Leadwerks GLOBAL problems to fix (ERK Games list)

[ERK Games]

Hello, we want to post here our rather extensive, but extremely important feedback, collected as a result of working on the creation of a project with an open world and shooter elements. These problems are GLOBAL, and their individual points are extremely important for correction (especially 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8). Please, dear engine developers, don't miss this message without your attention!

1. Physics (normal Prop objects like boxes or bottles, even with Poly Mesh collision): Physical objects flying through walls when you drop it, fall under the map and the game may crash. These problems relate primarily to objects made on Box-collisions, more less on cylinder and sphere-collisions. This bug doing creation of ragdoll physics extremely problematic, and using a lot of physical objects on levels too (small objects flying through walls much more often)
2. A car or wheeled vehicle based on the Vehicle class works, but when changing the map and, as a result, the Release function calling attempts, the game may crash without a log ("Closing application" error)
3. Environment Probe - it works, but from time to time shaders with its feature start to redden, glitch and other textures start to be superimposed on them
4. Script Editor - when you open the editor window and when you click on the content browser, where all models and textures are stored, or on any other element of the editor when the window is open, the editor either freezes or the render window becomes inactive until you close the script editor
5. NavMesh: 1) if you actively use the navmesh generation function in one editor session, it starts to generate paths with errors in each next attempt. 2) If an NPC uses a NavMesh generated with errors, the game can sometimes crash without an error ("Closing application" error)
6. Memory usage: Template projects don't have their .exe file patched to use 4 gigabytes of RAM, this may not create problems when creating a small project, but we encountered "Closing the application" when the memory was actively used, even on small game levels. It can be fixed elementary and applying this fix, we believe, is NECESSARY to do
7. Water mode On - can cause random screen twitches with certain camera movements and moreover, sometimes there are random movements of physical objects, even if such an object is on the ground.

8. 2D sprites in Leadwerks Game Engine v4.7 are broken, they don't rotate following camera rotation. 4.6 doesn't have this problem

9. Decals having a strange edging around it on NVIDIA(tm) drivers 396 or older

10. Linux-version is completely obsolete, it works fine only on Ubuntu Unity versions/Ubuntu 16.04. It's understandable that support is broken, but there's a problems much more critical and actual - Steam Proton of any version (even Proton GE) have critical problem with "sticking" windows and click latency in another windows when you opens, for example, "AI and Events" level or another levels with a lot of objects on it (it works fine on CrossOver Linux 20.x, btw. We though that solution was in dlls configuration in winecfg, but no, it's deeper) and you can't made Ctrl+A operations in Position/Rotation preferences, which greatly slows down the work of the level designer (it doesn't works even on CrossOver). The third problem is that every second launch of the game through the editor causes the editor itself to crash (the problem has a stable appearance).

 

We hope that can help you to improve the engine with this list and hope that you guys can help us to make our games better BEFORE you release the Ultra Engine. Please don't leave Leadwerks 4.x series without improvements, do historical justice and send this great engine to a well-deserved retirement... With a honor.

[Josh]

Thank you very much for the information, this is very helpful.

[Josh]

Reportedly, Leadwerks Windows exes are working reliably on Linux with Proton, so that might be one solution.

[ERK Games]

Just now, Josh said:

Reportedly, Leadwerks Windows exes are working reliably on Linux with Proton, so that might be one solution.

Yes, I use dualboot (Ubuntu 22.10/Windows 8.1) and can confirm that everything more or less works through Proton layer. I even made some edits for our project using Proton. I think that it's too late to fix the native editor and it doesn't make any practical sense, BUT I described the problems that are specific to running the Windows editor through Proton (point 10). If it is possible to somehow fix them directly from your side, that would be great (I would honestly even move to Linux on a permanent basis, since I only use the second OS to convinient work on project)

[Josh]

I don't think it is really possible to ever "fix" Leadwerks editor running on Linux because the underlying language uses an x86 compiler and no x64 compiler exists. That's why it got stuck on Ubuntu 12.04. After that they made a lot of changes to x86 libraries and I think they stopped including them.