Besides making tutorials I am also working on my own project. It is my biggest one yet, but I think I have enough knowledge to get at least really far. Right now I am building my own engine on top of Leadwerks 3. The entire project is written mainly in C++.
Component Based engine design.
Since Leadwerks is very flexible you can do a lot of different things with it. The Lua scripts in the editor are a good example of component based design. However if you switch to C++ you don't have this d
About a week ago we sent a survey out to Leadwerks 3 customers to get their feedback and plan our next leg of development. According to the results, the number one most important issue Leadwerkers care about is tutorials.
We've taken the following steps to build resources for Leadwerks user to learn from:
The Leadwerks 3 tutorials database is available here. Anyone can submit a new article, but all articles must be approved by the staff before they appear visible. Without a process of a
We've got a Leadwerks 3 update coming out this week, with miscellaneous fixes and some new features.
The first are the addition of Import and Export buttons in the Project Manager. You can export an entire project to a zip file. You can import a project from either a Leadwerks project file (*.werk) or a zip file. This makes it easy to share projects and synchronize your work across different computers.
The second new feature is projected shadows. These allow characters and other ob
Shadows in 3D games are important. Not only do they look good, but they communicate information about the 3D geometry of the scene. Leadwerks pioneered dynamic deferred lighting, with one of the first deferred renderers in the world on PC. However, fully dynamic lighting requires some pretty beefy hardware, and the reality of today's situation in computing hardware has to be considered when we are designing a platform for other people build commercial products on.
To support games that re
I was sorry to hear the news of Stonetrip's liquidation earlier this month. Shiva3D pioneered multi-platform publishing, and I enjoyed killing zombies in "The Hunt". I know that many of you are wondering what to do next. So, let me just get it out on the table that Leadwerks might be an option for your team.
We just released Leadwerks 3, our first cross-platform product for mobile. Leadwerks 3 is completely redesigned to accelerate developer productivity with new advances in tools and wo
Leadwerks Software announced today the release of Leadwerks 3, their new development platform for building mobile games with native code. Based on the technology developed for their successful game engine for PC, Leadwerks 3 brings a totally new approach to mobile game development.
While environments such as Unity and MonoDevelop use managed code...that is, code that is designed to be easily run on multiple devices...Leadwerks uses an approach called native code. Applications built with na
Between the release of LE3 and the GDC, life at Leadwerks has been busy to say the least. Now that things have settled down (a little) it is time for something that I have been looking forward to for a while: Tutorials!
At GDC we were constantly talking about the power and flexibility that direct native code programming allows and how users are not locked into only component based programming. But then you look at the example game Darkness Awaits and see only component based programming and
After a wild week at GDC 2013, it's nice to be back doing what I do best...writing code!
A new build of Leadwerks 3 is now available. We've added light vector maps so that lightmapped surfaces can display normal mapping effects. Lightmapped materials with normal maps should use the texture "Common/lightvectormap.tex" in slot 4. (If you create a new lightmapped material, this will be done automatically.)
This technique works by calculating the average light vector that influences eac
Hopefully this will be the most pointless blog I ever post for Alien Saga. BUT, fyi, I have a weird work schedule where I work like crazy for about 9 days where I'm on the road a lot and so on even when I'm sick like with last week and this week, and then I hopefully get 5 days off round abouts.
tl;dr There are updates to be made within the next 5 days or so.
You may notice the website header looks a little different. Sleeker, cooler, more 2013ish. Well, it's actually a lot more classic Leadwerks than you might realize. Here's what Leadwerks.com looked like in 2005:
I don't think it's fair for me to put Josh's every move with LE3 under scrutiny without exposing my own work to criticism. So here I will be posting my progress on my opening exercise with Leadwerks 3. I will be working on improving in all walks of game development and also responding to the soon to be created video tutorials.
I plan to work on my first LE3 project for the next 4-6 months in iterations. Which means that I will do a rough once over version that will admittedly look and play l
I'm back home now, relaxing after a long week away. And what a week it was!
I got my lecture out of the way on Monday. I felt like I was pretty well prepared, but some acoustical problems in the hall really made it very difficult to concentrate, plus I was pretty nervous about talking in front of about 600 people. I did it though, and hope to do another one next year. The recorded lecture should be available in the GDC vault.
