Monkey Frog Studio
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Posts posted by Monkey Frog Studio
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You know, you can just drag the FBX file from anywhere (your desktop, out of Windows Explorer, etc.) and drop it anywhere right onto the Leadwerks' editor and Leadwerks will convert the file for you. I just open my Assets tab, drill down to Models, and create my own folder first. Then drag-n-drop a model right in there.
You can also drop FBX files into folders within your Leadwerks project (normally under Models) and Leadwerks will see that there are new FBX files and convert them for you automatically. There's no need to have the converter on your desktop or to have to drop files into the Leadwerks' Tools folder. You should probably leave things alone where Leadwerks is installed and only do things within your project folder, I would think.
1 hour ago, Yue said:It makes me sad, when someone doesn't tell me what's going on and I have to learn by force.
How were we to even know your problem so we could tell you what to do? You asked us to see if the model converts in Leadwerks beta. We tested it and it did. How could we possibly know what the issue was from that?
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Hello. Sometimes when I import a model and materials and an unwanted shader is added to the material (shadow.shader). There is no obvious way to delete this unintentional shader other than selecting the entire text, right-clicking, and hitting delete. Having a delete button with the shaders, like with the textures, would be useful in cases like this.
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The model opens fine on my end, too. No issues.
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Awesome. I suspected as much (and should have tested before asking, actually). Thanks!
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Hello. Is there a way to update models already used in-game? For example, let's say I created a set of basic, simple models to stand-in for their final versions and placed them throughout the level. Could I later easily replace them with their final versions?
As an example -
Let's say I have created a simple tall box model to represent a column and have placed 12 of them in my level for testing purposes. After testing, I determine I like them and so I model a nice, detailed model of the column. Is there a way to swap out the one main model so that all 12 are instantly updated in the level? Or do I have to replace all 12 manually?
I hope I am making sense. If not, ask and I will try to clarify.
Thanks.
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Sorry, man. I was trying to help. I don't get the angst, actually. I was just trying to let you know that there will be ways to get your models into whatever format you need for Leadwerks. In any case, it's all good ...
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2 minutes ago, macklebee said:
I just wasn't looking forward to having a decades worth of a models and textures asset catalog basically become useless in LE unless I convert it over to this gtfo format.
That shouldn't be a worry for you, thankfully. As I pointed out above, just about every modeling program out there supports it. A quick Google search shows that there are some apps for converting to glTF (i.e. import your FBX into the app, spit out glTF). So, even if glTF were to become the only format that Leadwerks were to use (and Josh as stated this won't be the case), then there would be ways to convert your models over.
Best of all, glTF is modern, so it supports PBR materials and the like ... straight from your modeling/texturing app (MODO, Substance Painter, etc.). So, once we get Turbo, we can drop our fully PBR models right into it via glTF. glTF should ultimately make things easier on us 3D content creators. And from what I've been hearing from Josh, it should make life easier for him, too.
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glTF is on v2.0. So, while it's not exactly new, v2.0 is taking off like wildfire. Unreal and Unity now support glTF import (though I think Unreal's support is experimental at this point, though they are planning full implementation soon). MODO, a 3D modeler by Foundry, exports both glTF and glB (the version of glTF for posting live 3D content to Facebook and other places). Substance Painter exports glTF natively. Ultimate Unwrap 3D just added glTF to their formats in their last release. I believe that 3D Coat supports glTF export as well. There are glTF exporters for Blender (by Khronos, who makes glTF) and for Max, Maya, and just about everyone else via the BabylonJS plugin. What this means is that, even now, exporting from just about any modern 3D tool to glTF is possible.
glTF is doing what .dae (Collada) was not able to do ... become a true, universal 3D format exchange. It's powerful in that an entire scene (geometry, materials - including full PBR support, animations, and more) can be exported in one shot. Of course, you can just export a model, too, if that's all you need.
Best of all, it's free and open.
If you've not heard of glTF, then it's a great idea to become familiar with it.
