Game development without programming?

[imothep85]

Hi, it is possible in Leadwerks engine to create a game without having to code?

with something visual like nodals functions?

 

in my game i need to open and close doors, and activate just some traps, i saw all the leadwerks video tutorials and found that one (with the door)!!!

 

but i found NO videos about HOW to make a game title/menu functions and saving/loading levels ingame and also Loading screens between two levels.

[Roland]

In my humble opinion the answer is simply "No"

[Rick]

Sure, it's possible but you'll be limited to what other coders have made in terms of visual scripts for you to use with the flowgraph editor. There was a point where I made a decent amount of scripts purely for the flowgraph editor but Josh doesn't put much focus on making that thing more than a toy to play around with so its missing a lot of features to make it more "programming" friendly as he doesn't want it to be for that and just for little interactions.

[Josh]

A new GUI system is in development right now:

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/blog/1/entry-1725-widget-progress/

 

There will likely be a default template you can copy and paste for your game menu.

 

There is an included script to make a trigger that changes maps.

 

It will be difficult to do everything you would want without touching any code, but you can do quite a lot and Lua is easy to learn.

[imothep85]

i really hope the flowgraph is going to be more powerful, with more functions/actions .//vfx artis Im not a Lua developer at all, im a graphic artist/vfx, i use 3ds max.

To me this engine looks very good, but if i have to code in lua.... :s mhh i think its going to be hard.

Your flowgraph is exellent you just need to put more interrest on it, to work more on that, maybe is not important for the Leadwerk developer, but for users like me, yes its really important.

[cassius]

its the coding that I enjoy most and its the only way to make your game a bit different to others. I will never be advanced coder but I make things work. Wouldn't want it any other way.

[Josh]

i really hope the flowgraph is going to be more powerful, with more functions/actions .//vfx artis Im not a Lua developer at all, im a graphic artist/vfx, i use 3ds max.

To me this engine looks very good, but if i have to code in lua.... :s mhh i think its going to be hard.

Your flowgraph is exellent you just need to put more interrest on it, to work more on that, maybe is not important for the Leadwerk developer, but for users like me, yes its really important.

What exactly are you looking for? It sounds like the flowgraph already supports what you want to do.

[Rick]

The flowgraph is not a coding environment like Blueprint over in UDK. I think that's more of what he is looking for so he can do all sorts of things visually on his own. Basically you'd make nodes for all LE functions for people to code visually. Then you'd have to break flowgraphs out because one wouldn't be enough. Then add comments ability, etc.

[Josh]

I don't want our flowgraph system to be a visual script language. I don't believe in that approach because the results are confusing to both programmers and non-programmers.

[Rick]

You should log how many people use the flowgraph system. I assume with steam connection you could do that. It would be interesting data. My assumption would be very little with it being pretty limited in features. You were bigger on it in the past and now you're even going farther away given your recent c++ endeavors. I feel like the flowgraph needs some love at some point as it seems like it's fallen to the wayside.

[blueapples]

I think it makes sense for your flowgraph system to be essentially like a functional scripting language GUI, but not as a complete analog for Lua. Procedural or object oriented programming doesn't lend itself to flow graphs in my opinion, it is very confusing indeed to try to do this. Functional programming does, however. That could be a useful limitation to impart a consistent design to it and make it usefully different from Lua.

[Angelwolf]

I use the flowgraph editor in most of my games, often with my own inputs and outputs. Its very useful and helps me to overcome certain obstacles i might not otherwise get around.