marchingcubes

Model viewer/editor not working is a problem - not really critical once you have your pipeline sorted, but a bit a pain when you haven't, and a very obviously broken piece of the editor suite.

This seems to have resolved itself - We had a power cut so I had to restart my workstation, and after thart launching Steam showed a new update - after that was installed, and project updated everything seems to be working OK now.. I have to say I the updating mechanism could use some work - mostly just information on exactly what is being updated, and ideally some kind of reference for what versions of all components I 'should' have.. This may be written into some log files or other, but I kind of feel like I am left guessing about a lot of these issues, and end up filing a bunch of these bug reports which aren't reproducible or just go away 'magically' and ultimately just waste your time.. I am pretty new to Leadwerks so this may be common knowledge for some. If it was clear I had an 'update sync' problem and just needed to wait for Steam to get its act together, it would be less hassle for everyone. I understand if there are other more pressing priorities, but I do see a lot of traffic on this forum relating to update-induced problems, and just providing the user more visibility on exactly what is happening/happened in previous updates (possibly just a sticky tutorial covering the structure of Leadwerks, what is typically changed during updates, and how to read the logs/verify you have the latest stuff) would help a lot.

sewers looking good

And another tip - should you wish to 'expand' your terrain, e.g. create a small area and then embed that in the center of a large area, so your level extends further, you can resize the terrain 'canvas' e.g. to place a 256x256 terrain heightfield into the middle of a 512x512 area: convert /path/to/map.exr -interlace none -depth 16 -endian LSB -gravity center -extent 512x512 gray:/path/to/leadwerks.raw

In case anyone wants to edit their terrain outside of Leadwerks, I found the ImageMagick tools do a pretty good job of converting it. In my case I want to convert my 256x256 Leadwerks terrain to something I can work with in Blender. Note, if your terrain is a different size, you will need to specify that in the following commands. To convert the leadwerks .raw file I output using the 'Export' function under the Terrain tab (I did not try .r16, not sure if thats different) to .exr format, I used the following command: convert -interlace none -size 256x256 -depth 16 -endian lsb gray:/path/to/leadwerks.raw /path/to/map.exr You can then edit the exr file in another app, and when you want to get it back into leadwerks you can run: convert /path/to/map.exr -depth 16 -endian lsb gray:path/to/leadwerks.raw You can reimport it using the 'Import' button in the terrain tab. To view the raw image file, you can use the 'display' command from ImageMagick. display -size 256x256 -depth 16 -endian lsb gray:/path/to/leadwerks.raw

Hmmm, thats odd you can't replicate this. Notably, I also get a message box pop up when exiting the script editor after starting a map in the editor. It says 'An external process is still running, do you want to terminate it', even though the game executable has been quit and there is no window. Seems it is just failing to attach stdout or keep track of the launched process for some reason.. weird.

Also, when I publish a game that works fine in the editor and fine from the executable in the project folder, I get: Error: Failed to load texture "Materials/Effects/Water/water1_0.tex" <62 similar .tex file errors omitted> Error: Failed to load texture "Materials/Effects/Water/water1_63.tex" and Error: Failed to load material "Materials/Common/NavMesh.mat" This breaks the water quite badly. I note these items are not prefixed with the absolute path to the resource - as all the other loaded resources are.

With the latest updates, I notice there is no longer any output after: Executing "\path\to\my\leadwerks\projects\projectname\executable"... in the output tab of the script editor when clicking the 'play' icon to run the game (I also note the slashes in the above path are incorrect for the platform), there is no output during scene setup or from System:Print() in my scripts When the executable is launched manually from the terminal, text output e.g. from System:Print() works fine. I also notice clicking the 'Debug' icon seems to run something but no gui window is instantiated, and similarly, there is no output in the 'Output' tab. Ubuntu 14.04, NVidia here.

