ERK Games

Great news! We'll check the release as soon as it's available. We really hope that now that you've done a great job implementing the Flowgraph editor, you'll soon start working on realization a particle system. It's actually one of the few things we're currently missing to port our new game project to the Ultra Engine.

I'm not going to say anything bad right now, please understand my words correctly. BUT it seems to us that your current release strategy is wrong a bit. I don't think it needs to be clarified that an early release cannot be called 1.0 and not have at least minimally functioning modules for developing something not only based on code, but also on GUI and game levels, especially after more than four years of development. Especially considering the emphasis on the new interface that you are promoting. And especially considering that the Leadwerks engine was capable (and quite capable) of doing all this, and it was an old engine of the 7th generation of game consoles. So how is this radically different from another intermediate update for monthly subscribers? And who's the potential buyer of the new engine, if even the old engine, which has been neglected for several years, is hardly known outside of this forum? People simply won't accept an unfinished product, and on platforms like Steam, it's important to show the best right from the start of sales, even if it's early access. The strategy you have mentioned will mislead people, and if they buy Ultra, they will definitely refund it within half an hour. Remember the experience with Ultra App Kit, which had serious shortcomings from the start and even with the updates made, it was not accepted by the Steam community: it seems to me that you gained absolutely nothing from its publication and mixed audience reaction, and now the situation may repeat itself with an even more negative reaction, including from the old audience, do you understand what I mean? It won't be interesting to new users in its current form, and the old audience, includes us, will remain dissatisfied that they were made to wait for almost another year. By the way, you mentioned March 2024. That's a long time, considering that everything can change at any moment. With the level of functionality that you propose for 1.0, even our team that develops and releases games on Leadwerks (and respects you and your team), won't be able to switch to the new engine before that date (we planned to do it as soon as possible) - because it turns out that we won't be able to continue working on the game without at least having the flowgraph editor! And a Vulkan benchmark with a new interface is unlikely to help us create something worthy of audience attention. But... Apparently, there's nothing we can do about it 🌝 Alright, then I have one last question: do you plan to follow your previously announced plans and release a major update for Leadwerks? At least before March 2024, if the answer is "yes". Because this engine REALLY needs an update, and we have already submitted the main issues related to its functioning in a bug report about a year ago: And by the way: Leadwerks, if it had a completed form, would be perfect for legacy development and would be relevant in this niche for many years to come. It has amazing features and compromised system requirements. Some of us are working on projects on older laptops, and it's still quite usable, if not for the annoying problems described by us and many others in the bug report threads. It seems to us that it's too early to write it off and radically replace it with something that isn't yet ready - it should at least be brought to working condition before that, because at least it ALREADY has a fan base.

Can you please answer me: 1. Am I correct in understanding that you are planning to release a version called 1.0, which will have a minimally functioning engine, but modules for developing flowgraph scenes and particle emitters will be unavailable? 2. Will 1.0 also be released on Steam, or will it be an exclusive release for the website?

The implementation of Theora Video on Leadwerks was written by Niosop a long time ago, even for the 2.x versions of the engine. As practice and a HUGE number of tests and attempts have shown, it works quite unstably and requires significant additions as well as radical solutions to minimize crashes when playing videos (in particular, it requires low quality sound in the video file (96kbps recommended and 128kbps maximum) for more or less stable operation, and video resolutions no higher than 720p at 5000kbps (recommeded 720x576 for 16:9, which, you see, is rather low quality for 2023). Our first game on Leadwerks, SALVATIONLAND, uses a significantly improved Lua-based version of this implementation, but crashes still occur on certain hardware combinations. We were unable to identify their patterns or fix the C++ code, as Niosop didn't release the source code for the library. So, yes, I wouldn't recommend using this Theora implementation to ANY users of the engine. It's necessary to write video implementation from scratch, look for ways to do so. We're currently searching and have not yet found a solution. There was our attempt to attach some ffdshow components to the engine to launch full-screen video separately from the application process. Unfortunately, this caused a large number of problems and was a rather rough.

Great, thanks for the reply!

By the way, we are really looking forward to the release of a new engine. We're aiming to port a new project in development to Ultra Engine - yes, it will take a certain amount of time and push forward the release date, but I think it'll be the right decision if the engine is really better than Leadwerks in terms of speed and stability. We're especially excited about the new terrain creation tools and the 64-bit code that will remove memory limits. I know that this will be a bit offtopic, but can you tell me please, what is the state of the Lua wrapper now? The thing is that we have our own technical base, the code of which is 95% Lua code, and we would like it to be relatively easy to port to Ultra. This moment really worries us.

