Easy game creation

[Brent Taylor]

I don't know Rick. I agree, Leadwerks is not a game engine, but a framework geared towards multi-media applications (with an emphasis on games/simulations). However, thats also it's greatest strength IMHO. It's also precisely why Unity is so popular. Unity is NOT a game engine either. It's a framework, designed for the exact same market as Leadwerks. The difference is in the tool set. The Leadwerks editor is reasonable, but it's very very basic. Compare it to the Unity editor and you'll see precisely why Unity is as popular as it is. It provides some pretty basic behavior, but it's done with an emphasis of making it intuitive and RAPID.

 

All the unity editor does (stock, and in a basic sense) is:

• Move, scale and rotate nodes/objects. Keep in mind, the last I checked, scaling is broken in the Leadwerks editor.
  
• Allow you to attach scripts (written in an external, third party editor) to those nodes.
  
• Create terrains.
  
• It's also extendable to allow for developers to add and create their own tools. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
  

 

The Leadwerks editor does most of this...sort of. It's not extendable and there really isn't a way of attaching scripts to objects.

 

Right now, Leadwerks's biggest issue is it's content pipeline. While there are tools for converting models and other assets into a format Leadwerks can work with, they are not intuitive and it's fairly largely agreed that they are near useless. People rather favor using other, expensive third party tools JUST to get content into the engine/framework. Why is that even acceptable?

 

Secondly, the documentation for the Leadwerks engine is fairly abysmal. You have basic documentation that barely goes over functionality in the engine. Compare it to the documentation that is available (stock that is, not third party) that comes with Unity, UDK or even Torque 3D. The community has been creating examples, documentation and tutorials, however none of them are in the same league as what is available for other engines.

 

@Everyone but Josh. Keep in mind, I'm speaking of LE as it is currently. I'm aware that LE 3 is around the corner and fixes some of these things. But that's the future and is subject to change, not the state of LE as it is this very moment.

----

 

Just to be clear. I'm not trying to bash on Leadwerks, but rather trying to give input so that in the end we have a better product. I like Leadwerks. I wouldn't have bought it if I didn't.

[Canardia]

There's nothing good about Unity. Roland just told me few days age when he imported his Celly girl model into Leadwerks that it looked 10 times better than in Unity. So Leadwerks Engine's strength is the realtime rendering quality including realtime shadows, no other engine on the planet can do that. Not even CryEngine, since it uses DX10 which no Windows XP and Linux can run.

 

I tried also the Unity Editor once, at it was horrible. You can't even move models around, but you have some wierd ball cursor which refuses to do anything you tell it to do. Sure the Leadwerks Editor has also some lacks, like moving along their own axis, or scaling of models, but that is Newton's fault.

[Brent Taylor]

There's nothing good about Unity. Roland just told me few days age when he imported his Celly girl model into Leadwerks that it looked 10 times better than in Unity. So Leadwerks Engine's strength is the realtime rendering quality including realtime shadows, no other engine on the planet can do that. Not even CryEngine, since it uses DX10 which no Windows XP and Linux can run.

 

I tried also the Unity Editor once, at it was horrible. You can't even move models around, but you have some wierd ball cursor which refuses to do anything you tell it to do. Sure the Leadwerks Editor has also some lacks, like moving along their own axis, or scaling of models, but that is Newton's fault.

 

No doubt Leadwerks has great rendering facilities. I wasn't implying that Leadwerks has only one strength. Please make a point of taking what I say in context.

 

As for your issues with the Unity editor, maybe you had a bug. Maybe you were trying to run it via WINE. No idea. However seeing how Unity has over 50 million downloads, holds a significant share of the game engine market on iOS, Android and OS X, as well as the general indie market...it's clear they are doing something right. If you had a bug, post it on their bug tracker. I can assure you, it was an isolated case.

 

Claiming one of Josh's biggest competitors has no redeeming qualities is nothing more than a joke. You don't have to like Unity, thats fine (I'm not a big fan either). But pretending that there is nothing that Unity does right, and nothing for Josh to learn from to improve LE? That's just asinine.

