What next for Leadwerks?

[Thirsty Panther]

With the immenant release of Leadwerks 3.7 with its vegetation system, and with recent releases of water, decals and the game Launcher I was wondering what do we want next?

 

Back in May Josh made a blog post of what he was planning for the future so I assume some of those will be included such as icons, DLC ( soldiers) , game templates and a built in model store.

 

Suggestions?

[darthlukan]

I'll keep the list short and devoid of mentioning bugs that are already being worked on

1. Version Control Integration: Sure, it's trivial to use the project manager to start a project then crack open a terminal to run "git init" and setup my remote, but it would be nice to set a default preference in Leadwerks for a VCS installed on my system and when my project is created, have a local git repo ("git init" already run). Simple commit, push, pull behavior would be great as well, but would obviously require a lot more work (might be easy for git, but what if the user chooses subversion, mercurial, etc?). Still, a definite "nice to have"
   
2. One thing that I'm still confused about (granted, I just got Leadwerks less than a week ago) is how I can go about adding a dialog system. Whether it be with dialog balloons, or dialog screens. If this is already possible, then a tutorial on getting started with it would be awesome. If not, then I think it would be a great addition and would allow for easier creation of story-based games (not like interactive books, but games of "substance" with characters that you can identify with [assuming the writer is doing their job ]). So yeah, that would be a great addition IMO.
   
3. Preferences. What I mean by this is, for example:
   

• Font selection: I'm not sure how the font is being determined, but it's most definitely not configurable via a menu (or config file) that I've seen.
  
• Editor color schemes: White backgrounds are hard to look at when spending hours in the editor, especially in a dark room.
  

 

Those changes alone would keep me focused in the editor and not having to feel like I "need" to drop to my terminal in order to maintain a sane workflow. As it stands, I rarely use the in-engine script/code editor in favor of vim and I keep a terminal open for local version control.

[Olby]

1. Preferences. What I mean by this is, for example:
   

• Font selection: I'm not sure how the font is being determined, but it's most definitely not configurable via a menu (or config file) that I've seen.
  
• Editor color schemes: White backgrounds are hard to look at when spending hours in the editor, especially in a dark room.
  

 

[darthlukan]

 

 

I don't seem to have the option to change fonts in Leadwerks 3.6 Standard Edition on Linux.

 

But thanks for pointing me to the colors options! That will help a lot.

[reepblue]

My wait list of things that Josh mentioned in the past that I'm hyped for.

• Right-Click->Create menu on the viewports for faster creations of pivots, cameras, and lights.
  
• A hint system so you can make entities invisible without applying a new material to it. Would be great for trigger brushes as I use a tool texture for them so I know where they are in my maps.
  
• Updated widgets, at least have them look more different Between Transition, Rotation, And Scale.
  
• Auto complete and script editor more sorted out. Right now random values are highlighted blue, and the auto complete only worked one update for me before (I think it's temp disabled unless it works with everyone else). Even if then, it was more annoying than helpful unlike the VS auto completion.
  

 

Again, not making new requests, just restating ideas that Josh mentioned a while back. He might have something else big he wants to do after vegetation. Who knows, it might be roads like in LE2. Also, can't wait to see the updated SDK art stuff along with content creators to easily sell their work.

[Lunarovich]

A simple CSG vertex editing would be a great benefit for a rapid map creation. The CSG is greate because it alleviates the need for UV mapping - a modelling nightmare and a horrendous bottleneck. With vertex editable CSG-s one could even go for the simple game models and not only for the static scenery. This opens a ton of possibilities.