Road Kill Kenny

I love it! Keep up the good work

I agree, I like to be able to use only one viewport with a big view or 2 or 3 or 4 depending on what I'm doing. On that thought, Josh do the num-pad keys do anything currently for the editor? Now don't take me for a Blender fanboi because I legitimately think this might be a good idea. The reason why Blender works so well with just one view port and other software usually by default use 4 is because of Blender's well mapped out hot keys for view-port navigation. The single view port (which can be 4 if you want it to be) has all the standard zoom pan rotate stuff with the mouse and such but it also has the num-pad keys helping it out. This is how it works: - Num7 = Snap to Top view - Num1 = Snap to Front View - Num3 = Snap to Right View - Ctrl + Num7 = Snap to Bottom view - Ctrl + Num1 = Snap to Back View - Ctrl + Num3 = Snap to left View - Num 5 = toggle perspective and orthographic rendering - Num 4 = increment around Z axis to the left (relative to camera facing) - Num 6 = increment around Z axis to the Right (relative to camera facing) - Num 8 = increment around X axis upwards (relative to camera facing) - Num 2 = increment around X axis downwards (relative to camera facing) Here's the thing, in Blender you have the option to go one big view-port or 4 like the default on most modelling software... you are completely not restricted. However, because this numpad viewport navigation works so fast and you can quickly snap to any view you want, most Blender users forgo the multiple view-ports for the larger size. Now of course LE3D is not a modelling software so It works in different ways but I offer up the idea as I have had a pleasant experience with it. Even if you don't think this is a good idea, please don't just discount this feedback as Blender fanboism... If it helps I used 3DS-Max for about 10 years before I switched to Blender which I've been only using for 1 year

Not saying a laptop isn't capable and that people don't use them... Once again all I'm saying is I doubt desktops will ever die.

Of course it can. But is it practical Edit: Yeh i do understand they are getting faster and faster... However, at the same time so are desktops. Laptops ar the same concept here. They are highly mobile compared to desktop but they don't truly eliminate desktops in anyway. The majority of coders, artists and coders that I am aware of still use desktops despite a small few.

Yeh basically I would do it the same. Just like the states are created dynamically from the database, the abilities in say and RPG game would be dynamically created from the database as well and stored in a vector. I would probably make a different type of button than a Gui element button for this otherwise I risk overloading the functionality of a button. However, just like the database specifies what state activates when you click a button, an ability button will have an ability ID target set. So when you click it that ability button would have a pointer to the ability manager and it would attempt to activate whatever its target ability is from within itself. So basically I just have to itterate through every button and update it and based on the data installed into the buttons they will automatically manage themselves.

Excellent I love it.

Not saying mobile devices won't be used more and more and PC's generally less. Thats a given and its already happening. I'm not a fan but thats mostly because I mostly use computers for 3 things. internet, dev & games... dev and games are much better on PC... internet is ok on mobile but its not fast to navigate the web so I still prefer on PC. But thats just me, I know for a fact that a lot of people don't have PC's anymoer because they have a tablet. I guess a lot of people only really need internet and word processor. Edit: Forgot just one thing that personally trumps all: Screen size: I use 2 full HD 24inch screens and sometimes even my 42inch TV. I don't think I'll ever be fully happy with mobile platform screen size until it gets up to A3 size. I'm talking like an electronic visual diary.

Not that I want to fuel an argument or anything but I'm pretty sure you are right Chris No matter how good tablets and mobile devices get they will never be as powerful as laptops and desktops of the same era. Simply put size matters. You can simply put more power with more space. Therefore the most advanced games will always be on PC and by the time mobile catches up, PC will already be on the next frontier. Not saying that a lot of people won't play mobile games, but the desktop PC and Laptop is here to stay.for sure. Just like paper is too. Could you imagine programming on a tablet? I don't even like to code without having 2 screens because the size matters and I want to be able to see a lot of code from different files all at once.

I like the look of that Josh. Just want to know, you said "Everything is Cusomizable" so can you: -Edit viewport scale and configuration - Have only one viewport - Hide any of those side panels and then get them back easily Can you drag one of those side tabs out and it becomes a window if you want to? Or are they stuck as side tabs. It would be great if eery tab could be pulled out into a window because it allows everyone a lot of freedom of how they want to do things. Me for example would drag out the material editor and even the object list into windows on my second screen and make my first screen almost all viewport. My only criticism is that it looks like the UI takes up a lot of the screen making the viewports rather small. I'm sure you've come up with a solution but it's difficult to see on just one screenshot. Maybe a quick video would help us give better feedback.

Yes exactly. Desktops will fade out just like paper stopped being used when computers were invented.... wait... Edit: not trying to start another argument... just poking fun

Just drop it mate, there is no point continueing this arguement.... It won't change the end result anyway. Josh is gonna do what he's gonna do whether people bash it or not.