So, yeah, I know a little about glTF. I've been using it for several months now on a project getting assets out of MODO (and now Blender) and into the Godot engine.
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glTF 2.0 is pretty darned robust. I love using it (where I can). FBX is fickle and there are a zillion versions of it. Often, when FBX fails, one of the first questions asked is, "Which version of FBX are you exporting to?" Ugh!
Hey! At least you're not forcing us to use .x like another engine I know about.
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Here are a few more items created for The Seventh World game!
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EDIT: I've added new images of new items below!
Hello! Below are some screen shots of a few items I created (modeled and textured) for The Seventh World. Everything was created in Blender (even painted the textures there). I hope you enjoy them because they were a lot of fun to make! I'm exited to see where SpiderPig takes The Seventh World!
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That's what I figured, so thanks for confirming this. So, that's what the API is for in the docs, to point out the LUA commands that are not native to LUA itself, but are only for Leadwerks. I suppose this means that, once I am more familiar with working in LUA that I could potentially adapt other (non-Leadwerks) scripts to work in Leadwerks, if I wanted to?
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Hello. I am (slowly, between projects) learning LUA scripting. Well, I've not done anything yet, but read a portion of the docs. I do have a question, though. So, please forgive me if it is ignorant.
When learning LUA scripting in Leadwerks, are there parts of scripting that ONLY work in Leadwerks? In other words, are there LUA keywords (not sure what they correct term is here) that are ONLY used in Leadwerks? And, thus, will the scripts I create ONLY be usable in Leadwerks and not in, say, another engine that also uses LUA scripting?
Again, sorry if this is a dumb question, but I was thinking about this.
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4 minutes ago, AggrorJorn said:
If you don't mind video tutorials, this entire list of videos should be a good start to getting to know all lua basics including some leadwerks specific lua scripting:
I don't mind videos at all! Thanks for the link!
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11 hours ago, AggrorJorn said:
The largest change was going to Leadwerks 3. We lost several core features: the powerful and ahead of its time real time deferred renderer was not ready at the launch of Leadwerks 3. For a year or so we had to bake our lights. Terrain and vegetation were also gone. It would take several years before it would return. Especially the initial announced price (I think something around 800 dollar scared a large part of the community away). I was very skeptical but I didn't have any large project in development so I just played around with the engine.
Wow. None of that is good. But depending on when this was (what year) game engines were fairly expensive. I remember 3D GameStudio was trying to sell it's Pro version for over a thousand dollars, I think. Wasn't Unity pretty expensive, too, back in the day?
11 hours ago, AggrorJorn said:Flowgraph: This is something I never understood. Flowgraph was there from the start of Leadwerks 3. Since then, nothing has happened to it? Why? The core mechanic is there and it works. I remember that Rick and I made 2 little scripts in the first days of its release and they were so much fun to play with. But without zooming, layering and grouping, the flowgraph is just an empty tool that is pretty much useless an actual game. For a small tutorial or demo scene, it it useful, but after that it becomes unmanageable.
That's sad, actually. The more I am learning about the Flow Graph, the sadder I get about it. The Flow Graph has a lot of potential and I love the idea of it. Fully developed, it would simplify a lot of things. It would allow for truly reusable code.
Reading what you've said about the Flow Graph (and how it is virtually useless for for an actual game), could it be used with prefabs? In other words, could I create a door (with script) and trigger, wire them up via the Flow Graph, and then save it as a prefab? Then all I would have to do is add the prefab to my scene and have a working door, right? I mean, we can use the Flow Graph this way, can't we?11 hours ago, AggrorJorn said:Steam: Moving the selling of Leadwerks to Steam was a needed step. Not everyone liked it (I personally did like it) as they wanted to have a separate installer rather requiring Steam for the editor to run.
I'm ... okay with Steam. But I would rather have something like software run without having to start up Steam, to be frank. But it's a small price to pay to use software like Leadwerks.
