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Ultra Software Company Blog

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Zombie Character Pack Released

Our first character pack for Leadwerks has been released. The Zombie Character Pack DLC is now available on Steam for $29.99, with a 15% launch discount.     The Leadwerks Zombie Character Pack provides you with a horde of undead monsters to slay. Fight your way through the flesh-eating mob or pit them against each other in an all-zombie brawl to the death. All characters are fully scripted and ready to use in Leadwerks, with no programming required. Just drop them into your map and press

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You're Making your Visual Studio C++ Projects Wrong

Visual Studio gives two options for creating C++ applications. Console applications use printed text to communicate with the user, harkening back to the pre-GUI days of DOS. The other option is a windowed application with a GUI interface, simply called "Win32 Project" in the Visual Studio project creation dialog.     A console application will use the regular old main function you know and love: int main(int argc,const char *argv[])   This is cross-platform compatible and runs on an

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You did it! Native game development is coming to Linux

In just three weeks, the Linux community has successfully funded the development of Leadwerks for Linux. This means we're going to bring Leadwerks 3.1 to Linux, with native support for developing Linux games...so Linux games can now be completely free from Windows. Greenlight It's been an amazing few weeks. During this time, we also successfully completed our Greenlight campaign to make Leadwerks available on Steam and take advantage of features like the Steam Workshop. You can see from th

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Winter Games Tournament Roundup

The Leadwerks 2016 Winter Games Tournament is complete! This tournament brought some new types of games we haven't seen before, with a wide range of new games to try. Here's a review.     The Adventures of Relic Rick http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/games/_/the-adventures-of-relic-rick-public-alpha-v100-r108   You control the adventurer, Rick, who is on a hunt for an ancient artifact for his museum. During his search in an underground ruin, he feels an earthquake and, before he

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Why Leadwerks is the clear choice for VR simulations

Leadwerks has historically had a small group of customers outside of the game industry who use our software for simulations, training, and visualization.  Customers using our software products include NASA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and the British Royal Navy.  Today I am happy to announce that in response to overwhelming demand we are now offering our services to build custom VR applications with Leadwerks.     This puts us in head-to-head competition with othe

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What Makes a Good Brand Name?

In evaluating possible company names I have come up with the following criteria which I used to choose a name for our new game engine. Spelling and Pronunciation The name should be unambiguous in spelling. This helps promote word-of-mouth promotion because when someone hears the name for the first time, they can easily find it online. Similarly, the name when read should be unambiguous in pronunciation. This helps the name travel from written to spoken word and back. Can you imagine telli

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Welcome to the Leadwerks.com dedicated server

Leadwerks.com is now hosted on our own dedicated server located in Chicago, Illinois. It was found that this location gave the best overall results for our worldwide user base. We tested the new server in advance for a couple of days, and transferred the database right before switching the DNS, so no data should have been lost. Please submit a bug report if you experience any problems.   The Leadwerks server has a 500 gb secondary hard drive where site backups are automatically saved to, in

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Website refresh and Leadwerks 5

Back around February I started working on a website update that included the following: Responsive design everywhere. SSL everywhere. Visual improvement of website. Updated documentation system. Tutorials for C++ programming basics. Update forum software to new major version. Forum moved to new URL. All of that is now pretty much done.  These changes improve the online Leadwerks experience and are independent from the software itself, so it

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We integrated GameAnalytics.com into Leadwerks; You won't believe the shocking results

In Leadwerks 4.3 we integrated GameAnalytics.com into our software, both in the editor and in the engine, as a tool developers can use to track their player statistics.  A number of events were set up in the editor to fire when certain actions were performed, in order to gain better insight into how people were using Leadwerks.  Here are the results. The most popular primitives Unsurprisingly, boxes are by far the most popular primitive created in Leadwerks Editor.  The community has c

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Virtual Texture Terrain

The Leadwerks 2 terrain system was expansive and very fast, which allowed rendering of huge landscapes. However, it had some limitations. Texture splatting was done in real-time in the pixel shader. Because of the limitations of hardware texture units, only four texture units per terrain were supported. This limited the ability of the artist to make terrains with a lot of variation. The landscapes were beautiful, but somewhat monotonous. With the Leadwerks 3 terrain system, I wanted to reta

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View Your Sales in Leadwerks Marketplace

You can now view detailed sales records of your game assets in Leadwerks Marketplace. First, log into your Leadwerks account and navigate to the Leadwerks Marketplace main page. In the bottom-right, below the categories, a link to your paid files will appear. Here you can see a list of all your paid items: When you click on an item, you can see a list of people who have purchased it, along with sales dates. If you wish to give a free license to any member for any

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Version 4.5 Updated

An update for Leadwerks Game Engine 4.5 has been pushed out on Steam. The following fixes have been made: View projection for Oculus Rift VR headset is fixed. Added VR.AButton, VR.BButton, VR.GripAxis for improved compatibility with Oculus Touch controllers. Fixed terrain collision bug. Added missing Workshop toolbar icons on Linux. Fixed script editor not opening on Linux. Fixed LoadAnimation bug. Fixed missing fall damage on player controller.

