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AggrorJorn

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Blog Entries posted by AggrorJorn

  1. AggrorJorn
    I have been using Visual Studio Code for a couple of years now and it is my defacto text editor next to Notepadd++. I mainly use it however to write Lua scripts. 
    Opensource Lightweight Cross platform Completely adjustable hotkeys (or automatically map from Visual Studio: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.vs-keybindings) Fully customisable theming (with standard themes included) Supports all major languages. Lua is supported via an extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=trixnz.vscode-lua Build in GIT source control Has a huge amount of extensions: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/extension-gallery Supports creating custom extensions: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/extensions/overview Supports creating custom debuggers (on top of the ones that already exist).  
     
    Leadwerks extension
    Personally I would love to see it if Visual Studio Code would be the default code editor for Leadwerks (either with 4.x or 5.x). So I got started on working on a custom Leadwerks extension.  You can download it here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=aggror.Leadwerks
    Todo list:
    Done: Leadwerks extension has a dependency on the Lua extension. So this Lua extension is automatically installed when you install the Leadwerks extension. Done: Snippets. Every time you create a new script in the Leadwerks editor, you get a couple of default scripts like Function Script:Start(), UpdateWorld(), PostRender(context). Using a very simple snippet, these kind of functions can be inserted with ease. prop[type] : Creates Leadwerk editor properties print: Shortcut for System:Print("") lescripts: Inserts all entity script functions (commented) class: Creates a basic class objects with example functions start: Start function of an entity script updateworld: UpdateWorld function of an entity script updatephysics: UpdatesPhysics function of an entity script collision: Collision function of an entity script with all parameters PostRender: PostRender function of an entity script with the context parameter function: Creates a function for either a custom object or for the specific script if for pair ipar For instance: just type 'col' followed by 1 tab and you get:  function Script:Collision(entity0,entity1,position,normal,speed) end  
    Partially done: Supporting intellisense (sort of) with Leadwerks entities. Lua is a typeless language (not a strong typed language), which makes intellisense not really possible.  VS code is smart enough to recognise some functions that are available in your script, but it is not as complete as when you would work with C# or C++. Done: Generate snippets for the entire Leadwerks API.  Snippets are created per object and a second one without the object. For instance Entity:SetPosition() SetPosition() TODO: Classes with parents, would require matching functions. For instance: a pivot is an entity and thus requires Pivot:SetPosition() Done: parameters into placeholder slots. If I can extend the intellisense so that it recognises Leadwerks entities, perhaps we could see correct variables and functions of those entities. TODO: Loading in the API documentation in a split screen.  The API documentation is written in an XML format which I can retrieve in VS code. I can display it in a splitscreen.  I would have to play with the styling a bit but in general this should work really fast API documentation can be cached if in online mode. Documentation could also be periodically fetched. Moving the API documentation to Github would help improve this process. (newer file versions etc) Debugging Josh stated that he is getting someone to make this for him. So fingers crossed. The biggest issue at the moment is the lack of debugging support. Visual studio has debugging options of course, but it can't communicate with the Leadwerks editor. If you have an error in your script while running from the editor, the default Lua editor is opened.
  2. AggrorJorn
    I recently was introduced to a bug in my game. I had 20 AI units and only 19 of them were actively doing something. Number 20 was just standing there. The problem eventually lied in using '#enemies' to get the amount of enemies.
    Here is what happened:
    A lua table index by default starts on index 1. This in contrary to many other languages where it starts at 0. However, you can assign a value to index '0' if you want. Since I use C# on a daily basis, I am more comfortable using the 0 index as a start. As a result this is my (simplified) code:
    for i = 0, enemyCount-1, do enemies[i] = new Enemy() end In the AI script I loop over the enemies like this:
    for i = 0, #enemies-1, do enemies[i]:DoStuff() end This is really basic lua scripting with one tiny gotcha: The '#' is used to get the amount of consecutive keyed items in the list. This I knew. What I did not know, is that there is also the requirement that this order starts at index 1 (or at least not on index 0). It simply ignores the 0 index!
    Here is a full script to try
    local enemies = {} local enemyCount = 4 for i = 0, enemyCount-1, 1 do enemies[i] = "I am enemy " .. i System:Print(enemies[i]) end System:Print("#enemiesCount: " .. #enemies) for i = 0, #enemies-1 do System:Print(enemies[i]) end Output:
    I am enemy 0 I am enemy 1 I am enemy 2 I am enemy 3 #enemiesCount: 3 I am enemy 0 I am enemy 1 I am enemy 2 Problem
    So what was happening? I did get the amount of enemies back, except for the one enemy that was located on index 0. I quickly noticed the lower count of enemies, but since enemy number 20 wasn't doing anything I was also looking in the wrong place. It was actually enemy number 1 that was the culprit, even though it's AI was being executed.
    Solution
    It can be solved in numerous simple ways, but I guess best practice is to just stick to Lua's standard and not assign anything to 0. This can really prevent some time being wasted on absolutely silly issues like this.
     
  3. AggrorJorn
    I have been working on some new features for the SplineTools package for Leadwerks. In the video below I demonstrate 2 new features
    Reverse spline followers: Reverse any spline follower at any given time on the spline. Just call the Reverse() function on a spline follower and enjoy the ride. Closest point on the spline: helper functions that can check what the closest point on a spline is based on given position.  
     
