JohnBobSmith
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Posts posted by JohnBobSmith
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I don't plan on making the next Triple-A game with this engine. This is more a learning experience. Let me clear up a few things based on your post...
-By "game engine" I mean something like Ogre3D or, say Source (one of my faveorite engines). Think of it as like a car, and the car engine. The "game engine" in my case will do things like rendering, collision detection, input, sound, scripting, etc.
-I do agree that using an already existing physics engine would be good. I'm not trying to re-invent the wheel here, but rather learn how stuff is done under the hood.
-For the IDE, I guess it wouldnt matter that much, lol. So Code::Blocks it is.
-Thanks for mention of Ogre3D, will look at that!
-WIll probably use OpenGL 4. I dont see any reason to not use the latest version of it. No, I don't want bleeding edge. But theres no point in using something oudated.
-All right, the 300,000 lines of code was a very, very rough and broad estimate. The point being is that I know this project will be larger than anything I've done in the past.
-How do I have the wrong idea to approach it? Can you elaborate more?
Thanks for the reply!
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Hello all. So like, I've tried Leadwerks. And I find it... interesting. My biggest setbacks is lack of good, high quality learning material (and I have searched hard for it). Maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places, I'm not sure. Another setback, for me at least, is that it crashes constantly on my system. And because I'm using Linux Mint, I cant report bugs.
So my solution is this: Write my own game engine. I'm by no means an expert at software development, nor have I ever gone to school to learn software development. I'm an enthusiast/hobbyist programmer. I would like to adventure into game design and such.
The requirements for this engine are as follows:
-Must be 3D
-Must use OpenGL
-Must be easy to use with LOTS of documentation
-Must be relatively powerful for someone of my experience level.
-Single player for now.
-Linux only for now (I have no Windows machines available to test on).
I've used SDL, and find it fairly straight forward. OpenGL is a step up from SDL, but I doubt it will be that hard to learn.
Now, my questions are as follows:
-How hard would writing a game engine be? I'm expecting to have to do a LOT of work. I doubt it will be less than 300,000 lines of code. Not to mention all the dev tools I'd have to write as well.
-What sorts of libraries exist to make the proccess easier?
-Are there any good open source engines for Linux that I could use as a base?
-How hard would physics be to implement? I want a moderate degree of physics. Like rag dolls, somewhat realistic object destruction and movement, stuff along those lines. No vehicles for now.
-What sorts of file formats are easy to support and use? I'm thinking I would like to use something that blender can natively export, and targa or dds for image textures.
-What sort of an environment should I be in? By environment I mean things like the OS, IDE, and other relevant things along those lines. For now I'm using Linux Mint and Code::Blocks.
-What sorts of hardware would I need? I may be able to upgrade over christmas. For now I'm on a laptop with an AMD APU and Radeon HD 7420G.
-What version of OpenGL would be good to use? I'm thinking OpenGL 4. Not sure if an older version would be better.
I plan on spending the entire week gathering as much info as I can about the process of writing game engines. I am posting this in hopes that some experienced users can direct me in the right direction.
All the best,
JohnBobSmith
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Okay, sounds good. I have it working now, so topic solved.
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Hello everyone. Thanks for all the help getting going thus far.
I have a dream, that I want to turn into reality. The dream is that I want a career in game development. While I'm still in senior high school now, I am taking a digital media class, and have been doing artwork for more than a year now.
That said, my goal for right now is to make a game for the Linux OS using Leadwerks. To turn this goal into reality, I would like to join a team. I have good social skills, can work well with others, and I have a decent ammount of technical experience.
My technical experience is outlined below in a timeline of events in chronological order:
-Started programming in Python and C++. This is on-going, and I plan to learn LUA as it is much less complicated than C++. I have been programming for more than a year now, off and on.
-Started using Gimp image editor on Windows. I use Gimp as my image editor to date, and I have about a year-ish experience using Gimp.
-Experience using Autodesk Softimage XSI to make models on WIndows OS (before I converted to Linux) This lasted for about a year too.
-Started using Audacity and working with sounds. This is on-going, and I have been using Audacity for about 4-5 months now, off and on.
-Started using Blender as I began to have a distaste in expensive proprietary programs. While I used the student version of XSI which is legally free, I still didnt like it that much.
-Converted to Linux
-Have been using Blender now consistently for about a month or so, getting into the groove of how Blender does things. I feel like I can use Blender rather well, and I'm getting better every day.
All in all, my preffered area of help if I were to join a team right now would be artwork, in the form of textures or models.
Note that I havent listed any experience in level design. Not only am I really awful at creating game levels (in other engines mostly), its not my area of interest at this time.
Other than that, my only OS right now is Linux. I hope that that is not going to cause problems. Models and textures are cross platform (or at least should be cross platform...) anyways, so thats no big deal.
