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Leadwerks 4.3 RC3

A full build is available for Windows and Linux on the beta branch on Steam. This fixes a problem with the character controller physics and with the Alt key on Windows.   To upgrade 4.2 C++ projects to 4.3, you must add the following search paths: $(LeadwerksHeaderPath)\Libraries\libvorbis\include $(LeadwerksHeaderPath)\Libraries\libogg\include   I'm pretty sure it's ready, but please give it a good thrashing. This will go up on the default branch tomorrow morning.
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Leadwerks 4.3 RC2

I've uploaded a full build for Windows and Linux, and updated the game launcher beta branch. This adjusts some very minor issues that you probably won't even notice.   Some of your characters might need to have their character controller angle setting set to 180, depending on how you have them set up. This is because some previously incorrect behavior has been fixed. You can use my third-person player script for testing.   My only concern at this point is that some of HaydenMango's games
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Leadwerks 4.2 Release Candidate

A full update is available now on the beta branch.   Leadwerks Game Engine 4.2 features: Visual Studio 2017 support Compatible with the latest C++11 / GCC on Linux Refraction and heat haze effects. Analytics through gameanalytics.com New animation commands Spotlight texture: you can add a material to a spotlight and the first texture will be rendered onto the light (for flashlights). New material blend mode can be used to make objects that only appear in editor.   An
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Leadwerks 4.1 Beta

Leadwerks Game Engine 4.1 beta is now available on the beta branch on Steam. This is the final version 4.1, barring any bug fixes that are made before the release later this month. I am going to focus on just resolving bug reports and adding new documentation for the next two weeks.     4.1 adds environment probes, which have been covered previously, and volumetric lighting. Point and spot lights can display a volumetric effect by adjusting the "Volume strength" setting, found under Ligh
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Leadwerks 3.6 Roadmap

I've got a pretty good idea of what features I want to pack into Leadwerks Game Engine 3.6, and I'm ready to share them with you now.   Just about all the simple easy features I think I can implement are already built into Leadwerks, but there are some bigger more involved things I want the engine to support. Instead of doing these one at a time, I am doing research on them all, and changing my focus when I get stuck. I've got a big block of research done that all revolves around creating ne
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Leadwerks 3.4 Launch Prep

Leadwerks 3.4 will be launched as soon as AMD releases their new driver, preferably by Monday. The three big features this introduces are: Vehicles Water Built-in Workshop browser   As well as over 100 small fixes and improvements.   The launch will coincide with a week-long sale. The results of the sale will give me an estimate of cash flows for 2015 and let me make decisions about what to invest in the company and continued development.   Following the launch, we'll have a
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Leadwerks 3.4 beta now available

A beta of Leadwerks 3.4 is now available on the beta branch. Texture lock rotation on brushes now fixed (really). Vehicle orientation fixed (it was inverted on the Z axis). Engine version incremented to 340.   Vehicle and water documentation is written. Here's a simple example on how to build a car: http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/documentation/_/command-reference/vehicle/vehiclecreate-r861   We have about a week before this is released on the default branch. There wi
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Leadwerks 3.3 Beta now available on beta branch

The beta of Leadwerks 3.3 is now available on the beta branch on Steam.   Two new entity classes that extend the model class are present. Sprites are a quad that can face the camera, a specific direction, or can rotate around one axis. These are useful for lighting effects and the axis rotation is great for making laser beams or tracer rounds.   The Lensflare class extends the sprite class and adds a simple glow effect for lighting.   The editor now support shift-drag to select in the ma
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Leadwerks 3.1

It's December, which means Leadwerks for Linux is nearly here! Last week I had to get into more depth with our tutorials. We're creating a series of maps that demonstrate simple game mechanics. The goal is to show how to set up game interactions by attaching scripts to objects and connecting them in the flowgraph editor, without getting into any actual programming. These lessons center around a first-person shooter, but are applicable to many types of games.   I had to get my hands dirty i
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Leadwerks 3.0 Updated with Joint Motors

Leadwerks 3.0 has been updated with bug fixes and new support for joint motors. Hinge and slider joints can have an optional motor enabled that will rotate or move the joint to a specified orientation, at a speed determined by the new Joint::SetMotorSpeed command. This is great for making doors, elevators, as well as complex machinery made possible by the speed and stability of Newton Dynamics, the physics library powering Leadwerks (as well as the Amnesia series).   All joints can also have
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Leadwerks 3.0 Terrain Update Now Available

A new update to Leadwerks 3.0 is now available. Registered developers can run the Leadwerks updater to download and install the patch. This update adds terrain, bug fixes, and a few small feature enhancements. Our new terrain system, described in our Kickstarter campaign to bring Leadwerks to the Linux operating system, is based on a unique "dynamic megatextures" approach. This technique renders sections of the terrain into virtual textures and places them around the camera. The terrain pre
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Leadwerks 3 Rendering Enhancements

