YouGroove

Well ,back to LeadWerks engine, Just the material editing i had to use the tool ADN that really change the life in workflow. I put a model on the material folder hoping i would find a way to attach the materail to that object but no way ??? And i dindn't succed to attacht it easily, i'll have to read the docs another time ! So what i would like in LE3, would be : Model import, and materail editing directly under LE3 world editor ! Another point would be to be able to make a new project from scratch in any folder we choose to be the work directory for a game. We could than add terrain , models etc ... and all that would just be created in that folder. For publishing, only a button will Zip (perhaps with encrypting) all that directory in some new folder that would contain all stuff : .exe files, cripted data files. Directly to be distribued ! Well just points of view from a 3D artist view, to be able to import models, textures easily and directly , and to work easily on the directory we want

Do you have some screenshots to post ?

In fact there are solid games for Iphone and Ipad. Specially now with Ipad 2 that have even more power. And there are little games on mobile that are really attracting. Just try Dungeon Hunter 2 for example, or some great RPG, or some sort of Zelda Clone, and Gameloft games that are really polished for mobile games and fun. For people travelling , or taking common transport each day, a good bunch play games. At home some people prefer to open the Ipad and beeing confortable , surf on internet and play good mobile games instead of starting their big PC. Wel when you see the sales on Apple Store for some games, there is a big market And you'll have lot of work to do as good games as some companies are making seriously for the store. Gameloft is the proof that mobile games can sell a lot, now it's a really big companie with big revenues no ? Find a team and make polished interesting games and you'll be successfull also

In old systems, the terrain wasn't detailled, if they used 1024*1024, they could just paint general terrain details only. You can do the same but with bigger textures indeed in LE engine, and it should suffice for you to have some good detail amount i think ! Or you could use a drawing program and use some big resolution like 6000 + pixels and paint, then use some free program to cut your big image in several tiled ones like 512*512. Than use that in the 3D engine i guess. But with LeadWerks you can already make very big terrains. After is to you to set tup the scaling fo your plane bigger or more little to terrain to simulate that big distance world.

In fact for simple things it can be good. Yes i talked about advanced, i'll post some example tonigh showing for more complex models what happens , like a cylinder put on a plane : lot of vertices can be welded.Caus more vertices you have more vertices the 3D engine must process.

Does it have something in common with that : http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/mlaa/?cid=sw:graphics270

The texture resolution will also interfere with stress test performance, also HUD , lights , particles, etc ... will impact the overall number of polygons you can run compared to a simple running camera in a 3D scene. I think only by seeing some some little games running with LE3 , you will guess how far and how complex you'll will be able to go on mobile.

I have played with Sketchup, its a real pleasure to use. But it generates too much unecessary vertex if you more complicated things , it's a real mess if you look carefully. This tool i think can be great to prototype , fast draw your ideas, but when you'll go for a mesh for gaming , without unecessary vertex and faces, you'll have to use a real 3D modeling program instead. For people wanting to use Sketchup for finnal meshes for a game , my advice would be to check the polygons and vertex by importing Sketchup models under a modeling programt o clean them up if necessary.

So that's only animated characters and lights and scene parameters (if we don't use the framework helper ) that won't be loaded if i understood well ?

Here are some begin of rooms under Blender, i never did indoor repeating walls , just indoor simple house room. So i've done Unwrap on all faces, but in the UV i have lot of horizontal polygons and to align them and make tem fit well in the textures, it will be too much tedious task , specially if i make lot more And in Blender does anyone know a simple method to snap walls thet are perpendicular ? Or i'll adopt 3D Tiles instead ot make the rooms, i think it will be a better solution if LE editor provides snapping ? I just hope the walls i put on the editor will be auto loaded when loading level and that i won't have to place them by code , that is another option ?

A First Wall texture ! Now i can make rooms with floor and wall But i don't know i will i do to make segments having always same UV mapping scale to avoid wall texture stretched on some walls and bigger on others ? But i have an idea !

Ok, so i see how it can be done, and it's a common way of doing , and sure it can be lot more time faster than the real mesh with 10 000 polys. So we have t owrite some little collision editor tools to attach the different meshes e created (boxes, spheres or custom low poly mesh) to the good appropriate bones ? ( I mean : attaching, orienting, putting some offset ) I think Plugin system in LE3 will help us to bring such collision editor with default primitives that we could use for collision on limbs. - create box collision - size box collision - create cylinder collision - reesize cylinder - attach collision shape to a bone For now, i'll stay with simple collision approximation, and for an RPG it will be stay global like a lot of RPG.

I have a simple question , caus i don't have started to look at it : How does work collision on animated characters with a ray detection (firing weapons etc ...) ? Does the ray collides with a general collision body shape for the character ? Or it is accurate collision against polygons whatever the frames playing ? Or is it ray against Oriented Bounding Box on each limb of the animated character ? Depending of the possibility i'll make some RPG system using precise hits, or simple general character attacks on bouding boxes for example !

