Mumbles

Don't the majority of games already attract the male audience?

Do I gather from this infatuation that the character is female?

I meant that I assumed it had to pay the licenses for other tools. The Leadwerks Editor is free with the engine. Other tools though, like 3D World Studio are not the same product, so you have to pay separately for that. However, you do not need it to use the engine That card can handle Leadwerks whilst sleeping. You should not have any problems there. The networking isn't poor as such, it just does not have some very basic features that I want 1-> No TCP support 2-> Yes 3-> Can't remember, but I would guess at 32 - 64, maybe more 4-> If you mean a dedicated server, not really. The -only- problem with Leadwerks is that, the computer running it must have a graphics card with Shader Model 3.0 (or higher). Datacentre servers do not have this. But, if you have a normal computer set up with a very good Internet connection, and it does have the required graphics card, then yes you can. For number 4, you can download Newton for free, and make your server using that instead. But Newton is not the nicest thing to learn from scratch. The most common alternative is RakNet. Try the Leadwerks networking first. If it does not give enough performance then try RakNet (It's free). Right now, yes you have to code this yourself. Many users here want the engine to handle for them, so it may appear in a later update. But at the moment, I don't think it's planned.

I don't have any experience in using those, since I use std::fstream for files (std::ifstream for reading, std::ofstream for writing). Open the files in binary mode, and then use the .read() and .write() operations. That has worked fine for my own projects, from all the way back from last November when I built that functionality for myself.

No inverted mouse, and controls most people could not use. The first I played that did not use the arrow keys was Tribes 2. Which uses ESDF (A is for zoom). To this day, I will often rebind WASD to ESDF in every game I play. E-Forward S-Left D-Backward F-Right A-Sometimes Zoom - sometimes "action" - sometimes not used at all Q-Usually "action" W-Lean left (for games that have leaning) R-Lean right - or Reload for games that do not have a leaning ability G-Grenade (For games like Call Of Duty, where you do not select it from the inventory, and then LMB to fire it) H-Hide current item V-Melee (Similar to grenade) L-Light C-Toggle crouch X-Toggle run Z-Zoom out (For games where it is not the same key as zoom in) T-Chat Y-Teamchat O-Objectives (if it's not done via the esc menu) P-Pause (if it can be paused) Space-Usually jump (But "action" in Splinter Cell games) L Ctrl-Usually hold crouch (as in release to stand back up again) L Shift-Usually hold run Tab-Scores Alt-Team orders menu, or pre-recorded voice chat Mouse wheel-usually cycle weapons LMB-Fire RMB-Varies by game MMB-Usually reload Notable exceptions: cod4: RMB for scope, A to steady it (or toggle sprint) Mafia: L for reload, and movement with the arrow keys Quake 3: W for use item, not Q or A. Initially a mistake but later became intentional Splinter Cell: A for co-op action (would be Q but this is already bound for switch hands, and back-to-wall. By Chaos Theory, there was no way I could rebind that key, in my mind, that's where it had to be) Unreal Tournament series: Q for translocator, A entirely unused Obviously, in my project, I would make WASD the default. Edit: Damn, I've done it again. Got the last post in a poll. So now "I" keep bumping it...

It's a great engine for almost anything. But you will need some decent programming skills (C/C++, C#, BlitzMax, Lua are the most common languages) Yes, but it will depend on your programming skills It depends on the graphics card. Newer cards should be able to do all of that, with a good frame rate. Cards below a Geforce 8800 (or ATI Radeon 3870) may not have such good performance Leadwerks Engine 3 -WILL NOT- be a free upgrade but there might be a discount. Upgrades to Leadwerks Engine 2.x (the current version) are usually free, but there was one upgrade that had to be paid for. If you buy the engine now, the non-free upgrade will already be applied, so you will not have to pay for that.

That must take up a ton of memory, storing all that information about so many bodies... Does this happen 60 times per second? Is there a maximum rewind time (for example 10 seconds) Or will it try to save as much as it can until it runs out of memory?

Works much better on an 8800 (but that's what we expected): 30 fps with everything enabled (except wireframe) at 1680x1050. On this card, turning off SSAO alone will increase the frame rate to 50... Everything off (but still high res) gives 64 fps. Now I appreciate how much better an 8800 is, compared to an 8500. With such numbering, you would expect them to be close in terms of performance. Do I remember Josh saying that the 8800 gives better performance than some of the lower 9000 series? It really does show the advantage of parallel computation.

