what do you want see in leadwerks 3.0

[VicToMeyeZR]

well without testing, I am just concerned with resource usage.

 

Is it because you don't know how to do it, or don't want to? When you instantiate a mesh, it should automatically be unique... SO I just worry if this flag will cause a resource hog, if its used to much.

 

It will work for "instancing", so It is better than nothing.

[Rick]

When you instantiate a mesh, it should automatically be unique...

 

For speed/storage concerns Josh has chosen to not make this the default case. That is by design. That's how he can get tons of the same model on the screen at the same time cheaply. There are cases where that's good and there are cases where that's bad and causes devs to jump through hoops. He's meeting us in the middle and offering a way for us to make each mesh unique, while still being able to cheaply render tons of the same model.

 

In short, it's good to give us the choice.

[Alessandro]

I think this is a good solution, since I can decide which way to follow.

I don't think it is so "vital" discussing what's the default method, in fact I think it's important that BOTH methods are available.

[Rick]

I just want various trigger types in 3.0. Triggers form a large base for most all gameplay. Volume triggers, input triggers, etc would help get some gameplay going in some of these pretty screenshots.

[Pixel Perfect]

I'd really like to see an increase in the supported number of terrain textures. I didn't see any specific mention of it in the roadmap. The current limitation is just too restrictive for convincing outdoor scenes.

[Josh]

I'd really like to see an increase in the supported number of terrain textures. I didn't see any specific mention of it in the roadmap. The current limitation is just too restrictive for convincing outdoor scenes.

Yes, that will be implemented.

[Masterxilo]

CSG is still very much in use today. It greatly increases level design and requires less skill than being a 3D artist.

 

Far Cry 2, Crysis, STALKER, none of the newer engines use it.

Call it CSG, call it placeholders, call it "solids", but even some of "the newer engines" use this.

E.G. Crysis: http://doc.crymod.com/SandboxManual/frames.html?frmname=topic&frmfile=Solids.html

This simplifies collaboration between level designers and artists a lot.

 

Will the editor have some kind of plugin mechanism that would allow anyone to make something like this if you decide not to add it?

Same for anything else one could wish..

 

You can make a Voxel sculpting editor instead of CSG editor.

It does the same as CSG but much better and doesn't add any polygons

no matter how often you do boolean ops. Crysis uses Voxels for the terrain too,

and modern 3D modelling programs like ZBrush and 3DCoat uses Voxels too.

Sure it does add polygons with a polygon rendering engine like opengl. Cube marching is used to

"transcript" the volume data of the voxels into a polygon model.

ZBrush doesn't use voxels, that's why you have to tesselate the mesh yourself with that sculpting app.

The voxel volume used for terrains in crysis has a very low resolution and voxels per se are not too useful

for non-aa flat surface modeling.

 

We do need solids/csg.

 

Having a day/night cycle in the editor like crysis sandbox did would be great XD.

 

I agree. Originally I thought people would find that too restricting, but the general desire seems to be to have more of these pre-made things built in, so I won't worry about it.

 

I agree with franck22000 and Laurens there.

The most important thing (for me) is to be able to replace, extend, change, disable or just not use such built-in/pre-made features.

 

I'm currently writing a byte reader/writer for GMF

You could use the gmf sdk for the writing part.

 

I am using an optional flag to load a unique copy of[...]

This same approach can probably be used with shaders, sounds, meshes, etc.

Finally!

[Josh]

You guys are going to be the death of me.

 

It sounds like you want 3D World Studio and Leadwerks Editor combined into one super editor. I will admit that I like the idea of having our old 3DWS approach to level editing available, especially if the CSG solids can have chunky tessellated bricks sticking out of them.

[franck22000]

3DWS integrated in the editor ? Where can i pre-order LE3 ?

 

This would be an awesome thing !

 

I see 3 part in your roadmap, like someone asked you before, are you planning to complete all of those 3 parts before releasing a beta version ?

[L B]

3DWS integrated in the editor ? Where can i pre-order LE3 ?

 

This would be an awesome thing !

 

By the way Josh, are you thinking that you will be maybe able to provide some sort of beta of LE3 before christmas ?

