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Over the Hump

All difficult technical challenges for the completion of Leadwerks3D are solved. This includes navmesh pathfinding, cross-platform support, Lua and C# integration, OpenGLES rendering, the abstract driver model, etc., etc., etc. Basically, all the scary stuff is done, and the only thing that remains is hard work. I'll be turning my attention back to the editor shortly, but first I wanted to address a different kind of challenge: Documentation and the website.   The present appearance of the

Josh

Josh

Bogged Down - Chin Up

I apologise for lack of updates, long time since the last one (weeks it seems although I have two unpublished ones which are no longer relevant). I've been avoiding online spaces during this time, work has been bogged down with the multitude of tasks not just relating to the Combat Helo game.   I'm working on the flight model again this week so don't expect any updates in a while. I did get started on an updated FAQ and will publish that ASAP. Lots of things happen around this time of year wit

Flexman

Flexman

Should you get a Mac?

A few people have asked me about this, so now seems like a good time to talk about my experience with Mac computers. My first computer was actually an old Macintosh SE30, but of course in the 1990's Windows took over and I forgot about Mac. When I started developing Leadwerks3D I invested in a 27" iMac. It includes a 3.2 ghz quad core i3 CPU and an ATI Radeon 5750.   At the most minimal, the computer needs one cord for power, and that's it. The keyboard and mouse are wireless, and a built-

Josh

Josh

Darkness Awaits

Leadwerks3D will ship with a finished game demo to demonstrate how to use the software. Darkness Awaits is a third-person dungeon explorer with a 45 degree view. It's like a cross between Diablo and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. This is an idea I had back in my very early days of game development, before I even learned to program. This was originally done in the Quake 1 engine. It didn't really go anywhere, but what we had was awesome. You could run around and shoot skeletons with f

Josh

Josh

Why Small Companies Succeed

The development of Leadwerks3D seemed like an impossible task at first. Not only did I need to write a new 3D engine entirely in C++ mostly by myself, but I had to make it run on four platforms (Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac), with a scalability all the way from the fixed-function pipeline up to the very latest hardware tessellation features. All logical sense told me this was impossible. Even large companies with 100 programmers or more haven't yet been able to put out a 3D engine with the

Josh

Josh

Basics

Now im going to show how actual things working. My descriptions will be supported by images taken from example im about to show, as well as whole media, source code and binary included, so you can try yourself. So, lets get started.   After library is initialized, next step is to create both, search engine and navigation world, as you can see on pic bellow.     After that, if you compile your proggy, it will not be much visible..and you should be able to see image like this.     That

Naughty Alien

Naughty Alien

Introduction

After initial release of Pathfind Library, I have decided to post few various lessons, covering most fundamental use of library, so people could have easier approach to a whole thing of AI. In order to do that I started this blog where im going to upload every lesson im about to do in future. I think its not good idea to clog Asset store tools area with tutorials. Let me know what you think.

Naughty Alien

Naughty Alien

Android Progress

Here's a brief update on the recent Android progress:   -Sound: 3D spatial sound is working on the Android with OpenAL. For some reason Google went with OpenSL on Android instead of OpenAL like the iPhone already does, not that it would have been useable on Android 2.2 anyways so we ended up having to port it over.   -Fonts: TTF font support has been enabled so it should look a bit better then the previous bitmap based font.   -On/Off/Suspend: Pause and resume by switching apps or turning

Aria

Aria

Android Guts

I spent most of today getting the Android library more polished, especially when handling application switching. It's a little tricky because Android doesn't automatically manage your sound channels and OpenGL resources, so these need to be reloaded when an app regains focus. Here's a video, which I obviously had way too much fun with in iMovie:

Josh

Josh

An Eventful Weekend

The windows class on OSX has been a bit neglected, so i spent some time getting it ready for the final release. Creating a full-screen window on Mac is a little funny. There's a fullscreen mode that's been around a while, but it locks the system so that CMD+TAB doesn't work. That means if your application crashes, or you don't program it to close with the escape key, you'll be stuck in fullscreen mode, with no way out but a computer restart!   You can create a window on top of everything e

Josh

Josh

Friday, November 18

Well, we're through the "OMG will this even work" phase. Aria got FreeType to build on all platforms, so you can load TTF files directly on Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS devices. I set up the accelerometer input on iOS today, so you can call Device::GetAcceleration() and retrieve a Vec3 telling you which way is down. Acceleration is returned relative to the screen orientation, so you don't have to worry about which way the device is rotated. This isn't my proudest screenshot, but it demonst

