[Introducing the new game]

Do you have a team/contact out or a one main army? The presentation looks really well done here. If you have an VR HMD, I'd like to swordplay in  VR. ?

Overall, nice work. Best of luck!

[Leadwerks Software to Assist NASA Building VR Applications]

Very cool. Glad you're back in the States. Although Turbo is still the priority, I hope this NASA contact benefits LE4 while Turbo is being worked on. Would be nice to see bugs fixed and more VR options soon.

Also hopefully this means you're not tied to that Gigabyte box so I also hope to see AMD and Linux support with the new engine. (And continued support for LE4.)

Congratulations, and continue making cool stuff!

[Map Loading, Materials, Shaders, and other Details]

Super stoked. Is the new beta going to be Leadwerks with the forward renderer or a new Turbo build? Either way, if it'll work on my AMD card, I'll be sure to give it a try.

[Clustered Forward Rendering - Multiple Light Types]

Super stoked! I'm getting ideas and plans ready for another project and this will certainly help visually and performance wise. I adore the box light idea. 

[Clustered Forward Rendering Victory]

5 hours ago, Josh said:

The most appealing thing about that is it gives all your projects a big jump in appearance and performance with no changes required. Just recompile in version 5 and it works. Theoretically.

Very cool, make it happen then. I'm sure people here would pay for that update. ?

[Clustered Forward Rendering Victory]

7 hours ago, Josh said:

I don't know, is that something people want?

Like I said previously, anything that can be swapped into Leadwerks in favor of speed is a positive. It also gives you real world tests for Turbo. 

[Clustered Forward Rendering Victory]

Planned but not confirmed. ?

[Clustered Forward Rendering Victory]

Please confirm this feature will be in Leadwerks in the future.

[Clustered Forward Rendering Progress]

If you're still willing to Port this to Leadwerks, curious how much of a performance boost this will be. The lighting seems nicer than what's present now.  

[Clustered Forward Rendering]

I got rid of my older machine with the 750ti. My Windows machine has the RX480 while my Linux box as a cute little 1050ti. When I get a chance, I'll update my hardware profile. ?

Granted, I didn't play with LE on my RX much outside of VR. Noticed a performance boost on the AI and Events map with visual odds that I took was more on AMDs part. I recall not being happy with The Zone and pin pointed it to do with the amount of objects in the cameras view cone while I was trying to get the map to work with VR.

I understand and respect you not wanting to back engineer the engine, and that's cool. Use your new knowledge from Turbo to make Leadwerks faster and I'll be happy to give it another look  Maybe you can also lower the overhead with other classes (like bones) while you're in there as well. I'm eager await what you have in mind and end up doing.

[Clustered Forward Rendering]

I have mix feelings about the new approach on the LE5 idea. It makes totally sense to support Leadwerks as Turbo is developing in the background. Totally focusing on the future now will make Leadwerks seem like abandon ware (although not really.)

Leadwerks 3.1 - 4.x was designed to work with the Steam ecosystem which is a huge mess beyond belief. Since this site has steam intergration, you could resell LE5 at the $99/$199 price, the subscription model (good idea to test this sooner) and offer existing owners of LE4 on Steam a discounted price. I used to be a big Steam supporter, but due to recent events, I encourage people to go elsewhere.

As for the features of this LE5, I recommend actually porting the new architecture for performance instead of new visuals. I always have and still have performance issues with Leadwerks to a point I shelved my projects in wait of Turbo and free time. Porting the architecture will also allow you to see if it will hold up in real world use. I personally don't care how you end up making LE faster if porting the architecture is a project within itself, but LE should see a performance update. The Zone should run better then it currently does in my opinion.

In the end, it's your call as always. ?

[Introducing Leadwerks Marketplace]

Not just assets are there, Luawerks (a back end framework) is 50% off at $4.99/USD! Use this to cut hours of devtime with your tournament projects. There is a bug tracker (currently no reported bugs) and mini articles over on GitHub. 

Any questions, I'm just an email away and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. ?

[What Makes a Good Brand Name?]

4 hours ago, Josh said:

Leadwerks 4 will continue to be developed over the next year or two. The product is mature and stable and will continue to be available on Steam, forever. I will never open-source any commercial product I make. Why would I do something so stupid? 

I wrote an entire essay explaining my statement then realized/remembered that Turbo and LE share the same code base. So even if LE bit rota over time, you can't share the code anyway due to it containing turbo code. Sorry. ?

[What Makes a Good Brand Name?]

I hope the end product of this will take the ease of use of Leadwerks with the speed of Turbo. What I'm saying, please keep the level csg editor, quick asset importing, easy to read API, mutliplat support and all those aspects that made me purchase LE in 2014 or so. 