Yes, the engine is not free. Even if you are making free games, you must still pay for it.

Wow - I wasn't ready that - even with the screenshots. Runs nicely on my 8500 - a nice 1.9 fps (at 1680x1050.... 12.9 fps at 960x600) Turning all the lights off increases it to 10 fps. Turning off the postfilters doesn't make it any faster at all... Took me a while to figure out how to move forward. French Keyboard = azerty , so z to make it move forward. On a qwerty keyboard, z is on the bottom row, furthest left I don't know the full french keyboard, but I know the movement controls are: z qsd

Sounds more like Splinter Cell to me Speed of light. Well, uh... It's pretty fast. "Frame rate" of the human eye is much more of limiting factor. That said, I believe that airline pilots have to demonstrate that they can see upto 220 frames per second

Not really, I'm a PC player, and PC gaming is pretty much dead. I blame the frag dolls...

As a gaming machine, the British speccy was almost entirely inferior to the American Commodore 64. Speccy had a 3.5 MHz processor (instead of the C64's 1 MHz), and 16K of memory (C64 had ... 64K). Later speccies had 48K and 128K (I, well, 'we' had a 128K machine). Other than that, the C64 totally outclassed it. Better graphics, better sounds, and for games, that's what you want. Frag Dolls: Most of them are console gamers, and none of them really stand a chance of winning at QuakeCon (that said, neither do I). A few of them venture on to the PC, But that's only to play WoW... I could slap them for not using their computers to their full potential. Halo and MW2 are both FPS games, but you would not catch me playing either of them. You would also never catch me playing Final Fantasy. I watch my brother play the new one, 13 is it? At this point I'm already thinking "Money grab, number 12". The combat looks boring, the story sounds boring. The story is also clearly very poorly thought out, If you can make 12 sequels from one game, I think that says it all... Breath of Fire III - please don't say it's about dragons. Never been one for mythical, fantasy or magic (spells) - Paul Daniels' magic tricks do not count as magic, but I wouldn't want to see them in a game either

texture size? 3x 4096x4096 textures (diffuse,normal,parallax) for example will probably take far longer to load than a single 512x512 texture (diffuse only)

I'm wondering if you have ever heard of the frag dolls, although I'm also thinking, everyone knows of them... Maybe most girls are into that sort of game, but I can say I never really played with dolls when I grew up. The ZX speccy was my growing up toy, so you might wonder: Just how girly am I? Answer is, not very...