Steam have a good online, so no matter how we all feel about this platform, we can use it to make our product more popular. A Steam release is the best way to "passively promote" an engine/software/game when the product is not very popular at start/doesn't have a huge advertising budget. Me and my team would like to see Ultra Engine on Steam, even though we're not a big fan of the platform, we (ERK Games) embrace the benefits that Steam provides. Fun fact: at first, we planned to promote SALVATIONLAND in our own way, but later we decided to use Steam Direct. And we don't regret this decision, especially considering how cheap it was for us at regional prices (the ENTIRE game budget is around $200 and I'm not kidding now).

Huge Update 1.4 - Released! This update is the latest in a series of major updates. Now the game will only be supported with small patches as needed. We have come a long way together with you, dear players. Thanks for your support! Changelog: - Cleaned up about ~500 megabytes during resource check - Added junk buyer at the level "Gamsk - 2" - Police chief at the "The Beginning" level now plays an animation during his first appearing - Optimized game assets - Optimized levels - Added new character voice lines for several subquests - Updated Readme files - Fixed a number of minor bugs WARNING: It is recommended (but not required) to start a new game to apply all fixes. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1807590/view/3694679124144168413

Huge Update 1.3 is available Despite the intensity of the final tests, at the launch of SALVATIONLAND we made several serious mistakes that led to crashes and general technical problems. With this huge update, we want to prove that we care about players' requests, and game development is not just a hobby for us, but a full-fledged, important part of life. In addition to fixing various bugs, we also made a number of major structural overhauls that changed the pace of the game in its first quarter, as well as added several training elements for new players. We hope you enjoy the result. Thanks for staying with us! WARNING: you need to start a new game. It is also recommended to run SavedgamesRemover.bat in the root folder and delete old saves to avoid problems. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1807590/view/3635005161222150540

SALVATIONLAND official soundtrack is available on Steam The "disc" is divided into two sides: the first contains music by various artists, used in the gameplay, and the second - author's ambient themes, recorded specifically for the game. Soundtrack is supplied free of charge. Enjoy! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2326950/SALVATIONLAND_Soundtrack

ERK Games presents the first open-world game powered by Leadwerks Game Engine - SALVATIONLAND. This is a story shooter with additional non-linear quests, stealth-action and survival elements, developed by members of former "Between the Realities" team. Game released in 15th February, 2023. You can buy and download game with 15% discount here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1807590/SALVATIONLAND Official soundtrack available here for free: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2326950/SALVATIONLAND_Soundtrack If you interested, you can discuss game here. Also, if you found any bugs and problems, contact us here and in Steam Community topic: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1807590/discussions/0/3198118671848886939/ Please add to wishlist! We hope you enjoy the final result of our two years work.

Yes, I use dualboot (Ubuntu 22.10/Windows 8.1) and can confirm that everything more or less works through Proton layer. I even made some edits for our project using Proton. I think that it's too late to fix the native editor and it doesn't make any practical sense, BUT I described the problems that are specific to running the Windows editor through Proton (point 10). If it is possible to somehow fix them directly from your side, that would be great (I would honestly even move to Linux on a permanent basis, since I only use the second OS to convinient work on project)

Hello, we want to post here our rather extensive, but extremely important feedback, collected as a result of working on the creation of a project with an open world and shooter elements. These problems are GLOBAL, and their individual points are extremely important for correction (especially 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8). Please, dear engine developers, don't miss this message without your attention! 1. Physics (normal Prop objects like boxes or bottles, even with Poly Mesh collision): Physical objects flying through walls when you drop it, fall under the map and the game may crash. These problems relate primarily to objects made on Box-collisions, more less on cylinder and sphere-collisions. This bug doing creation of ragdoll physics extremely problematic, and using a lot of physical objects on levels too (small objects flying through walls much more often) 2. A car or wheeled vehicle based on the Vehicle class works, but when changing the map and, as a result, the Release function calling attempts, the game may crash without a log ("Closing application" error) 3. Environment Probe - it works, but from time to time shaders with its feature start to redden, glitch and other textures start to be superimposed on them 4. Script Editor - when you open the editor window and when you click on the content browser, where all models and textures are stored, or on any other element of the editor when the window is open, the editor either freezes or the render window becomes inactive until you close the script editor 5. NavMesh: 1) if you actively use the navmesh generation function in one editor session, it starts to generate paths with errors in each next attempt. 2) If an NPC uses a NavMesh generated with errors, the game can sometimes crash without an error ("Closing application" error) 6. Memory usage: Template projects don't have their .exe file patched to use 4 gigabytes of RAM, this may not create problems when creating a small project, but we encountered "Closing the application" when the memory was actively used, even on small game levels. It can be fixed elementary and applying this fix, we believe, is NECESSARY to do 7. Water mode On - can cause random screen twitches with certain camera movements and moreover, sometimes there are random movements of physical objects, even if such an object is on the ground. 8. 2D sprites in Leadwerks Game Engine v4.7 are broken, they don't rotate following camera rotation. 4.6 doesn't have this problem 9. Decals having a strange edging around it on NVIDIA(tm) drivers 396 or older 10. Linux-version is completely obsolete, it works fine only on Ubuntu Unity versions/Ubuntu 16.04. It's understandable that support is broken, but there's a problems much more critical and actual - Steam Proton of any version (even Proton GE) have critical problem with "sticking" windows and click latency in another windows when you opens, for example, "AI and Events" level or another levels with a lot of objects on it (it works fine on CrossOver Linux 20.x, btw. We though that solution was in dlls configuration in winecfg, but no, it's deeper) and you can't made Ctrl+A operations in Position/Rotation preferences, which greatly slows down the work of the level designer (it doesn't works even on CrossOver). The third problem is that every second launch of the game through the editor causes the editor itself to crash (the problem has a stable appearance). We hope that can help you to improve the engine with this list and hope that you guys can help us to make our games better BEFORE you release the Ultra Engine. Please don't leave Leadwerks 4.x series without improvements, do historical justice and send this great engine to a well-deserved retirement... With a honor.

