Pixel Perfect

I bought the rock pack last night and have had my first play with it and I have to say I'm very impressed. Excellent job Michael. Here is a quick scene I put together tonight and I have to say your rocks make for some pretty decent mountains too!

I'm sure Blitz3D is fine Puki ... but this is a Leadwerks forum and I don't think anyone is remotely interested. We are here for Leadwerks, if we wanted Blitz3D we'd be on their forums

Josh did indicate recently that in order to integrate Speedtree into the engine you would probably require the source code (and the obvious additional expense). Apparantly it requires fairly low level integration; although I have no personal experience of it. As already stated, you should try the available vegetation based tools with some of the many available tree/plant packs available at reasonable cost (Michael's are well recommended!).

I completely agree with you Michael as this is very much my assessment of the situation too. Chris and I were discussing this topic this morning and also believe that it brings a lot of invaluable user feedback to the big companies too, not only feedback on bugs but a wealth of suggestions for improvements and additional functionality which they have the man power to implement quickly. I also agree with Mike in as much that all of these AAA engines require a massive learning curve in order to be fully productive with them, which for the existing modding community is not a problem but is a big investment for people who have previously invested in smaller engines like Leadwerks and need to start afresh with a new engine. Of course, this is only an indication of Crytek's current thinking it's not an official statement of intent but it would be hard to see them not going down the same road as Epic with UDK as there is little to lose by doing so and much to gain.

He has some nice models available folks. Recommended! Thanks again Andrew.

Thanks Andrew, these look very useful. Very generous of you! Note: For anyone who is unsure what to do on the download page ... enter the displayed number in the box above the green CKaYaTb (Download) button and press the button. You'll be forwarded to a page with the link highlighted in red. Worked fine for me

Yes, I wasn't trying to knock the Leadwerks Editor in my previous statement and your experience with both editors is reassuring to hear. It's just the sheer exposure of all the engines properties in the CryTek editor that's amazing along with the added functionality ... a lot of which we just don't have for example the built in navmesh and AI capability. But I'm sure things will progress as time goes by, the Leadwerks Engine and tools have never stood still and I'm sure will continue to improve with input from people like yourself and others in the forum

Reminds me of the saying 'Give 25 million monkeys a typewriter and an infinite amount of time and eventually one of them will write the complete works of Shakespeare Crytek do it again with an absolutely stunning looking editor with amazing functionality which probably reflects the half million or so euros ploughed into its development. Professional tools for those working at the very top of their game. Superb! Glad I'm coding at the moment and not using the Editor as I think I'd feel a little deflated after watching that video

Sounding very positive .. good luck with everything you're doing B)

Love the bridge Dave, not so sure about the bullrushes in the Pine woods though, their normal habitat is shallow standing water with lots of light but hey... great work!

Yeah good work Quan...please post more as you progress.

The one I supplied is compiled against 2.31 but was compiled in Debug mode which would account for the increased exe size and the difference in the dll. I'm not sure why the height of the camera has changed as I've not changed any of your code (I did notice that). What version was your's compiled against? As far as my testing has shown the problem is fixed in 2.31 but confirmation that my exe runs ok on your system would be the final proof.

I've rebuilt your project RVL using my 2.31 files and I can't get the executable to fail any more, unlike your original which is still exhibiting the same problem on my system. I've attached the rebuilt project if you want to give it a try and see if it's fixed it on your system.

She makes some interesting points!

I love it ... can't wait to see how this plays out ... keep up the good work.

Looks like a great implementation ... nice work wh1sp3r

Not really, if you are relying on key frame animation alone then you would need to produce animations for every possibility and apply those as and when required. This is not only a lot of work but requires standardisation of your level design for example ... slopes all have to have the same angle so you can apply your 'walk on slope left leg down animation', 'walk up slope feet at 35 degrees' animation and have them look right. As Chris says, even some of the big game houses don't bother solving this. Those who do tend to go for combinations of extra animations and coded real time manipulation of the animations (IK and advanced animation blending techniques).

Pretty nice ryao, I like it

Hopefully Josh, with his knowledge of how the controller is implemented, might be able to offer an explanation.

ok ... well you are not going mad lol. I downloaded your demo project and I can reproduce the exact same problem on my system as per spec below. The barrels fly off all over the place with exagerated force and sometimes spin about at speed. The odd thing is that when run on my old P4 PC which has an ATI 3850 it behaves normally! This is looking hardware or driver related. [EDIT] Sometimes this does not happen and it behaves normally. It would appear to always manifest itself when first executed after a reboot, but then may work fine for subsequent executions. However, this is not always the case. I restarted the computer, ran it once and saw the issue, stopped and restarted the demo program five times. Four of the five worked fine but the fifth time exhibited the same issues again! I really have no explanation for what is going on here. It looks to me like the barrels get sucked into the controller as its gets close and are ejected generally behind the controller. I saw a barrel rolling away from me actually reverse its roll direction as I approched it and roll into the controller. Weird!

Updates up until the last major release of 2.30 have always been free. The 2.30 release was an additional $50 but contained a completely re-written Editor and came with LUA embedded into the engine. It's my belief that non major upgrades will continue to be free.

I have experienced similar problems with collision in the past, usually where Newton has become unstable for some reason. If I have large amounts of physics bodies moving at speed (100+ during explosions) I tend to see this type of problem where even after they have settled down the physics becomes unstable and I see random small movements of dynamic objects from that point onwards and collision problems like those you describe; where colliding with objects that were previously ok now send either themselves or my controller flying off at great speed. Quite why its happening in your case I'm not sure as you appear to have little happening but from looking at your code you might try one or both of the following to see if it improves it: 1. Increase the acceleration value of the UpdateController command from 40 to something like 500. I found values of around 40 - 50 too low for some geometry and that caused me lots of problems in certain levels in the early days. I have known people use values up to 15000 for acceleration. 2. Use the SweptCollision function on the controller and other dynamic objects, this slows the system down and produces generally more stable physics but can be too slow for large amounts of physics movement.

Yes it's a commercial licence and there are no hidden costs. The licence entitles you to publish any number of games based on the engine. Yes it can be used with C#, there is an active C# community. I don't know the ins and outs of the C# implementation as I've never used it but I'm sure someone else will enlighten you on that.

If you’re writing a simple game engine use whatever language you want, it's probably not going to matter. If you’re a capable programmer and writing a complex game engine then the best advice I can offer is to write your game engine in C++ and your game play in Lua. It's tried and tested and taking an alternate route can end in tears a long way down the road which is not really where you want to find yourself after a year or more of development! Tools are important when programming, choose them carefully.

Well Gimp it is then Thanks for that bit of information