Rick

http://www.leadwerks...le3-sound-node/ From what I can see, Source.Playing, Source.Stopped, Source.Paused don't work. I had to use 0 for stopped and 1 for playing instead of the constants. Otherwise, create a pivot in your scene, attach this script, fill out the properties, and use the flowgraph to trigger your sound. When your sound is finished (loop = false) then it'll trigger an OnComplete output which you can then do whatever else you want. In my example I just played another sound after the first sound was finished.

1) Needs scroll bars so we can put more stuff than just the basic screen 2) Are we able to go directly from node to the underlying lua script of the node? 3) Can we tell in the scene tab what has a script attached to it by just looking at the icon?

That's exactly what I plan on doing. I'm going to play around a little tonight with this as a "fun friday" thing I'm going to push this to the limits and create variable type scripts as well. Of course they will require entities (pivots) in the scene for each variable which sucks, but it's the work around for now until Josh can see the value in such a system and give us variables in the flowgraph. It wouldn't change anything as the flowgraph is based on Lua anyway. It would just expand the flowgraph functionality closer to Lua. I can't promise you that I wouldn't push for more Flowgraph functionality though. I find lots of value in flowgraphs and I think it should be expanded. If I can hook up a lots of functionality quickly via components, I'm all for that. It saves me time later so I don't have to pick pieces of code out of a Lua script to put into another. I can just take the generic entire Lua file and add it to my project and hook up the functionality via the flowgraph.

I'm pretty sure you need the license to make a new product.

Welcome! The commands between Lua and C++ should be very similar. However you'd have to type out the conversion yourself at this time. Probably adjust the camera position in the world to be right in front of the player model. You'd have to handle the rotation then though, but if you just wanted a quick and dirty look you could manually rotate it to face the same way the player is just to get a look at how things would look in FP.

I'll call it a programming tool from now.

So Kismet (and other flowgraphs) has variables, modules, conditions, branching, & lets you define logic for the computer to run, but because their documentation doesn't come out and say it's a programming language we can't call it that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test So you see all those features that make up Kismet and see how similar they are to other programming languages and you just simply say no? I guess I see the similarities and say yes. I don't think it's that far of a reach.

I don't even know why I let myself get sucked into these but... Wiki says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language Typed: "programming language def" into google "a language designed for programming computers" "Language is the human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, and a language is any specific example of such a system." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language Languages don't have to be text based. I don't see the word text in any of these 2 defs or the def of language itself. So if the word language doesn't require text, and programming is to give instructions to a computer, then why aren't flowgraphs a programming language?

That's all a programming language is. So it would seem they both serve the same purpose. We can give it a different name because it's pictures with some text instead of just text I guess, but not sure what the point of that would be since it does the exact same thing. You are right it would be more relevant, but then it would be faced with the same question all programming languages are faced with. Why learn one over the other?

I think flowgraphs can/should be looked at as just another language. It's just another way of getting logic to run. Kismet supports variables, modules, loops, conditions etc. It is a language just like any other just not typed. That puts it on par with any other scripting language. It's just a different way of thinking about a problem. We see time and time again that images (colors & shapes) are better teachers than text. "A picture is worth a thousand words" is so true. So for where LE3 is with flowgraphs right now, sure I think learning to code Lua will be helpful. Where UDK is right now with Kismet, designers/mappers/etc are doing some pretty cool, advanced, & complex things with it's flowgraph. I think the more those who like Flowgraphs use and really push them for Leadwerks 3, the more likely Josh will see their benefit as a programming language and expand them. Flowgraphs aren't "MakeMyGameForMe". They can, and should in my view, be just like another language.

I agree islands can make it more confusing, but sometimes you need things to run on entities every frame, and making those connections also comes at a price of readability with having tons of lines everywhere making the connections. Add to that we only get the 1 flowgraph and no grouping functionality and complicated flowgraphs will get messy in LE3

I haven't looked into LE3 flowgraph all that much yet, but I have no doubt we'll have to hack around some of this stuff as Josh isn't 100% there with flowgraphs. I don't think we need an entity ID, I think we can get the entity's themselves, but we may need a node that accepts a table of entities (not sure if a table can be a public property or not). That way we can just add every entity to this node, and that node can connect to functionality nodes to process the table of entities. I would, however, question if this is needed. If you want functionality to run on certain entities every frame, I think making a Lua script of the functionality and attaching it to each entity would be the way to go. The Lua script could also just be to tag the entity, and we could have a ForEachEntity node that in it's Update method scans all entities looking for the tagged entities and starting the looping process. I'm not sure if we can get all loaded entities from within a Lua script though. I'm guessing we should be able too, given it's all 1 Lua state. Again, for me this will have to wait a month or 2 until I finish my game.

Plugin? What I was talking about is a simple Lua file.

@mockingbird, did you ever use the downloader for LE2 because if so it should still be in there. That's where I took mine from.

Eventually, not right now, I plan on making a package of useful generic scripts. I'm going to copy some of these from iTween but would like for people to just list some stuff they think would be generic enough and useful. CameraFade (fades the camera in and out) ShakeCamera (shakes the camera) MoveTo (move an entity to another entity over a specific amount of time) ScaleTo (scales an entity to a certain value over time) RotateTo (rotates an entity to a certain value) PointAt (points an entity at another entity) Some useful character controller AI command(s) could be: TakeCover (could either use specific cover volume triggers placed in the world or dynamically scan near geometry to find cover)

iTween for LE3 would be sweet! I haven't even looked at LE3 yet so can't help at this time, but at first glance if you wanted to do this yourself, I would make a separate script that takes an entity as the thing to move, then and entity as the place to move to (pass a pivot as this), and then in the Update() function use the Move() and PointAt() functions to move the object to the destination each frame. Make some kind of enable/disable thing so that you can trigger this process starting. Also check the distance between the 2 points/entities to determine when to stop. This way doesn't use physics though, so not sure if that is a requirement. This would be a great thing for an elevator or something. There are so many little scripts like this that would be so useful and I do mean to make these for people but at this time I have to focus on my game.

I have to imagine if your game is done entirely in Lua it would be 100% the same between Windows and Mac.

Correct. Currently you have to roll your own. It's on the creators To Do list for the future though.

Oh I see, triangulate face. Got it thanks! This looks like it keeps the animation just fine. Very nice!

In UU3D when I do reduce poly menu option it says "Your model must be triangulated first". So where is the menu option to triangulate . I don't know what this means or how it would be done.

I have UU3D so I'll give this a try as the first "easy" solution (again if I even need to for mobile, the models might be fine as is, haven't tested yet). If I need to reassigned the weights then I have a guy who can help with that and will hit him up. Thanks all for your answers!

Just curious if it's "easy" to reduce a models (animated and all) poly count? Can this be done in UU3D with a couple clicks of the mouse (I'm hoping )? Just trying to anticipate any issues for mobile.

That's really all a hook is. A call to a function. It's just having the engine call your user function in specific situations.

I often find a special frame hook to be helpful as well to get more accurate timing on when an attack actually lands and when to calc and show the damage done. This would be more for RPG type games with slower melee attacks and spells.

I'm telling you, I'm just telling you , use the event file I put up. You don't even fully have to understand the details, just use it in a couple tests and I just think you'll love it. I use it all over the place for soooo many things. It's so handy when programming in C++. It opens up an entire layer of communication between objects.