[[Episode 1] Development of Fallen Legion]

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  Please consider to like, comment or even subscribe If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I will be reading all the comments!

  Also please note that I'm currently on my laptop because my PC is having some troubles at the moment. The sound and graphics quality is a bit off then.

  In case you're interested in smaller updates, I recommend going to the Facebook page of Fallen Legion: http://www.facebook.com/FallenLegionRPG

 

[Steam Greenlight is Closed]

I'm curious to see what people will think of it in ~1 month or so.

So far it hasn't sounded great, perhaps even worse. Maybe it's better to have a quality control team or at least have some quality guidelines. I don't know, maybe I'll be wrong in the end. I hope so at least.

[Google Hangout this Saturday]

I missed :/

Can someone please share a sumary of the hangout?

 

From what I still remember:

• Josh is really happy with the new site, thinks it really shows what Leadwerks is capable of and deflects the "unfit" users.
  
• Josh has been working on VR for a while now (Oculus and HTC Vive) using OpenVR. Almost implemented except for a few things like a skewed rendering result, which seems to be fixed when looking at today's status.
  
• Leadwerks now has a big client, which is a reason why Josh has been working on VR so much. Couldn't say who because of NDAs.
  
• Said that if Leadwerks had some more reliable income that he would hire a few people to work for him. Right now everybody just buys once and you have it forever, but if that was a $5-10 subscription per month then Leadwerks would've been in a different place right now. There weren't any plans to make subscriptions happen.
  
• Said he was worried about Steam Direct. If it takes Steam's value down then he might release Leadwerks on it own or somewhere else as well.
  

Can't remember anything else right now, I think this was pretty much it

[Steam Greenlight to be replaced]

Article from Polygon: http://www.polygon.com/2017/2/10/14571438/steam-direct-greenlight-dumped

 

TL;DR:

Valve wants to drop Steam Greenlight and replace it with Steam Direct. Main reasons are to remove the "popularity contest" vibe around it and prevent overflooding the Steam store (last year had over 4000 new games).

 

The new system will require the submitter to pay a higher free from $100 to ~$5000 (still unconfirmed), submit a form (probably for game info, description and media like screenshots) and submit their game for basic compatibility tests. Valve does want to try to find the balance between talented developers and affordability.

 

$5000 seems extremely steep if that was to be true. If hobbyists like us want to get our game on Steam we really, really have to make sure that it will make at least $5000 just to break even for the initial fee. Sound a bit too harsh for me. Perhaps we have to try to look for alternatives like other platforms or other ways to make money? Would be a shame though, as Steam is such a big platform.

 

I do like the idea of basic compatibility tests though, but I wonder how much info you will get from the results.

[Leadwerks and Blender Models]

I think that plugin was meant for Leadwerks 2.X. Since version 3.0 I think the .mdl format has changed a bit. Try exporting to .FBX and see if it works from there. I could be wrong though.

[Getting rid of App class]

I think that is better than we have right now. Whenever I start a new project I have to get rid of the Start and Loop function and write it from scratch which looks similar to that.

 

Removing the App class does make you assume that there's only one application per run, which is a perfectly fine standpoint. I don't see anyone making two games in one executable. It's also good that there's less (perhaps unnecessary) overhead now, makes it easier to understand what's going on. In case people do want multiple applications in one executable then they can create their own App class.

 

I'd say do it.

[Leadwerks.h]

I had this problem when using source control. On default, PropertySheet.props in the location "YourProject\Projects\Windows\" (or Linux) should be pointing towards "<installpath>\steamapps\common\Leadwerks\Include" and "<installpath>\steamapps\common\Leadwerks\Library". Make sure the file paths are correct in order to compile.

[Leadwerks podcast/hangouts]

Now that the Winter Games are over, it'd seem a good time to do it (and maybe have Josh try out the games live)?

[On the road again]

@Aggror, I'm sorry but you'll have to do it with double digits

[On the road again]

Really like the game, also like the approach of choosing ball levels and car levels.

 

I think there's a small bug in the level saving. It showed me that I finished level 2 after completing level 1. Nothing major though.

 

And Josh, you might want to look into the leaderboards again...

[Setting a C++ iterator to an "invalid" value?]

I've never tried it myself, so use it at your own risk I suppose...

[Setting a C++ iterator to an "invalid" value?]

He's referring to the iterator, not iterator value.

 

But you can you use the value of the iterator as a flag, although it can be dangerous in case an object or variable does have that value.

An alternative way could perhaps be using it = list.end(), as end() has no value assigned to it.

 

I don't really think there's a clean way to set it to "invalid" in any other way.

[What are you working on :]

Working on WhiteOut, my entry for the Winter Games!

 

It's a racing game where you race locally, online and/or against the AI. Still need to do the menu, audio and some more maps... But it's getting there!

 

 

 

 

I'm coming for you, warm Leadwerks hoodie

[Exam game - Realm of the Lamb]

Very cool! The amount of immersion is overwhelming, didn't expect it to be that much. You can definitely see the amount of effort and passion into this project. Also glad to hear that you've passed your exam.

[Git ignore for Leadwerks project]

I don't think you can Git Ignore anything else aside from that. The .meta, .map and .pfb files are all binary but shouldn't be excluded as they are needed for either the project or the engine itself.

[Bug tracking system]

All bugs are reported here.

