Road Kill Kenny

Well for anyone who wants a function for C++ that they can re-use every time its pretty simple: #include <math> float GetDistance(LE::TVec3 start, LE::TVec3 end){ return sqrt(pow(start.X-end.X, 2) + pow(start.Y-end.Y, 2) + pow(start.Z-end.Z, 2)); }

Wait... let me get this right.... instead of steps like this: 1. PointDistance(TVec3. LE::TVec3) // If you are in bmax or LUA, otherwise simple math funciton in C++ You do this: 1. CreatePivot(); 2. PositionEntity(pivot, Vec3); 3. GetEntityDistance(pivot, camera); .... I don't see the logic here.

Point distance??? is that an wiki'd command? didn't know it existed. I made my own lol.

Use 3D pythagorus and make it own utility function. There is no LE get distance between points only between entities:

There is a reason why C++ is the industry standard

Yes this is good. I hate how I have a character controller with a mesh parented to it and then another physics box parented to that when you use LoadModel.

I see that makes sense. My problem currently is that I have an automatic door/gate class and my gates are actually animated instead of hard coded moving of sliding doors. I did this so that I could have multiple different types of doors/gates running off.the same class without harcoding each type of door. However, because the BSP structure doesn't update with animation my camera object avoidance always screws up when I go through a gate. Maybe if I just change the entity type of.the gate when it is opened so the camera raycasts aren't affected by it... Sounds like a good possibility

So if the skinning is done in the CPU... Will a raycast be able to hit the mesh in its animated location/orientation? Rather than just hitting the original non skinned mesh like it currently does in LE2

Well I'm not suggesting we become jack of all trades but it is good to be ok in some areas and really good in one area than to be really good in one area and have no idea about the others. Generally when you work on a skill you start out learning a lot and your improvement per hour is very high... so on a graph of skill gained over time you start out very steep... Then you reach a peak where getting better starts to require more and more effort. So what I'm saying is its a good idea to make the most of that quick skill increase part of the curve for all different skill areas and then focus the rest of your time on your primary focus i.e. programming. The problem is not in coming to pay others to do it. The problem is when you start complaining that the world is against you and you don't do anything about it etc. etc.

So You're Not Good At It...... Then Get Off Your Butt and Get Good at It! As I started my last blog off with a lessons learned I thought I would continue the trend in all of my blogs and share a bit of what I have recently learned. More often than not, as game devs we have our weaknesses in certain areas of game dev that just makes things that much more difficult. Some of us are great programmers but bad at art, some of us are good artists that are bad at programming and of course.... there are some of us that aren't that flash at either. We will always have our deficiencies. However, the question is.... when there is a deficiency in your skill, what do you do about it? It is so easy for us to just say, "I'll get someone else to do that", or just ignore the problem out-right..... we can go on complaining about how the world is so cruel to us that xyz is so hard and you can't find anyone to fill the gaps... Unfortunatly as predominantly indie devs we don't have the luxury of resources. We have to try fill in the gaps as best we can. Instead of wishing we were good at something, how about we try and get good at it. No one starts out skilled at a lot of game dev stuff, you have to work on it and continually get better, read books, search in google, try fail try fail and try again until you get better. Also don't rely on a college to make you better at game dev as you have to work on your own to ultimately get good at it. Don't get me wrong.... there is nothing wrong with not being skilled in something, what is wrong is when you decide not to do anything about it. As for myself I, my major weaknesses are 2D art, texturing, concept art etc. I was really having a hard time wondering how I was going to deal with it. However, I feel now my new approach to all of these things will be, just keep doing it until I get better... no excuses. No one is going to pick up the pieces for me, i'm an indie and at the end of the day I can only rely on myself. Character Design Recently I have been focusing on character design for my game. I have put a lot of thought into it, how I want them to look, how they should act and behave. I thought up all these cool looking robots but at the end of the day I had to have a hard long think. Is the player going to be able to relate to these characters, probably not. I find a lot of the time when I am playing games I have to be able to relate to the main character on some level otherwise I just will struggle to get into it. Even a robot can have a relatable personality and that is what I decided to go for in the end, erring on the side of "not so serious" and still getting the fun factory in. The image below is of the first design for a robot I made. I thought it was rather interesting at first how it runs on tracks and such. However, it wasn't until I modeled it that I realized that it just wasn't relatable and I just didn't like it. I then went about rethinking this character. Making him more flexible, more friendly and really just to have more personality. Here is the result of rethinking the same character from a different perspective. You'll probably notice that this is the same little robot that I showed for animations in my last blog. I hope you agree that this second attempt is much better... In fact what was I thinking when I drew the first one. So finally here is just one more drawing I did tonight where I tried to design another robot and try give him personality. Now I'm not the best drawer but I gave it my best and feel I achieved enough to make it look good and personable in 3D. This here is MAV, he has a cool laid back personality. I gave him glasses, or what looks like shades, and put a little alarm light that looks a bit like a top hat. He even looks a little 'fat' and is the guy that just sits back with his guns. I'm not 100% sure about it yet but I hope I still like the design tomorrow. I want to make sure that all my main game characters are designed well and have personality that players can relate to. I am not afraid to completely redesign when I feel it just isn't good enough as the main characters are just about the most important designs in the entire game as far as artwork goes. Anyway hope you enjoyed my blog.... Excuse my lack of drawing skill.. this is just me working on my weakness and keeping on drawing until I get better. Thanks for reading

Thanks guys, @Roland, Yes I think you are very right, we have to make mistakes to go further. I found that even though my my previous failed attempts at making games gave me knowledge about game development that I would not have gained doing a feasible project..... However, I think it gets to a point where if you keep making the mistake it starts to be not so useful anymore.