During my talk, I described my experience as a PC developer,
In follow up to Andy, I also want to do a little blog on my experience with Leadwerks 3 so far. The first week after purchasing I didn't have much time to spend on it. Luckily after that week, there was quite some time left for the start of a new adventure.
Lua
In contrary to Leadwerks 2.3, I now want to lay most of my focus on C++. That is kind of Ironic, since a lot more people are interested in Lua now that Leadwerks 3 has arrived. It is not that surprising since the advantages of
We're very busy this week, doing a lot of things that are out of the ordinary for us.
Leadwerks Software will be at booth #938 at GDC 2013 in San Francisco March 27-29. Come by our booth if you're in the neighborhood, play with the full software, watch our demo reel, and get a look at the world's first...well, you'll have to come see it for yourself.
If we get a chance, we'll stream some video from the event.
Here's our staging area.
Following the GDC, Chris will be focusing o
My hours of use in leadwerks 3 is already counting up fast and along the way i thought i would share some of the things ive found so far. Which no doubt means this will turn into a small rant about the features i wish leadwerks 3 had in its current version I am not going to talk about bugs as we all should expect them in new software and trust they get resolved as soon as Josh can get around to them, what i am going to talk about are a couple of (to me) significant issues with the "current" lea
The last few weeks have been interesting as we've been figuring out where Leadwerks 3 fits into the game development landscape.
The good:
The feedback from the Leadwerks 3 users has been more positive than anything I've ever seen. People love using it. All the care and attention to the tools has really paid off. The return of constructive solid geometry is a huge win.
At the upgrade pricing, we're doing a lot of sales. Leadwerks 3 makes more in a week than Leadwerks 2 made in a mont
An in-depth look at a basic Third person camera.
Script.target = nil--Entity "Target"
Script.distance = 5--float
Script.debugphysics = false--bool
Script.debugnavigation = false--bool
Script.pitch = 35--float
Script.angle = 180--float
Script.pickradius = 0.5--float
Script.verticaloffset = 1.8--float
Script.smoothness = 30--int
function Script:Start()
if self.target==nil then return end
--debug functions for viewing physics or navigation in game
self.entity:SetDebugPhys
A tutorial for creating map with a goblin that has third person controls and a third person camera
1. Create a new project.
Inside the LE3 editor open up the leadwerks project manager click File->Project Manager
Once open click "new" select "Lua" project, add a title, and click "Ok".
Select your newly created project and click "Ok"
2. Create a platform for the goblin to stand on.
In a 2d viewport drag-out a box to be used as a platform.
3. Add a material
That was one crazy weekend! Things were hectic at times, but we managed to process all orders and get people started with Leadwerks for Android. Well, everyone except YouGroove. I've got to do some tests on a clean install of Windows, so I will figure out exactly what JRE to install, since that part can be confusing.
I uploaded new builds for Windows, Mac, and Android just now with performance improvements. Darkness Awaits is playable now on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, though I know I can
For those of you who are more familiar with C style syntax here are a few oddities that initially threw me off:
The not equals in lua has a tilde
self.entity ~= nil
if you want to "not" a boolean you have to use the keyword "not"
if not self.target then
All "if" statements you have to do include 3 keywords if, then, end
if self.stunned==true then return end
While loops have 3 keywords while, do, end
While x < 10 do x = x+1 end
This is what a for
Well, starting with leaving my iMac's power cord at home, this has been a chaotic day, but we're getting it under control. Leadwerks 3 is a much bigger step beyond Leadwerks 2. We're no longer confined strictly to the PC platform, we've now got a C++ code base that can be used in many ways, and our new tools are really nice to use, if I do say so myself. It's also nice to sort of reconnect with our origins in the CSG editing tools. The feedback on this has been very positive, and I think it
Developing a failure sucks. You spend hundreds, sometimes thousands of hours on a project only to find out that it's a complete flop and nobody wants to use or play it.
As independent game developers we have a unique situation and challenge. Our resources are limited and our conditions are that of extreme uncertainty.
Acquiring certainty of the success of a project by collecting feedback early on is great way to determine whether to continue, change course, or drop the project. You'll wa
The Leadwerks community project "Midnight Salsa" was one of my favorite things that came out of Leadwerks 2. Watching the videos of everyone collaborating across the globe was really interesting, and with Aggror's leadership they did pull off what they set out to do: Make a playable zombie FPS. However, there were some weak points that showed me where I could put effort and have it be the most useful.
When you go through the first set of doors, a carefully placed light above the door shin
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