reepblue

After seeing how popular my status was about the removed/broken argument feature, I decided to make a topic discussing the matter. 1) Use of Arguments The Flowgraph editor is a simple, and visual way to connect entities logic to another which is pretty much straight forward as Entity1out -> Entity2in. (It kind of reminded me of Source's I/O system). The issue with the argument as a newer user to Leadwerks is although I got the "Point A to Point B" concept, the argument feature made me scratched my head, and I never got it working correctly. So I didn't use it. A few months later, after learning more and more about the engine, I decided to take a wack at it as I really wanted to use it to make my scripts more reusable. However, when I went to do so, I noticed that the feature was gone. So YES, the argument feature although useful, was not as clear as the simple connections. I think a linear path to add values onto an input function would be better Such as: Entity1out(OutValue) -> Entity2in(InValue) What I had in mind is a another argument for component:CallOutputs(). Script.Value=0 --float "Value" function Script:OutValue() self.component:CallOutputs("Add", self.Value) end Then in Entity2: function Script:AddValue(newval)--in if val ~= nil then currentval=currentval+newval end end If the input does not take any arguments, but one is outputted, it would get ignored. and the simple CallOutputs function should still work, 2) Zooming It is very easy to get lost in the editor. While using it, I keep thinking I can zoom in and out like I can in the 2D viewports so I can see more of my nodes working, or zoom in the ones I'm working on. And finally.. 3) A Button As I said before, I feel the Flowgraph editor is not in your face as the other features of the editor. It's tucked away under the menu bar, and with the current issues above, it feels like a tack on then a feature/tool. As I don't think that this should turn into a UE4 Blueprint clone, but with a few tweaks here and there, the Flowgraph editor can be more of a staple in level creation for Leadwerks. I think I speak for everyone when I say that we appreciate the hard work you're doing, and we're happy to see new features/tools added. But if there comes a time to revisit an older feature for refinement, I think it should be Flowgraph editor next time.

It should be noted that the skybox flickers through random textures in the scene.

On my end, If I have a directional light with even Static shadows, my framerate gets cuts in half. (On a good size map with 350.12.) EDIT: It's seems it's something with my exe that handles menuUI and such. Installed the older exes and the game runs fine.

I've tried multiple ways of installing games. Yet, no successful boot through the launcher.

I'll give it a try with Asteriods3D since the file size is pretty small. This should be fixed as people with slower connections (like myself.) don't want to wait to download something all over again if they attempted to install a game via launcher. It's really a slap in the face.

After waiting for the game to download through the workshop, when the launcher goes to "install it, I get the error message: "Failed to download Workshop item". I tried it with One More Day and Asteriods3D. Does it have to something to do with the last update? Note: If you were to find Asteriods3D's data.zip under the userdata folder and use the files from Josh's Super Crazy Marble Ball game that he posted a while back, Asteriods3D will work. Can't say the same for One More Day.

