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Welcome dear reader to my first Blog entry. In the following you will get a first impression of what I am working on. So lets not lose any more time and get started! What is the Phodex Framework? The Phodex Framework is created with the intention to provide common systems and mechanics to be able to create cool first person and especially role playing games within the Leadwerks Game Engine. "Leadwerks Game Engine is the easiest way to make 3D games." and "It's everything you need to make games, all in one place." With the Phodex Framework it try to also follow the general idea of Leadwerks, accessibility, simplicity and power. What does the Phodex Framework provide? Ok now lets get more specific. Here just a few things the Framework consist of: Highly intelligent AI System based on Goal Oriented Action Planning (GOAP) Userfriendly design and focus on accessibility and simplicity High costumization for all systems Questcreation System Different behaviors and designs for nearly every system of the Framework First person player controller with all you need Full-Blown combat system for melee and rangeweapons "Character Set" which lets you costumize every NPC (Combat Style, Behavior, Attributes, Animations, ...) External tools like the Questcreator and Charactercreator to improve accessibility Many common systems, like dialogs, inventories, questlog, levelsystem and more There is much more planned and this list does, of course, not go into detail, but now you can at least imagine what my plan is. How far is the development? I am worked on this since about one year and five months now and I can finally say that the Phodex Framework is finished. I cut off some features and as you may have noticed the direction the framework has changed from beeing a jack of all trades towards a framework for a very specific task, creating FPS and RPG games. Finished in this manner, does not really mean the work is done, I still will improve many systems and will implement some new ones, but the Framework now generally consists of all it needs to get started. Ok enough talk, lets show some stuff. Thank you for reading so far this is your reward: Of course this is not the final product I imagine, its just some stuff I put together in some lazy afternoons , but I tought it would be unfair to remain you without any visual impressions . The models are from an assetpack I recently bought and as well are not final and are just a placeholder. Anyway I think the scene looks pretty atmospheric . About me: My name is Markus and I am the head of Phodex Games. I am very glad to be able to study "Digital Media", which includes many topics relevant for game development. Besides design and art I am also very interested in technical stuff and therefore studied "Electrical Engeneering" for a while, which I am very glad for as it helped me understanding many of the technical aspects of computers, coding and ultimately in games. This is my second gamedev related project and I really love what I am doing and are passionated to create something good. My aim is to provide the best possible product, I can achieve and to help people by providing games which make them feel good :). Conclusion: If you have any ideas, suggestions, or wishes of what you would like to see in the Framework, feel free to tell me in the comments. If you find any errors, feel free to tell me, as english is not my native language. I wish you a wonderful day and stay cool . Markus from Phodex

Hi its me again , as promised last time, I will talk about publishing and what my plans are with the Phodex Framework. Next time I continue posting the progress of the Framework. So I made myself some toughts about that topic. I am working very hard on this project and I think it has some very good attempts and intuitive systems, but still is pretty far away from meeting my expectations. When I started making the Framework, my intention was to create all the systems, as userfriendly, clean, efficient and intuitive as possible to later beeing able to have a good workflow and also a lot of fun when designing my next game. So what I came up with, after I made my toughts, is, that before thinking about publishing (and pricing) I would like to prove the quality of the product in practice, by creating a more or less small game with the Phodex Framework. If it feels good working with the framework and the result of the outcoming game meets expectations then its time to seriously think about (commercially?) publishing the project. If not, I can use this experience to fix the errors or improve the systems and then offer you, the costumer, the product I would like to provide, an intuitive, easy and yet powerful tool for creating (especially First Person) games that unleashes the true power of Leadwerks. To sum up, lets put it all in a nutshell. The Framework will be published, if the quality is as I expect it to be and after I created a representative game with it. Thats it so far. Below, as always you find your gamedev tip. Have a nice day and stay cool ! Game Dev Tip #3: If you don't do it already, you should definetly make use of structured To-Do lists, if you want to get really efficient. You can get one step further and categorize the tasks by importance. A - Has an huge impact on your goal, B - Should be done, C - Can be done. I also can recommend to use One Note to keep track of your goals and your larger and smaller To-Do Lists. If you want to know more about One Note and its powers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7PYPl5WSVA&t=255s Markus from Phodex

