Brent Taylor
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Posts posted by Brent Taylor
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Most ideas for improvements for LE come from existing features and or tool sets found in "other engines" that LE currently does not have/support, but when using "other engines" as an example Mika turns into the caped crusading fanboy "Zanussi" and enters a spin cycle. Which is not productive when it consists of disingenuous obfuscation and suppository stats.
It's sad really and not at all helpful. He constantly derails potentially very positive discussions with his general attitude and most importantly his behavior.
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I have looked for examples how to do it in Unity, but nobody could provide one. The closest I found is that you have to do some sin/cos calculations on the entitymatrix to rotate a cube in Unity. Or even worse, using some up-vector, which makes no sense in advanced games since there is no such thing as "up":
transform.RotateAround (target.position, Vector3.up, degrees * Time.deltaTime)
It would have been a lot faster to just look at the documentation. A simple search for "Rotate" would have gotten you this result.
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/Transform.Rotate.html
Seriously, this is ridiculous. This doesn't have anything to do with Leadwerks at this point.
EDIT: Now trying to get back on topic...
Actually the Up vector makes a lot of sense, and is required for a lot of the math you'll use in just about any game. In terms of direction, it's not really talking about "up" in the sense of "towards the sky" so much as it's talking about the rotation of the "Y" axis of an object in it's local space (some engines use "Z" as up as well, but thats relatively rare). The world space itself has it's own "Up" vector as well, and this is true for any engine (Leadwerks included). While I agree it doesn't necessarily make a lot of conceptual sense in all games (say, a space sim for example, where there is no true "Up"), it does however make the mathematics a heck of a lot easier to work with.
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Even Blitz3D is better than Unity, and puki can confirm this.
In Blitz3D (and of course LE) you can say:
cube1=CreateCube() TurnEntity cube1,1,1,1
There's no way you can do this with Unity, and there is no setting up of anything else either in Blitz3D, you just start to write code and it works. You don't really need any fancy tools, but you need a fancy programming interface.
Lumooja, you're only proving your own ignorance. Thats not only possible to do in Unity, it's as trivial as the code you posted. It's also entirely irrelevant. I'm not trying to advertise Unity here, but promoting improvements to Leadwerks.
Lumooja, at this point it should be fairly obvious why no one believes anything you have to say. Yes, Unity can spawn a cube and rotate it with code. In fact one of it's features is procedural content. Yes, Cryengine has realtime shadows. It just doesn't run on XP or Linux, which while apparently irrelevant to you, it's quite relevant to the rest of the world.
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There's nothing good about Unity. Roland just told me few days age when he imported his Celly girl model into Leadwerks that it looked 10 times better than in Unity. So Leadwerks Engine's strength is the realtime rendering quality including realtime shadows, no other engine on the planet can do that. Not even CryEngine, since it uses DX10 which no Windows XP and Linux can run.
I tried also the Unity Editor once, at it was horrible. You can't even move models around, but you have some wierd ball cursor which refuses to do anything you tell it to do. Sure the Leadwerks Editor has also some lacks, like moving along their own axis, or scaling of models, but that is Newton's fault.
No doubt Leadwerks has great rendering facilities. I wasn't implying that Leadwerks has only one strength. Please make a point of taking what I say in context.
As for your issues with the Unity editor, maybe you had a bug. Maybe you were trying to run it via WINE. No idea. However seeing how Unity has over 50 million downloads, holds a significant share of the game engine market on iOS, Android and OS X, as well as the general indie market...it's clear they are doing something right. If you had a bug, post it on their bug tracker. I can assure you, it was an isolated case.
Claiming one of Josh's biggest competitors has no redeeming qualities is nothing more than a joke. You don't have to like Unity, thats fine (I'm not a big fan either). But pretending that there is nothing that Unity does right, and nothing for Josh to learn from to improve LE? That's just asinine.
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I don't know Rick. I agree, Leadwerks is not a game engine, but a framework geared towards multi-media applications (with an emphasis on games/simulations). However, thats also it's greatest strength IMHO. It's also precisely why Unity is so popular. Unity is NOT a game engine either. It's a framework, designed for the exact same market as Leadwerks. The difference is in the tool set. The Leadwerks editor is reasonable, but it's very very basic. Compare it to the Unity editor and you'll see precisely why Unity is as popular as it is. It provides some pretty basic behavior, but it's done with an emphasis of making it intuitive and RAPID.
All the unity editor does (stock, and in a basic sense) is:
- Move, scale and rotate nodes/objects. Keep in mind, the last I checked, scaling is broken in the Leadwerks editor.
- Allow you to attach scripts (written in an external, third party editor) to those nodes.
- Create terrains.
- It's also extendable to allow for developers to add and create their own tools. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
The Leadwerks editor does most of this...sort of. It's not extendable and there really isn't a way of attaching scripts to objects.
