[Recommended reading Entity-Component-System]

During the summer I got more and more entangled game entity classes in my game project, and I really wish I had read this before I started on my journey. I recently stumbled on this article talking about why OOP is not really good for (larger) games to manage game entities, and that introduced me to a better approach. I have yet to test this out in Leadwerks as I am trying to learn more about this before taking a major overhaul. Anyway I hope this could help other people here that might struggle with this.

 

Link to article: http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/understanding-component-entity-systems-r3013

[Seeking character artists]

Wow! Linda Fyen certainly got talent. Would this be classified as AAA? Would this be able to run at 100+ FPS on a decent gpu?

[How to make a laser beam C++]

This is it what I try to achieve:

[How to make a laser beam C++]

Hi! I am currently trying to make a laser beam in C++ but so far without success. Sure I could use a 2D-line but that I think is not the best way to do so. Could this made with shaders and if so how?

[Seeking character artists]

Did I ever thought a good quality character would cost $1500+, obvious my price estimation was to naive. I presume it is an AAA character with all animation needed for a typical game. Some AAA characters could make a cool tech demo for Leadwerks, I thinking a mini game made with C++ to really show off the potential that Leadwerks engine has (just an idea). This could serve as a template for C++.

 

You don't need the best 3D artist from industry, but a really talented guy.

Yes while I agree it may not be wise for AAA.

[Mouse and keyboard poll]

Some observations I have seen when other people play on their computer is that righties use WASD and lefties use arrows, so therefor one should implement both as standard for a game. Lefties often have the mouse on the left.

Also noted that people that are using inverted mouse envision that the characters head (camera) has a stick w/handle back on the head and the mouse is like a hand on that stick (sorry not good at explaining this). And that people using non-inverted mouse are envisioning that the head is on a pole-stick and that the mouse is like the eye of that character. Again this illustrates why options and more options are good

[Why do Leadwerks have a "Button1" define/macro?]

ohh I see, I really should have paid more attention to the title

[Why do Leadwerks have a "Button1" define/macro?]

If you got a GUI class then you could use an enum class inside your class. Use it like this: MyClass::MyEnum::GREEN. If you want to use it as an ordinary enum you could use C-style casting to int.

 

class MyClass
{
public:
MyClass();
virtual ~MyClass();

enum class MyEnum
{
 NONE = 0,
 RED,
 GREEN,
 BLUE
};
}

[Seeking character artists]

Here's a suggestion, why not pick the top 3-5 and have them send an image sample and then have a community poll who get to make those models. At least it would be cool to see those samples. Anyway can't wait for the next workshop

[Texture on model is not showing]

Yeah it must be the unwrap thing. Well I'll try to find a blender tutorial on youtube.

Thanks.

[Texture on model is not showing]

I used the Blender Exporter and exported a simple box with wood texture but in Leadwerks Editor it is without texture.

 

This what I made in Blender:

 

And after exporting it to Leadwerks:

 

I can't figure out what I did wrong with this. How do I get the texture to show up?

[Angle between 2 Vectors]

This might:

float tRoty;

// Calculate angle from point A towards point B
Vec3 tv = secondEntity.GetPosition - entity->GetPosition();
tRoty = Math::ATan2(tv.x, tv.z);

[Angle between 2 Vectors]

Try using Math:Atan2, if I remember correctly you get the angle between them.

[Downloading workshop item]

I am currently on a low-end wifi network somewhere and I wish that after restarting LE to download those workshop items that there could have been some indication of the download progress. A simple 0% to 100% text on the splash screen would be enough.

 

I am looking at it and wonder if I should abort the download or not. Three minutes later it is complete! Yay!

[Tutorial poll]

I would also enjoy learning how to use C++ and Lua together.

Yes that would be great. How should one implement GameScripts like "if player has red-skeleton-key and BigBoss is defeated --> open up a new path for next level". Something like that perhaps.

[Tutorial poll]

I am currently struggling with setting up a good (C++) GameObject structure so that it is fast and scalable. What I so far have is a GameObject that handles the game object, controller input, basic AI and animation but it is messy.

All I have found so far are:

1. Class Hooks
   
2. How to Structure a Game
   
3. Object-Oriented Game Design
   

Looking through them I found out that I need to handle collision detection inside the game object (1.link) instead of a for(...) in game loop. And that I probably should use a static Enemy::UpdateEach() (2/3. link) instead of for(...) in game loop. I am not sure if this better in terms of performance but it is a new technique I haven't thought of.

If someone could make a tutorial on this subject that would be nice.

[Built in backup to online storage ability.]

Why not use a Synology box with SVN or Git app that comes with it? (Any kind of version control would work)

Or just zip the project onto a large USB stick. I us both methods and it works great. Granted it does require manual work (often less than 1 min).

[Calling SetPosition() expensive?]

Sounds like it could be a bug in Pivot class. Pivots are inherited from Entity class I believe, do you get same result with 500 entities instead of 500 pivots?

 

EDIT: fixed spelling

[Calling SetPosition() expensive?]

Try adding

box->Release();

after

box->SetPosition(Vec3(i, 0, i));

[Vibrating player]

Minor change:

model->SetRotation(0.0f, entity->GetRotation().y + 180.0f, 0.0f);

[Vibrating player]

Thank you! This solved my jitter problem. I did remove the parenting and changed my code to this if anyone are interested.

 

entity->SetInput(angle, move);
model->SetPosition(entity->GetPosition());
if (b > 0.01f || b < -0.01f)
 model->SetRotation(entity->GetRotation());

 

It might not be perfect but this seems to work.

[Vibrating player]

After some testing with UpdatePhysicsHook I still get this Z-rotating jittering when using SetInput(). I really don't know why but I am starting to wonder if it could be that it is only the model that are jittering but not the entity? Or should I just abandon the idea of using SetInput() ?

 

Registering the hook:

entity->AddHook(Entity::UpdatePhysicsHook, (void*)UpdatePhysicsHook);

 

Updating physics:

entity->SetInput(entity->GetRotation().y + 10.0f*window->KeyDown(Key::D1), 10.0f*window->KeyDown(Key::D2));

[Calling SetPosition() expensive?]

I think may be shaders might be something to consider. I have seen a lot of fancy things like wrapping, morphing like fluid and cool camera lens effects etc. But then again I am no expert on this subject.

[Calling SetPosition() expensive?]

I am playing around with a custom terrain once again. The terrain has a number of patches parented to it, depending on the terrain size these can be between a few dozen and several hundred. They are all directly parented to the terrain, no sub-hierarchy.

 

I have added a hook

 

void CameraPositionHook(Entity* entity) {
MT::Terrain * terrain = static_cast<MT::Terrain*>(entity);
Camera* camera = terrain->GetCamera();
Vec3 position = camera->position;
position.y = 0;
if (camera) terrain->SetPosition(position);
}

 

which I add as an UpdateWorldHook to the terrain, and the SetPosition() call causes the observed rate drop.

Are you trying to move the terrain? A terrain of 1024x1024 makes about 1 M vertices, that would really slow it down. If I am reading this correctly (I may be horrible wrong here).

[Calling SetPosition() expensive?]

Why do you want have the entity follow the camera and not vice versa? But to answer you question about SetPosition(), I would say from my own experience that is not expensive to use. Heck I use it several places in my project. How many SetPosition() are we talking about each game loop?