Hey its me again, as you can see I was working hard . As I want to spend as much time as possible on the project, lets quickly go through whats new. This is the first version of the PHFW (Phodex Framework) Toolkit now including the "Item Creator", besides the recently presented Animation Manager. I guess the picture is pretty self explaining . The Item Creator generates a file out of the settings you made which then can be loaded into the "Item Script" inside Leadwerks. The creator makes it very easy and fun creating new interesting items and definetly improves your workflow, which is one of the aims of the Phodex Framework. In the following you can see how the test city I build of my test level scene enhances: As last time here is your Gamedev Tip : Game Dev Tip #2: If you are searching for a simple and quick solution for creating textures this tool may be interesting for you. It is ideal for beginners, you can quickly get cool results and its really cheap. With some training you can create pretty noticable textures with this tool called Zeuxis: Procedural Texture Generator. Link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/366550/Zeuxis__procedural_texture_generator/# Thats it for this time, I hope you enjoyed reading . As promised last time, I tried to focus even more on visual content. Do you like that? Does it make reading my Blog more interesting. Feel free to tell me your toughts! Next time I will get more general, about how and if the Phodex Framework gets published, so be excited and as always stay cool ! Markus from Phodex

Hello dear reader, First of all, as I recently though on how to make the blog more interesting and valuable for you to read, I thought it would be a cool idea if I provide a gamedev specifc tip (can be everything from productivity, to technical stuff, to marketing) at the end of every blog entry. I would be really happy, if you tell me what you think of this idea. Back to topic. I want to present what I am working at the moment. Last time it were some animations and rigs. I had some more trouble with them then expected and needed to do all that stuff again (rigging and animations). As they are just meant for a visual impact for me to be able to build and optimise the systems (e.g combat, movement) they don't look very professional, but my intention was not to create high quality game ready animations . Enough about the past, I will showcase the animations any time soon, as we take a look on the combat system maybe. So what I am doing now? Well I made some good progress and have some quite cool stuff to show. I was heavily working on my npc/character system (called "Character Set"). The NPC is now able to wear diffrent cloths. Already provided are: Helmet, Body, Gloves, Legs, Boots. At the moment I am working on the weapon system. So you can easily equip, range and melee weapons to the character. As I slowly would like to get a little bit more into detail here the settings for the character set: As you see I try to keep everything as clean and userfriendly as possible. A very cool thing are the "NPC Settings" which gives the systems a lot of power as it keeps the script settings clean, and gives you a lot of options to costumize the way your NPC behaves. It even gives you access to some technical stuff you can change, so there are no boundaries for you when using diffrent rigs/animation systems etc. Maybe I will talk more detailed about the whole AI/Character Set stuff another time. Another cool progress I made is the "PHFW Animation Manager". As my system works not with the Animation name (e.g "Walking", "Running"), but with the animation index, this tool is very helpful. Why I use the animation index you may ask. Well I use my own animation playing system (not the Leadwerks "PlayAnimation" function) and unfortunately the "SetAnimationFrame" function of Leadwerks does not provide to use animation names. To work around this I created this tool. This is the first external tool for the phodex framework and there are some more to come, I will then, most likley, put them into a huge toolset. There you can also set various keyframes needed for the combat system, so the tool can still be helpful, if the "SetAnimationFrame" function gets enhanced. This is how it currently looks (its like a pre alpha :D, just set up the rough system) So as promised here is the tip: Game Dev Tip #1: If you have a problem, you struggle with for a long time and you just can't find a solution. Stop working and do something completely diffrent (for example go outside and take a walk), then come back with a fresh mind and you will be suprised what great effect this can have, how you find new ideas, or simply get new motivation. I hope that helps some of you. I try to provide some more visual content to show in the future as I know its much more fun to watch pictures & videos instead of reading long and boring texts . Just the best and stay cool . Markus from Phodex