A good question, one that it seems several people have now asked me. The answer is, I'm doing quite a few things, and multi-tasking them. Of course this causes a problem in that it can appear to take much longer to get any visible results down, but I remain faithful. During my last year at uni I was tasked with making a simple multiplayer game, and only in the final two months before submission could you really see any evidence of the game itself. But once the first sign of life had emerged from the project it made huge progress in a short time. So I'm not yet worried that my Leadwerks projects are not really in any playable state. But people will be asking, "just what are these projects that you are working on?" I'll explain: The first project, which currently gets most of my attention is a multiplayer arena style game, think Quake 3 but with different maps, powerups and weapons. The idea is that this game will provide a foundation to build a more complex FPS game. For the second one, think Mafia and GTA: Admittedly, more like Mafia than GTA, more of a linear story as is the case with the first mafia game (although the upcoming release of mafia 2 might provide some interesting inspirations). Should be quite an interesting project since I don't really know too much about that style of life. Hopefully it will provide some comical stereotypes, but so early on, it's too early to make such a promise. Those are the brief abstracts, more about the second game when the first is ready. So, this Arena game of mine (or id software's, which may be more appropriate), what exactly is it going to involve? Well anyone who's played Quake 3 probably knows that deep down, the game is not actually that complicated. There are nine unique weapons which all have their own strengths and weaknesses. And the simple objective would be to score the most number of frags within a specified timeframe. During that time, you would decide which weapon is most suitable to use for that task at any given time, whilst making sure that you are strong enough to survive an attack from another like-minded player. Powerups occasionally appear in the arena to make your job a little bit easier, again, they all help you in their own way. Well, I don't see too much change in any of those mechanics, but implementing those are some of the core elements of any shooter game, so getting them down once would make a larger-scale game much easier to develop, or at least that's the idea. The biggest difficulty is going to be controlling the players. I could not decide whether it would be easier to code the network side of the game first, or the single player bots, and each have their own set of challenges to the developer: Networking involves: Tracking the connections and disconnections Handling the client input, and ensuring all other clients update the associated player model accordingly Attempting to hide any network delays, because, best intentions in the world, problems do happen, and warping clients to old positions is annoying. More so when it happens frequently Attempting to keep the client's view smooth. It may be great if you don't get warped around all the time, but try aiming at another player who is experiencing this problem. Also, keeping prediction reasonable. Attempting to remove any over-predictions, which cause many (visible) corrections to be made And I'm sure there are more that I'll experience during development Single player bots involve: Knowing the arena, and where to stand. isn't is just silly if a bot walks somewhere it shouldn't (Like Q3's red mist, or the void of space). Sometimes the most direct route is not always the best, so this involves pathfinding in some way Being able to 'think'. Walking around randomly may be enough to start out with, but really, wouldn't it be so much more interesting if the bot knew to run for some health when it was weak (instead of perhaps running to grab a railgun)? Being able to 'lead-aim'. We all know that rocket launchers sterotypically do not hit instantly. To prevent their explosive blast being over powered, they take a while to reach the target. This allows an observant player to attempt evasive action. But the bot has to take this projectile speed into account as well, as simply firing where the target was is unlikely to work. For the case of grenade launcher, the influence of gravity must also be taken into consideration when using the weapon offensively (unless the bot chooses to use another weapon that is) And possibly, if I really feel like it, attempting to predict the player's movement over somewhat long periods. Example: the bot has done a tremendous amount of damage to another player. It's likely that this other player will be going to the megahealth spawn, and praying it's there. Does this bot know a faster way there? Simply chasing will guarantee the player will get the mega health (if it's available), whereas taking a faster route may deny the player the health (and it's even possible that the bot can grab it instead). That's a difficult one, and so will be attempted much later. Eventually, I decided I would go with the network side first. After all, at least then people could play the game with each other and have longer lasting fun that with poorly programmed bots. Also, the bot's play style could be influenced by watching people playing the game. Building the bots will require a pathfinding system. I know most people here all seem to have taken a liking to A-star, but I won't be going for that, instead, think of a breadth-first search system, but with some minor changes, giving some features of a uniform cost search. When I've actually built this system, I will explain just how it works. All I will say is that unless I've really got something very badly wrong, it should -always- find the fastest path from start to destination. without being too slow, but of course, time will tell... Closer to time, I may be asking for some media input from the community, models in particular. But I will not be asking for such input until the programming is close to finished, and will be using my own (sub-par) milkshape efforts until then. Once the game is finally finished, I'll walkthrough exactly how I created the game so that others can have something to learn from if they're not quite sure how to build such a game. I'm now definately committed, this game will -not- be using 2.3 or newer. That does not mean that it would be of no use to read through the source code though. The mafia-like game will probably be an LE 3.0 game. So like I said early on, there's no signs of life yet, but when screenshots come up, you may be surprised how quickly it all takes shape

This is just one of those scenes where you can really feel that you are there. With every update, the feeling of actually being there gets even stronger. I suppose it has something to do with the lighting being just right. It doesn't feel like you are sat in a photographer's studio with lights everywhere, but you can still see some shadows being cast by the limited light in the sky. As a small side note though, you now have two blog 09's (The other being: "Leadwerks Blog Post 09: The Beginning of the End" on Jul 16 2010 06:19 PM)

what was it, Tyler? I think he said something about creating alcohol...

You only need to thank one of us. I didn't tell you anything useful...