Hi, I've been reading and posting here and there on the forums for quite some time now, and being that my current project is taking shape, I think it's time that I introduce myself, and in the next post, I'll share some goals of my project. Quick Bio: As a Kid, I've had an interest in game development with my hundreds of hours I put into RPGMaker 2000/XP. At that time, I was mostly inspired by The Legend of Zelda series and other top down games that could be made in the program. When I was a young teen, I was not really into PC games. I stuck to my old Nintendo consoles while my brother would play Counter-Strike: Source on a daily basis. I remember him once showing me a custom map he made for CSS that be based off our local 7-Eleven store. He was showing me how he made the textures, and a bunch of other simple things. I can't recall if I was blown away, or wanted him to stop talking so I could do my thing to be honest. After a while, my interest in game development started to fade, and I got more into graphic design for websites and such. But then game called Portal. I was not into first person shooters, but I did like Puzzle games, and this game was one of a kind when it released. My brother got The Orange Box package and I played the living hell out of Portal. The game was so interesting to me and there came a point where I would turn on cheats, take the metal rectangles, move them into position, and save the game. Then a "custom puzzle" would be loaded like loading a saved state. And it begins!: To make a long story short, I eventually got The Orange Box for the PC, got a budget build, and made a lot of maps that never got released. Portal 1's gameplay elements where just a collection of base engine entities that worked together. I spent months on end learning how to make breakable glass, the indicator strips, buttons, doors, you name it! After I felt like I had enough knowledge of map making, and the I/O system, I decided to work on my first mappack called Blue Portals. The project was on and off. I was working on another project at the time, so these maps were totally remade from the ground up with a new art design. Through out the years and other side projects, Blue Portals was released on November 29th, 2010. The mod got mix reviews, and looking back on the project, I can say that it's not for everyone. But I can say that it does have a cult following. With the release of Portal 2, of course I was excited to work on custom maps. I first started to to work on a Blue Portals 2 to fix the flaws of the original, and to add other cool elements. But due to the different FileSystem structure of that branch of Source, and my lack of knowledge of it at the time, I canned it. It was a good thing too, because DLC1 made the unused Adhesion Gel weird which BP2 used. I've made some small mappacks such as A Little Higher, Tornate, and Feather Away. I also worked on most of the test chambers for Alive & Kicking while I was making new game concepts still within the Source Engine. After a while, Portal started to get boring, and the second DLC for Portal 2 (PTI) made me lose interest in making Portal puzzles because now anyone could do it, and it killed the art for me. I started a project in the Source Engine called Punt and to sum it up, it was me trying to find what I want as my own puzzle game. After a while, I got the gist that the main core concept of the Puntgun was not fun. That, and the code base was a mess due to the Puntgun being a mod of the gravitygun, and poor tracer code. Also, Valve released a new SDK base to replace the one from 2007, and I really wanted my mod to be less like Portal gameplay wise. In the next entry, I'll talk more about my project, the goals and why I decided to port it to LE3. In the meantime, you can checkout my Youtube channel to see what I've done throughout the years. (I hope to put Leadwerks related content on it soon!) https://www.youtube.com/user/reepblue And here is my blogger which as more of my writings and thoughts: http://reepblue.blogspot.com/ Thank you for reading/watching. I hope you are willing to hear more!

Off the top of my head: - Leadwerks Game Player is now called Leadwerks Game Launcher. - There will be something "special" in June. Not only the 10,000 players playing LE3 Games with the launcher, but something else... (Josh is keeping a secret.) - The Workshop will soon support items that can be monetized. - If the game launcher does well, you'll (maybe) be able to publish, and monetize your games through the launcher.

In progress of porting my Source mod to LE3.

Ahh, interesting. I'll bookmark that for later. I decided to make a shader that swaps the basetexture depending on it's alpha. This methoid cuts the need of multiple materials, and changing colors is easier the loading materials.

Hi, I've only came across one topic relating to this, but it was for LE2. I have a gameplay mechanic in when an event happens, the entity would change it's skin via lua script to change it's "glow light" color. however, when multiple instances of this object are in the same scene, one box changes the material for all instances that have not been activated. Is there a way to have it that only the activated entity's material changes? I can do something else instead, but I'll need to know how to do this down the road. Thanks.

With the updated material editor in the beta, if you use the slider under textures, You'll get a white par that comes in at the same rate as the slider.. Clicking on the main viewport will make the white bar go away.

Ok, thank you for clearing this up.

Hey guys, I'm currently thinking about porting my Source project over to Leadwerks, so I started to port assets over and make test scenes and scripts to see if the gameplay concept would work. I started off making a test scene and I noticed that when I put a spotlight in, I got this gross effect on my floors and ceilings. I tried setting the light quaIity to high, although it's less apperent, the spotlight line effect is still there. I can also hide the effect by toning the brightness, but I think that it can be a design barrier down the road. If you set the spotlight's "Cast Shadows" to none, the effect vanishes, along with my shadows. Is there a better trick to avoid this issue, or is this a render bug. If not, then why is this happening? I'm running on a GTX 750ti if that helps, and can supply more information/files if needed. I was not sure if this is a bug in the engine, or it's just something you have to watch out for like Face Clipping. Thanks.