@Rick - The only reason I didn't make it dynamic for the editor is because there is no reason to. It's an unnecessary complexity at least in my mind and unlike the game UI, which you are likely to change, the editor can pretty much stay the same. I could have done it but I don't really see any point in doing it. Also I don't want the editor to be edited in game..... that would be a bit counter productive so I don't want editor buttons and game buttons to be treated the same at all. As for your guess it is not correct. I don't have to assign elements to a function at all. They are capable of being completely dynamic and everything I could want to do with them is mapped out so It can totally be data driven. @pixel cheers

The only negative is it takes a lot of work to get setup especially the way I'm doing it. It was one thing to set up the databases and your standard ddd setup but to make even the UI editable in game makes things much more complex. Especially because I wanted to make it have no bearing on the final code once editor is turned off. What I mean is, I wanted the editor to have no performance effect and be isolated from everything else which was a challenge. However, I'm counting on the fact that this time spent is going to be payed back once its finished because productivity will be much more and it would be highly reusable. A reasonable trade off I think. I'll call it an investment in my time for a more permanent solution. You might be interested to know that even the gui elements for the Editor are data driven. However, instead of dynamically creating them they had to be created individually using hard code but all their data is straight from the database as well.

Hehe thanks guys. The reason it's called HAARP is... well a secret XD for now. Maybe I'll let y'all know when its finished.

In my short 1 year of programming I have gone to great extents to learn not only how to code but also the techniques and methods behind game architecture that make things work and keep the integrity, re usability and productivity of my code to a maximum. Out of all the techniques I have come across there are two that really have taken the cake. These two techniques are (excluding OOP, thats a given): Finite State Machines Data Driven Design Data Driven Design For those of you who don'tk now or are not sure of what Data Driven Design is, here is a brief explanation. Data Driven Design is when you don't hard code any constants into the game but rather draw out all the "data" required for your game from external files such as .txt files, .xml files or databases. Pretty much any data you can think of can be stored in a database externally from the code such as the following examples Material Paths Model Paths Camera Follow Distance Prop Attachment Offsets UI element's, textures, scale, position, parent, target etc. Weapon model, Weapon Power Weapon Fire rate Game Settings & Key Bindings etc. etc. etc. Now anyone who knows me or has seen my posts and status updates would notice that I'm obsessed with Data Driven Design even to a point where it may even get annoying. However, I talk about it a lot for good reason. It is because the benefits of it are tremendous and it increases long term productivity and game design freedom to a new high not possible with simply coding constants. With data driven design you can store all your data in an easy to find place in a database and access it and edit it easily without having to touch your code. This means no more wading through thousands of lines of code but simply going through a logically setup database to find the data. Say you don't like the run speed of your character. You have to close the game find the speed variable and change the value. This could take a while to find in your code and you have to then recompile again. Then you load up your game and if its not good you have to repeat the process again. However with DDD you simply have to change the easy to find value in the database and restart the game. Another big pro is that you can easily make an every game with DDD. Why completely re-write the code for another RTS or FPS game if you have already coded one. With DDD you can simply change the models and values in the database and everything can look new without even recompiling. For an FPS game you can simply code only one gun, but have different stats and models in the database and already you can create pretty much any gun you'd ever want in an FPS. Well I've done a lot of rambling just then so here is a video of something I'm making called H.A.A.R.P. With HAARP I have combined the power of Finite State Machines with Data Driven Design and taken the whole thing one step further to come up with a solution that stops me from re-coding things, reducing my workload and increasing my productivity in the long term. I don't mind the time it will take to create this H.A.A.R.P implementation because as far as I've noticed so far the art assets get out of data 100x faster than code and this will allow me to concentrate more on making the game and less on coding once I've finished it so I will be able to get the art out quicker before it gets outdated.

While we are talking about LE3D. Josh is there any significant performance increase going form LE2 -> LE3D?

I'd rather stay a civil engineer for the rest of my life than make games like Minecraft and be a money grabber. Also dude. Half Life was actually AAA graphics for its time.....

So basically it's pretty much going to turn into a hand held console.

Thanks, for some reason I forgot about the pathfinding. Concerning Synapse... So far it sounds a bit like Unreal Kismet?

These so called new gamplay features that we haven't really heard anything about.... What are they? Most of what we've seen so far is.... 1. mobile platform 2. Fancy Editor 3. CSG editor. Tho I don't really have a problem with those in particular they don't have anything to do with game play. What are these hidden "new gameplay features"?

So in saying that do you forsee the kinds of games that are on PC with propper gameplay (not gimmicky) being on mobile platforms... such as RTS games like starcraft for example for tablets? I just think its so frustrating how the mobile platform ruins immersion. The moment you put your finger on the screen to do something you block part of the screen and your immersion is gone... especially with mobile fps games which I've played a few of. None of which I've enjoyed. Also I think its almost limited to only tablets. I mean you can make games for smart phones but the screen is so small that they are often not playable to an enjoyable level.

Thanks for the advice

Oh well this news sucks. Guess that means the real LE3D won't be released until 2013... Looks like the games industry has been sold to the devil called 'uber casual gaming' Correct me if I'm wrong but with the massive influx of mobile game development isn't the market going to be over saturated really quickly. There is more opportunity (apparently) on mobile hence there are more developers and hence more competetive which will bring everything back to square one.... Thats a good article Rick

I've done this before by using raycasts. It's not easy though. Just use the LE Controller

There's nothing original about a post apocalyptic shooter these days tbh. Here area few recently existing: - Rage - Fallout 3 & New Vegas - Metro 2033 - Borderlands. Anyway, not that I'm against the idea. Just thought I'd point that out. You'd struggle to find anything original in an FPS these days its the most done genre. Good thing is its probably the easiest kind of game to make so if this project has a chance of succeeding it would be with an FPS