I see 3 part in your roadmap, like someone asked you before, are you planning to complete all of those 3 parts before releasing a beta version ?

As these are 3 development phases, I assume it is only logical to develop the software before releasing it.

[franck22000]

Josh can release the engine with phase 1 and 2 done and finishing the last phase after that...

[Rick]

You guys are going to be the death of me.

 

It sounds like you want 3D World Studio and Leadwerks Editor combined into one super editor. I will admit that I like the idea of having our old 3DWS approach to level editing available, especially if the CSG solids can have chunky tessellated bricks sticking out of them.

 

 

I think it's almost a requirement to compete with something like UDK. CSG is still very popular and it helps us scrub programmers get some playable demos going really fast and skilled people in it can still create very nice scenes. Most buildings would use this.

[Josh]

Two years ago everyone was saying the exact opposite; that CSG was ancient technology and I should get with the times.

 

I'm not interested in mimicking what Epic happens to be doing at any given moment. I'm interested in what gives our users the best results.

 

There may be good reasons to support this, but if you tell me I should do it because Epic is, that is probably the worst line of reasoning you could use.

[Rick]

I'm not really interested in what UDK does. What I am interested in what gives our users the best results.

 

That sounds like a good PR statement, but you aren't going to be doing yourself any favors by not looking at the competition because your users are looking at more than one engine to see what features work the best. So if your users are looking around, then so should you to see what they are looking for. What works and what doesn't. Only seems logical. Putting your head in the sand to the competition isn't going to help any. I'm not saying you have to copy them, but looking at what they have is a must.

 

Either way, the main point was that CSG is still very much in demand and other engines have it, and if you don't it's a tick in the negative column on that point for Leadwerks, and features is what your users are looking at.

 

There may be good reasons to support this, but if you tell me I should do it because Epic is, that is probably the worst line of reasoning you could use.

 

I wouldn't consider mimicking one of the companies that basically wrote the book on game engines to be bad reasoning. Clearly they are doing something right, and I was just using UDK as an example.

 

I know you have to set Leadwerks apart, but people are going to know about engines like UDK before they know about Leadwerks. Leadwerks clearly beats it in ease of use and looking better, but not having much of the same tools that these bigger engines have will only hurt Leadwerks. People expect these things because the big boys have them. You are being judged and compared to the likes of UDK, Unity, & others.

[Josh]

I believe some of the motivation for this request,from no one in particular, is simply because Unreal uses it. I've seen this approach vary in popularity based on what game engine is popular at the moment. I want to analyze the usefulness of this approach for the long term future, to try to predict whether it will be genuinely worthwhile, or if it will just fall out of fashion.

[Rick]

I believe some of the motivation for this request is simply because Unreal uses it.

 

1) The motivation for the request is that we aren't all artists and CSG is much easier to build a level with than going into a 3D program to make it.

 

2) Duty separation for level design and artist is another reason for it.

 

3) Quick and fast demo's can be created for it.

 

4) Even programmers can make levels with it! (my personal favorite)

 

5) Even artists can do amazing things with it.

[Josh]

Okay, now you're talking.

 

I'm leaning towards including it, even though I wasn't before today. It will be a significant amount of work, but it would be a lot of fun to have 3DWS built into the editor.

 

The geometry this produces is all unique, which is why it used to be used for lightmapped levels. It sucks for anything with repeating geometry, and it sucks for detailed buildings, but it's good for indoor scenes and simple buildings.

 

I don't think tessellation will be able to handle the hard edges of CSG blocks. I'll have to research it some more to see. If it works the way I am picturing, I might be able to add some dummy triangles to the edges...but then you also have the problem of the tessellated edges not lining up, and gaps appearing.

[Rick]

It sucks for anything with repeating geometry, and it sucks for detailed buildings, but it's good for indoor scenes and simple buildings.

 

Yeah for sure, but even these newer games have things in the distance and other models that could benefit from this. I would assume since you wrote one already that it would be slightly easier to include that but maybe there is way more to it.

