I've been getting good results storing documentation data in XML files. This allows me to make changes to the way documenation is displayed, without updating hundreds or thousands of pages. I can also write documentation without as much HTML markup. For example, bullets can automatically be inserted in line breaks for the syntax info. Javascript-based search engines usually require all page contents to be store in an array, so this gives us an easy way to collect that data.
Since XML is
I'm not entirely happy with the output of HelpNDoc for a few reasons. It outputs a great variety of formats, but doesn't do a spectacular job of any. I hoped to use CHM for local help but these do not scale well on high-resolution displays, and the technology will not be updated by Microsoft. HelpNDoc's HTML output is okay but not great, so I started experimenting with my own HTML to get exactly the look and functionality I want.
RIght now I have a javascript-based treeview for navigation
Our website has been updated with a new look and responsive design. Here are a few highlights.
Landing page:
Product pages:
Screenshots used in the site from games will display the title and author when you hover the mouse over them.
Responsive layout scaled for phones:
Clearer writing that says exactly what Leadwerks does and who it is for:
Dark gallery and video pages:
Sleek screenshot pages:
I left the Workshop pages as-is for now. The forum softw
I have a few preview images to show you my progress with the implementation of my design for the website refresh. Enjoy.
Here's a new version of the view image page. It's pretty bold. The image stretches to its max dimensions, and a dark background is shown beyond that.
Working with a dark background for the video and gallery pages, and it feels pretty natural. Information pages with lots of text use the light theme, while image-heavy artsy sections use a dark the
Intro
An interesting new project of mine. I've always wanted to become a network programmer and made many multiplayer games (like Ravage Online and SIEGE) because it really excites me to see it all work. For those games I used existing networking libraries like RakNet and ENet. Although, I found it was time to make my own for once. Not to make a new wheel, but to see how it rolls. This will make the finding of an internship easier as well.
For every project you will need an end goal. I want
Here are some concepts I came up with for the site redesign.
The bold no-bull**** interface of itch.io inspired this design:
I think what will work best is if the designer takes my rough sketches, turns it into a clean design, and implements it with clean code.
I don't think we can change the whole site over at once without me losing control of the creative process and having runaway costs. I want to focus on the pages I have shown here and establish a foundation
With the upcoming uncertainty that Steam Direct introduces to Steam sellers, I am putting more effort into our website, because it may be the primary channel through which new users discover Leadwerks in the future. Although the functionality of our site is awesome, the visual design is rather outdated and it's time for an actual designer to take over. I've got a rough idea of what I want the site to look like, but beyond that I am happy to let someone else figure it out.
I plan o
I've successfully pulled every website page out of the Invision Power Board CMS that I can:
http://www.leadwerks.com
http://www.leadwerks.com/graphics
http://www.leadwerks.com/editor
http://www.leadwerks.com/programming
http://www.leadwerks.com/features
http://www.leadwerks.com/steamos
http://www.leadwerks.com/gamelauncher
http://www.leadwerks.com/workshop
http://www.leadwerks.com/gallery
http://www.leadwerks.com/videos
http://www.leadwerks.com/games
http://www.leadwerks.com/company
The last blog I posted was Nov 2013. The blog section seemed stale for for a week or so so thought I'd share a change in design I recently did for our Dead Anyway game to spark conversation and ideas.
Our player script was just getting too massive and was doing too many different things directly inside of it. Adding features or modifying existing features was scary as hell. All the "helper" variables were adding up and the amount of hunting for what I needed in the script was pissing me off.
The upcoming changes to the Steam curation process may mean we experience greatly reduced visibility in the Steam store, and I am preparing for that possibility. The plan for quite a while has been to double down on the ease of use and learning that differentiates Leadwerks from every other game development system on the market.
To that end, I have begun translating the documentation into a format that is easier to view and search. The welcome page has been done away with and will be replac
It should be great if you can create a game world which has exact real-life object's dimensions. If you are using Blender to make game props for Leadwerks, these are some simple steps to help you archive the dimension match up.