[Canardia]

Even Blitz3D is better than Unity, and puki can confirm this.

In Blitz3D (and of course LE) you can say:

cube1=CreateCube()
TurnEntity cube1,1,1,1

There's no way you can do this with Unity, and there is no setting up of anything else either in Blitz3D, you just start to write code and it works. You don't really need any fancy tools, but you need a fancy programming interface.

[Marleys Ghost]

Leadwerks Engine's strength is the realtime rendering quality including realtime shadows, no other engine on the planet can do that. Not even CryEngine, since it uses DX10 which no Windows XP and Linux can run

 

So, you are saying that CryEngine can't do "realtime rendering quality including realtime shadows" because it uses DX10? but CryENGINE 3 works on Xbox 360, PS3, DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 .. so you are saying that no one with XP can run crysis 2 because the Cryengine only uses DX10? care to elborate on what it is you are actually trying to "say" so later you can't argue from ambiguity?

 

 

Key Rendering Features

http://crytek.com/assets/Crysis-2-Key-Rendering-Features.pdf

 

Even Blitz3D is better than Unity, and puki can confirm this.

 

 

And if you are using Puki as a call to "authority" then you concede that Blitz3D is better than Leadwerks as well then?

[Canardia]

So, you are saying that CryEngine can't do "realtime rendering quality including realtime shadows" because it uses DX10? but CryENGINE 3 works on Xbox 360, PS3, DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 .. so you are saying that no one with XP can run crysis 2 because the Cryengine only uses DX10? care to elborate on what it is you are actually trying to "say" so later you can't argue from ambiguity?

CryEngine has a nice downscaling feature, so even Crysis 2 runs on my Windows XP and GeForce 8800 with amazing FPS. But it is then downscaled, so I don't get the full quality out of it, like with LE2 under OpenGL.

 

And if you are using Puki as a call to "authority" then you concede that Blitz3D is better than Leadwerks as well then?

In some parts it is, for example you can make games on low end machines with decent FPS, but overall Leadwerks is better.

[Marleys Ghost]

CryEngine has a nice downscaling feature, so even Crysis 2 runs on my Windows XP and GeForce 8800 with amazing FPS. But it is then downscaled, so I don't get the full quality out of it, like with LE2 under OpenGL.

 

 

So you avoid the fact that cryengine supports XP and DX9 when you clearly used that it did not as point against, you asked why people simply dont take what you say as true without proof, heres yet another example why.

[Canardia]

So you avoid the fact that cryengine supports XP and DX9 when you clearly used that it did not as point against, you asked why people simply dont take what you say as true without proof, heres yet another example why.

In DirectX9 you don't have all the features as in OpenGL 2.1, so DirectX10 is closer to OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX11 is closer to OpenGL 3.0 and 4.0.

[Marleys Ghost]

In DirectX9 you don't have all the features as in OpenGL 2.1, so DirectX10 is closer to OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX11 is closer to OpenGL 3.0 and 4.0.

 

 

yada yada ... will you be using the sausage in the refrigerator defence later? because it will take the tedium off your disingenuous ambiguity mongering.

[Brent Taylor]

Even Blitz3D is better than Unity, and puki can confirm this.

In Blitz3D (and of course LE) you can say:

cube1=CreateCube()
TurnEntity cube1,1,1,1

There's no way you can do this with Unity, and there is no setting up of anything else either in Blitz3D, you just start to write code and it works. You don't really need any fancy tools, but you need a fancy programming interface.

 

Lumooja, you're only proving your own ignorance. Thats not only possible to do in Unity, it's as trivial as the code you posted. It's also entirely irrelevant. I'm not trying to advertise Unity here, but promoting improvements to Leadwerks.

