nick.ace

Congratulations! I totally want to play it now once I have time! This will be a great learning tool for others as well! It was very generous of you to release this to the community, so thank you so much for that! On top of that the amount of work you've put into it is impressive. I've followed a bunch of the videos/posts, it's just an incredible project!

Oh really? Ok, well I guess you can't change it then. It just makes it very difficult to work with some times. I wasn't sure if you had any influence on this. They really should do more usability testing.

This is just a small color suggestion. Often times, when I have to select a pivot with child objects, I need to edit one of the child objects. The problem I have is that when I select the pivot and then try to find what I selected under the scene tab, the selected object is highlighted under the screen tab, but it is EXTREMELY faint, so it's difficult to tell which one is selected. My suggestion is to make this darker.

Oh nice! I didn't see that.

Does anyone know the filepath to load items from the Workshop using Lua? For example, I want to access a shader from the Workshop to attach as a PostEffect, how would I go about doing this? (I have to use ClearPostEffects in my code, so this is why I would need it in Lua).

A lot of these questions have already been answered in the forums, just FYI. But welcome to the forums! I think you are a bit confused about the Standard vs. Indie version, based on some of your questions. You NEED the indie version to use the Standard version. 1. YOU need to compile it if you use C++. 2. You can always use Lua, either in conjunction with C++ or as in the indie edition. But you don't have to use it. 3. Lua performance shouldn't be a problem unless you are performing heavy math operations (such as large terrain or physics stuff) outside of the Leadwerks API. 4. You can #include other libraries. 5. Yes, you can use it for commercial games. There are no royalties, so the percentage you have to pay is 0%. 6. Download the demo off Steam first. That is really the only way to tell 100% whether your setup will work. Although, judging by your graphics card, you may need a new one as Leadwerks only supports OpenGL 4.0 and above, yours uses OpenGL 2.0.

Where do you get these number from? Provided that the artist makes $40 an hour, that would still be close to 40 hours for $1500. Also, when making 5 characters, animations and other features of each character should only really been once. Whoever provided these estimates must have way overpriced them. Instead, one thing you could do, kind of like what tournamentdan suggested, is allow them to sell the models for Leadwerks (like DLC), and then take a royalty. This is how pretty much every marketplace works, and you are guaranteed to make a profit while they are guaranteed to get very high visibility for their art. Also, just sharing my thoughts, but I feel in some ways it would be best if the provided models are on the more generic side (kind of like you suggested) so that at least provide a good base for added detail.

I don't know, this sounds a bit limiting. I mean the idea sounds good, but even little changes like what Rick suggested don't allow this. I mean, if people don't want to share source files, they shouldn't have to, but I'm sure some people would like others to modify their work. I know I would.

The thing I find difficult about this is that many of the workshop items do not include source (just .mdl and .tex files), so you can't really change much.

Nothing wrong with that way that I can see. That's pretty much how I do it at least.

Just a quick note: Convex meshes are dynamic in the sense that you can pick them up and throw them or whatever, whereas polymeshes are static, meaning that they will not move. If you are dealing with buildings, it's best to use polymeshes.

Isn't physics already on a separate thread? That's what I thought at least. Where are you calling PhysicsSetPosition()?

Hey Rick, I use paint.net regularly. I imagine that the diffuse alpha texture is just two colors? So the way I would do this is to create a new layer on top of the diffuse texture with the alpha texture. Then, color the alpha part of the alpha layer some random color (preferably something like purple or pink, unless the diffuse is this color ). Anyway, use the magic wand selecting tool to highlight the non-pink portions of the alpha texture and delete those. Next, merge the two layers. After that, just use the wand tool again to select the pink portions and delete those. If you have varying alpha values, then this won't work, and it might be best to write an RGBA merge script or something. Hope this helps!

I agree with everyone! :0 On a serious note, I agree, things like a lack of water and vegetation do limit the amount of content that can be developed. Also, large environments are not necessarily super time consuming. Some games, like Deadlight, use procedural content to generate large worlds. Part of the problem I see is that the engine is most suited for FPS and I guess TPS games. RTS games, while possible, are a nightmare due to the lack of exposed recast commands to Lua, and the few people who use C++ primarily are the only people who can really get around this. I know C++, but the only reason why I bought the C++ edition is if some items don't get implemented from the Lua side in time such as some of the recast commands (there was a discussion in the forums about regenerating the navmesh for only certain regions, but this was only feasible in C++). Also, more of the Newton physics commands could be exposed as well since racing games and some physics-based games are ruled out. Also, while I like the art packs, like others have said, there are plenty resources out there. In fact, the sci-fi one was basically just an edited version of Arteria3D's old sci-fi pack, and there are plenty of resources out there as well such as Unity's wonderful asset store. I also think that things like graphics are a huge draw to this engine. True, members aren't churning out games as often as users of Unity and UDK might, but the graphical aspects I'm sure are what draw a lot of users here. A cheap engine with great graphics is difficult to encounter.