The Mistakes of the Past I just wanted to start this blog with a bit of a lessons learned. I've attempted to make some games with LE that in hind-sight were way too complex.... 50x too complex for the amount of time / resources that I have available. This is a common mistake and it is so easy to make it. So I decided to deal with the problem once and for all. After failing a few times I decided to have a long hard think. I decided, you know what, KISS dammit. Keep It Simple Stupid. Simple doesn't have to be a bad game, in fact it can be a much better game if done right. I decided I'd come up with a simple idea, give it the bare functionality that I need to make the game and just make it (NIKE) without adding any of the extra 'STUFF' that so many games get clogged with. I decided that if a feature does not contribute a certain amount of the "fun" element to the game it should be removed from the game without a second thought. This can be difficult because there are things that we can perceive as being "cool" but when it comes down to them being "Fun" the miss the mark and we've managed to miss the point of creating a game. After doing this mind changing excercise I got to work on HAARP and the game I'm currently making. I'm pleased to announce that it is going well and It has much 50x more potential to be completed and released than any of my other attempts This all being said I don't completely regret all of my failed attempts. I learned so much being over ambitious about coding and game development in general so it was not a complete waste.... and to be honest I wouldn't be where I am now if not for a few failed attempts. Of course this blog is not about the game so I won't be announcing it today until I have some substantial gameplay and artwork to show. I will say that I plan to port it to LE3D and release it on Steam and OUYA hopefully around this time next year. Animation Fun Animation has got to be one of my most favorite things to do both on the side of creativity and also on the technical side of programming it. I'm not sure what it is about it. Perhaps it is just the pleasantries of seeing life come to your little creations. I have just come to the point where I need to do the core animations for my game before I can continue coding any more. This mostly involving the animation of game characters and for me this is a 3 part process as follows: - The Art: Rigging & Animating the actual character in Blender - The Data Driving: Setting up the animation database & coding the AnimationShop to retrieve that data - The Code: Coding the animator class to manage character animations for any character that uses a LE::TController Instead of ranting on about these processes I decided to make this a half blog half vlog that is broken into three parts. Enjoy First Step: How I like to set up my animations in Blender Second Step: Setting up the database Third Step: The final result (please note, most of what you see is placeholder) http://www.leadwerks.../videos/_/-r164 <- Click the link for Part3 It really is amazing how much the animation adds to the game, gives life to the characters and just makes everything more fun even though no extra gameplay is added. Choppy animations make the player feel disconnected and unable to relate to their character. It also ruins immersion which in my books is extremely important in a game whether it be simple of complex. So when it comes to animation I've decided to keep things simple, make them smooth and don't be afraid to spend time on it. However, I think it comes to a point where you can spend too much time on animation leading to sacrificing gameplay and I'll do my best to not let this happen. Despite this, I feel like for my main character/s must have a lot of time invested in them. I want them to be relatable and have personality even though they are robots. I know that I like to have relatable characters in a game and if they aren't animated properly it totally kills the mood. If the animation requires sacrifice for the better gameplay, the sacrifice will be in the animation of enemies and/or such as the player does not need to relate to them necessarily. Thanks for reading. I hope to officially announce this game some time in Q4 this year.

Fantastic. I love it. Can't wait to play with it

That's a great idea! I'll be coding the AI for npc's in about a month or two and I'll be sure to use that XD thanks.

...... thanks Marley I hate asking stupid questions but I never noticed that one.

Hi all, The title is rather self explanatory but I'll elaborate. I'm trying to find out how to get a 2D XY point on the screen from a visible XYZ position in space. See what I am trying to do is make a data driven cinematic / story event class which goes through a bunch of data and does certain actions depending on the data and steps through a bunch of different actions in sequence. So one of the actions that I want to create is for a 2D cartoon like text bubble to pop up adjacent to a 3D character. Now I know the character position and if I can determine what that position is in 2D on the screen I'll be able to easily position the text bubble so it is pointing to the character. So any idea's? Its sort of like I need the opposite of a CameraPick.

I will

Nice one.

Woo hoo. this time I have plenty of questions.

Looks nice XD

Make sure you delete the lights and camera in your Blender scene. Otherwise they get converted into those wierd planes you see in that screenshot

I was actually thinking the same thing. This would be cool. eg. in a stealth game an enemy hears a sound, paths to where he thinks the sound came from and then look around or something like that.

Not sure about this..... but if the one that comes with LE doesn't use framework() then it makes sense to be faster because framework uses HDR by default. If it doesn't then I don't know. Man I think LE or rather OpenGL hates ATI... or at least mine. My computer is high end except the graphics card which is average and ATI. I don't ever get more than say 320fps in debug build without anything in a scene..... Yet I can pretty much play any game that exists on PC with full graphics or near and decent fps.

This is probably the one thing I am most excited about for LE3D. I'm actually trying to create a simple GoToPoint() functions on my character controllers in my game. However, as it stands it is just line of site and at best it will be node based path finding. Just don't have the time to figure out / learn how to do the full thing so this feature will be flipping awesome.

Seems fine to me