 

Lumooja, at this point it should be fairly obvious why no one believes anything you have to say. Yes, Unity can spawn a cube and rotate it with code. In fact one of it's features is procedural content. Yes, Cryengine has realtime shadows. It just doesn't run on XP or Linux, which while apparently irrelevant to you, it's quite relevant to the rest of the world.

[Canardia]

I have looked for examples how to do it in Unity, but nobody could provide one. The closest I found is that you have to do some sin/cos calculations on the entitymatrix to rotate a cube in Unity. Or even worse, using some up-vector, which makes no sense in advanced games since there is no such thing as "up":

transform.RotateAround (target.position, Vector3.up, degrees * Time.deltaTime)

[Brent Taylor]

I have looked for examples how to do it in Unity, but nobody could provide one. The closest I found is that you have to do some sin/cos calculations on the entitymatrix to rotate a cube in Unity. Or even worse, using some up-vector, which makes no sense in advanced games since there is no such thing as "up":

transform.RotateAround (target.position, Vector3.up, degrees * Time.deltaTime)

 

It would have been a lot faster to just look at the documentation. A simple search for "Rotate" would have gotten you this result.

http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/Transform.Rotate.html

 

Seriously, this is ridiculous. This doesn't have anything to do with Leadwerks at this point.

 

EDIT: Now trying to get back on topic...

Actually the Up vector makes a lot of sense, and is required for a lot of the math you'll use in just about any game. In terms of direction, it's not really talking about "up" in the sense of "towards the sky" so much as it's talking about the rotation of the "Y" axis of an object in it's local space (some engines use "Z" as up as well, but thats relatively rare). The world space itself has it's own "Up" vector as well, and this is true for any engine (Leadwerks included). While I agree it doesn't necessarily make a lot of conceptual sense in all games (say, a space sim for example, where there is no true "Up"), it does however make the mathematics a heck of a lot easier to work with.

[Canardia]

Yeah, so it's pointless even to mention Unity. You can just say what features you want in Leadwerks, and don't need to compare what other engines might have. Indeed you might get much better ideas and feature requests done that way, since you are not limited in your ideas by some poor implementation which others have done. Like Josh said, all code which is not written by him is not thought thoroughly through.

[Marleys Ghost]

I'm not trying to advertise Unity here, but promoting improvements to Leadwerks.

 

 

Most ideas for improvements for LE come from existing features and or tool sets found in "other engines" that LE currently does not have/support, but when using "other engines" as an example Mika turns into the caped crusading fanboy "Zanussi" and enters a spin cycle. Which is not productive when it consists of disingenuous obfuscation and suppository stats.

 

 

Yeah, so it's pointless even to meation Unity. You can just say what features you want in Leadwerks, and don't need to compare what other engines might have.

 

Ah ... the real motivation ... "fanboyitis", trumps objectivity and reasonable discourse.

[Brent Taylor]

Most ideas for improvements for LE come from existing features and or tool sets found in "other engines" that LE currently does not have/support, but when using "other engines" as an example Mika turns into the caped crusading fanboy "Zanussi" and enters a spin cycle. Which is not productive when it consists of disingenuous obfuscation and suppository stats.

 

It's sad really and not at all helpful. He constantly derails potentially very positive discussions with his general attitude and most importantly his behavior.

[Rick]

However, thats also it's greatest strength IMHO. It's also precisely why Unity is so popular. Unity is NOT a game engine either. It's a framework, designed for the exact same market as Leadwerks. The difference is in the tool set. The Leadwerks editor is reasonable, but it's very very basic. Compare it to the Unity editor and you'll see precisely why Unity is as popular as it is. It provides some pretty basic behavior, but it's done with an emphasis of making it intuitive and RAPID.

 

Unity does define a structure though. You are to derive your classes from a behavior base class which defines methods you can override and they are called by the game engine. It also gives you a way to piece things together. From a programmers point of view giving us a predefined structure might not be require but he's looking at the masses here. Because Unity has defined this structure programmers feel comfortable to make libraries that they know can easily be integrated into other peoples projects.