 

I don't think tessellation will be able to handle the hard edges of CSG blocks. I'll have to research it some more to see. If it works the way I am picturing, I might be able to add some dummy triangles to the edges...but then you also have the problem of the tessellated edges not lining up, and gaps appearing.

 

That's a good point, but maybe giving us the ability to select faces of CSG and control the triangle count could put all that into our hands instead of yours?

[L B]

As I see it then, there is no use for CSG as an outdoor scene designer?

[Rick]

There are various things CSG can be used for outdoor designs. Think about putting a hole in the terrain and now you have to fill it with a cave. CSG can be used for that and by the level designer. If you've ever played WoW you can see that those caves can be made with CSG pretty easily, and the benefit you would get is that they wouldn't have to all look the same like in WoW. The level designer could customize those in the editor instead of just using one from a list of 3 already created caves by an artist.

 

Also you can make bridges to fill gaps in the terrain like in Masters link he posted above. Basic fences and other smaller props that don't need physics can be made with them all right in the editor. There are so many situations that CSG can be used and it really helps speed up level design.

[wailingmonkey]

1) The motivation for the request is that we aren't all programmers and flowgraphs are much easier to build a game with than going and learning c++.

 

fixed that for ya.

[Alessandro]

You guys are going to be the death of me.

 

It sounds like you want 3D World Studio and Leadwerks Editor combined into one super editor. I will admit that I like the idea of having our old 3DWS approach to level editing available, especially if the CSG solids can have chunky tessellated bricks sticking out of them.

 

This is a nice idea! :-)

 

One thing more: Crysis does not use voxel for terrains, but only for some little parts (for example to make holes).

Even if voxel technology is a great concept, I not yet found a good editor to manage it. I used Crysis editor and voxel part is much more difficult then standard terrain manipulation.

Maybe instead thinking to voxel (that must be converted to standard polygons - and, for my knowledge, I cannot directly manage this conversion) we could work on better terrain management tool, other than sculpt/smooth/flat etc....

[Alessandro]

I have a couple of requests for 3.0

 

1) I wish "UNDO" function in the world editor! I really miss it!

2) I wish a function to automatically rotate a model to the normal of the underlying model. I explain: sometimes I need to put a model over another one (for example putting a fence over the terrain), but if the underlying model (e.g. the terrain) is not plan/horizontal then it is difficult to the the right angle for the new model (e.g. the fence). So I wish to align my "fence" with the normal of the terrain. This function exists in other engine editors e.g. in UDK) and it is VERY useful!

 

Thank you! :-)

 

EDIT: I have another request for the editor: I need a more sophisticated way to search objects. For example, take a look to Unity engine searching feature ;-)

 

EDIT 2: Another request in the editor: camera movement speed (using WASD) should be placed in the main form, since it is useful changing that value in order to manage small details or large area :-)

[VicToMeyeZR]

For speed/storage concerns Josh has chosen to not make this the default case. That is by design. That's how he can get tons of the same model on the screen at the same time cheaply. There are cases where that's good and there are cases where that's bad and causes devs to jump through hoops. He's meeting us in the middle and offering a way for us to make each mesh unique, while still being able to cheaply render tons of the same model.

 

In short, it's good to give us the choice.

 

 

That makes sense. Good point

[L B]

I have a couple of requests for 3.0

 

1) I wish "UNDO" function in the world editor! I really miss it!

2) I wish a function to automatically rotate a model to the normal of the underlying model. I explain: sometimes I need to put a model over another one (for example putting a fence over the terrain), but if the underlying model (e.g. the terrain) is not plan/horizontal then it is difficult to the the right angle for the new model (e.g. the fence). So I wish to align my "fence" with the normal of the terrain. This function exists in other engine editors e.g. in UDK) and it is VERY useful!

 

Thank you! :-)

 

EDIT: I have another request for the editor: I need a more sophisticated way to search objects. For example, take a look to Unity engine searching feature ;-)

 

EDIT 2: Another request in the editor: camera movement speed (using WASD) should be placed in the main form, since it is useful changing that value in order to manage small details or large area :-)

 

@E2: Use the shift (faster) and control (slower) modifiers.

+1 for normal placement though.