Step 1:
In Blender, go to Properties panel > Scene tab > Unit group
Choose "Meters" from list.
Make sure Length = Metric, Angle = Degree, Unit scale = 1
Step 2:
This step is optional but can make you feel better with grid floor
A full update for Windows and Linux is now available on the beta branch which addresses several small problems:
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/15772-standalone-build-wont-launch/
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/15761-entity-gets-has-stopped-working-error/
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/15766-crash-anything-since-last-update-object-already-deleted/
The version of the VC redistributable has also been updated in Steam and will fix this problem if you are having t
Previously, I laid out a pretty complete design of the racing game template I want to build. There's definitely enough there to build out the concept with very little left unanswered.
We are going to have a marble game template, because of its simplicity and ease of learning. However, unless the template really looks like a game people would want to play, it doesn't offer enough "carrot" to inspire people. This idea is less well-defined than the racing game, so I am only in the idea
An update to version 4.3 is now available on the default branch. This fixes it so the editor is not DPI-aware and will be scaled correctly if scaling on Windows is used. Some small shadow update bugs were fixed, and the animation shaders were improved.
If you are having trouble running your game from the editor in debug mode, you need to install the latest VC++ redistributable from Microsoft found here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=53587
The version distribut
Previously, I have talked about my plans for Leadwerks and how to get there. In that blog I started with technical specs and went backwards with the path we would follow to achieve those goals. Now I have begun to put some of these ideas into practice and I want to review my plan with you.
I met with a very large academic institution a few months ago and talked about using Leadwerks to teach game programming. This is the whole reason I wrote this blog and did the research included therein
Ive decided to plan better and fix milestones so i can actually finish this game, the main problem is lack of time.But i have patience.
I got a domain and in the process to setup a website and a blog.The plan is to have a small release every 15 days.
Will see how it goes, it would be nice to work full time on this but not possible at this time, still have to go to work for a living.
Currently im about to finish a somewhat starcraft like resource gathering mechanic.
A mine has a 1 trans
An update to 4.3 is available on the beta branch. This fixes it so the editor is not DPI-aware and will be scaled correctly if scaling on Windows is used. This build is also built with a fresh install of Windows 10 and Ubuntu (but it shouldn't make any difference).
This is a full build for Windows and Linux, with C++ libraries included. Game Launcher is also updated on its beta branch.
If there are no problems with this, it will go onto the default branch in a couple days.
I am going to try something different this time and use the Thunderclap tool to promote the release of Leadwerks 4.4, which I have scheduled for April 3:
https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/52943-leadwerks-game-engine-4-4
Please sign up to help with the launch if you would like to promote it.
Also, there is still time to help the launch of A Demon's Game:
https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/52763-a-demon-s-game-crowdfunding
An update is available on the beta branch for Windows, editor and Lua executables only. This fixes a problem in the new light update system:
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/15713-shadow-update-editor-issues/
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/15716-43-child-entities-do-not-cast-shadows/
The animation shaders are also modified and they will appear better:
http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/15710-all-animated-shaders-have-wrongstatic-normals/
Something that has always been a time consuming process is getting the audio right in my recordings. Although I have a very decent headset, recordings allways contained a lot of static noise and voice 'pops'. To get an acceptablequality I required a finetuned microphone placement for every recording. 1cm to the left could make a big difference. The recording software that I use has some build in noice reduction filters, but they do not always guarantee a smooth audio track.
Since there are g
One More Day - Performance Updates
So it’s been a while since my last blog update on One More Day but recently I had a look to see if I could do anything with improving the performance of the game. As it turns out there were still some optimisations to be made that have helped boost performance.
V0.1.6 on the Game Launcher
Here are the main performance related changes I’ve made which were recently published to the Game Launcher:
I changed some of the furniture models to lower pol
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