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Version 4.4 beta updated

An update for version 4.4 beta is now available. The Newton Dynamics library has been updated to the current version. Vehicles are temporarily unavailable, but everything else should work. The Newton DLLs have been moved into external DLLs, which allows the author of Newton to debug his own physics code in Leadwerks from Visual Studio.   You can get the update by opting into the beta branch on Steam.

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Vehicle WIP in Leadwerks 4.6

Here's a look at the new vehicle system that is being developed. The API has been simplified so you simply create a vehicle, add as many tires as you want, and start using it. The AddTire() command now accepts a model and the dimensions of the tire are calculated from the bounds of the mesh. class Vehicle { int AddTire(Model* model, bool steering=false, const float spring=500.0f, const float springrelaxation = 0.1f, const float springdamping = 10.0f); void SetGas(const float accel); void

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Unicode in Leadwerks 5

I've begun implementing unicode in Leadwerks Game Engine 5.  It's not quite as simple as "switch all string variables to another data type". First, I will give you a simple explanation of what unicode is.  I am not an expert so feel free to make any corrections in the comments below. When computers first started drawing text we used a single byte for each character.  One byte can describe 256 different values and the English language only has 26 letters, 10 numbers, and a few other cha

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Ultra Engine SDK Now Available

I'm pleased to announce that Ultra Engine SDK Early Access is now available. Four years ago, I set out to solve the performance problems I was seeing while working on virtual reality projects at NASA. Ultra Engine is the product of a lot of intense research and development during which I invented a new architecture designed for the way modern graphics hardware works. The results exceeded my wildest expectations, providing Ultra Engine with order-of-magnitude faster rendering performance than Lea

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Ultra Engine Early Access is Here

Ultra Engine unlocks the full power of your GPU to deliver up to 10x faster performance for your game. Ultra Engine is now available in Early Access, both in our store and on Steam. Use coupon code "LAUNCH" to receive a discount before January 1. Ultra Engine is a huge leap in technology that provides a new future-proof foundation, while keeping the strengths and general design philosophy we developed in Leadwerks. There were many major underlying changes made to create a better development

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Ultra Engine Beta Updated

An update is available for the new Turbo Game Engine beta. Fixed compiling errors with latest Visual Studio version Fixed compatibility problems with AMD hardware Process is now DPI-aware Added high-resolution depth buffer (additional parameter on CreateContext()). Subscribers can download the new version here.

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Ultra Engine Beta Update

The Turbo Game Engine beta is updated! This will allow you to load your own maps in the new engine and see the speed difference the new renderer makes. LoadScene() has replaced the LoadMap() function, but it still loads your existing map files. To create a PBR material, insert a line into the material file that says "lightingmodel=1". Blinn-Phong is the default lighting model. The red and green channels on texture unit 2 represent metalness and roughness. You g

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Ultra Engine Benchmarks Revealed - 10x Faster than Unity, Leadwerks

A few years ago, some folks at NASA asked for my help with some VR projects they were working on. They had switched to Leadwerks and were getting better performance with that, but it still wasn't fast enough for what they were trying to do. I flew from California out to Goddard Space Flight Center to meet with them. When I saw what NASA was doing with my software, my jaw hit the floor. Goddard Space Flight Center Rendering performance in VR is critical because if the framerate dr

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Ultra Engine 0.9.3 Released

Ultra Engine 0.9.3 is here, with usability improvements, bug fixes, and new AI-powered features to make game development easier. You can get a discount now in our store or on Steam all week. "Futuristic Room" by Dennis Cliofis Object creation has been overhauled with a more visual approach that lets you easily select the object you want to add to the scene.   You can also insert a new object into the scene tree, under the selected node, or in the scene root.

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Ultra App Kit: Let's Solve the Desktop UI Problem

The foundation of our new game development tools is here, with a close-to-the-metal framework for building desktop applications. Close-to-the-Metal Framework for Desktop Applications We're approaching the end of a loooooooooong cycle of research and development...several years, in fact, have been spent building the fastest game engine in the world. A great game engine needs a great user interface, and Ultra App Kit provides exactly what we need. This will provide the backbone of o

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Ultra App Kit Released

Built to power a new generation of game development tools, Ultra App Kit provides an easy-to-use C++ programming SDK for creating desktop GUI applications. Unlike other alternatives like Dear ImGui, the Ultra App Kit GUI renders in retained mode rather than immediate mode, and is specifically designed for desktop GUI applications. This makes applications snappy and responsive when resizing or refreshing a window. DPI scaling is baked into the design for resolution-independent

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Ultra App Kit 1.1 Adds Support for Cross-Platform Development

Ultra App Kit 1.1 is now available on our website and on Steam. This free update brings cross-platform development to our fast resolution-independent GUI toolkit. To download the new installers, click on your account purchases. In addition to Windows, Mac and Linux are now supported, which means you can code once and compile everywhere to easily create cross-platform GUI applications. Builds on Linux use minimal dependencies and will work on virtually any distro without any additional

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Three New Model Packs available in the Workshop Store

Today we are rolling out three new paid model packs by artist Nova Dimension.   The Urban Interior Pack contains everything you need to populate your decaying urban settings with fixtures, furniture, and survival supplies.         The Morgue Model Pack provides a creepy setting for horror or apocalyptic games. Just imagine how scary this could be with the right lighting and music.     Finally, the Old Furniture Pack provides an extended collection of every type of furniture pr

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