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Vegetation Interaction

This video shows the player interacting with vegetation objects. Vegetation objects are special because they aren't stored in memory at all, but instead are dynamically generated in real-time according to a special algorithm! You can have infinitely dense forests without using any memory.  

Josh

Josh

Building the game launcher user base

We've now got 40 games in Leadwerks Game Launcher and I am giving serious thought to the final launch. The application is presently in early release mode with about 2500 users. We want that number to be 100,000 users. Leadwerks Game Launcher is a really unique application; it's distributed exclusively through Steam, it's a standalone app, and it's free. This is not really like anything else out there, so how do you most effectively promote it?   I am running an experiment with Facebook ads

Josh

Josh

Halloween Game Tournament Roundup

The 2015 Leadwerks Halloween Game Tournament is complete, with results above and beyond any previous game tournament. The quality, content, and fun of the lineup of games this tournament is really spectacular.   Halloween Pumpkin Run http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/viewitem?fileid=540259470   If one game summed up the spirit of this year's tournament, it's this title. The atmosphere, gameplay, and fun of this title make it an instance classic in the Leadwerks catalog of user-made

Admin

Admin

Vegetation Demo

I'm really happy to see all the great and scary games coming out for the Halloween Game Tournament. I have something of my own to share with you.   The Leadwerks 3 vegetation system is a groundbreaking new technology. All vegetation instances are procedural and dynamically placed, so that physics and rendering of any amount of instances can occur with zero memory usage. This demo proves that the idea actually works!   This demo shows the new Leadwerks Game Engine 3 vegetation system in ac

Josh

Josh

Game Launcher Release Schedule

Based on the results of the summer games tournament, we can expect each new tournament to produce about 10 games: http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/blog/41/entry-1510-leadwerks-summer-games-tournament-results/   Right now we're at 35, which means by the end of the winter games tournament it is reasonable to expect 50 Game Launcher games.   My Steam Workshop changes are now implemented to provide more reliable downloads.   Support for SteamOS will be added in November, with a full-screen

Josh

Josh

Beta Update Available

Leadwerks Editor has been updated to use version 1.35 of the Steamworks library. It also features Workshop improvements that eliminate the need for a local file cache in the app data folder, and should result in more reliable Workshop item downloads.   The update is available now on the beta branch, for Linux and Windows.

Josh

Josh

Game Launcher Update

Steam Workshop was originally implemented with a different design than what it uses now. In fact, it was an entirely different API. After a while, Valve figured out all the things it would be used for, and introduced the SteamUGC API, which is the basis of the modern Workshop implementation. This provides much more reliable operations and more features than the original system. However, it was not backwards compatible with legacy items uploaded under the old system.   My approach to implem

Josh

Josh

Official Steam Controller Bindings

A default Steam controller configuration has been created for Leadwerks Game Engine and Leadwerks Game Launcher. It is recommended that you use the keys listed here for controlling your games. This will ensure that your game can be played seamlessly with either a keyboard or Steam controller.   WASD: Movement Left shift: Run C: crouch Tab: Map, inventory, etc. Escape: exit game or main menu Mouse wheel down: next weapon Mouse wheel up: previous weapon R: Reload Left mouse button: sho

Josh

Josh

Einlanders Halloween devlog

Sorry this is so long and may seem like rambling. I've been working on so many things relating to Leadwerks in game and tool-wise that this doesn't even begin to cover it.   When I started my Halloween contest entry, I had a very simple idea: You have arrived in area/town/location x, you need to get out. As I started to fill in the blanks I realized that this project would never be done before Halloween arrived. I started using Articy:Draft in detail to bring all the overflowing ideas back to

Einlander

Einlander

Leadwerks and gcc 5.2.1 (regarding c++ abi)

I just updated my laptop to ubuntu 15.10 (from 15.04).   And got into some intereasting issues.   I rebuild my game with the new compiler, and it doesnt link anymore.   I got a bunch of undefined references like below:   undefined reference to `Leadwerks::Window::Create(std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > const&, int, int, int, int, int)'   This didnt make any sense, the program was linking just fine with the previous ve

aiaf

aiaf

Vegetation Physics

I just had a breakthrough with the physics. There's a lot of optimization work left to do, but I can see at this point the idea works.   Newton Game Dynamics provides a mechanism for a user-defined collision shape. This accepts a bounding box and calls a user-defined callback any time an object intersects the bounding box. The callback builds a mesh dynamically for the area that the other object occupies. Internally, Newton uses this mechanism to process heightmap terrain without having to

Josh

Josh

Leadwerks Merc

Here's an update of the model sheet for our "Mercenary" character. We're spending more time in the planning phase than previous attempts, and I think the effort is really paying off.   All design is really a process of decision-making. If you don't make decisions you'll end up with something without much definition. Everything about this character was decided according to factors I set out at the beginning of this project.  

