LE3 Upgrade Structure

[Marcus]

Just a few simple questions about how the upgrades will work. As I understand it, LE3 will not launch with a few features that are common to most game engines (networking, terrain, etc). Will these be free updates or are we going to have to pay for these?

[Canardia]

Yes, No.

[cassius]

I don;t know but I imagine big updates like terrain and dynamic lighting may involve more payment.

[Josh]

Our business model is periodic paid upgrades (at least a year apart). With charged upgrades we have to win over customers each time, so it forces me to stay in tune with what people want, and gives us a metric for measuring success.

 

I don't like subscriptions, and I don't like free-for-life. I'm sure there's a few products you've bought you would happily pay for new development on, but the developer has stopped because it's no longer worthwhile for them. With subscriptions, you just keep paying because there might be something in the future you want, and that sucks too.

 

I'm not making any plans yet for when and if a new version will be. I'm just going to let the community play with the new system and see where I should focus new development effort.

[Marcus]

Yeah, I have no problem paying for updates (and I prefer to pay for them), but I really don't want to pay for what I would consider entry-level bare-bones features like networking and terrain. I guess it will depend on the upgrade price of LE2 to LE3.

[Rick]

I wouldn't consider networking bare-bone features by any means. Getting a game networked is complicated and there are many things that have to be done to get it working well. Terrains, yes I agree.

[Josh]

If you really need terrain, it's certainly doable, it's just not as flexible as what we are going to eventually implement:

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/gallery/_/leadwerks-3-terrain-with-custom-shader-r126

[Rick]

Would there be a way to take a terrain created in LE2, and make it a model so we could use this shader on it? I ask because my current game has all outdoor scenes with terrain. It's more of just a background but would be nice when I port my game to just be able to port the terrain from LE2.

[Josh]

That's certainly possible, but I don't provide the code. All you would have to do is make a tessellated plane in 3ds max, then look up the heightmap pixels to adjust the height of each vertex.

[Rick]

Yeah, I don't do 3ds max. We could make a plane in LE3 and do the same thing right?

[Josh]

Here's some Blitz3D code to do it. I don't remember if their verts and surfaces start at 0 or 1, but all our stuff starts at zero:

Function CreateTerrainMesh(x,y)
;x = how many horizontal vertices
;y = how many vertical vertices

mesh = CreateMesh()
surf = CreateSurface(mesh)	
If x < 2 Or y < 2 Then Return mesh		;in case user gives a bad number simply return the mesh
For tempx = 1 To x
	For tempy = 1 To y
		AddVertex(surf,tempx*4,0,tempy*4)
	Next	
Next	

For v0 = 0 To (x*y)-y-2
	For Z = 1 To x*y
		If v0 = z*y-1 Then v0 = v0 + 1
	Next
	v1 = V0 + 1
	v2 = v1 + y
	v3 = v0 + y
	AddTriangle(surf,v0,v1,v2)
	AddTriangle(surf,v0,v2,v3)
Next

Return mesh
End Function