Josh

Ah ok, I did not realize that's what you were looking at. You're right.

1. I am building a development platform and game studio. 2. I have spoken at the GDC and I/ITSEC, and I had booths at both trade shows. Investors only want to ride your coattails when you don't need them. 3. Currently it's mostly just me working on this, although others have done some work for specific tasks at various times.

If you don't sell your game on Steam, it's probably a lot less likely to make any money at all. There are some DRM features on Steam, but I think the main advantage it has is convenience. When it's easier to just click and buy on Steam than to download a questionable torrent, piracy stops to be such a big problem. I do not offer any such service, because those things do not need to be tied to a single game engine, and it's not something very many people ask about. I know you want to build something independent from Steam, but as someone who has tried that, I can tell you that 98% of my sales come through Steam, and that percentage has only increased over the years.

1. No, I don't handle DRM features. We do support exporting the game contents in an encrypted zip file, but that just hides the game files, and I don't handle the game's ownership. 2. The pro version with C++ support would be compatible with third-party libraries, most of which are written in C++, although the exact details of that are up to the end user to integrate, Looks like they have a C++ library here, so it should work fine: https://heroiclabs.com/docs/nakama/client-libraries/cpp/index.html

1. Multiplayer is very hard to do without something like Steam's built-in system. There are probably third-party systems available for this, but I'm not sure. We also support ENet networking, which is how the Lua debugger works, but I don't recommend this because it does not support NAT punch-through. 2, 3. This is outside the scope of what I provide. One solution might be to use Invision Community Software. They have a web API, and it does allow you to have the user log into their account, check their purchases, and could probably be used as a license validation system. If you have not created a successful game already, I would recommend setting your scope to a smaller project and completing that, before making a lot of effort to build a system outside of Steam.

Yes, this is because it is very hard to get pixel-perfect 2D drawing with a 3D rendering API. My earlier attempts used a lot of vertices to make a rounded polygon, but it's not possible to make that pixel-perfect with both solid and line primitives. The only way to solve it is to basically make a hidden pixmap that gets generated and drawn automatically. In other words, drawn the widget with a software rasterizer first, and then copy that result into a texture and draw it onscreen. That's a pretty complicated system to set up, just to handle something that is a small cosmetic issue, so this is likely to be low-priority.

It does when I try it...

1. Leadwerks 5 and Ultra Engine are the same thing. Within a few months, Ultra Engine on Steam will be renamed to be Leadwerks 5. Leadwerks 4 is our older engine, which supports more old hardware but is not as advanced. 2. Wherever is best for you, but I get the most of it if you buy directly from the site. 3. The Pro DLC adds C++ programming support. 5. No. Ultra Engine will be renamed as Leadwerks 5. 6. No. 7. ? 8. Yes, using Steam peer-to-peer networking. 9. Yes. 10. I don't know, the engine doesn't have anything to do with this? 11. I don't handle DRM. Steam has a feature to wrap an executable you might find useful, but it's outside the scope of what I provide.

Currently, rounded corners are not supported in 3D GUIs.

No.

Fun fact: I was going to call the engine "Turbo" for a while. Fortunately, the drugs wore off.

Originally, there was Leadwerks. People constantly mispelled and mispronounced the name. For version 5, I thought calling it "Ultra" would eliminate this problem. Name is super-generic and doesn't catch on. I decide to call the full release Leadwerks 5 once it gets out of early access. Ultra Engine and Leadwerks 5 are the same thing. If you get Ultra Engine you will be upgraded to Leadwerks 5 at no charge, when it is ready. The Pro version includes C++ support, and the regular version does not. Sorry for the confusion, but that's the way it happened and we are almost through the change.

1. Yes, this is correct, but our version of brushes has some pretty big advances. Each face can have edge-turn bevels toggled on and off to make smooth rounded corners, and we support face subdivision and per-vertex material painting, similar to what id Tech's latest tools support. 2. Visual Studio is required for C++ programming. A built-in IDE is provided for Lua programming. At this time, only Windows is supported.

The problem is the depth and color passes are not producing the same depth value on Nvidia cards. This is likely a driver bug. However, if I switch to a deferred renderer, the problem magically goes away because there would be no separate depth pass to worry about. Since this there is a good probability I will end up doing this, it does not make sense to put more effort into the vertex animation shader right now. I need to release the Leadwerks 5 Steam store page in order to get an idea of how many wishlist adds a new page will achieve. Depending on that result, I may launch version 5.0 with the current clustered forward renderer, or I may switch it over to deferred before launch. Steam Next fest is happening right now, and the Summer sale may occur soon. Launching a store page during this period is a bad idea because you will have lower visibility. So it will go up after the Summer sale ends. Otherwise the Leadwerks 5 page and demo would be up right now. So the answer is we can expect to see this soon, but there is a chain of events that has to happen first. Moving this from bug reports, because this is not currently a supported feature.

Some steps have been taken and it seems okay now.