Right now, Leadwerks's biggest issue is it's content pipeline. While there are tools for converting models and other assets into a format Leadwerks can work with, they are not intuitive and it's fairly largely agreed that they are near useless. People rather favor using other, expensive third party tools JUST to get content into the engine/framework. Why is that even acceptable?
Secondly, the documentation for the Leadwerks engine is fairly abysmal. You have basic documentation that barely goes over functionality in the engine. Compare it to the documentation that is available (stock that is, not third party) that comes with Unity, UDK or even Torque 3D. The community has been creating examples, documentation and tutorials, however none of them are in the same league as what is available for other engines.
@Everyone but Josh. Keep in mind, I'm speaking of LE as it is currently. I'm aware that LE 3 is around the corner and fixes some of these things. But that's the future and is subject to change, not the state of LE as it is this very moment.
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Just to be clear. I'm not trying to bash on Leadwerks, but rather trying to give input so that in the end we have a better product. I like Leadwerks. I wouldn't have bought it if I didn't.
- Move, scale and rotate nodes/objects. Keep in mind, the last I checked, scaling is broken in the Leadwerks editor.
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I'm not trying to compare Leadwerks to Unity 3D or anything, but for the sake of making sure I understand you accurately, I think it's safe ground.
This sounds a LOT like the system Unity has in place for dealing with scripts. You can attach a script to any node (and multiple scripts to the same node), and the same scripts to multiple nodes of different types. At runtime it just fires off certain, predetermined methods/functions (Object.Update, Object.OnClick, etc.) in each attached script at the appropriate time. Is this what you're trying to accomplish? If so, you've got me grinning. -
And I'm out of things to complain about. That doesn't happen very often.
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That does look interesting Guy ... I'm taking a look as I've not decided what scripting language to implement yet in my Leadwerks based engine. Thanks for the recommendation.
I've used it for a few years and I can testify that it's quite nice to work with. It's considerably easier to bind C++ classes and functions to Squirrel counterparts when using sqbind. It also has a syntax perhaps a little more compatible with game engines (as they tend to be OOP in nature). Lua was never a particularly good fit for that, it was just extremely easy to embed.
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I have an issue with this. You say that w'll be able to sell code and such in the asset store. But you make a specific case of file formats in the agreement. According to that agreement, any executables, .dll or C++ files for example could be freely redistributed. Furthermore this also means that FBX and collada files could be freely redistributed.
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Good for you puki. You're right, I don't play games nearly as often as I used too. I spend far more time making them these days.
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I thought 850 sounded a bit excessive... That's almost as powerful as a microwave!
The main reason people need such a huge PSU is due to their graphics cards. For example, my computer actually required a 650W PSU due to having dual 8800GTX's in it along with everything else in the machine. I put a 750W PSU so that I would have room to upgrade in the future (keep in mind, it doesn't actually pull that unless it's required. My computer draws about 310 watts during normal usage. No idea what it's at when gaming, but I'd imagine it's significantly higher).
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The A15 will be a lot faster than current ARMs, but also with the current A9s, it means you can do with a standard PSU (maybe 850W) somekind of 128-CPU ARM PC. That would sure beat a single Quad Core Intel which also needs a 850W (including GPU, harddisks, etc...).
Assuming you actually have applications that can scale to that many processors (CGI rendering, some types of reverse engineering, high end numeric computations such as physics simulations (which would still be faster yet on a a modern GPU) or you've got some heavy virtualization usage). Chances are however, even if you do any of these things, you're going to find the system as a whole a lot slower than AMD and Intel's offerings. This is also assuming that you can even put 128 ARM chips in a box (you can't, not with the ARM15 architecture or any of ARM's current offerings).
Also, please re-read that article. The ARM15 is designed to be competitive with TODAY'S Intel Atom chips. These aren't slated for release until 2012. Intel is releasing a new atom chip at that time as well, which is not only supposed to be more powerful, it's supposedly using a fraction of the power consumption it's predecessors were using. I expect the ARM15 will still use less power than the Atom chips, but it will still be less powerful as a whole.
ARM chips are used not because they are powerful. They are used because they have more speed/power consumption in their power bracket (Intel's i7 or AMD's Opterons for example have far more power per watt, but the base power consumption of these chips makes them unsuitable to mobile devices).
And yet I can get a quad core AMD Phenom (125 watts is AMD's official figure for how much power it uses) with two GeForce 8500s (one of which can probably be removed), four physical hard disks, two optical drives (one's a reader only) with a 650 watt supply. And a plug-in plug socket power monitor records about 200 watts when just browsing the web, and 300 when playing a game. Does a quad core Intel really require so much more power than a quad core AMD - if the rest of the components are the same?
No, no they don't. In terms of power consumption, AMD and Intel are about on par for most competing chips.
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Look, I love ARM chips. However you're taking that article slightly out of context. Intel and AMD's low to mid range chips are significantly more powerful than ARM's offerings. ARM only beats them in their metric of Speed/Power consumption. That makes them perfect for mobile devices (I expect most netbooks and even some midrange laptops to start using ARM chips soon). In terms of raw power, both AMD and Intel have ARM beat, fairly badly.