11 hours ago, AggrorJorn said:Editor customisabilty: Again something personal: the biggest issue that I think causes people to go away is the editor customisability. No assigning of custom hotkeys. Not being able to add shortcuts to toolbars ("Create pivot" for instance). No multiscreen support or customizing the editor layout. No custom editor plugins or tools support. How many tools haven't I made in Unity and unreal, that extend my workflow. From simple drawing lines to see where my characters waypoints are to generating structures in the scene tree like ropes. Maybe performance may be an issue in those engines, but the workflow for creating gameplay and level design is so much faster because of it.
I find the editor to be ... adequate. However, it could definitely be improved. For example, I work on a rather large screen and I would love to undock Assets from where it is and move it somewhere else (maybe over to the left side or at the bottom) so I could have the Scene tree open virtually all of the time and still access my assets. The ortho views should have an option to sync them so when you move or zoom in one, the other two do the same so you are focused on the same space/item in all three. Changing the grid size in one ortho view should affect the other two ortho views as well (this could also be an option). The scene tree should allow for more flexibility (i.e. work more like other programs, such as Photoshop) where folders (filters, in Leadwerks) can allow you to group AND manipulate all items within, etc. I could go on, but the editor could definitely be improved to help people better create their levels.
11 hours ago, AggrorJorn said:Many of the issues above are going to be solved with Turbo. Josh's blog for the last few months have been a joy to read. Josh figuring out all these insanely crazy and complex technological things is amazing. I certainly couldn't do it.
I'm actually quite excited to see what Turbo is like once it gets further along in development.
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1 hour ago, aiaf said:
Leadwerks needs more bling effects included, more people will try it if see some nice aaa demos .
I'm not sure I completely agree with this. I mean, "bling" doesn't hurt (unless poorly implemented) and can cause people to take notice. But there are popular game engines out there that don't have "bling" and are fairly active. It's a matter of community building and making the most of what you have, me thinks.
1 hour ago, aiaf said:Documentation is good imo.
So far, the documentation has been sufficient. But, as a non-programmer who wants to learn, I found the basics presented in LUA Scripting to be frustrating at times. I didn't know what I was creating vs. what was an actual command in LUA because 1) we had not gotten to the LUA API Reference yet and 2) the docs simply didn't tell me (and they should have). As a result, I am still scratching my head with parts of Tables, though I probably wouldn't be if the docs were more complete (for absolute beginners in programming, like me). We ... even I am not an absolute beginner. I had programmed in BASIC back in the 80s and dabbled a bit here and there. So, I am quite familiar with IF THEN statements, etc. Even so, I struggle with some concepts and the docs were not helping me to get there. Which leads me to this point:
1 hour ago, aiaf said:Well forum activity maybe low but on the good side if you have questions you find answers here.
Yes! I have found this to be true! I asked about one of my coding confusions from the docs and I was given a few explanations. So, this is good. Great, in fact!
1 hour ago, aiaf said:But i think the main bottleneck is art, you need artists, custom art if you go for quality game.
And I'm coming from this from the exact opposite direction. I'm an artist (both 3D and 2D) and want to bring my idea(s) to life. I can create the levels, the props, etc., but I don't know if I can fully bring them to life until I can grasp programming basics.
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57 minutes ago, gamecreator said:
Regarding documentation and beginners, it's a tough challenge because people can come at it from different angles and tutorials are never enough. If you show someone how to load a character and move him around, the next question can be anything from "now how do I make a platformer" or "how do I make an FPS" or "how do I make an underwater game" or "how do I have him drive a truck around" or "how do I make him climb a ladder" or "how do I have a spaceship fly from planet to planet" or "how to I set up a server and make an MMO like World of Warcraft?"
True, but there's a middle ground, I think.