Hi, this time I provide a closer look into the Framework. The graphic below shows what the Framework contains of and how far the diffrent elements are developed. The green bubbles inside the red ones indicate how much progress has been made for the specific feature. More green means more progress. Empty (complete red) bubbles mean this feature hasn't been worked on yet. For the best result (as its a pretty huge image) click the image to load it in full size and use the zoom tool to take a closer look. This graphic may not be complete and I may add or remove some features, it also does not take asset creation into account. It should just give you an overview on what exactly I am planning to do with the Framework on the technical side. As you can see the whole framework (PHFW = Phodex Framwork) is at about 65% progress. The most work needs to be done on the Gameplay and System side. Many features are there already, but are still very primitive and provisional. Let me know what you think of the graphic. Did it help you understanding the Framwork, or did you find it pretty confusing at all? Stay cool and have a nice day! Markus from Phodex

Introduction Hi, last time I gave you a rough idea of what the Phodex Framework is and what plans I have. This time I will talk about what I am working on at the moment and what my plans for future are. So this is kind of the first real blog entry :). What I am working on? Recently, beside some bugfixing and improving stuff, I tweaked all imported models (collapsing, normal calculation), set up the materials so that they fit the look I want etc. I also reorganzied my folderstructure within the project, and came up with a pretty cool tag system (by renaming my objects) for beeing able to quickly find what I need inside Leadwerks. Maybe I will introduce it any time soon :). More recently I rebuild the whole city, shown in the Introduction of the framework. This was needed, as I collapsed most of the models, so it was kind of a mess after my cleanup :D. But I did not only rebuild it exactly as before, I tried to make the city more interesting and did some tweaks here and there: What is next? The next big thing on my to do list is recreating/tweaking all first person animations, as those I have at the moment are just kind of placeholders and look pretty aweful. In total that are about 40 animations, so I guess I will be pretty busy :D. After that, I will create some armor for the player an also create new NPC animations to fit my combat system. What is the plan? As many features I want inside the framework are already there, my plan is to create a test scene, with a more or less livley city, where you can get some quests, buy from a trader, figth some monsters, hire a mercenary and talk to some townfolks. This will easily show me where I need to improve, or where stuff is missing. Another nice thing is that I can then make this level available for you to play, so you can take a look on what is possible with the framework, of what quality it is and of course can give better feedback. Conclusion First thank you for commenting, last time, feel free to do this at any time :). I am always glad to hear ideas and suggestions as well as what you would wish the framework would provide. Thank you for reading and stay cool Markus from Phodex

Restarted my networking framework yet again. This time I gave it a new name 'Hexe'. The old name was 'Overwatch'. It was named long before the Overwatch game came out. It was based off the Half-Life Overwatch. It oversaw the players, ai spawning, contained a secondary path-finding system, but had no networking as it was not native to the LUA side of Leadwerks. 'Hexe' is German for 'witch'. I don't really know why I chose the name but I have the feeling I will be able to put it to good use. Maybe I'll even mix in some Anglish into it. This restart occurred because the framework became too cumbersome. I had the entity synchronization working correctly, but it did not differentiate between player and an object in the world. That wasn't really that bad, what made messed it up was that a lobby system and teams were needed and there was no space to squeeze any other components into the mix. This rewrite will focus on the player/client and foremost. The components that are currently being written or are complete are: The server browser. This was a side project created out of necessity. I did not want to have to hard code the ip every time. Anytime I wanted to test multiple clients I had to change the code depending on which computer was running the server. PITFALL: Since Leadwerks does not expose the servers local ip address via code, you will need to get it manually from you computer, or use some creative workarounds Network Manager Hexe is split up between a server class and a client class. Both classes use a network manager class that can automatically handle hosting or connecting to a server. The network manager currently handles the handshake and the beginnings of the lobby system. When a client joins it initiates and handles the handshake between the server and client. It also raises events so the server or client can react accordingly if need be. After the handshake is completed, the network manager starts the lobby system The connection handshake. This is was saved from the last version. It makes sure the server and client are using the same protocol version. It will then register the client on the server and give it an incremental number (similar to the source engine) that allows the client state to be manipulated The Lobbying system: This is completely new. After the handshake is complete, it will send a command launching the lobbying system. The network manager only makes sure that a client is in the servers lobby and nothing more. The client and server manually handle the team creation and player switching on their own. Teams are not part of the network manager because it would require large amounts of rewrites depending on the type of game being created. When the lobbying system is complete the client input will be added. So far things are going well and maybe soon I wont be staring at console output for feedback.