Also, juuuuust to be clear, Windows 8 runs on ARM. Microsoft isn't going anywhere.
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That sounds good to me, except I would not want separate documentation via doxygen. If C# requires separate documentation beyond the C++ command syntax, then it should be entered into the same database and appear on the same pages. I suppose .NET would be fine for LE2, since it's Windows-only, but LE3 will require Mono or whatever it is that runs on OSX.
I'm not trying to drag my feet and get the community to add value to my product, but I have tons of other stuff to do that are a higher priority than official support for another language, so I haven't paid much attention to C#.
Actually mono is simply a different implementation of the .NET runtime and VM. With the exception of applications written using certain libraries, a .NET application will run on mono without so much as a recompile. It's also true in reverse. So it's a non issue. Think of it as Java in this case. At this point mono compiles and runs for Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS and Android.
As for separate documentation, thats fine. The syntax should be pretty much identical with a few slight syntactical differences.
I'll get started today.
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@Josh
What would your opinion be on me working with you to design a .NET wrapper that precisely mimics the C++ interface? I'd also be happy to write proper documentation for it (and have it automatically generated via doxygen). If all works out to your liking, we can work on getting proper (and maybe official) support for the language in LE3.
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Ahhhh. Continue using the FBX exporter. In this case I don't think it's an issue with any of the software involved. Now I haven't done any animation work with Leadwerks yet, but I believe all animation in Leadwerks is bone driven. You can't just keyframe an object moving around.
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Unfortunately the Blender exporters as a whole are fairly quirky. I've had fairly good success with FBX, but abysmal failure in regards to Blender collada importer/exporter. Perhapse you could tell us specifically what's wrong?
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5700 poly's for a game character is just fine. However for the amount of detail you actually have on your low poly mesh...you can reduce your poly usage by at least half and get the same results. In addition you don't actually HAVE any detail in the low poly. The nose for example is at best a bit of a bump. For the poly count you have, you could create a very well defined head model.
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I think you need to lower your poly count by a little over half.
You've got a good start, but you're working with waaaay too many poly's. Work on your topology.http://www.blendercookie.com/2009/03/02/bundle-complete-head-modeling-series/ Start here. You don't need to purchase anything. Just grab a couple of reference files off of google (or take a couple pictures of your own head) and follow along. You'll still need to reduce the polycount, but you'll have an idea what the topology needs to look like.
In addition, watch this: http://www.blendercookie.com/2010/01/28/topology-overview-the-head/
Have fun! Thats a pretty great site to learn from if you're using Blender. You should learn a lot.
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Thank you for answer.
I have R11.027 version of Cinema 4D.So i have to convert the joints into bones ,is that right?
Correct.
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Currently working on my own startups selling desktop software. I'm intending to move on to game development middleware and of course games.
$15k and I'll be at my goal. -
Which version of Cinema 4D? If you're using version 10, please make sure you upgrade to version 10.1 as version 10 shipped with a severely broken FBX exporter. 10.1 fixes a number of these issues, but not all of them. Please make sure you're using the older bone system rather than the joint system as the joint system is not saved properly via FBX.
If you're using 11, make sure to upate to 11.5 as that supports the newest FBX format (though again, still with the occasional issue. Stick with bones over joints if possible). Supposedly the FBX exporter works properly under version 12.
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Looks great man! Unfortunately I'm a little behind as well. That said, I should have a playable demo done by the end of the "competition".
Worst case it'll be a couple of days late. Thankfully the MAGIAM rules are closer to guidelines. -
Brent I don’t know how correct I am, only going from my experience and im no programmer at all. Out of the box neither physics are setup and you need to add either one to your project. I have only ever built the engine using physX but I believe the method is the same for Bullet.
Open up <Your Project>\buildFiles\config\project.conf and add
includeModule( 'bullet' );
or
includeModule( 'physx' );
then run generateProjects.bat, this adds the proper files and include directories etc
Set the environment variables etc for your chosen sdk and rebuild.
As for the problems its something to do with threading Tom from sickhead games made several post about it, this was about a year ago so not sure what the situation now is.
I agree with paul, i don't care what is used, i just went with physX as i have experience with it as an artiest.
Looks like you're mostly correct. I haven't attempted to compile with Bullet yet. I still can't find any post from Tom about bullet, but I'm sure thats partly due to the changeover on the garage games website. If no physics module is specified, it defaults to PhysX apparently (which is what has been happening in my projects). Glad to know Bullet has already been integrated. That reduces the amount of work I need to get this working on iOS.
Easy game creation
in Suggestion Box
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I get where you're coming from now. The problem with introducing such a structure is it's implementation. If it's not done JUST right, it's going to be very limiting. Unity's is pretty simple. Entities and Behaviors. It might be a decent way for Leadwerks to go.