Josh

Josh

Vectronic: Week 7

Sorry for the whole week of silence, I ran into quite into a number of issues the previous weeks, but I'm ready to talk about them more, and how I it got resolved.   Newton Physics (Or how Leadwerks uses this physics engine) has a problem when a non-physics object collides with a physics object. You expect that if a entity using the Move() function would use it's own shape to push anything out of the way. What actually happens is that since the entity has no mass, the entity pretends the physi

reepblue

reepblue

Artwork production

Our all-purpose action figure concept is complete, and he looks fantastic.     I am reminded of the great artwork on the packaging of GI Joe action figures from the 80s.     Rich has had some difficulty modeling a higher-detail pickup truck, inspired by the design of a Dodge Ram. According to him, curved vehicle bodies are much more difficult to get right than more angular designs. So that tells me in the future, we can get a jeep or something done much more easily than a Corvette, f

Josh

Josh

Vegetation Part 3

Billboards, transitions, and rendering are now done, and as you can see in the screenshot below, the idea works great. In Leadwerks 2, this application would have used hundreds of megabytes of data to store all the individual 4x4 matrices of each object. In Leadwerks 3, the instances are generated on the fly, so the application uses no more memory than a map with a blank terrain:     Still to do: Fade out billboards as they approach max view distance. Add rows to break up generated

Josh

Josh

Example c++ project with cmake

Just started with Leadwerks.Heres a way to build a c++ project using cmake on linux.   Start from an existing project (lets call it Proj):   Copy ~/.steam/steamapps/common/Leadwerks into Source/Libs. Now you have Proj/Source/Libs/Leadwerks (this directory contains all the header files and static libs needed).   Can use this Libs dir to add any other external libs you need.   Here is the CMakeLists.txt: https://github.com/aiafrasinei/lep.git   Copy to the root of the project. cmake

aiaf

aiaf

The Left-Hand Rule

Leadwerks uses a left-handed coordinate system. This means that if you hold your left hand as shown below, your middle finger, index finger, and thumb will point in the directions of the X, Y, and Z axes, respectively.     Rotations use the left-handed rotation rule. To predict the direction of positive rotation, curl your fingers on your left hand and point your thumb in the direction of the rotational axis. Your fingers will curl in the direction of positive rotation along that axis.

Josh

Josh

Experimentation

I almost let a whole week go by without writing a blog, ahh! I've been doing a lot of thinking and experimenting over the last few days, and talking to other people about Vectronic.   Last week, I talked about improving functionalities of the pickup system and the platforms. Although the pickup system is near done, the platform system, well they need work. I made a topic about them here, and kind of left me on a stand still on the project because I see them as a vital piece of the game, and th

reepblue

reepblue

Halloween Game Tournament

Fall is in the air, which means evil spirits, good beer, and the annual Leadwerks Halloween Game Tournament.   WHEN: The tournament will start Thursday, October 8, and end Thursday, November 5th at 11:59 P.M. (Pacific Standard Time).   HOW TO PARTICIPATE: Publish your Halloween-or-other-themed game to Steam Workshop or upload it to the games database before the deadline. You can work as a team or individually. Use blogs to share your work and get feedback as you build your game. If you need

Admin

Admin

Correction: Game Launcher installs

I previously reported that Leadwerks Game Launcher had obtained 4000 users. My records in Steam have changed and it now reflects a user base of 1765 users. I think the reporting for free applications was not working correctly, because this number is much closer to what I would expect based on game subscriptions.   The application is still in early release mode and has not been officially launched, and it will have low visibility before the final release. This gives us a period of time to wo

Josh

Josh

Billboards Part 2

I tried a different approach for billboards that is giving good results. A single quad rotates around the vertical axis to face the camera. A series of 64 different view angles are rendered in a circle around the billboarded object. A second quad faces straight up and is gradually dissolved in when the angle between the object and the camera becomes vertical enough.   A combination of cross-fading and cross-dissolving is used to smoothly blend in between the different side views. The billb

Josh

Josh

Billboard Generation

With the main culling and rendering algorithm done, I am focusing on the billboard display for the Leadwerks 3.7 vegetation system. My goal is to reduce the popping artifacts the Leadwerks 2 renderer displayed:   I am testing with a non-plant model with the idea that if I can get it to look reasonably well with an oddly sized mechanical object with highly visible lines, then a tree should look very good. Below you can see part of the billboard image drawn on the screen showing the object

Josh

Josh

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