 

You and I probably don't want a structure forced on us but you have to admit that without that common structure it makes it difficult to share code without the user of the code making modifications to it to fit their structure. Now if a person newer has to do this they probably won't succeed and gives up or worse learns about this before even buying the engine. Josh is trying to make money by appealing to the masses.

[Pixel Perfect]

Chris Paulson has been working with Unity for a while now and the ease at which he has integrated a nav mesh editor he's written (his own this time ... not Recast) with the Unity Editor speaks volumes. This is one of the great strengths of their editor and the framework they provide as it enables non trivial functionality to be seamlessly integrated and applied as a simple drag and drop item. Others have previously alluded to this and in my opinion that type of system really encourages community development of the type that the Unity Forums are full of. It's a vibrant happening place.

 

Never ignore the competition ... learn from them and take their best features and use them to enhance the many commendable features of Leadwerks Engine. If this is built on top of the code base and the full API is still exposed then there are no constraints placed on us programmers should we not wish to use the provided frameworks. Effectively we can have the best of both worlds!

[Rick]

What Pixel just said sums it all up. You have to promote integration and the way you do that is by defining a basic structure for others to follow first. This has to come from the creator. At that point it doesn't matter what language you use. Once you have this structure your tools can be built around it to help aid people in following that structure. This is exactly what Unity does and it works.

 

This is the successful strategy for any game engine and it can't be ignored.

 

The issue with Josh putting all that structure on the Lua side is that if we can't create the entire game in Lua, then you still leave this big open non structured path with C/C++. The structure has to be consistent between any language used to make the game.

[Josh]

There's nothing good about Unity. Roland just told me few days age when he imported his Celly girl model into Leadwerks that it looked 10 times better than in Unity. So Leadwerks Engine's strength is the realtime rendering quality including realtime shadows, no other engine on the planet can do that. Not even CryEngine, since it uses DX10 which no Windows XP and Linux can run.

 

I tried also the Unity Editor once, at it was horrible. You can't even move models around, but you have some wierd ball cursor which refuses to do anything you tell it to do. Sure the Leadwerks Editor has also some lacks, like moving along their own axis, or scaling of models, but that is Newton's fault.

That argument is so bad it looks like a fake argument to make Unity look better.

 

I respect the work David and Joachim have done. I've know them since before they came to the U.S. They've made some good contributions to the user-friendliness of engine art pipelines.

 

We're going a different route than Unity, but it's still important to recognize the design decisions they got right.

[Rick]

We're going a different route than Unity

 

What route would that be and how is it different?

[Josh]

Tessellation, multisampled deferred rendering, CSG editor, etc.

[Rick]

Oh OK, I guess I was still stuck on the game programming side instead of graphic techniques. I don't think there is much question about the graphics direction LE is going and how everyone loves it. Looks like the majority of this thread was about the game structure direction.

[Josh]

i don't believe they have a flow graph, which is where the whole design plan for le3 comes together, imo. I also am a big believer in Lua

[Rick]

i don't believe they have a flow graph, which is where the whole design plan for le3 comes together

 

They have some system where people vote for features and if it gets enough votes or whatever, they will look at implementing the feature. I know at one point the flowgraph was pretty close to having enough votes.

 

 

I also am a big believer in Lua

 

You have said yourself that Lua won't store all your code for all aspects to a game. Given that, it would seem that we would then still need a good structure to use C++ libraries that the community creates from inside Lua. Do you plan on supporting such a structure? If not then community libraries, which we need so bad, probably won't be created that work from inside Lua and with you putting all your chips on Lua that's not good.

 

I think you have to look at the entire picture of making a game from start to finish and if that still includes C++, then give the community something to work with as far as integration between C++ and Lua.

[Pixel Perfect]

i don't believe they have a flow graph, which is where the whole design plan for le3 comes together, imo. I also am a big believer in Lua

So what are the flowgraphs going to be used for? Used in moderation they are a nice feature but tend to become completely unwieldly over a certain size and complexity