Pixel Perfect

I had the same problem, but because I'm using framewerk and not framework I was able to amend the framewerk adding my own additional functions for suporting refraction. Guess you need to request Josh do likewise in the embedded framework!

Excellent, thanks for this Kennar

Half you guys seem to be living in cloud cuckoo land .... he's not going to make a successful MMO of any sort in the next few years unless he's had extensive experience of writing game engines beforehand ... end of. Stop leading the guy on. The advice given so far that suggests he tackles some smaller projects first and builds on those is the good and sensible advice! Trainguy ... build small, but think big. You'll get there if you’re determined but you'll need lots of real game design experience behind you and your team (or be prepared to pay big bucks recruiting it) and also lots of finance as just setting up and maintaining the servers you'll need isn't going to come cheap! People who succeed are those who tackle realistic goals, make sure you're one of them!

I use a binary heap in mine and the performance certainly seems pretty good!

Hi Davaris, looks like MG already pretty much sorted you out with regards to the export options. The other thing I tend to use UU3D for is the scaling and you need to be a little careful with which scaling functions you use. If your scaling animated meshes then you need to do the following as already indicated by Rick: Select->All 3D Tools->Modifiers->Scene->ScaleTo Using the other (non scene based) scaling functions work for static meshes but not for animations as they don't scale the bones. You need to use the move function afterwards to re-centre the model, again from the scene menu if moving animated meshes.

This looks like a really well thought out Converter. Many thanks tkunze!

I couldn't agree more. Josh should spend all his time doing what he does best and not spend it reinventing the wheel.

I've previously converted dexsoft animated models in UU3D in exactly the way you describe Rick, scaling and exporting, and not had any issues. I'd suggest starting again as something has clearly gone wrong during the process. Perhaps try another format as the initial import format

That would be fine by me and I'm sure most other people. I suspect we are unlikely to see a stable version of LE 3 inside a year so waiting for that is not a good option for those currently working with version 2.

I'd really like to see an increase in the supported number of terrain textures. I didn't see any specific mention of it in the roadmap. The current limitation is just too restrictive for convincing outdoor scenes.

I put a wrapper round the Win32 interface and used that to write my editor, I like developing using the win32 API. It's lean and mean and very straight forward once you get used to it.

working now, wasn't last night. Test result: PASS Laurens should be a happy man!

I don't see a locked 'Feature Requests' section so I'm guessing the current version is still 'open for business' at Josh's discretion. Granted that would be nice, but why would we desire this to be the preferred route over Josh improving the existing one. Why would Josh not want to do this for us if there is a real need for it. Version 2.4 is the current stable product and likely to be the only one for the next year and the very people working with the current engine are likely to form the bulk of the first ones to invest in the new one. Does he not have our interest at heart! Would it really take so much time out of his current development schedule to add a call-back function to LoadScene(). It would only need to pass the total number of items to be loaded and the current count. The Editor could update the SBX file with the count so the LoadScene function wouldn't even need to fully parse the file to obtain this (not that that takes long anyhow). I guess I just prefer the solution to be applied to the source of the problem unless that proves impossible.

That is being innovative Rick, I missed that when reading through the thread and that should work well but it is still only required because the SDK is not allowing access to functions that control a major feature of the Engine. I don't believe it's too much to ask for their inclusion and is better than having to do workarounds. In theory the inclusion of the call-back would be an even better solution but the commands should still be exposed non the less. Just my opinion, not saying you have to agree with me. Well who else apart from programmers are going to be using the vegetation layer functions in the SDK

All the vegetation layer functions were exposed in 2.0 and were subsequently taken out. These should simply be restored in whatever form they currently take. This has been asked for on several occasions. It's just this sort of thing that prevents people from being innovative. Either that or provide some sort of call-back based on the LoadScene function so people can provide fairly accurate user feedback. Or even better ... BOTH! Power to the people I say. (well the programmers actually )

Looks great, nice work Gandi

A little less dense, I'm using a 250 by 250 grid as the geometry density is not large on this type of level with plenty of space between non walkable tiles. As the Island doesn't actually cover the entire terrain I could have brought the grid boundary markers in and reduced this to further increase performance but it was easier to just set them to the extents of the terrain. Yes, the system copes with this size without any real slowdown but if a slow processor was struggling you could break it down into say 4 smaller linked navAreas. Linking them along paths and natural topographical boundaries is really easy for this type of terrain. Hierarchical searches across multiple navAreas can be carried out over multiple game loops helping maintain overall frame rates but it’s rarely needed unless you are driving a lot of NPCs.