Yeah, this would be nice to see. Definitely the idea of a simple GetCurrentMonitorResolution function as it will make fullscreen mode properly set, and it will always look right with no need for config files. It would also be really great to have for lua games as well.

A lot of things in the editor need keyboard shortcuts imo.

Really nice. I know the Command Reference right there in the editor (And not directing to the Leadwerks site) will be helpful to new and current users. I do hope you guys have a system to keep those Tutorials and Commands up to date with each update. I hope the Carving feature will not be like Hammer's and will actually be helpful than ignored. Is the Vertex manipulation feature going to get shipped with it, or is it coming a tad later after the Carve feature? It's something that I'm personally looking forward to the most. Keep up the great work, Every update to LE makes it better and more fun and interesting to use!

I don't mind the basic GUI colors as I've spent years staring at Hammer's UI for over 6 years which kept it's 90's feel unless you applied a manifest. A "Dark Skin" would be nice, but I think something like allowing users to customize their workflow layout, Toolbar adjustments,and hotkeys to increase workflow is far more important then a nice coat of paint.

I'm not sure if this was reported or not, but I noticed that there is a black line on the Horizon, and other skybox + water screenshots don't have it. Does this in the editor and in-game. Is this a rendering issue, or is it something can be fixed with changing the settings? Sorry to bother you if this was mentioned, but I did a quick search before I posted. Intel i5 Quadcore Processor @ 2.67 GHz 16GM of RAM (DDR3) EVGA Geforce GTX 750 (FTW) graphics card with the latest Nivida Drivers (347.25). Windows 8.1

Thanks, I got it working. It took me a bit to figure out how to call the C++ functions, but in the end it all worked out.

I did some poking around, it's the use of tolua_luacommands_open(lua_State* tolua_S) under "/* Open function */" ls what kills it. The function can just return 0, and it will still crash. So I assume this is an issue with the library?