Also, no disrespect to the artist of the logo, but I found it screaming "riced up Honda Civics" than "very efficient game engine." when I first saw it. I think the gold is nice versus the silver with LE logo so it hints the two are some what related (unless you didn't want that then oops..)

So what is going to become of this site? Will this just be turned into turboengine.com or will LE and Turbo co exist? Will LE become an entry level engine with a lower base price, or maybe consider open source? I hate for LE to be deprechated and/or purged from existence like LE2 was handled. I have your engine to thank for getting me invested more into low level code, and the people I've met and learned from here, but I see it hard the two existing in this point in time. It's engine, you do what makes the most sense. 

Also, is Turbo Game Engine another piece of software from Leadwerks Software, or your company name is changing too? Sorry for all the questions, just curious on where you plan to take things.

[Three improvements I made to Leadwerks Game Engine 5 today]

Optimize lighting and shadows and fix/reduce shadow banding. 

LE5 is already better than LE4 due to it not slowing down after a few objects and skeletons. Looking forward to the final product.

[Lua in Leadwerks 5 is Solved]

I had some worries about the lua bindings with the new pointer system myself, but glad a new library does the job. I might look into Sol for my personal projects.

The VSCode implementation seems really neat. My only criticism is that it ruins the "All in one package" model you have created for the current version if you decide to not do your own script editor. Regardless, VS Code is really nice, I use it all the time. I just wish it opened as fast as notepad or notepad++. 

I haven't had the time to really play with Leadwerks at all as of late. But I'm always looking forward to what's new in the engine.

Oh yeah, as a kid I got called anti social because I liked to be on the computer a lot while being in the comfort of my home. I went to roller skating at a place last weekend and noticed that mostly everyone there was on their phones most of the time. I on the other hand left my phone in the car so it wouldn't get broken.

The idea that people paid money for admission for a social event, to be on their phone is disgusting.

Anyway, glad everything is working out.

[Oculus Rift vs. HTC Vive: Which is the one true VR headset?]

I tried both the Rift and Vive and I find the Rift to me more ideal as not everyone has the space to do full room scale VR. I had issues playing Job Simulator, but I could play Robo Recall just fine (Minus me punching my ceiling light from time to time :))

The god ray effect on the Rift is AWFUL. I didn't notice them at first, but when I did, I thought my device was defective. 

[Beta update available]

I wasn't having any issue with my Rift before. I noticed that when I manually set the Tracking space to Roomscale it fixed the lens.

I'll let you know. 

[Creating a VR Teleporter: Part 2]

Wait, I thought you said lua's garbage collection would get in the way of VR? Shouldn't this be done in C++ or you're prototyping this first?

[Leadwerks 5 Beta Rollout]

On 8/26/2017 at 4:50 AM, Josh said:

Yes, a regular buy-once license will be available.  I personally am not a big fan of subscription software for myself as a customer, but a lot of people like to have that option, especially when the monthly amount is very low.  And from my perspective a steady monthly revenue is very appealing because I can hire people more easily that way.

I got a little nervous when I read your post at first, but now that a buy-once model is still gonna be used when it's release, I feel better. I see the subscription model for beta software like a Patreon of a sort. Best all, you know you're doing something right or wrong based on number of subscriptions, so you can dynamically change things based on real feedback rather than assumptions. 

[Game Tournaments, Schwag, and American Apparel]

Quote

The 2017 Summer Game Tournament will proceed once I have shipped the prizes out from the previous tournament.  However, as I have proven that I am not a reliable shipper of prizes, the tournament is going back to our original prizeless model.  A roundup of entries from all game developers will be posted at the end and fun will be had by all.

Daww, you should at-least ship out stickers while you got em. I actually don't like using stickers if I only have one of em.

If you're done sending prizes, that's understandable, hopefully someday you'll find a way to make it work. 

[Website refresh and Leadwerks 5]

Quote

Pricing for a perpetual license for the standard and pro editions would most likely be the same as now ($99-199), with a discount for early adopters / upgrades.

According to this post, the subscription service is just an option. If you want to put 100-200$ to own the software, that's cool too. I hope this remains the case when it comes time to release. I dislike the idea of 'renting' software, hence why I moved to most open source software, but I also understand the arguments. 

[Luawerks For 4.4]

Thanks for your interest. Off the top of my head, a controls tab in the options and some sort of map select when hitting new game were things I wanted to put in this update, but I wanted it to be ready for 4.4's release. 

A Trello for a road map would be a good idea, I'll set one up soon. Thanks.

[Leadwerks 4.4 RC2]

Prob would be best to have fog options be adjustable in the scene tab so the user can see their fog results in the editor. Overall, really cool! 

[Return to the Zone]

I hope the final iteration is a bit brighter, unless it looks brighter in-game. That or should be 1:1 with the LE2 version. But overall, amazing work I'm excited to finally be able to play this, I hope this gets released as a template or an open source project.