Josh

Josh

Quick update - optimisations

Last week I identified one issue relating to UserEntityData introduced with the last engine update which prevents consistent update of Enity data due to some change in the hierarchy and no documentation on what was changed.   So I'm faced with having to re-factor (meaning to changing code but same behaviour) core sensor code. It's the sort of thing that is utterly frustrating and makes one want to throw everything out of the window. It's not as if there aren't enough things to do.   There's

Flexman

Flexman

Odds and Ends

I implemented direct WAV file loading, and will add OGG as well. The MP3 file format has licensing issues, and we are not going to support it. However, if you use a third-party MP3 converter, the editor will detect whatever converters you add and use them (see more below). We're using OpenAL for sound, but have a more in-depth implementation than in the past. Sound source management is important because you only get so many sound channels on most cards, and this is handled automatically, bas

Josh

Josh

Solved! Apache and Domino running together

We can use Apache as frontend HTTP server running on port 80, and Domino on port 81, so that users can access both Apache and Domino pages via port 80 only.This is done via the Apache Rewrite Engine, but until now it caused one nasty problem: When doing a submit on a Domino page, then Domino would add the port 81 to the URL, and the user could not access that page, if only port 80 was opened to the internet.I found a solution how to overcome this Domino's problem, by adding Apache Reverse Proxy

Canardia

Canardia

Setting up Leadwerks for a better arch-viz experience

People are not only doing games with Leadwerks. A good number of users also do architectural visualizations with it. This is what I also did in 2011 mostly at Pure3d Visualizations. Leadwerks supports me to present real-time experience to my clients with a stand-alone and let them play themselfs with models, placement and enhance decision-making processes with my help. I got a bit derailed by new solutions like Lumion3D which offers good movie-making but lack of other stuff game-engines support

Michael Betke

Michael Betke

US Army showcases AB3 - Apache Block II to Block III in video

US Army released video showcasing the new Block III Apache in a virtual training environment.     The video covers in a nutshell...   Weight reduction Improved software upgrade pipeline Increased engine power 701-D engines and improved drive system Better digital battlefield intergration UAV commanding IFR certified instruments Reliability and servicing improvements RFI range triangulation Maritime classification Awesome new logo Further reading  

Flexman

Flexman

Collision Decisions

As I was implementing the collision commands for Leadwerks3D, I noticed a few things that illustrate the differences between the design philosophies of Leadwerks Engine and Leadwerks3D.   You'll easily recognize the new collision commands, although they have been named in a more verbose but logical manner: void ClearCollisionResponses(); void SetCollisionResponse(const int& collisiontype0, const int& collisiontype1, const int& response); int GetCollisionResponse(const int& c

Josh

Josh

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! The free Justine add-on for Amnesia: The Dark Descent is available. Just don't get too scared! B)   Leave a comment telling us how you are celebrating Halloween this year.  

Josh

Josh

Leadwerks Engine 2.5 Update Available

Leadwerks Engine 2.5 has been updated with a few small fixes and added commands. -Added GetModelLODEntity(), CountModelLODEntities(). -Added vegetation index in pick structure. -Improved vegetation terrain coloring. -Fixed terrain color map.   You can download the update by running the Leadwerks Engine sync tool.

Admin

Admin

C-SCOPE

While Dave is away hopefully keeping his head above water (all those Bear Grylls survival videos should come in handy) I've got not much else to do except worry and get on with my to-do list.   C-SCOPE was something I remember saying wouldn't make it but turned out to be a freebie since everything was available to simply drop it in.   [C-SCP] button on the FCR page overlays FCR target symbols on TADS video and HMD. Makes finding those hard to see vehicles a piece of cake.       C-

Flexman

Flexman

Alles Gute

The Leadwerks.com server started acting up earlier today, and I had no idea why. Database errors were occurring, and I had not made any changes to the site. I called our server site in Chicago. First they restored the full site from a backup from 2 A.M. yesterday morning. The matter was still not solved, though. A couple hours later, they determined that an automatic CPanel upgrade had caused PHP extensions to be loaded multiple times. This was fixed, and now we are back to normal. If you

Josh

Josh

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