Read through the LUA scripting part of the docs. They start out pretty well, but then start to feel rushed and things are left out ... things that I think are important for a person new to programming to understand. Here's a simple example of what I ran into when going through the same docs (and I had to ask about this here on the forum) ... this is a code example straight from the docs:
function PrintUpper(text) print(string.upper(text)) end PrintUpper("Functions can be fun.")In the above simple, beginner example, the author of the tutorial does not tell the reader that string.upper is a LUA command. So, the first time I went through this, I was trying to read this and understand what it was and what it was doing. I understood "function". In understood the name the function was given (PrintUpper - which could have been anything the coder wanted to name it). I understood what he was trying to do in the parenthesis with "text". I also understood "print" was we had used it and it was explained from the very beginning. You can't very well do "Hello World" without print, right? But then there was this string.upper. It was just plopped in there with no explanation as to what it was and what it did. The author should have taken time to explain LUA commands, what they are, and how you use them, that string.upper was a LUA command and that it is used to do X, Y, or Z. Being the dummy that I am (and not knowing that string.upper was a LUA command) I tried to make a connection between PrintUpper(text) and string.upper(text) and tried to figure out if you could somehow use a part of the name given the function to do something. After all, they both had "upper" and "(text)" and ... well ... I was confused ... and we hadn't even started to do any game programming ... and LUA was supposed to be easy ... and the Leadwerks web page had promised this would be smooth and easy for beginners.
So, see where I am going with this? If the docs fail at trying to help beginners see what is what with programming, then beginners will just become frustrated. It's not a matter of asking "How do I make World of Warcraft?" It's a matter of banging one's head against the wall because even the super simple stuff is not explained well enough so that someone like me could just code a camera to just move forward a little.
If we're going to claim ease of use, then someone needs to go through the docs, ensure they are more complete than they are, and think about what is written there to see how a complete beginner would view what is written.
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BTW - I wanted to thank everyone for participating in this thread. I'm enjoying the conversation.
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21 minutes ago, Yue said:
But this is going to stop, I repeat my prediction is that leadwerks is going to die, Turbo Game Engine, is going to send him to the grave.
What do you mean by this? That Tubro will replace Leadwerks (which is what I think you mean)? Or that Turbo will be a disaster and both Leadwerks and Turbo will die off?
If you mean the first, I agree. However, other than a few things (engine updates, faster performance, PBR textures, etc., and an emphasis on VR, etc.), I suspect that a lot of what made Leadwerks what it is will be inherent in Turbo, too. So, if the creator, Josh, does not like certain things, you can bet they won't be in Turbo.
In any case, Turbo looks to be quite a long way off. It doesn't even have an editor yet (for example). So, Leadwerks still has some life left in it.
10 minutes ago, Rick said:The interesting thing with that link is the reason given is documentation! Just goes to show how important that is.
I completely agree. As stated previously, I am not a programmer. On the Leadwerks home page it states:
"Leadwerks Game Engine provides the smoothest learning curve to take you from beginner to full-fledged game developer. Our easy-to-follow tutorials teach you everything you need to make games, with no background knowledge or previous experience required."
So, I was excited to dig into the docs and learn. What I found was that not much was really explained ... not at least for a non-programmer to understand what is going on. As a result, I had to ask basic questions on the forum to figure it out. And, to be frank, basic things like some aspects of tables are still throwing me for a loop. I hope that once I can (finally) go through the FPS shooter tutorials I can start to understand them.
Basically, if you promise to lead someone through a "smooth" learning experience, taking them from "beginner" to "full-fledged game developer", then you should at least try to fulfill that promise. The docs are to thin, in this regard, and not near clear enough for a beginner, imo.
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Yes! I very much agree with this, Rick! I've not yet played with the Flow Graph enough to know it well, but the base idea is there. There definitely needs to be a Flow Graph per entity. This is sort of how you work in Blender with material nodes, etc. It just makes sense that you would only want to see the "code flow" for what you are currently working on or with and not the entire game. Ugh!
