Things that Leadwerks can use to be just as good as the UE3

[niv3k]

How was I comparing?

 

I just said LE isn't far off.

[Marcus]

How was I comparing?

 

I just said LE isn't far off.

 

Not far off, is a comparison. Trust me. It is very far off.

[Marcus]

Leadwerks Renderer > Unreal 3 (is it???)

 

I will leave serious question mark over Renderer because its ignored fact that Unreal 3 is cross platform system...anyway, LE is very nice, I like it a lot, and fact that im seriously using it for project of mine says a lot about what i think about it..I just dont believe that this sort of comparison have any sense..thats all..

 

That renderer comparison was inserted to prevent too much backfire from fanboys. I actually think the end result of visuals in UDK with the global illumination is superior to LE. The advantage of LE is in the dynamic lighting.

 

I'm still trying to determine why Josh still uses OpenGL considering the engine isn't even cross platform...Why not just buy a Mac and port it? Why not just compile for Linux?

 

Unity built a VERY successful company based solely on the Mac (until recently anyway).

[Michael Betke]

Josh has said he plans on giving CSG to the editor. I think it's pretty much required. There are always parts of levels that level designers should be able to create from CSG and not have to rely on modelers.

 

CSG is important. Even if you use it for clipping stuff for collision or blocking out geometry for your modelling app. Which means a basic export function of your brushes will be needed too.

 

All in all I think Josh shouldn't do Tesselation or such stuff to soon. He has limited resources and noone knows if tesselation is just a trend or a break-through....

 

If doing fundamental features I think this GI stuff or cross-plattform would be a good selling feature for him.

[VicToMeyeZR]

 

--EDIT- not all 3dws users are LE users and vice versa...

 

 

3dws could still be sold as a stand alone...

 

Was talking about also integrating it to LE, and raise the price of LE.

[Canardia]

Advanced artists wouldn't need CSG in Editor, as they can model much faster in their familiar modelling program. Other engines, like S2 have a seperate BSP modeller and a seperate map editor where you place models, but Editor could have the CSG module as a seperately sold add-on (like a DLL), which would be used by 3DWS6 also. For 3DWS users, the add-on could perhaps come also with 3DWS6, so they don't need to buy 3DWS6 and the add-on seperately.

[Rick]

You know, I think we could make a crude CSG implementation with lua alone.

[Josh]

Reliance on CSG used to be a huge complaint from artists. They wanted to model a building in their own 3D modeling program of choice.

[AggrorJorn]

The creation of prefabs would be a partial solution to this.

[Rick]

Reliance, being the key word. Given the option for both and everyone is happy. The problem is most of the time you have level designers making maps that are using some stuff from modelers. Level designers aren't supposed to be true modelers. They are supposed to be more focused on the flow of a level.

[L B]

To sum it up:

• UnrealEd is superior in usability than Leadwerks Editor.
  
• Global Illumination is requested again, as always.
  
• Tessellation might just be a trend, so we'll wait.
  
• In-Editor constructive solid geometry is possible but not wanted by everybody.
  
• Cross-Platform is requested to motivate the use of OpenGL over DirectX.
  

 

Wait, wait. Did I mention anything new here?

[Rick]

No, but when you say it, it sounds so pretty

[niv3k]

cross platforms? really?

 

who in their right mind cares about apple?

[Niosop]

I think we were thinking more about linux

[Marleys Ghost]

who in their right mind cares about apple?

 

 

 

 

Mac users?

[Rick]

I actually agree. No one in their right mind buys a mac and thinks "This is going to be a killer gaming machine". Maybe it would be if people actually made games for it.

[Canardia]

Macs have their own position in the market. They are preferred by people who fall into Microsoft's suggestions to upgrade and patch and find nothing working after that. People who don't have time or interest to study how to get a PC working decently (needs XP, minimize services, etc...), just buy a Mac and find everything working.

