Any news on new leadwerks engine?

[Pixel Perfect]

lol

[shadmar]

Yeah it sank, then there was a couple of world wars.

[gordonramp]

I want to do something special with the terrain.

 

Infinite Terrains would be a great feature.

[Roland]

Small highly detailed terrains would be a great feature

[Juggernaut]

Infinite Terrains would be a great feature.

 

Yes. +1

[gordonramp]

Small highly detailed terrains would be a great feature

 

Hi Roland, Yes but any inspiring World Builder could achieve this in most Engines with quality Assets and careful placement. The ultimate would be to achieve 'highly detailed Infinite Terrains'. This may be possible. Procedural Generation, Occlusion Culling, Terrain stitching, Lods and streaming and deletion of objects could all add up to Infinite Game Worlds if it was organised well. I think that the Quality or usability of a Terrain tool in a 3D Engine is the determining factor of the success of the Engine, Games these days are becoming more and more expansive and the comments I see about Game environments usually refer to 'detail' and 'size'.

[Benton]

Whats wrong with voxels?

[BES]

Hi Roland, Yes but any inspiring World Builder could achieve this in most Engines with quality Assets and careful placement. The ultimate would be to achieve 'highly detailed Infinite Terrains'. This may be possible. Procedural Generation, Occlusion Culling, Terrain stitching, Lods and streaming and deletion of objects could all add up to Infinite Game Worlds if it was organised well. I think that the Quality or usability of a Terrain tool in a 3D Engine is the determining factor of the success of the Engine, Games these days are becoming more and more expansive and the comments I see about Game environments usually refer to 'detail' and 'size'.

 

Yeah, I have been looking into procedural generation ....its pretty impressive and would be a great addition to the engine, but I think its going to have to be added yourself ..

 

Like I want procedural generation because I believe its the best way to add atmospheric transitions for planets, I have some source code on procedural texturing but I haven't really looked through everything yet..

 

Its from those German guys ...Farbrausch the same guys that made the 64k game called .theprodukkt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farbrausch

[Roland]

Hi Roland, Yes but any inspiring World Builder could achieve this in most Engines with quality Assets and careful placement. The ultimate would be to achieve 'highly detailed Infinite Terrains'. This may be possible. Procedural Generation, Occlusion Culling, Terrain stitching, Lods and streaming and deletion of objects could all add up to Infinite Game Worlds if it was organised well. I think that the Quality or usability of a Terrain tool in a 3D Engine is the determining factor of the success of the Engine, Games these days are becoming more and more expansive and the comments I see about Game environments usually refer to 'detail' and 'size'.

What I would like is an area with high details where the action takes place, combined with a wast surronding terrain with lesser details. Of course this can be achived with a big terrain and the high detailed are as a mesh, but having two resolutions would be great. One for the area of interest and one for the surroundings. Procedural terrain sounds interesting, but dont you loose the possibilty to design the terrain then? ... I don't know to much about procedural terrains.

[smashthewindow]

Whats wrong with voxels?

 

Well I presume they're pretty slow on most implementations.

I like the idea though.

[Road Kill Kenny]

Well I presume they're pretty slow on most implementations.

 

Yes pretty much. Unless you have voxels very small (which isn't really feasible especially not for mobile) they look ****ty.... I am so over the whole voxel cube thing. There can only be so many minecraft clones....

[Benton]

I mean voxels like in the C4 engine. It allows you to create cliffs, overhangs and arches that would not be possible with a basic height-map solution.

[Pixel Perfect]

Cry Engine uses voxel terrain construction too in conjunction with normal heightmap terrain for detailed outcrop sections etc, its a pretty neat feature.

[tjheldna]

The C4 engine uses Voxel terrain and I have used it quite a bit. Its very nice to be able to tunnel into the terrain etc.

[Road Kill Kenny]

Cry Engine uses voxel terrain construction too in conjunction with normal heightmap terrain for detailed outcrop sections etc, its a pretty neat feature.

 

In this case not so bad I guess, so long as the performace hit is reasonable.

[smashthewindow]

 

 

In this case not so bad I guess, so long as the performace hit is reasonable.

 

Dr. Lyngell actually wrote a paper on voxels (I'm not sure if I should link it though) that has very reasonable performance hits.

[cassius]

Will any connectivity between le2 and le3 be possible apart from being able to use the same models we purchased or designed?

[Canardia]

In fact, most of your C++ source code should not be very LE2 specific anyway, so it will work also in LE3. I think I will make a LE2 wrapper for LE3 anyway, because the syntax of LE3 seems a bit not-so-Blitz3D style. Mostly the wrapper would need to manage lists of allocated entities and textures, so that the user doesn't have to care about them. I think that's the main difference between LE2 and LE3.

 

For example:

CreateCube(); // LE2 manages the memory itself

Cube cube1=new Cube(); // LE3 lets the user manage the memory

 

So a LE2 wrapper for LE3 would look then like this (pseudo code):

Entity& CreateCube()

{

Entity temp=Cube();

global_entities.push_back(temp);

return global_entities.back();

}

[Road Kill Kenny]

If you pre-fix all your LE commands with the LE:: namespace identifier when coding with LE2.X and C++ then it will be much easier to port to LE3 methinks... eg. LE::LoadModel()

 

That way you can easily identify everything that needs to change. Also you can do a search for LE:: and and it will show you everywhere where you need to change the code.

[Roland]

If you pre-fix all your LE commands with the LE:: namespace identifier when coding with LE2.X and C++ then it will be much easier to port to LE3 methinks... eg. LE::LoadModel()

 

That way you can easily identify everything that needs to change. Also you can do a search for LE:: and and it will show you everywhere where you need to change the code.

And all you that do that... never ever have a 'using namespace' in a header file and you will be just fine

[Juggernaut]

So, how did it go ?

[Furbolg]

Hi Guys,

 

And all you that do that... never ever have a 'using namespace' in a header file and you will be just fine

 

You can use 'using namespace' with specialised types e.g. 'using namespace std::cout;' but i wouldnt use it because it hides your dependencies.

[Road Kill Kenny]

You can use 'using namespace' with specialised types e.g. 'using namespace std::cout;' but i wouldnt use it because it hides your dependencies.

 

I never use it. Defeats the whole point of having namespaces in the first place. But Its just a matter of preference really.

[Xaron]

So Josh, I read this "Leadwerks 3, revision 666" comment on FB and I thought, ... well, is there light at the end?

 

Is the release near?

[Road Kill Kenny]

Tease tactics. I assume its coming soon but who knows how soon that is. I'm guessing anywhere between 2 weeks and 2 months. Though that is just my speculation. Only Josh knows when summer ends.