Wanting to join a team has also been a goal of mine. If you guys are interested, let me know. Feel free to give me a trial task to do if needed.
I look forward to hopefully being part of a team and making games for the Linux OS!
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For now, just a simple, scif-fi crate. I suck at UV mapping royally... Meaning there are probably way to many seams on this model. Its still a WIP, but otherwise I like the hexagonal texture.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jg6szwdjvmtx7iv/future_crate.png?dl=0
Texture taken from cgtextures.com, modified by me.
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Okay, so I'm encountering a slightly different problem now. I can export my model just fine, but when I load it in leadwerks it has no texture. To fix this, I go to the exported material, give it a diffuse shader and my .tex texture, and then save the material and save the model in leadwerks and then it shows up correctly. Any ideas as to why the material, upon export, doesnt have a shader or the image already present? Its a bit of an anoyance, but I was able to correct it myself.
Now to not suck so much at UV mapping...
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Thats odd, as the blender exporter for Leadwerks has ".mdl, .tex" in its name. Let me try importing the texture file, and post back if it works. Still perplexed about the missing render menu though...
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Hello again. I am trying to export my model, but it needs a .tex file. I read online that I need to bake a texture for it to work, but my bake menu is non existent, and heres a pic:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5d7qxqroxm26csv/blender_render_menu_missing.png?dl=0
So my questions are:
1) Why is there no bake menu? Every tutorial on the web has this bake menu.
2) How to create .tex files from blender?
I'm using blender 2.69 with cycles render, will upgrade soon if needed.
All help appreciated!
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Hm, alright. Now to figure out why I can run through a stock barrel (it appears to have no collision)... I will google that now.
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Thanks guys it works now. Though building a navmesh with some terrain takes FOREVER with default settings. Is this normal?
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Doh! How could I miss something that obvious. Oh well, I will look there now.
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Where can I find the command reference? Also, it seems strange that the default monster does not have this feature built in. Whats a navmesh and how do I make one?
Again, sorry for sounding stupid. I will google around and post back my answers here if I find any. Thanks for the help!
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Hello all. As I am experimenting with Leadwerks, I have come across a strange issue. My monster runs on the spot, and wont chase the player. I am using all the default scripts and assets. Heres what I have done:
-Drag the player prefab into the 3D viewport
-Drag the monster prefab into the 3D viewport
-Drag the player prefab from the scene view to the target slot of the monster's monsterAI.lua script.
-Run the game
-Monster runs on spot and doesnt attack the player unless I am really close and even then I need to shoot the monster to initiate the attack...
I'm probably missing something obvious, but this is strange nevertheless.
The desired result is that the monster(s) will find and run towards the player and attack the player.
All help appreciated!
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re: question 1:
I can upgrade to blender 2.70. Then I will try using the exporter and go from there
re: question 2:
Thats a shame really. Why can't one resize the GUI elements in Linux inside the editor? Is there a good reason for this? Its not a huge deal, but a setback nevertheless.
Other than not being able to resize the editor elements, I'm looking forward to making games in Leadwerks!
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Hello! I am new to Leadwerks, but not new to the world of enthusiast game development. Leadwerks has caught my attention, and I have purchased the indie edition and hope to start developing games soon! That said, I have some questions I would like help with.
1) Whats the best way to export from Blender 2.69 to Leadwerks? Using OBJ to GMF, or using FBX? I will eventually need animation (and possibly physics) data for some items, and OBJ can't do that as far as I know.
2) How can one resize GUI elements inside the Leadwerks editor? I can't seem to resize anything inside the editor.
3) How does one add arms and a weapon to a first person player controller? A tutorial would be nice, I will continue hunting for one myself too.
4) How does one add a player model that will be displayed ingame? Like, if I'm looking at an enemy, I need to be able to change that player model.
I'm running Linux Mint 17 (which is based off of Ubuntu 14.04) so I have no problems running the editor or any bugs at this time.
Sorry for the somewhat noob questions. All help is appreciated though!
All the best,
JohnBobSmith
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How hard would it be to write my own game engine in C++?
in Tech Talk
Posted
I would say I have a moderate ammount of experience with C++. I'm learning new things and techniques as I go.
I will probably build something thats fairly good in SDL before moving on to OpenGL. I need to learn more C++ I think, having read some OpenGL stuff. That said, I consider myself to be somewhere between beginner and intermediate. Not completely new, but by no means an expert.
For now, I want to get a taste of whats in store for the future, if that makes sense. This OpenGL game engine project is something I plan on doing over the course of a year or more, after I learn more SDL/C++ first.
As for tediousness... Yes, C++ is very tedious. But it's also what I'm most familliar with, what will perform the best, and what the industry uses. So I have nothing to lose and everything to gain by using C++.
All in all, I will continue my research and look up more C++ tutorials.