I think you should definitely take it in a 'non standard' direction - ignoring convention and giving your characters personality beyond 'the bigger the claws and teeth the more evil he/she is' is what will make your games story interesting and cool

Here's some pinecones in the scene.. looking pretty cool, if i do say so myself. I think i need to make them explode into fragments on contact with the ground/beaver though, with appropriate sound/camera shake http://marchingcubes.com/beaver10.mp4

Some progress on beaver ballistics - Now the crows can throw things at the beaver (currently spheres, soon to be pinecones) http://marchingcubes.com/beaver9.mp4

Haven't spent too much time over the last few days as real life intervened.. started on the very early code behind the crows throwing items.. currently they just lay spheres but it looks kinda cool in-game so i thought i'd post it. http://marchingcubes.com/beaver8.mp4

Fixed 'crash on load map with water' for me. Thanks!

I still get a crash when Leadwerks starts with a map that has water in it - I am currently working around this by turning off 'load last map' in Leadwerks.cfg and loading it from the recent files list. I can replicate this by starting with an entirely blank scene, check 'water' on in the Root node, save as a map, quit leadwerks and restart - immediate segfault. Starting leadwerks with a blank scene, and then loading the level works fine. This is Ubuntu 14.04, w/Nvidia. strace/gdb don't show anything I can see that might pinpoint the issue, unfortunately

I'm not sure about doing this game for steam greenlight.. but anything is possible.. after I get it to 'playable'. I took a look at those waterfalls, that does indeed look like an animated texture.. a multilayered version with leadwerks particles for 'splashback' would probably look ok.. i might have a play and see whats possible. In order to get this water thing really happening, I have put in a basic underwater posteffect (really need a fog or something, but i tried the fog from shadmar's posteffects pack and it really needs a split so only fragments with a world coord under the water plane are heavily attenuated.. I will work on getting that done but it looks pretty usable as-is. heres another video: http://marchingcubes.com/beaver7.mp4

Yeah you can see the fish swimming under the surface - one of the things i want to tweak is the amount of reflections - more controls for the reflectivity would be nice as the reflections are a bit overpowering at the moment. I tried messing with some of the variables in the shader code, which has improved things already .. I'm not averse to a bit of glsl hacking (though its not really what i prefer to spend time on). I think the single-plane water will work fine for the purposes of my demo (I had thought I would put in waterfalls and things, but I don't think that is a *must have* and water dynamics/foam etc. is out of scope) - so now the road to playable demo has two major things - getting my birds animated, with their 'hurl missiles at the player' implemented, and a thorough do-over of the terrain and prop placement to support my 'level is segmented into 3 areas, each inaccessible from the others except by completing the dams' gameplay concept. Theres a couple of minor things like placing invisible barriers that are placed/removed on dam completion, preventing the beaver from catching fish, and preventing the otter from lumberjacking trees, and putting in an underwater fog/wobble effect when the camera is below the water plane in the water zone but thats all pretty easy. At that point, it will be more or less 'playable', and i'll put it up and see what people think. I may have to reassess how many polygons are actually workable in the scene (I work with a gtx770 and an i7 which is on the hefty end of the scale) Assuming people tell me its fun to play, works good on a reasonable range of systems and looks ok, then I will proceed to give the whole thing a cosmetic improvement, - redoing the menu screens, the models, animations and billboarded message elements as well as the sounds to fit in with a look and feel for the characters and environment that has actually been purposefully designed - I'm more of a generalist so I can model/animate to match artwork, and pull everything together and make it work but I don't have the focus on the art side of things to make it look as good as I know it could without help - I think a more abstract and cartoony look would suit the the game better, and having animations that are much more playful and exaggerated would be cool too - everyone loves a dancing beaver. With the 'working' game and the set of 'template' models and animations I have done for all the assets I think it should be possible to make the whole thing pop a bit more without using too much artist time. Of course I have to find an artist who is interested and has the style I think will work, but I have a couple of people in mind. After that, I'm probably going to call it done, use it as a portfolio piece and move on to developing my next project.

