I'm seriously interested in buying the Leadwerks Engine off Steam but I have a few basic questions

[jerleb]

I am very interested in buying Leadwerks Engine from Steam (only place it seems to be avaiable).

However, I am completely new to game design and programming but have watched some videos on Youtube and just bought a C++ class on Udemy.

I understand that using Lua and visual scripting will be easier to learn than C++  (described as hard to learn for beginners) from what I've read online.  I have GIMP and Blender as my DCCs.  Blender is hard to get into for me as I find the interface unintuitive but it is the only free option and I know about all the tutorials on Youtube about it and I plan to watch more.

My PC is Windows 10 x64, Intel i5 6400T (w intel HD 530 graphics, so no Geforce or anything fancy), 8 GIGS RAM and 1TB 7200rpm harddrive.

I think it will be sufficient since all of the Leadwerks games I've been playing from the game launcher play well on my PC, even with Intel HD 530 graphics.

My question is this:  Can I make a FPS game with enemies and item pickups as 2d sprites and also the FPS player weapon(s) as sprites.? Is there a flipbook to animate the sprites in Leadwerks? 

From what I've read online, in a true 3d engine the sprites in a FPS have to be flipped to face the player at all time otherwise obviously they will not be visible from certain angles since they have no depth. 

Is this hard or CPU intensive to make?  I would assume that a FPS game with sprites is going to be less-resource heavy to run (and easier to make since 3d modeling in Blender is very intimidating while I can make sprites in GIMP and I know about getting rid of the background with Alpha color or something like this)  than 3d models, am I right?

Thank you for the support

[AggrorJorn]

If you are really new I would start of with Lua, because you can get results a little bit faster. Plus you can make use of the editor scripts.

You can do everything that you mention in your post using the Sprite class. They can automatically face the player camera. You don't have to worry about performance. This also affects the GPU rather than the CPU.

https://www.leadwerks.com/learn?page=API-Reference_Object_Entity_Model_Sprite

You could do your level design with CSG brushes and use enemies/pickups using sprites. 

[tipforeveryone]

Hi, welcome to Leadwerks world

Leadwerks can do what you want.

if you are new to game design and programing, it will be a long road to go but worth. Just learn it step by step.
But I think you still need a computer with graphic card

[Josh]

17 minutes ago, tipforeveryone said:

Hi, welcome to Leadwerks world

Leadwerks can do what you want.

if you are new to game design and programing, it will be a long road to go but worth. Just learn it step by step.
But I think you still need a computer with graphic card

I'm developing Leadwerks right now on an Intel graphics chip. So it can be done.

[Genebris]

Everything you mentioned will be very easy to make with Leadwerks especially if you use Lua. CPU performance won't be a problem, but GPU performance will. Billboard enemies will make it much easier.

[jerleb]

Does developing games require a better graphics card than playing them?  I plan on making only old school games (90s to circa 2005) that do not have modern high-end graphics.  

As far as running games with my Intel HD Graphics 530, I am only playing old games (90s era to crica 2006) that I bought on GOG.com and some old-school indie games (like this Windows store game called "grudgekill" which is a FPS made with Unity) and I'm coping fine.  I bought Doom 3 last December on GOG.com and it runs fine on my system but I know I could never run a modern AAA game like Doom 4 with Intel HD Graphics 530.

I downloaded the Leadwerks-made game "Nightmare Prism" and played through the whole game a few times.  The game is maxing my Intel HD 530 to 99% and runs slightly choppy (not as fast and smooth as the video below but close to it) but is still very playable.  The slight choppiness due to my lack of a better graphics card makes it a bit more challenging though.  And I put all the settings at their lowest value.

 

[AggrorJorn]

5 hours ago, jerleb said:

Does developing games require a better graphics card than playing them? 

Not per se, but it can't hurt to upgrade your graphics card. From a bright side: your game is developed against the lowest specs. If it runs on your pc, anything with better hardware will certainly work.

A cheap graphics card with a good bang for buck is the GT 1030. 

[mdgunn]

I think Nightmare Prism has some volumetric lighting turned on in parts.  This can really tank FPS due to the way it works so should usually be reserved for very limited use.  In a release game you'd maybe come up with a much lower cost alternative and have different graphics levels but in game jam games there's a temptation to turn it on, knowing that in a simple looking game the majority of people probably have the graphics horsepower left to take the hit.  

Leadwerks can be pretty effective for developing on a lower spec machine as long as you work on isolated game chunks and avoid trying to run final unoptimsed levels when really you're just testing a game mechanic (create super simple test levels).

Some things can be hard to run effectively on low end graphics (e.g. terrain sculpting and building up natural outdoor environments)  

I've had a couple of things not work on low end graphics, e.g. real time texture from camera (for a portal) but in general things work pretty well. A more powerful graphics card will make development quicker and smoother in general but it's not a necessity if you keep your ambitions reasonably small to start with and build from there.