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
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Leadwerks 3 on Windows 8

I picked up an Intel SSD for fairly cheap and installed the Windows 8 Release Preview on it. With this configuration boots up in about 5 seconds. I actually spend a lot longer waiting for BIOS to finish than for Windows to start, which is fantastic.   Anyways, it makes sense to me to take screenshots for the docs from the newest version of Windows 8 since Windows is still the dominant operating system. I couldn't find a driver for my ATI 3850, so I swapped it out for a GEForce 480. Here's
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Leadwerks 3 Gets Projected Shadows

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
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Launch Day

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
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Last Minute Improvements

We decided to make one last minute change to the material editor. The texture list is a bit easier to work with now:   Looking pretty nice on Mac, too:   We're also working on our character models for Darkness Awaits, as well as a super secret special surprise...
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Articles

Last Call for API Modifications

I'm finalizing the Ultra App Kit API, which is going to be the basis of the new engine's API. Naming commands themselves is always a bit of an art unto itself. Some things are named a certain way because it is common convention, like Stream::Seek() instead of Stream::SetPosition() and ACos() instead of ArcCosine(). Other times we have holdovers from old APIs or BASIC syntax like Stream::EOF() or String::Mid(). Should a class that has no SetSize() method use GetSize() or Size() for a me
Josh

Josh in Articles

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Articles

KTX2 Texture Support

A while back I wrote enthusiastically about Basis Universal super compression. KTX2 is a texture file format from Khronos, makers of the Vulkan and glTF specifications. Like DDS files, KTX2 can store multiple mipmaps, as well as memory-compressed texture formats like DXT5 and BC7. However, KTX2 now supports Basis compressed data as well, which makes it the all-in-one universal texture format. glTF has an official extension for KTX2 textures in glTF files, so it can be combined with Draco mesh co
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Josh in Articles

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Kickstarter Shipping Update; Leadwerks in the Wild

All stickers have been shipped, and they look absolutely fantastic:   I've never been a "sticker on my laptop" kind of guy, but I am putting one of these on mine as soon as I get home.   Physical items are a little different from getting software to customers. With software, there is at most a delay of a couple hours between the time I have it ready to go, and the customer is using it. I did not anticipate much of a turnover time for the shirts, and I still don't have all the ones I need
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Justify My Love (of Constructive Solid Geometry Modeling)

One thing I love about constructive solid geometry modeling is that texture mapping is sooooo much simpler than 3ds Max. Most of the time the automatic texture mapping works fine, and when you do need to adjust texture mapping by hand, CSG texture mapping tools are still much easier. The justify buttons line a texture up along a face, or a group of faces.   Although using these tools is fun and easy, programming them is another matter. I dreaded the implementation of the texture justify but
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Joint Class Finished

I'm happy to say the physics joint class in the new engine is completed. I made all the members that are not meant to be accessed private. One interesting part is the parent and child public members, which are constant pointers to private members. This should result in a read-only member in C++. A sol property is used to expose this to Lua in a read-only manner. The upvector joint will align an object's Y axis to any vector you set, but still allow rotation around the axis. This is perfect
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January 25, 2010

The networking code is pretty much done, but I don't think it's quite ready to release. We're redesigning the site to integrate the forum and community features together with the whole site, and an official documentation section is being created. In the meantime, I am going to start the model editor. This will be an app to replace the "Model Viewer" which will allow viewing and resaving of .gmf files. It will also include some editing features so you can adjust some of your meshes that might
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iWerks

When I saw specs for the graphics card they are using in the new iMacs, I knew it was time for Leadwerks to come to Mac. Steam for Mac also recently came out, so the time seems right for Mac gaming. Of course, some guy blew up the Roseville Galleria, so the Apple store was closed. I ordered the 27" iMac with a 3.2 ghz dual core processor and upgraded the graphics card to an ATI 5750. Here's what they sent me: The computer case/monitor (it's all one piece) is a solid piece of aluminum that
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It's Friday

...and that means one thing here at the lab.     I'm going to fix soooooooo many bugs tonight...  
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iOS 6 Blues

Apple's problems in iOS 6 aren't limited to maps. Their OpenGL drivers in iOS 6 are absolutely non-functional.   First I was experiencing a BAD_EXC_ACCESS error when rendering certain surfaces. Feedback on the Apple dev forum suggests I am not alone in this. I took a guess and switched my position vertex buffers to use vec4s instead of vec3s, and it appears to have solved that problem (even though both should be fine).   Second, all 3D objects just stopped appearing, completely. I've deb
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