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Learn about game development technology

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New beta update available

A new update is available with the following changes:   Player collision against terrains is now working really nicely. In general, the player controller has become very solid and accurate. It's also quite a bit faster than before.   An experimental feature lets you make CSG brushes the child of another object and check a "shape hint" option in the physics properties. This will use any attached CSG brushes to build a new compound convex hull for that model. This is best used to make pref
Josh

Josh

31

Character Physics Improvements

I update to latest version of Newton and did a lot of work on character physics. All collisions below the step height will now be ignored, regardless of incline. Character collision in general is much more stable and accurate. Terrain collisions now work properly. Character collisions using an adaptive method that will be much faster overall.   Opt into the beta branch on Steam to get the update. If you're using Lua, be sure to update your project to get the latest EXEs.
Josh

Josh

19

Update available on default branch

A new update is now available on the default (stable) branch. For a list of improvements and fixes, see my blog and the bug reports forum: http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/blog/1-joshs-blog/ http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/forum/80-bug-reports/   If you purchased the sci-fi DLC, the example maps will now be automatically copied into your "MyGame" project, making it easier to find them.   If you would like to trade your standalone registration key in for a Steam key, so you can get ac
Josh

Josh

2

Change Map Example Added

A new map called "09-Change Map.map" has been added to the example game. This demonstrates how to use the new TriggerChangeMap.lua script to make your player progress from one level to the next.   In order to use this script, you must update your project with the new executables. Select the File > Project Manager menu to open the Project Manager, then press the "Update" button to update your project.   A new chunk of code has been added to App.lua to handle map changes. This code will
Josh

Josh

13

New update available on beta branch

A new update is available on the beta branch on Steam.   Pistol script bug fixed A recent change in the way particle emitters are updated was causing an error where one-shot emitters would automatically release themselves while the engine was iterating through the list of emitters, causing a crash. This has been fixed.   You must update your project to get the new binary. Open the Project Manager and press the Update button to update.   Game Player Enhancements The Leadwerks Game Playe
Josh

Josh

4

Continued Development

At this point I would like to share some plans with you on continued development over the next several months. I generally avoid detailed roadmaps for two reasons: It's more fun to announce something with a short notice than to say "we're going to do X, Y, and Z, by these dates...". If people know too far in advanced they sort of take it for granted, and it doesn't have as big an impact. Plans change. When they do, people often consider cancelled plans to be "promised features". I like
Josh

Josh

6

Animation Pipeline Improvements

I've been doing some work with animated models lately, and encountered some of the difficulties people have mentioned with model animations. It's not really hard to do, but there are things we can do to make the process faster when dealing with lots of animations. This video explains some of the changes I made to make it easier to get animated models into Leadwerks.   These include: Animation name in extraction dialog. Animation tab with all sequences displayed at once. Import animat
Josh

Josh

8

Building Character

My goal with Leadwerks 3 has always been to give the people what they need to make playable games. What they really need. Creative projects are interesting because it's easy to get derailed. You can lose interest in an idea, or you might avoid a critical problem you don't know how to solve, and instead spend time doing fun little things that make you feel like you're making progress when you're not. For example, let's say I am making a dungeon crawler. I have some basic gameplay but I can't
Josh

Josh

7

Workshop is out!

After an extended period of testing, the Leadwerks Workshop on Steam is now available. I'm really happy about this because it fundamentally changes the way we work together. Content authors have more of a sense of "ownership" of their items, and it's easy for them to get feedback and update their subscribers. More features are always good, but for a long time I have had the feeling we needed to address other aspects of the game development process. I think the Leadwerks Workshop will harness
Josh

Josh

2

A Week in Seattle: Steam VR, Gas Works, and the Strawberry Moon

Last week I travelled to Seattle for a few days to lay some groundwork for the future of Leadwerks Software. During the week I tried out Valve's VR hardware, visited a gassification plant, and survived a trifecta of astrological phenomenon. Steam VR Although I attended Steam Dev Days, I did not get a chance to demo Valve's virtual reality hardware. I was invited by one employee to come back and check it out, so I decided to take them up on that offer last week.  Valve's VR is improved over
Josh

Josh

4

Werkspace Banners are Back

I'm pleased to announce the return of the much-beloved header banners. They now scale across the width of the page, similar to the profile images on Twitter and Google+.   To add a banner image of your own, click the ]submit a banner link in the site footer. I recommend JPEG images with a resolution around 1920x300. However, your image dimensions do not have to be exact, as the image will be scaled and trimmed to fit the space.   You can also add an optional URL to link the banner to. If
Josh

Josh

6

Bonus update is now available!

