ERK Games

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?

After several days of development from the moment of release, we are ready to submit to you the first update of our game. Please support us, add to wishlist and share with your friends about SALVATIONLAND: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1807590/SALVATIONLAND/ Changelog: Added a hint for picking up a hammer (basement of an abandoned school), The mechanics of blocking due fights have been revised: now enemy hits are blocking more effectively, Fixed a critical bug with opening inventory under certain conditions, Added a hint when using first-aid kits, if the character has maximum health, Added a hint when picking up pills, if the character has a full supply, Added initial support for Steam Achievements, Level "Beginning": now you can't go through the Semyon and you can't leave guest house until you talk with him again, Level "Police Station - 2": now the inventory is turned off until the backpack is picked up (elements of survival are frozen at this moment), Level "Old Neighborhood - 1": distant range of some objects has been increased, Level "Old Neighborhood - 1": Semyon is now correctly taking medicine when you moving between levels/sleeping, Revised and extended some dialogues (reseller, Schweitzer), Fixed a dialogue with a reseller that appears without him after moving between levels, Some enemies have less health points and slower attack speed now, Special item name no longer overlap the compass image in inventory, Increased distance of flashlight; the night auto light has become a little brighter, Fixed the disappearing dialogue with Helen if the character goes to sleep/returned from another level, Fixed bug with the display of weapons where they could not be used (and vice versa, their disappearance, where possible), The dialogue with the grandson will now work even after the transitions between levels, Enemies no longer screaming an alert voice lines when character is already fallen in battle; Balanced the replay time of enemy alert voice lines, Fixed a bug with clinic guard's waypoints when he's going back to work, Fixed a bug with the endless repeating of "Task completed" hint after completing the task of the Pharmacist, Fixed some logic bugs in the side quests.

After a week's delay, Steam has approve our game and it's available for purchase now! We are announcing a starting 15% discount! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1807590/SALVATIONLAND/

If you say this based on footage from the trailer, then keep in mind that it's raining in the game, so all surfaces are wet and shine. We always work on materials to make them look more natural and adjust the roughness and specular parameters. You can see the result of our work in the game. Light probe method is not suitable enough due to the fact that there are various problems with them (uncontrollable shining, specular boost on the character's hands, etc.) + if we're working with large levels with dynamic sunlight, it can be difficult to control every place on map with light probe on it. Also it may cause performance drop, after all. We like honest engine dynamic light and the only trick we use to improve lighting, for example, in a dark room, is an additional light source with disabled shadow casting. And yes, we still use light probes for individual interiors.

I had a few ideas for the first trailer, but ended up on a demonstration of the beginning of the game to convey atmosphere of the game itself. The survival elements, in my opinion, don't need a video demonstration (and they're not complete yet, by the way), and in the game we don't make such a strong direction on stealth and action as we do on the narration, dialogues and "lore".

I added a trailer today with gameplay shots, it's right on the page now.

Sure

https://partner.steamgames.com/steamdirect

ERK Games presents the first open-world game powered by the 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. Our game will be released in Steam's Early Access on December 28, 2021. Please add to wishlist! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1807590/SALVATIONLAND/