That looks amazing shadmar! You should put it in the Workshop and bump off all the recent comment spammers there! XD No, but seriously, it looks amazing!

Haha, the end was pretty funny! I love the little details like the poison, and it's cool that you got saving to work! Also, that camera idea when you respawn isn't something I would have ever thought of but it's such a neat feature!

People need to be more appreciative! You're generously spending your own time to help others by making these tutorials! On top of that, they are excellent (or at least the ones I've seen). Thank you for the tutorials you've make and continue to make and for setting up this poll!

Personally, I also think it would be good if the engine just loaded things as needed because the load times can be extremely long.

That's not true at all! While I agree this should be an official feature for all versions, there are ways to publish without it. First of all, you don't need protection if your project includes assets that can be freely distributed (such as public domain stuff or stuff you make) and you are fine with users having access to that stuff. Second of all, there are tools out there that specialize in asset protection such as Smart Packer Pro.

That may be true, but I also think in the long run, if you look at what Unity was able to do, you'll see that a large share of their business comes from their asset store. If you give asset developers more of a cut of the profit initially than Unity does, it might actually be beneficial financially for Leadwerks. I know you already have connections with Arteria3D, and a bunch of other sellers go on the promotions forum, so that might not be a bad place to start if you tried this.

Well on the backend, how are the scripts run? Surely there is a list of scripts that are iterated through right? Or are they handled on different threads?

Hi ArtistDesigner, welcome to the forums! You may want to take a look at this and vote for the features you want if you haven't because a lot of what you suggested are already listed: http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/10381-requested-features-and-improvements/ The light intensity and the shortcuts sound like good ideas though! I'm not really sure how useful UV mapped physics would be (or even what that means), because right now you can apply a force on the surface of a mesh.

Thanks for the suggestions Hayden! I wasn't too sure how I wanted to approach this, whether it would be with some sort of indicator or if it would be automatic, but I guess either an audio or a visual indicator would be good to add since it would add a little more fairness.

I think I might be confused also, but if you are moving the terrain with the camera, then what is the purpose of mesh patches? I get that you want certain parts of the terrain to be more detailed that others, but this sort of defeats that purpose. Could you maybe post a screenshot?

So, I'm creating a blog to show how I'm approaching certain things (maybe this will be helpful to some people?). Stealth: This is a set of features that I wanted to go all out on, so that's what I'm doing right now. Shadows: Someone asked about how to implement shadows, and Josh gave a simple answer (kind of made me feel dumb lol). Anyway, the implementation for my game works for directional lights (the sun) right now, but it should be easy to extend to other lights if I choose to. Anyway, the way I calculated whether a point is in a shadow is by performing a raycast to the a vector generated by the light's rotation and scaled so that there would virtually be no building tall enough to evade the raycast. Crouch: This was pretty simple. The character controller needs to be changed using SetInput(), and the camera height needs to be changed while in crouch mode. That's it. Cover (Bushes): This was simple as well. I just performed a distance calculation to check if the player is near the center of the bush. Distractions (Rock): The AI doesn't actually "hear" the sound. Basically, each time the rock makes a sound, the rock the location of that sound is recorded and if it's close to enemy, the enemy will follow it. Buildings: I'm not sure how exactly I want to handle navigation due to building placement. I saw that there are recast commands accessible via C++, but I like to use Lua so hopefully these will be exposed through Lua in the future . But for now, these buildings have physics attached to them that scale as the building is constructed. Sounds: I sort of organized this like how a radio plays. When one ambient track finishes, another picks up. The way a randomly select the next track is by using the player's position data, but I found a way to change this in the future by using the system's milliseconds instead, but I don't know what to use! Day/Night: I wrote my own Day/Night script (I tried to use Shadmar's implementation, which is much better than mine, but I my weird lighting preferences made the colors of everything mess up). Anyway, it's simply a directional light that changes as time changes. Also, the ambient light changes as well so that the night becomes VERY dark! So, you must use your flashlight or find light!