Rick

I was hoping for cooler systems . I find when doing things the "brute force" way things end up "messy" and a certain class ends up way bigger than I care for.

You are better off learning Java because it forces you to make EVERYTHING a class. C++ doesn't have this requirement so it's probably not the best language to learn about classes with. I suggest coding in Java for a couple months so you are used to making everything a class, then come over to C++ and learn it's slight differences in how it handles classes, but at least you'll be in the good habit of making everything a class.

No, it wouldn't look stupid. It's what they would expect (given the class designs were logical) if using a language that supports classes like C++ or Java to name just a couple.

You can use this to extreme extents When I program in C++ everything is an objects. To name a few to get an idea: Camera Player Enemy Weapon Ammo Rectangle Point Animation Action the list goes on and on. Everything in your entire game can be described with objects. Good practice has you keeping objects fairly small and only store the info and functionality it needs. You don't want massive objects that do everything under the sun. You want more smaller objects that work together.

Properties and functionality grouped together (variables & functions). Humans tend to like to think of objects and objects have properties to them and they do things. Everything is an objects really when you think about it. You can describe most everything with a class.

Lua has to "fake" classes and it'll most likely confuse you to see how you do a class in Lua because of it. In C++ a class looks like: class Car { private: Color color; // only visible inside this class protected: public: // visible inside this class and any class the derives from this class void Drive() {} // visible outside of this class }; Car myCar; myCar.Drive();

Sorry, cd = cooldown.

I'm just curious if people have a well organized way of handling some tasks that happen in a game. For example, let's say you have an RPG fighting game. When you attack someone with an ability (let's say fireball) you need to: 1) Reduce player mana 2) Put the ability on CD (possibly) 3) Play the animation to shoot the fireball 4) When the fireball hits the target destroy the fireball 5) Play hit animation on the target 6) Calculate the damage and apply it In this case it's all in sequence. In the case of a simple sword attack the hit animation and and damage calculation might happen at a certain point in the animation being played to make things more exact. My question is does anyone have a more formal generic task system they use to do all this or are they just kind of loose with coding these things directly into an action, player, whatever class. I'm toying around with the idea of having Action classes that do specific things with the parameters passed to them, and bundling them up in a Task which will do the Actions added to it in sequence. I feel like this can help bundle things neatly but curious as to what others do or would do.

So let's get this LE3 going. I have tax money coming that I'll just spend on something else unless you hurry up!

Far from a complete game like most others Although I would say development on it would be much faster and easier if LE had built-in pathfinding, an animation editor of sorts to attach actions to animations, maybe some action editor, and UI editor. I plan on moving it to LE 3 when it's ready mostly because doing all that stuff is tedious and my time is limited due to other obligations. Not to mention I think the game would work better in a tablet/phone marketplace than PC.

@Canardian Yeah, I think that's very valid. He could sell both separately easy enough I think.

I agree that Josh should make C++ game specific functionality. A character class, a weapons class, etc. If you want to use it, it's there, if not then don't. If you want to extend it then do it. He's basically putting all that stuff into scripts vs C++.

If Josh wants to make a game engine, he has to lay out the rules and guidelines for a game. If he wants to make a game API then he's done it. He has said before he doesn't like forcing those kind of rules on people, but that's exactly why there are no games made with LE so far. Enforce a structure and I think you'll get more games created BUT you'll piss off the people who want the freedom. I think he could get the best of both words by wrapping more structure around the API and releasing both, and I think LE3 is more like that then LE2 but I still sort of get the sense he doesn't want to force structure which will always mean the odds of a game being finished is slim with the small community LE has.

@Furbolg Like templates Honestly if Josh would download the event code I posted in the asset store this would be a slam dunk and take mins to implement, but people get all freaked out and think it's to complicated...

You can do this with "normal" C++ and any recent VS, and bind with class methods with templates, but I don't think that'll happen.

Can we have an extra pointer also so we can pass around 'this' when we call this from within a class? I hate all these C callback functions when the library is C++. The way it is pretty much requires globals if we want to use anything in these hooks other than the entity in question, which we most likely will, and forcing me to use globals to get anything inside these hook functions just sucks and in my view is bad practice. Any C callbacks you have should allow the extra pointer like LE 2 has to allow us to pass things around instead of making anything global.

eBook, I want to read it on my iPad and want free updates too while we are at it

Depends on how you view what an MMO is. I can make an open world where many people could log on and do a couple quests. I'm pretty sure there are a couple specific MMO engines out there that allows you to set that up in mins! Just because someone might not find it engaging or interesting doesn't mean it's not an MMO or that it's not a "finished" game. Minecraft is a great example of what indie's should be doing I think. Make some basic rules that let the players be creative. It's much faster than trying to create some story and complex gameplay.

@karma You do understand not everyone knows everything at any given point in time right? Josh didn't know then what he does now. Software grows over time. Do you get upset with all software companies when they come out with new features because they didn't have them before? Come on man. Josh was stating what he learned since LE2 was created. This all comes down to what Pixel often says. Just wait and see. No sense in getting all pissed about a product you've yet to see and work with. Either give it a chance or don't. Life continues either way.

I think Josh needs to pay some of us to make games for his engine to get the word out

It's only "tricky" if you are trying to make some game on par with AAA studio. Most indie games could easily be made and it wouldn't be "tricky" with LE. The fact of the matter is most devs don't finish their projects. For a game engine it's a numbers game. You just have to get a very large number of devs so that the small % of them that will actually ever finish a game will do it with your engine. The lower dev count you have the lower % that will finish a game (and that can be 0% with a low enough number of devs). I don't think LE even comes close to user count to something like Unity or UDK.

The Lua side of LE3 is basically a plugin pattern already. The C++ side could probably use something like this but the lack of reflection makes that hard.

The way I usually do this is In the Lua scripts of the objects in question (spawn point for player) I give it a special key that I then look for when loading the scene. What I thought was really cool was when I was using the C# implementation I made a plugin system for the scene loader where each C# class object was it's own DLL. When the game loaded it would dynamically load all these DLL's that were in a specific folder to the project. Then in the Lua scripts I would make a property that would be the string representation of the C# class namespace + name. The when loading I would use reflection to dynamically create the C# object based on this string. These objects would share a common interface since I used them for like things that had different functionality, but this made the scene loading part really small and simple and didn't require me to change it when I added new placeholders. I just made the DLL for that placeholder object, stuck it in the plugin folder, and game the namespace + string name for that object in Lua and BOOM! I wish C++ had proper reflection

Technically with Lua you can do this if Josh were to make a generic LE Lua interpreter for Mac and you make your game with Lua. It could be done with iOS also if Apple would be cool with it, which I'm not sure if they would just yet, but there are Lua interpreters available on the app store so not sure what the difference really would be anyway.

What happens when speed programming practice meet maintainability programming practice? They don't always mix well. Who wins