Whereas all of the boards here have... uh, 2316 topics... Not such an interesting number is it? (and 19674 total posts)

I use visual studio (and the language is plain C, but many others are available). It's the only reason I still use XP. That and the upcoming Mafia II

Linux just isn't marketed the same way. It should not be at all difficult to convince people to move to a free OS, that can still play games brilliantly. id software would always release linux executables for their games, but the majority of users would stick with the system that they already knew. After all, most people do not want to be associated with the spotty nerds, so it has a bit of a negative image at this time. But you just don't see these 7 second adverts (which last more like 15 seconds) for linux, or 8 second adverts for its applications. it doesn't have some random losers (one in a suit, and the other in an allegely casual outfit) claiming to be computers (maybe cyborgs?), claiming that they can both run Microsoft Office, or making other silly claims about what they are apparently doing. It enjoys a small market share, but not casuals (Windows - home line), professionals (Windows - professional line), or rich snobs (Mac). But long running computer experts who either saw sense from the beginning, or (like me) people who got so frusrated with at least one of the other 'major' systems, that they went to try out what the hard core nerds swore by. And be honest, the sexist world that we are. If when my project was finished it was actually popular, it would make news all around the world. "Great new game by single programmer... a girl" And it became known that I used linux, how many other people would suddenly start using it? Or investigating it at the very least, along the lines of "If a girl can use it, so can I"... Well, now that I've said that, you just know that it would generate no interest at all, but you get my idea.

I'm not a fan of such artificial promotion. But, what do they care if just one person doesn't like the promotion style? In Windows, the difference between them is fractional. But don't forget about wine. Whilst it's not officially supported, it does work. I'm sure you know the clear winner when running under wine (Yes, wine actually can do DX, but not 10 or newer, and even with 9, it's not brilliant). OpenGL runs just as nicely on wine as if it were Windows itself...

Is this true for all versions of Windows? (I don't know) But think about it: Windows 7: "Look how good this new version of DirectX is. It's faster than OpenGL". Yet interestingly, OpenGL runs, what is it? Something like 20% slower on 7 than it does on XP? I don't know how much of that is intentional and how much of that is due to poor optimisation... When I bought the engine (May 2008), it was only £76 (£75.99, or $150) but now, due to the dollar rate (and a new price tag of $200), it's almost double what I paid (£130). The engine is still well worth its new price though, before it was just insanely cheap for what it does.

"1)How easy are mesh files to work with? Can I export strait out of blender and into leadwerks with animations and artwork complete (.3DS format?)." Very. Although this engine only uses its own proprietary format. Ultimate Unwrap 3D is quite cheap, can import almost anything, and export almost anything (including the leadwerks format *.gmf). Also I believe that your animations would be lost with the 3ds file format. I may be wrong on that, but I did not think they supported bone based animation "2)Can I render only a portion of a mesh at a time or must I render the entire leadwerks compatible mesh whenever I call it? THinking of terrain here." Meshes are hierarchical. That is, say for a character: the hands are connected to the arms, and the arms to the body, you could choose to hide various parts of the hierarchy, and thus only render portions of a mesh. I'm not sure about terrains though, I believe they are completely seperate entities "3)Can I mix part of leadwerks display with my own Directx code if I wanted to say have more control over terrain rendering?" You can render to custom buffers yes, but I'm not sure about custom DirectX buffers. You see, Leadwerks is built on top of an OpenGL renderer "4)How fast is leadwerks generally speaking? Is it fast enough for say 100 player models on screen at any given time? Will frequently be less than that." It all depends on the user's video card. Leadwerks runs almost entirely on the GPU, and it MUST be SM 3.0 compliant (although SM 4.0 is strongly recommended). With an 8800, even with several lights all casting dynamic soft shadows, the performance should still be decent "5)How much is the license to go pro with this? Surely a single user license doesn't cover the cost of being able to profit from this endlessly. It sounds too cheap." It really is just $200 to use it any way you want. Freeware, commercial, subscription based games. It's all allowed. The only restrictions really are that you can't make a sandbox game creator with this. But it sounds like what you want is definitely allowed, and only for $200 too... Infinite number of games, no price limit on your games, and no royalties paid to Leadwerks. "6)If I wanted to recall a camera's pixels from a perspective other than the player can I do this or does leadwerks lock me out of talking to DirectX?" That's the only point I do not really know. But again DirectX / OpenGL limitation may get in the way, but then again, it may be very simple to do. Hopefully someone else knows that one... You can create more than one camera, and you should be able to project/unproject from it. That may be what you are after. But that is just a guess...