Wow, two updates in two days! This one adds new features and bug fixes.   Fixes http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/10019-directional-lights-dont-cast-shadows/ http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/10030-values-in-appearance-tab-ignored/ http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/10020-values-in-entities-general-tab-stuck/ http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/8138-pointlight-viewrange-bug http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/9919-wobbly-fbx-imports/   New Features Globa
Josh

Josh

7

From Cartography Shop to Leadwerks 3.1

This is just a little walk down memory lane that pleasantly shows what has led to where we are today. Some of this predates the name "Leadwerks" entirely.   Cartography Shop (2003)   3D World Studio (2004)   Leadwerks Game Engine 2 (2008)   Leadwerks Game Engine 3 (2013)
Josh

Josh

6

New build provides texture lock, improved tex mapping

A new build has been pushed out on the beta branch on Steam. This update increments the map file format. Maps saved from the beta build cannot be opened in the standalone build until the update goes out everywhere.   The editor now has the option to use a centimeter grid. The previous meter-based grid is still available in the viewport tab in the options dialog. This is important because it allows us to more easily line brush geometry up to textures. By default, a 1024x1024 texture will m
Josh

Josh

2

CSG Texturing Enhancements

In order to get ready for the Workshop, and to get ready to implement texture locking, some preliminary work needed to be done. First, I needed to improve the CSG texture mapping routine. It was modified to take into account a texture's dimensions. This means that wide flat textures like this trim piece will be mapped to their texel area, not with the same aspect ratio as a square image:   The default mapping scale is that 1024 texels maps to 256 centimeters. This ensures it is easy to l
Josh

Josh

0

Diving into Constructive Solid Modeling

It's pretty clear that constructive solid geometry modeling is a high priority for our community. I like being able to easily sketch out my ideas. In fact, when this feature went away in Leadwerks 2, that was when I just stopped making game levels. It's not that I don't know how to use 3ds Max and other programs, it's just that they're not fun. The upcoming release of Steam Workshop also fulfills my long-held dream of building a shared repository of textures and models scaled correctly to wo
Josh

Josh

0

Building maps with modular props

The beta branch on Steam is updated with a new build. Fixes and Enhancements The camera movement options have been made more sane. The range of possible values is a little more practical now. A mouse smoothing option has been added that makes the camera motion in the perspective viewport feel a lot more smooth and natural. I also found a bug that caused the camera move speed to change when a map was loaded. It was an annoyance that was almost unnoticeable but it feels much better now.  T
Josh

Josh

8

Publish your games directly to Steam with the Leadwerks game player

One of the coolest things I'm seeing in Leadwerks 3 is a lot of minigames being made. These are finished products, without super high expectations, but they are complete, don't take long to make, and some are quite fun. Seeing these gave me an idea for a feature that's been in development in the background for some time, and when you see what it does, it will explain some of the design decisions I've made over the last few months.   The next build on the beta branch on Steam will support Lua
Josh

Josh

10

What's the Big Idea?

I think of the Leadwerks community as a big loosely affiliated collaborative game studio. I see people working together to add value in different ways. Some are dedicated to a single project, and others bounce around and participate in different projects. I like that everyone can just find what they like doing best and provide value in that way.   Voluntary collaboration, without being too restrictive, allows us to achieve economies of scale, while diversifying risk. Basically that means i
Josh

Josh

10

Texture Import Features

Since I am working with the Blender import pipeline and also getting artists onboard the Steam Workshop, it makes sense to work out any little details in the art pipeline that can be improved. One of these is the texture import process.   Leadwerks 3.0 was designed to function across PC and mobile, and one of the compromises that had to be made was texture compression. There is no universally supported texture compression format on mobile, while the PC has several variations of DXT compressi
Josh

Josh

7

Marketing begins before you write a line of code

The lean startup methodology posits that life is to short to build a product no one wants. The old way of doing business involved a limited number of companies with very high barriers to entry adopting a "push" strategy. Sears could effectively create demand for a product by choosing what they wanted to feature prominently in their mail-order catalog. Television advertisers could craft a promotional strategy that would reliably result in a certain response. Those days are over, fortunately,
Josh

Josh

9

Beta branch update: Tons of art pipeline enhancements

I'm happy to say I nailed the design of the Leadwerks 3 workflow overall, but there are a couple of places where there's still some friction. Because the community is going to soon be moving a lot of content into the Steam Workshop, now is a good time to take a look at those issues. It's also smart to address them before the Blender exporter is written.   A new update has been pushed out to the beta branch on Steam that contains a lot of improvements in this area. However, both the map and
Josh

Josh

10

This week's progress

This isn't really a fancy PR post that's been carefully thought out, more just a quick update of what I've been doing.   A third party firm was contracted to provide a Debian package for Leadwerks. We tried to do it in-house, but were unsuccessful. I expect it to go live next week, at which point I will have a final Kickstarter update and start the Linux push in earnest. I've been fairly quiet about it because I wanted to make sure things worked, and I was also waiting for the distribution
Josh

Josh

3

Linux Editor Updated

An update to the Linux build of the Leadwerks editor has been posted. This resolves a few UI issues: The way the scene browser tree renders is changed to eliminate visual artifacts. Some scroll bar behavior bugs are fixed. The popup menu that appears when you right-click on an entity in the scene browser now contains an "Add to flow graph" menu item. This odd UI bug is fixed. Double-clicking on items in the scene or asset browser trees will collapse/expand that item if it has chi
Josh

Josh

5

Next Steps

Previously, I talked about my plan for Leadwerks for the next 6-12 months:   Leadwerks Editor Adding new tools to make life easier. Refining the workflow to eliminate any remaining"sticky" points. Bug fixes, to make it a super slick and polished experience.   The Engine New features in graphics, physics, networking, etc. Performance optimization. Improved compatibility across all OpenGL 4 hardware.   Third-Party Technologies Blender, SteamOS, Steam Workshop, vir
Josh

Josh

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