Josh

I don't think the goal is to prevent piracy altogether. That's impossible. The goal is to make piracy so inconvenient most people with money would rather just buy the game. If every computer sold at Fry's could play Crysis and PC game sales were still behind, then I think the piracy explanation would be more plausible.

I agree this type of "protection" is counterproductive. Steam effectively ended PC game piracy. Maybe there is a way around it, but I can't be bothered to look for it. The same goes for console games. It is possible to pirate XBox games, but most people are too lazy to bother. If someone's time is worth so little they are willing to search for cracks and risk screwing up their computer, they probably weren't a potential customer in the first place. The real reason PC gaming has taken a hit is the **** graphics chips they put in most computers. If I go into Fry's and buy a brand new computer, 90% of them can't play Crysis. The best you might find is a semi-budget ATI card, like a Radeon 4600.

When using KeyHit() in a MaxGUI application, the program will call PollEvent(), which will cause all your application hooks to be called. This can lead to strange behavior, like in my case, where I spent a long time figuring out why a light was being freed in the middle of the engine rendering routine.

Does anyone here have experience programming for the iPhone or Google Android?

Leadwerks 3.0 would be a much bigger product than what you have seen so far, with a lot more people working on it, and existing developers would get a big discount. There's still a lot of improvements to make to 2.x, so I would not worry about a 3.0 too soon.

Thanks for the suggestions. Some of these will be easy to implement.

This is probably the cause. Are there any editors from large games, maybe one of the Battlefield games, that I should take a look at for vegetation editing ideas? I really like your results so far.

Yeah, my metric sense is a little off.

4096 * 10 = 40.9 kilometers = 1678 square kilometers.

If you are making a flight sim, you don't need such a high resolution terrain. You can easily make a much bigger terrain by using a lower resolution. Instead of 2 meters per tile, use 10.

What kind of features do you think could be added to the IDE to make it more useful for programming with the engine?

I will be very comfortable with this when the next major version comes out. I like the idea, but is practice it doesn't work. In a 3D engine, various subsystems affect each other in many ways.

Sorry about that. I forgot to add you to the password list. This is why I am looking forward to stopping the upgrade orders at the end of the month.

Increase the camera near range as much as possible, and decrease the far range, if possible.

For the best combination of value and performance, I say the GEForce 9800 GTX.

Please rate and comment:

I think to maintain a sustainable business, it is necessary to offer some products to professional developers at a professional price. However, I think the PC version of the engine will always have a relatively low price point(s).

Unwrap3D can save a second texcoord set to GMF files.

The .x format does not support lightmaps, at least the older version I used.

Minimum followed by the maximum.

I really like Unreal's Kismet system, and I think we could work out something really powerful with that and your "thingoid" approach.

We are putting effort into an effective logo and icons. I am not happy with our current presentation, but it is very hard to find the right look.

I skipped the GDC for a couple of years, because I just wanted to focus on developing our technology. This was my first year back since our engine came to be. I was surprised how many people were familiar with our engine, and I got to talk to a few users (who probably aren't active on the forum). I also got to chat briefly with Tom Spilman, David Helgason, and Mike Wuetherick. It's really fun to see what everyone is up to, and how far they have come since a few years ago. We met new friends including the FaceWare team, the PureLight guys, and the GameDev.net team (they are launching a new site soon, so stay tuned!). I got to talk at length to some nVidia employees, and we had a very interesting discussion about the future of mobile graphics...very interesting. Oh, did I mention OpenGL 4.0 was announced while we were there? I am very excited about this new technology, and really happy with how Khronos has come through for us. We also got to talk to a few potential investors. There is a well defined plan for the future of Leadwerks technology, but I can't make that information public quite yet. If you've never been to the GDC, I highly recommend you attend this event at least once. We've uploaded a ton of videos on our YouTube channel to give you a taste of what it's like. I'm looking forward to GDC 2011, especially if we have a booth of our own. If you're looking for publicity for your game, we will be looking for projects to show the potential of the engine, and there's a good chance we can get your game seen.

I saw an FFT water implementation using OpenCL at the Khronos booth, and it was really beautiful. Trying to find the demo. That's what I want to use.

Yes, and we were there: I was talking with some NVidia and Khronos guys last night, and told them I was really happy with how OpenGL 4.0 has come together. What a surprise that was! ATI says they will have drivers really soon. From the way they said it, I would guess maybe three weeks.