First screenshot with the new leadwerks water! Looking pretty good, though of course I would like to tweak a few things to make it perfect for the scene. Can't complain though, this was the missing element I had been waiting for!

Crashes for me.. the latest beta downloaded, and I updated my project and received a message about 144 files being updated.. I turned on water, in the scene tab, and immediate segmentation fault. I restarted, tried setting a level > 0.0 to see if somehow that was an issue, and could see the water in the editor viewport, but when i run the game, no water is displayed. When i saved the scene with water on, and restarted Leadwerks, immediate segfault. So yeah, not working so well for me either at the moment.... More Info: When I run my standalone application binary in the Project Folder, I do see water and everything seems to work OK (which is cool), however my scene now immediately crashes the Leadwerks editor on load, and launching the game from the editor did not show the water (before the crash-on-load made it impossible to get that far) and More Info: When i started with a blank scene (by commenting out the current project line in Leadwerks.cfg), and created a new scene with just the water, a box and a camera, everything worked. When i subsequently loaded my main map (which crashed before) it worked. When i quit Leadwerks and restarted, it crashed. So something is not being initialised correctly when a map that contains water is loaded, but it is correctly initialised when an empty map is loaded and water is added. Running the executable directly works fine. Also, water screenshot in the Showcase section - it is looking pretty damn good ! Nice work Josh.

EDITED to remove detailed gameplay spoilers. Thanks for the feedback everyone - I hadn't considered a narrated storyline.. in fact the scope of this project is still limited to a demo rather than a full game. I would like to have some cool 'announcements' when the 'billboards' pop up e.g. the 'wham, bam, dam' stuff and when he lumberjacks a tree etc. but a long-format narration would be pretty cool.. i'll think on that. My current plan is that there will basically be three levels: Level 1 is just 'discovery' where the player needs to run around, and figure out how to build the first dam which will unlock: Level 2, where the player needs to get past the crows to get to the trees they need to build the next dam - When dam 2 is built, the player unlocks 'otter mode' and enters: Level 3, the lake, where they will almost certainly wake the bear who will probably kill the player, teaching a valuable lesson - 'don't mess with the bear' the player will then need to figure out how to buy time for beaver to get to the trees it needs, and build the third dam.. which leads to ... THE END! BEAVER WINS! From there, I'm not sure.. i want to keep the scope limited because my resources are limited, and a short fun demo is better than a long unfinished game. plus I have a concept i'm kicking round in my head for a 'real' game that should be pretty cool.

I have been playing around adding trees, vegetation and rocks to break up the terrain and to get some more interesting shadows in the scene. In some parts of this movie you can see some weird artifacting in the shadows, presumably because of the distances involved, but i'm really liking how leadwerks renders this stuff in general. Please ignore the bird, the animation is all messed up right now. http://marchingcubes.com/beaver6.mp4

Is there any timeframe on when we might be able to test it out?

yes, you can see them in the 'otter demo' in the showcase, though the ones I have been making most recently are only in the last screenhshot, not the videos

Hi, While attempting to do some better trees, I found if i tried to use the 'double-sided' flag on my materials, I would get flickering artifacts on my leaves when the camera moves.. currently I duplicate my 'leaf' polygons and flip normals, which makes the rendering stable , but obviously at the expense of roughly doubling the polygon count for each tree. This is not a showstopper for me at all, but would be quite nice for making lighter-weight vegetation etc. if double-sided polygons behaved correctly.

Started working on some better trees, which are coming along slowly.. Need to reach a useful compromise between polygon count and good looking leaves/shadows.. Also did a basic model for my crows (they will throw pinecones and/or swoop down and attack the beaver unless pacified somehow (not sure on exact mechanism, possibly they need a special type of tree branch for their nest you can find and chew down in a certain place in the forest. No textures or animation yet, so they look a bit **** just sitting there with wings extended, but thought I would post something..

Hmmm, my project would ideally use water at multiple levels e.g. rivers with waterfalls etc. is there any particular reason it needs to be one infinite plane?