 

It's not so fast and modern as a PC in hardware means (in software it's actually even more advanced than a PC since it uses Unix V5), but it works without having to know anything much about computers. The difficulty to use a PC starts already with the purchase. Most PCs which are sold by marketing people as good and modern, are actually pure ****, and worse than some 3 year old high end machines.

 

With Macs you are not fooled on the purchase; sure they cost a bit more (you have to pay for the brand), but they don't cost much more than a comparable PC (not those new **** PCs with built-in Intel video chips).

 

Consoles are quite similar to Macs in that sense. They also don't have the latest hardware, and are aimed at computer illiterate people. For example CryENGINE 3 on consoles (XBOX, PS3), looks much worse than CryENGINE 2 on PCs. The console hardware is THAT outdated (which would mean over 3 years behind the PC hardware).

CryTek itself said that they can't wait for the next version of consoles, as they already squeezed out everything from consoles with CryENGINE 3, and still had to gimp down the visuals to a year 2005 PC equivalent. The price of consoles is also higher than the of PCs, since you get a year 2005 PC for under 200€ (especially if you bought it back then).

[Naughty Alien]

..speed wise, my MAcBook Pro whiping floor with any PC with same GPU(generation) on board (nVidia 8800GT)..and its working as Lumooja said, without any flaws..just works..and I dont think so that its wise to ignore MAC as a potential customer space...if UE3 is taken in to comparison here then its ability to compile for MAC should be too taken in to consideration..

[Rick]

Right, but when you bought it did you think "This is going to be a killer gaming machine"? I'm guessing not because there just aren't that many games out there for macs. There are games, I'm aware, but the quantity is much lower. I think most people get their macs for different reasons than gaming, where there are a ton of people who get PC's specifically for gaming.

 

I'd say if it's not a big hassle then supporting macs is no skin off my back, but if it causes any sort of issues I don't think it would much be worth it. Most people with macs run that boot camp thing anyway so they can boot into windows.

[Canardia]

Macs can run also WINE, which runs LE also fine, so they don't necessarily even need to boot to Windows, but can use their modern OSX environment. The last I checked only Editor had some problems with WINE, but that problem was also with other Windows programs which are using riched20.dll controls. They might have fixed that in WINE already, haven't checked for a while.

 

Anyway, it doesn't affect games written with LE, only developing them. And you can also run VirtualBox on OSX, there you can run a real Windows XP environment within OSX, where also Editor works.

[Michael Betke]

Apple is also doing the iphone which is a good starting plattform for developers.

[Chris Paulson]

I thought I'd chuck my views to this.

 

I spent several weeks investigating UDK as it's got so many more features than LE. However I came back to LE because I found myself banging my head against a brick wall in UDK and not having fun. I do the stuff in LE for fun, no other reason at the moment.

 

If I was going to pick features from UDK I'd like to see in LE these would be them: -

 

1) >5 terrain layers

2) Fracture tool (having to do doing this by hand is a lot of work)

3) Emitters (UDKs emitters are strong, LE's are weak in comparison)

4) CSG (Useful for filling over gaps in levels)

 

These things below I have done in LE but come as standard in UDK

 

5) Navmesh (without this you have no AI starting point for a modern game)

6) Locomotion

7) Complex animation blending

 

There's lots of other stuff in UDK that I'd like to see in LE but I don't won't to overload Josh and make him think I'm a whinging git.

[Michael Betke]

You can do fracture stuff with every 3d-app and save the animation.

If you shoot at it you can play the animation and get a nice (but not realtime) result.

 

I did it way back in Return to Castle Wolfenstein mapping times.

[Josh]

The best suggestions here, I think, are the navmesh stuff, because that improves actual playability, and the built-in material editor. I actually have looked at the Torque3D material editor, and thought the open-ended UDK node editor was much better.

 

It may interest you to know that Unreal Engine can't do some basic things like editing vertices at runtime.

[Niosop]

Recast integrated into the engine and editor would be awesome. The other 2 big ones on my list are more terrain textures (any feeback on my idea for an implementation?) and a more robust emitter system. UE3 is a decent engine, but it's really the tools that it provides that make it what it is.