I understand, but "Ultra" and "Leadwerks" is totally different words. I'm really happy that "Turbo" variant of new name was dropped - it sounded like something related to "TurboPascal", hello 90s 😀. I like this old programming language, btw. Makes sense to rename it in "Leadworks Engine" or something like that, sounds seriously and much more recognizably for fans ☺️.

I'm surprised that there are so many people here in the comments who agree with your position. My team uses the engine for its intended purpose - to make commercial indie-games with single player. Leadwerks has all the features for this: a royalty-free model, relatively low system requirements, legacy x86 support. We once bought the engine as a whole team and it's convenient: our programmers use it in Professional Edition, when the rest of the team (level designers) use standard version. We were willing to give 2 out of 3 concessions to Ultra Engine for the sake of progress, to improve the graphic quality in our games, etc., but we are totally against, ideologically, totally against the subscription model. Sorry Josh, but apart from dynamic rendering and fast physics processing (I hope you finally fixed all the Newton game dynamics bugs? Because in Leadwerks 4.6-4.7 objects fly through brushes of any size, and we are RIGHT NOW trying to solve this problem, because we need to somehow realize ragdolls in our games) you no longer have a killer feature in front of Unity, for example. Yes, you have an interesting level editor, but find me a large number of lovers of "Source-like" editors in our time, it's mostly modmakers, and they have not even heard about Leadwerks. It's a geek feature that we love, but another people? For them, this engine looks like another one GameGuru, and, to be honest, they have all rights - they don't care about nuances, because they know a better advertised and really more stable solutions to make games, it's Unity or Unreal Engine. Or Godot to make good 2D games. We in our team like your engine at all, but we'll find your course of evolution totally incorrect. And I'm ready to explain: We waited a whole year for version 4.6 in 2017 and waited for a buggy release in which you broke half of our project and didn't fix too many bugs - multiplayer code is completely not finished, it's not even basically synchronized, and we even can't host a server normally! In Leadwerks 4.7 Beta you broke sprites (and your team not fix this after years), so we'll downgrade our project to 4.6 to solve it. We've been waiting for Leadwerks 5.0 with unicode support for over four years to make our game multilingual - we're still don't get this and made "hacked" separate fonts for each language based on english input conversion to get around the problem, it's very not good solution and it was hard to make. We're don't get an good, ready to use Ultra App Kit either - the reviews on Steam speak for themselves, it's too limited framework with slow updates. Aiming for VR has already been failed - many years have passed since the first engine releases with VR support, but not a single game with this feature has been made. Not one step in this direction from the community! Pay attention to this, especially since the implementation of the OpenVR in the engine is clearly not completed. If you make the decision you want to make, it will be a direct blow to our team. We hate the subscription model, it's not a problem for us to buy a big upgrade if we need it - but we won't settle for a subscription model. Don't count on our support in this matter. Most likely in the future we will have to change the engine, because it's all already looks like a mockery from you. This is my official message to you on behalf of our entire small team of five people who work around your bugs by the sweat of their brow (closed source code doesn't allows to do this 100% quickly and efficiently) and love your engine with all their hearts for its pluses, and not for minuses - our whole team will have to say goodbye to engine after many years of work and stay on buggy 4.6 release to finish our projects, because instead of dealing with pressing issues and releasing updates, you are busy renaming the engine and endless silent porting of your "Ultra" (what's wrong with classic 'Leadwerks' name?) Engine. I hope we did not upset you with this message, but we're in a state of shock about all of your actions. You need to think about our words, for sure.

Thanks a lot!

Please tell me, Josh, do you keep the Lua scripting in Ultra Engine? We're developing SALVATIONLAND game on Leadwerks 4.6 with 99% using Lua and would like to update the technical base in the future to Ultra Engine, so is it can be possible?