I think for Minecraft the main points are : - Discover a big world for big adventure - Lot of exploration and pleasure to find hidden rooms (digging in the level) - The fast and direct easy to use creative system (dig to have blocks , than construct anything like you want) ( Little Big Planet have that construction point, but it is lot more complicated for advanced things !) - Possibility to make anyhting like level and lot of fun things - Simple exploration/fight gameplay, but fun combined in the big world The 2D version of the game brought real RPG elements in some sort with armors, cute graphics and real leveled monsters to fight as you progress, so more adevnture and fight on it also, and even if copied it's a big success also So for making an original and good game, some formula could be : Just take the most fun and best little ideas on paper and make a mix For example some fast ideas : - Driving , even on vertical walls - possibility to plane on the sky like a parachute with the car - different part to put on your cart - destroy buildings - construct several garages , each having it's own behicule type to boost up - micro management system like buil stores to make money income , why not research facilities to build to find new leveled equipment - lot of towns/levels on map to choose to visit with it's own ennemies/bosses - possibility to quit the car to fight in some futurist armor for some indoor or special outdoor places not accessible in car In fact my idea would be lot more to have the addicting effect of Borderlands game , with some Loot , and Powers Tree to unlock on you car and different Car classes with different gameplay ! Well anyone could assemble little ideas and make some genre/type of addicting game

3DWS is a good to use little tool. But Blender , specially on last version is easy to use, and like modelers tools as Silo and others, it's really complete and have all you need from modeling to animating. It's really powerfull with all shortcuts like Edge/Face loop selection, loop cut , extrude functions etc ... If you want ot make lightmaps more easily and use CG brushes than take 3DWS, if you can put more effort take Blender. But if your purpose si pure modeling , texturing , and you want all classic functions of modelers than take Blender. And LE3 will incorporate 3DWS if i understood well ? It's up to you

And do yu really think when someone sees "LeadWerks Entreprise" he will imagaine that as a game engine ? Why not Leadwerks Central Corporation Society ? I think the most important will be also the marketing on the site and by the games that will be made on mobile platforms ! Showing a list of games published by an engine si what have a strong impact Just look at the big list od games published on Apple Store with Unity 3D , or some really good commercial games made with Ogre 3D (even if it's just a graphic API and not so easy for a non programmer) !

"Leadwerks Corporation" Well this name sounds really like a big society using "corporation" word ! "always use some graphic photo or a screen shot from the engine to market." I don't understand, the site have media screenshots for marketing already, and other engine like UT3 or Unity 3D and others do the same no ?

Great for the TPS feature Well by reading all you said about Lua that don't have all necessary commands, really makes me want to change another time fo language and go back to C++ Well the engine programming for lot of parts indeed is really great and easy, a pleasure. The tutorials from Lua to C++ are not so different, the commmands called have almost the same name. (But that's not the subject of the blog) I have an idea of template like some Strafox style shooter game template, but i prefer to wait for LE3 to release the plugin feature !

Okay cool ! It would be cool to have some compare table between sales or people visit between Android Market and Apple Store , just by curiosity. How many percent they take if you publish a little game ? Caus if i remember well, Apple takes some amount on your game !

In fact the problem , it's time consuming ! For terrain the textures and trees are already here, in the 3D art section for making a big demo it would need diversified 3D models only like : one or two ennemies models , and some houses and strcutures like bridge and other 3D small assets , and perhaps some other ground textures. But a demo in Follout 3 style could be made with stupid ennemy AI. I think mobile support like Ipad, Iphone Android support will be what will make LeadWerks more popular whitout needing a PC demo ? But if the idea remains, what could be done, would be just go step by step and assigning a first task to each participating people like : - People A make house structure - People B would make an weapon - People C would make the script for managing the ennemy idle, run, attack, die The goal would not be to show some AI , caus it would need specialized libraries, but only demonstrate ability of the engine on handling a complex world with techniques like LOD and other sutff.

I am using Actual Lua script and before going further in my game dev, i thaught in bringing the code , and some comments that would show some basic Lua code (not a real framework) showing : - scene loading - player placing and initialisation and frame update for : health, attack , defense ,state , animations - ennemies placing and initialisation and frame update for : health, attack , defense ,state , animations For LE3, perhaps finally i would not need example if i understand the scritping new entities system ? I think only some lines of code showing the interaction between two entities and interaction will be enought for us to make what we want indeed !

I think the idea of a single entitie and image to draw on can be a great performance improvement ! Like single surface particules ? For all the GUI elements that are always on screen and don't change like no new buttons that apperas or disappear, this systel could be great. Perhaps someoen could make some version for C#, C++ or Lua ?

My estimation is there's probably ten times as many people interested in mobile game development as there are interested in PC development. I think so also, mobile games target more entertainment , causual, fun instantaneous gameplay even if there are some solid games like Dungeon Hunter 2.Its' mroe easy for people to make mobile game than for example AAA Next Gen FPS commercial game.And tablets become more and more powerfull and sells a lot actually more than PC mobile ! Great news For Lua, this is what i plan to use also. In fact it seems to turn in something like Unity3 and it's scripting system , it means fast gameplay makinf and tunning and fast game production. Mobile game publishing will only boost up LeadWerks engine Unfortunatly, Apple mobile publishing involves having some Apple computer what is really expensive. Android will be much the way for PC people , caus the build can be made with CyGWin for example !

Great Metatron. But i presume it will only be C++ or C# and no Lua ? Even if we can be inspire by the code and port it to Lua, something i can do now Will it be some third person character controller ? I htink in something like that : Erd person controller in Unity I htink LeadWerks 3 with the new plugin system will allow ot make templates like that will have custom panels to manage for example controller properties with sliders and inputs text.

I plan to make some game for Android caus i know we don't need a Mac for people having a PC ! We can compile an make the package using CGWin. Has someone already sold some game on Android Market ? What is needed to sell on Android Market ?