Godot handles the script thing pretty well, from what I've scene. Like Leadwerks, you can only have one script per item. However, if you nest items (so that one is a parent and one is a child and set up a "signal", as they call it) then the parent inherits the code of the child. In this manner, you could, for example, code your basic player character code and attach it to your PC model/camera. Then, if you attach a "wizard" entity to the player (perhaps this is selected during character creation) the "wizard" code is then inherited by the player, effectively adding the "wizard" code to the "player" code. This allows you to code once and use multiple times.
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Sure. I hear you, Yue. But that doesn't explain the size and activity on the forums, for example, at places like GameMaker Studio. Even the Godot engine Facebook page is hyper-active, with many posts clogging my feed every single day. What I am saying is that a lot of these engines have a decent following and active communities. I think Leadwerks deserves as much. It's an awesome engine (IMO). An active community tends to help the engine grow. Word of mouth spreads and more people come to see what's going on.
I'll be frank, when I took the dive into Leadwerks because the Humble Bundle deal was too good to pass up. But when I did a Google search, I saw little that was truly inspiring. I mean, typing in "leadwerks" into Google gets me a Wikipedia page as the first entry! No videos are offered. No reviews. Not on the first page. So, I was surprised to find that Leadwerks is actually pretty darned good. Great, in fact! It deserves more, in my opinion.
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9 minutes ago, Rick said:
I’ve never used that engine but looking it up the idea of actions and events is a thing I always thought made sense. Leadwerks sadly doesn’t get that high level though. I’m a big advocate to the event style programming model because it just makes sense. You can sort of set this up in Leadwerks but without editor support you won’t get an ecosystem of actions and events from the community going. It would be great to get action/event support for entities that we can expand via Lua scripts and link together in the editor. Josh doesn’t like being tied to that level of how users should make their app.
That's too bad. It makes sense (to me) and makes code totally reusable, too. If you make your code so that it is editable in the editor (like you already can via LUA) so the end-user can affect things like which direction a door opens (slides up, slides left, etc.), how fast it moves, etc., then you have a system of things that don't need to be coded. A door is a door, etc. And with the Flow Graph, setting up triggers and other such things becomes a breeze.
I mean, a programmer need never touch this kind of thing if they don't want to. It's an option. But having something like this? It opens a lot of doors to a lot of people.
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12 hours ago, Josh said:
Unlike a lot of other engines, Leadwerks focused hard on ease of use, which is what kept us strong while so many others died. However, if ease of use is your selling point, you attract beginners who aren't as capable, which means your community won't have as good of output. To get an experienced developer to try something you need some other bait to interest them.
Recently, an engine called CopperCube released v6 and made their base engine/editor free. It boasts ease of use, specifically aimed at non-programmers. The engine itself is incredibly dated. However, I have to say that the creator of CopperCube has an interesting approach to allowing non-programmers to do quite a lot. Without programming, I was able to create doors, for example, that opened on proximity, opened via a pressure plate, opened with a switch/button, could be manually opened/closed, and a lot more. It was fun sort of stringing things together via it's logic system. It could be a bit frustrating, too. But I saw that I could create a decent game without a single line of code.
Now, while I do want to learn to code in LUA so I can develop in Leadwerks, I do like the idea presented in CopperCube. My "dream" would be for something like what CopperCube has, but integrated into Leadwerks. However, instead of doing things the CopperCube way (check it out to see what I am talking about, if you are interested), which can be visually difficult at times, I would love it if Leadwerks' Flow Graph was more developed so that it could become more of a non-programmer's paradise, so to speak.
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19 minutes ago, cassius said:
A lot more people own le than use the forum. I was thinking its pretty busy anyway recently. I know of another engine where the forum gets one post every three days on average, and usually no one answers them.
Heh. I'm used to forums with a lot more posts, it seems. Even 3D GameStudio, which has been basically dead for 5 years now, gets more posts in a day than the forum here.
Import models with no hierarchy
in General Discussion
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The key word he used is "batch". The entire process, if it were needed, could be automated. But, hey, people were just trying to help you and offer alternatives just in case, not that you needed it. It's called being friendly.