[Git ignore for Leadwerks project]

If you're using C++, the only thing to ignore is the "Projects/Windows/PropertySheet.props" file, as it contains the abstract path to the engine of the user who created the project. This file informs Visual Studio where the library is located, which can be different for every user. So if another user has a different path to Leadwerks or doesn't have this file at all, then the user cannot compile the project.

 

These are the following lines that probably need to be changed by every user:

   <LeadwerksHeaderPath>C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Leadwerks\Include</LeadwerksHeaderPath>
   <LeadwerksLibPath>C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Leadwerks\Library</LeadwerksLibPath>

 

One way to work around this problem is to rename the file to "PropertySheets.changethistoprops" or something similar. Visual Studio won't pick up the file and you can use that file as a template that everybody needs to change to make the project work.

[Crash on save or run after adding navmesh]

Are you making your game in C++? It appears that the includes are faulty after the recent update of Leadwerks itself.

I fixed it by creating a new blank C++ project, open both solution files and then in Visual Studio:

1. Go to Project -> Project Properties (or displayed as "WorldSmith/BlankProject Properties" in your case)
   
2. Click C/C++
   
3. Click General
   
4. Copy over the 'Additional Include Directories' from the new project to your WorldSmith project (do the Debug and Release configurations separately)
   
5. Optional: Clean and rebuild the project (recommended though)
   

If you need additional help with this then I can make a quick video or something.

[Google Hangout]

Summary as far as I understood it:

 

4.1 official release is next week (even though you can already use it now)

- "Probably a sale on a big distribution platform ;)"

- "Please post fancy screenshots in the gallery for news article"

 

Workshop not doing so well yet, is currently main focus for improvement such as:

- Be able to download zip files of DLCs you bought on Steam through the workshop using your linked Steam account

- Focus on more game templates for the users, preferably on the workshop

 

If the workshop sales were more successful, we would've had over 2000 model packs already

- To give you an idea, the mercenary DLC pack only brought in $150 on the workshop

- Steam DLC sales compared to workshop sales are about 9:1 in favor of Steam

 

New library for 2D drawing / window creation is in the progress

- Potentially allows us for Mac OSX support, whereas the current library doesn't

- No initial plans for a GUI editor, maybe later

 

Wants to compile the Leadwerks editor to 64 bit using Blitzmax

 

I think that's all of 'em

[Proper FPS weapon CS:GO-like ?]

But how do you make it render only your weapon?

 

You can try ForEachVisibleEntityDo: Hide all the entities visible for the second camera, store all the hidden entities and re-enable them using Show() after rendering. It's probably not performance friendly but it's quick to make. You can also try to make a new world and try to emulate lighting it from there.

 

Although I do like nick.ace's shader solution, would probably be the most performance-friendly solution of all.

[Proper FPS weapon CS:GO-like ?]

I remember a technique where you have a second camera which renders the first-person model as a new layer. I found a good article about that recently, will come back with it soon

 

Edit: I think you can do something like SetRenderTarget to render a second camera's display to a texture (which is a big as your window), which you can use as an overlay on top of your main camera using something like DrawImage.

[characters lean forward [ c++]]

The behavior is probably because the point they're looking to is below them. You probably only want the Y rotation of the model, so you can set the X and Z rotation to 0 using SetRotation.

[Google Hangout]

Looks like I can be there for the first time

[(C++) Camera::Project - Weird Results When Looking Away From Project Point]

I remember this problem when using Project to draw health bars. I solved it by doing a dot product to see whether or not a point is in front of the camera or not.

 

I don't have the code right now but can give it to you in about 12 hours from now if you want to.

 

Edit: Oops, saw too late that you still want to draw the line. I don't have a solution for that though. Although you can use the dot product to determine whether or not it should be drawn

[Can Leadwerks Make Co-Op Game?]

Making a multiplayer game gives 2 problems you would need to research first before you start developing. It can get really complicated and messy if you don't really know what you're doing. It's definitely possible in Leadwerks to make an online game. For example, I made Siege online during the Halloween game tournament.

 

The problems are:

- Finding a networking library

- Setting up your game to use networking

 

For the networking library, like above I can really recommend RakNet and ENet if you're new to networking. If you're more advanced, I can recommend looking into Boost.Asio and WinSock as it takes it to an ever lower level, giving you more control to the data you're sending out and receiving in.

 

However, RakNet is known for stuttering as their networking tends to use TCP for reliable messages. Stuttering is where data like damage arrives later than it should. For the player it can be unpleasant as it causes things like

. For a side project I've used ENet which didn't give that problem. So if I had the choice, I would pick ENet. Although, Ken Claassen made a

on how to use RakNet with Leadwerks 2.0 (previous version of Leadwerks), but the idea behind it still works. You can check that out as well.

 

Then for the implementation, there are two approaches to a co-op game. The first approach is to make the game able to host a networked game (also known as listen server), and the second option is to make a dedicated server. In Leadwerks it's easier to make a listen server as creating a dedicated server requires you to make a separate project which you will need to update constantly. A simple listen server is easier to manage both development-wise and release-wise.

 

So whenever you finish the game, you can release it like the following:

- Dedicated server: You can give the server to everyone or keep it yourself, make sure the game will still be sent to the players

- Listen server: You only give the game (as setting up the server is all in the game), but tell the players to forward a port that the networking is using to establish a connection.

 

There's still a lot to talk about for networking, but these are the basics. I'll be watching this thread for if you have further questions Good luck in the meantime.

 

@Josh, is ENet actually implemented into Leadwerks? Haven't seen that yet.