Nice effect Farlas, that works really well ... would have looked better with a deciduous tree but you likely didn't have one. Very effective

I tend to agree with your closing statement. Don't get me wrong, there is some great open source software out there and I think it’s wonderful that developers provide this and I have nothing but the utmost respect for those who do. But honestly, how many users of Linux do so because it's open source and they intend updating, amending or extending their operating system as opposed to it simply being a free operating system which isn't going to cost them anything. Yet we are constantly bombarded with this almost 'religious attitude' of we are somehow better people for using it and contributing to some superior social system and almost despise people who develop and sell software for a living. In actuality the net contribution of the majority of Linux users to this system is precisely zero and they only exist through the generosity of a talented and altruistic few. Certainly Unix based systems are better at multitasking as Unix was pretty much specifically designed to provide just such low level services without any of the higher level GUI based services that Windows provided from the start; making it very suitable for servers. Windows was specifically designed for desktop systems. Watching them converge over the years has been quite entertaining to say the least!

Cheers guys! The Island demo is a half kilometre square area (512x512 @ 1m per tile) Currently, the path finding resolution is determined by the grid size and any obstacle within a grid will result in a non walkable area but this is only used to find the route from the first node on the path to the closest node to your destination. The movement system is designed to then move you from the last node to the target position if flagged to do so. So if you specify a position directly behind a tree which happens to be within a non walkable area the moveToPosition command will get you there using the path finding to get you as close as possible and then finally move you up to your chosen position. The path finding is an aid but does not restrict your ability to move an NPC anywhere. If you choose to collide it with a wall by taking the NPC right up to it then it will allow that! This allows for cover positions etc where you might want to get 'up close' and also works on the principle of 'the game designer knows best'. Otherwise, it will only accept target destinations that are not in non-walkable areas. Not sure if this answers your question or not

Don't think I've laughed so hard in a long time With regard to the economics of the Linux market place a friend of mine commonly refers to Linux users as freetards, somewhat unfair I know but there is some truth in this as others have already pointed out. Maybe the Linux users should dig deep into all this money they have saved by not having to pay for software and fund the extra development and then the Linux release licence could state that games cannot be sold for profit preserving the 'artistic and altruistic integrity' of the Linux platform developers The developers could then take great delight in the knowledge that they have maximised their potential player uptake, made the world 'a better place' and Josh gets to buy food ... it's a win-win situation

I updated the 2.24 Leadwerks Island Demo today to run in 2.40 in order to see how well my path finding would work with that type of level. I found I was able to use a single navArea to cover the entire Island and it took about one and a half minutes to process the geometry. Tested NPCs walking the terrain and it all worked perfectly, very pleased with the results. I now believe my navArea approach is pretty much suitable for anything I care to throw at it. I've included a couple of pics below:

There is a 3dw2gmf.exe convertor that comes with the Leaderks Engine SDK. Otherwise you can export to a .dbo .b3d or .x format and use Ultimate Unwrap Pro to convert the file to gmf format. The gmf file format is the only one that Leadwerks directly loads so all popular and standard file formats have to be converted to this format first (a pain I know but Josh loves forcing people down his proprietry file format routes, just a price you have to pay for using LE ) The engine was more flexible in its early days but that all got thrown out of the window. Might as well inform you at this point though that if you wish to have dynamic physics objects then you cannot use gmf files to produce the Newton Physics convex hull files that are necessary for this, you need to have these in .obj format (nice eh!) Otherwise, its a great engine. Have fun!

Great work Michael, lovely to see what can be achieved.

Cheers Chiblue, that's really good of you. I'll definitely have a look at this. Yeah, now you have attached the help file I'll be able to see it's capabilities in more detail hopefully. It's not that I don't think it's quite impressive because I actually do. My main concern is the fact that you have no access to the code to amend or extend it. One of the things I want to develop is fairly detailed interaction between individual members of patrol groups whilst under fire where they will cover individuals whilst they move to cover points in a co-ordinated and realistic way and this is just a single example. From what I'd seen of Dark AI I got the impression that this level of control was probably not possible. But I'd like to be proved wrong. The other thing is by writing my own AI routines I get experience in doing this which is also invaluable. Mumbles has a very good point here, I was forgetting about GameLib. I've not really got involved in that due to mainly lack of time with what little time I have being ploughed into my own game engine design but also because I found the initial GameLib very unstructured (I've not looked at it in quite some time though to be honest) which is just a reflection of my own game code design and not meant as a direct criticism of Lumooja and other contributors. We all have our own ideas on things and design methodologies! But if you wanted to get involved in some joint AI design then that may well be a good place to start. Might be worth a quick word with Mumbles on that one. If you ever want to discuss ideas on AI by the way, or anything else game related for that matter, don’t hesitate to PM me.