Josh

Don't forget the iPad.

I like that last shot a lot.

So here's what it took to get Leadwerks running on the iPhone: Let's start at the point we had the C++ code building and running with an OpenGL 1 renderer on OSX. I was worried OpenGLES might be a dramatically different API that required a whole new learning curve, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's just a stripped-down version of OpenGL, more like OpenGL 3.3 than anything else. Making the OpenGL2ES renderer was mostly just a copy and paste operation, and then I had to comment out a few unsupported commands. Building for the iPhone simulator was a bit harder. The first problem I ran into was that file paths on iOS are case-sensitive. (They aren't on OSX.) This was problematic, because my asset management code stored file paths in lowercase, so that had to be changed. Then there was the matter of setting the application's file path. A special function had to be written to set this at application startup. The hardest part was the context handling. The flow of an iOS app all revolves around Objective-C events, and this doesn't mix well with a C++ program. What I ended up doing was creating an App class like this: class App { public: bool Start(); bool Continue(); int Finish(); }; Objective-C calls these class functions to keep the program loop running. Once the Continue() function returns false, the application calls Finish() and exits. I'm okay with using this same design across all platforms, if it means your C++ code will run on everything. of course, this is just a convention in the generated project files, and if you want you can code the engine with any program structure you want. This is just the best way to ensure your code runs on everything. The last challenge was setting up the provisioning profiles, certificate, and some other stuff I don't even remember. This was pretty tricky, and took most of the day to figure out. In the end, I just ran through the instructions a second time, and it magically worked. At the end of all that, it was nice to see Leadwerks running on the iPhone. iOS was the hardest platform to add support for, and I don't expect the same difficulty when we add support for Android: Thanks to Ed Upton and Simon Armstrong for their help and advice.

Ah, I found you now. You emailed me from a different email address, but now I know who you are.

One thing you can do to easily change this is open the oildrum.mat material file in a text editor and add a value to increase the specular reflection: texture0="abstract::oildrum.dds" texture1="abstract::oildrumdot3.dds" shader="abstract::mesh_diffuse_bumpmap.vert","abstract::mesh_diffuse_bumpmap_specular.frag" specular=500.0 However, increasing the specular value in the normal map will work better.

It should work if you lock your threads at the right time, but it's a minefield of potential problems.

Use Windows Texture Viewer. Paint.NET does not load alpha channels, apparently: http://developer.nvidia.com/content/windows-texture-viewer Here, the background color is black. You can see how dark the alpha channel is: I'm sorry they don't look the way you want, but a lot of people were complaining that the material was too shiny so I toned it down.

Generally, we make our own IP. I don't like relying on third parties unless it is necessary.

We definitely do not need SpeedTree.

Yes.

It's working here. I made a point light and turned the light's intensity value up a bit: Some people may have adjusted the normal map a bit, or have another normal map applied. The specular intensity is stored in the alpha channel of the normal map. If you make the alpha channel brighter, you get more specular reflection.

No, but that's a good idea.

3D World Studio is designed specifically for making buildings and interior scenes. It's a lot better at this than 3ds max is. The price has not been announced, but it is cheaper to buy LE2 now and upgrade than to wait for LE3. LE3 will run on your laptop. LE2 will not. There's a river script one someone wrote for the editor. We don't support it ourselves. You don't. Our forest rendering is much much better than SpeedTree: http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/Products/le2/_/features/terrain-r4 You can use Leadwerks to make commercial games with no royalties due. No. LE3 runs on Mac computers.

Use uncompressed format for skyboxes.

RTS. Two people could put together a good one in 6 months and have it on Steam.

It doesn't work that way. But if you post a Facebook and Twitter update and someone reposts it, it will still contain your referral ID.

Right, the default setting is to lock the fps at the monitor refresh rate, which is usually about 60 fps

Isn't it trivial to code a simple program thatt launches your app with some command line options? We're talking like ten minutes of work, if that's what you want.

Yep.

The default behavior is for vertical sync to be enabled. People were complaining about the editor using too much resources when the framerate is unlimited. You can change this in the editor settings.

Any decent engine should be able to alter all those setting on the fly. When was the last time you played a game you had to restart to adjust the graphics settings?

Just go to C:\Leadwerks Engine SDK and all the tools will be there. You may want to uninstall the demo version to avoid confusion.

Wow, that looks amazing. All I could see before was a black square. Really nice normal mapping work!

Where do I download LE.Net? And is there a project wizard template for it?