Hi, Over the past few weeks, I've been looking into how to link objects to classes created in C++. Since I prefer to code in C++ but still value the flexibility of Lua, the goal of mine is to simply link a Object whether be a pivot, CSG, or a model to a C++ Class while having all the advantages of the Flowgraph communication, and such. When I came across ToLua++ (This File), I thought this would fix my problem. The plan was to link an object to a class by doing something like this in the Start function: self = self.class:new() However, if the lua-gluecode.cpp is included in the project at all without any calls from the Interpreter, the game will just downright crash if any object has a lua script attached to it, even the ones included in the SDK. I thought it was lua-gluecode.cpp calling my class wrong, but if it's NULL, it still does the same thing. luacommands.pkg: class BaseEntity; lua-gluecode.cpp: /* ** Lua binding: luacommands ** Generated automatically by tolua++-1.0.92 on 01/15/15 17:09:26. */ #ifndef __cplusplus #include "stdlib.h" #endif #include "string.h" #include "tolua++.h" /* Exported function */ TOLUA_API int tolua_luacommands_open (lua_State* tolua_S); /* function to register type */ static void tolua_reg_types (lua_State* tolua_S) { tolua_usertype(tolua_S,"BaseEntity"); } /* Open function */ TOLUA_API int tolua_luacommands_open (lua_State* tolua_S) { tolua_open(tolua_S); tolua_reg_types(tolua_S); tolua_module(tolua_S,NULL,0); tolua_beginmodule(tolua_S,NULL); tolua_cclass(tolua_S,"BaseEntity","BaseEntity","",NULL); tolua_beginmodule(tolua_S,"BaseEntity"); tolua_endmodule(tolua_S); tolua_endmodule(tolua_S); return 1; } #if defined(LUA_VERSION_NUM) && LUA_VERSION_NUM >= 501 TOLUA_API int luaopen_luacommands (lua_State* tolua_S) { return tolua_luacommands_open(tolua_S); }; #endif App.cpp:: #include "App.h" using namespace Leadwerks; App::App() : window(NULL), context(NULL), world(NULL), camera(NULL) {} App::~App() { delete world; delete window; } Vec3 camerarotation; bool freelookmode=true; bool App::Start() { //Initialize Steamworks (optional) if (!Steamworks::Initialize()) { System::Print("Error: Failed to initialize Steam."); return false; } // Call ToLua++ if (Interpreter::L == NULL) Interpreter::Reset(); tolua_luacommands_open(Interpreter::L); //Create a window if (System::GetProperty("fullscreen") == "1") { window = Window::Create("Test v0.0", 0, 0, 1024, 768, Window::FullScreen); } else { window = Window::Create("Test v0.0", 0, 0, 1024, 768, Window::Titlebar); } //Create a context context = Context::Create(window); //Create a world world = World::Create(); //Create a camera camera = Camera::Create(); camera->Move(0,2,-5); //Hide the mouse cursor window->HideMouse(); std::string mapname = System::GetProperty("map","Maps/start.map"); Map::Load(mapname); //Move the mouse to the center of the screen window->SetMousePosition(context->GetWidth()/2,context->GetHeight()/2); return true; } bool App::Loop() { //Close the window to end the program if (window->Closed()) return false; //Press escape to end freelook mode if (window->KeyHit(Key::Escape)) { if (!freelookmode) return false; freelookmode=false; window->ShowMouse(); } if (freelookmode) { //Keyboard movement float strafe = (window->KeyDown(Key:) - window->KeyDown(Key::A))*Time::GetSpeed() * 0.05; float move = (window->KeyDown(Key::W) - window->KeyDown(Key::S))*Time::GetSpeed() * 0.05; camera->Move(strafe,0,move); //Get the mouse movement float sx = context->GetWidth()/2; float sy = context->GetHeight()/2; Vec3 mouseposition = window->GetMousePosition(); float dx = mouseposition.x - sx; float dy = mouseposition.y - sy; //Adjust and set the camera rotation camerarotation.x += dy / 10.0; camerarotation.y += dx / 10.0; camera->SetRotation(camerarotation); //Move the mouse to the center of the screen window->SetMousePosition(sx,sy); } Time::Update(); world->Update(); world->Render(); context->Sync(); return true; } If you want my BaseEntity.cpp/.h stuff, I can send it over, but it does absolutely nothing but print something on spawn. And as I said before, the luacommands.pkg can be totally empty and not be calling anything and it will still crash. If anyone could help, or recommend me better ways of doing this, I'll appreciate it. Thanks!

Again, I already know you can create your own saving and loading data system. But it would be better if this was built in. Please excuse me being that the only other Engine I really know is Source. Just quickly explanation, you define those bools, ints, whatever under a table and those values are then used to keep track of them. When the game saves, all the values under that table are saved onto a .sav file along with other entities were also saved. I would think it would be nice if Leadwerks had a similar, or better way of doing this. But again, I know some people prefer to just write their own code and have things saved their own way in the end. Dunno, was just a quick suggestion.

Editor: - Being able to move the UI elements such as the Asset Browser, and buttons would be nice. The Leadwerks editor is the only software I use daily that does not support this. - Key Shortcuts. Seriously, it will increase the workflow by a lot Leadwerks had more shortcuts, - Allowing people to edit their controls. - More example content! Maybe the uncompiled model file of the Crawler, the pistol viewmodel would be nice. Engine: - Both C++ and Lua games should have a base menu script, or at least one in the MyGame sample game. - Saving and loading system. Yes, there are tutorials and scripts around that do this but it would be nice if this was apart of the SDK. (Again, the MyGame sample) I only been using Leadwerks for a month or so, and these main things plus some of what others suggested are my nitpicks so far.