  4. AggrorJorn
    Now that the steam updating works again, the Spline Tools 1.04 package has been uploaded on Steam.
    Update 1.04
    This version contains some updated maps for Leadwerks 4.5. The moving platforms map unfortunately is not working properly and will have to be sorted out. Wire splines added.  Wire splines can be used for creating wires, cables or rope. By default, wires have no physics. Physics can be added as static shapes by selecting the wire type.  There is also an experimental dynamic wire type which creates joint for all rope segments. Doesn't work properly yet but is fun to play around with. Wires require some more work, like attach multiple splines geometry but I didn't want to wait any longer. Map added: "Wire - Electric poles.map". Demonstrates wire splines with no physics and static physics. Map added: "Wire - Tireswing.map". Demonstrates the experimental dynamic splines that uses joints for movable wires.   
    Todo list
    Reversed spline travel for spline followers  Ease in and out for spline followers  Rivers Improving the ropes  
     
     
  5. AggrorJorn
    Quite some time ago I was playing Rainbow Six Vegas with a coworker (not during work time). We were doing terrorist hunt on this construction site map and we were having a great time enjoying this classic game. At some point I wanted to throw a grenade quite far away. Of course with my pro-fps skills I managed to hit the electric pole standing right in front of me. After I was done facepalming, something caught my eye: the wires on the electric pole were swinging, probably by the grenade's shockwave. I hadn't noticed that before, but I found it really cool. It reminds me of making rope-bridges (old 3ds max tutorial ). I think dynamic wires can add a nice extra touch of 'being an interactive environment'. Making wires like that could be fun to have as an extension on the SplineTools.
    The Zone
    This became especially apparent when working on the zone back in June. I was placing these power pylons on the terrain. Since they are great models that add a lot to the background, I decided to bring them a little bit closer to the main area and raised the terrain at several locations. Placing the pylons was a piece of cake. However placing the wires, was a pain. The wires come from 1 single model. The problem with this is that it makes it really hard to place these wires. I had to constantly rotate them around, move them and then rotate them some more. So when I had 2 pylons placed at different heights, it took a lot of messing around to get the models placed correctly. And this was just a straight line of pylons. With bends in the electric network this would have even more problematic.

    SplineTools extension: Wires
    The wires/ropes/cables extension of the SplineTools fixes this problem. We can simple put a pivot on each of the wire connectors of a pylon. Then we attach the wirescript to the pivots and make the pylon a prefab. Now we can connect multiple pylons by connecting the wire nodes. We play around with some of the handlers to create a nice bezier curve and we are good to go.
    Physics
    We can take it even further by adding physics to these wires. At the moment of writing there is support for static physics ropes and also experimental dynamic ropes. The latter one makes physics shapes per wire segment and adds joints between them. We can anchor both ends of the wire if we want to. In the stable 4.4 branch this causes the game to crash now and then, but the beta branch for 4.5 doesn't seem to have this. So that is good news.
    We now have the same wires as the ones that I encountered in Rainbow six. The dynamics ropes are really fun to play with. You can now easily create a tireswing, draggable computer cables (like in HalfLife 2) and most importantly: rope-bridges.
    I have to finish the example scenes and make the tutorial for them, but they are almost ready for release. They are included in the SplineTools package. A new video blog will be posted when it is ready. At the moment the workshop uploading fails, so I can't push any updates yet.

  6. AggrorJorn
    In a previous developer blog I showed how I use spline paths inside the Leadwerks editor. The cool thing about splines as that they are extremely multipurpose. I started working on generating meshes based on the splines.  Think about ropes, wires, rivers, rollercoasters and of course roads
    Ropes and wires are in progress because I find them the coolest. Especially rope bridges are awesome to make and see in play. They require a lot of finetuning so I have put that on halt for now. In the meantime I also started working on road nodes. The Return to the Zone project uses terrain textures, but the original scene from Leadwerks 2.3 used the in-editor road tool. Time for some new roadfeatures.
    Roads
    The generic nature of the splines allows easy creation of meshes based on the spline. Constructing basic geometry was relatively easy. However, getting the road to appear on the terrain properly proved a little harder. When there is no terrain, the generation of the road is instantaneous. The roads that are created snap perfectly together and it is really satifying to see the result. Per node you can't only tweak the road with the spline handlers, but you can set a road width, a material and several terrain alignment options.
    When the node has to deal with terrain allignment the performance on startup is little slow at the moment, but the first results look promising. I want to add this feature to my winter game "On the road again", which makes cool random tracks from CSG brushes.  
    Another cool automatic feauture is that the road still functions as a path spline. You can attach a car to the road spline and it will follow the generated road. 
     
    Ropes and wires
    For a next video I will show the progress on the ropes and wires, with hopefully some working physics. Here is an older image based on the earlier splines to give you an idea on what I am going for:

  7. AggrorJorn
    Paid scripts
    I am looking in to publishing paid scripts to the workshop. There are 2 script collections that others might find interesting:
    Advanced Third Person Controller Many tweakable options: from double jumping, to camera offset, camera snapping, smoothing, speed controls etc Spline paths Not just useful for camera paths, but also for instance factory belts, vehicular movement (static cars, trains etc), airial paths (birds, planes), VR on rails. Tutorials and Patreon
    The newer tutorials (part of Project OLED, ) do not have a lot of visitors. Perhaps my focus on tutorial subject is just not right or people don't like the way it is setup. Perhaps the focus on editor tutorials is far more important. Who knows... With the lack of feedback in the past months I am quite hesitant in recording new videos, thats for sure.  
    The patreon page was an experiment to see if people would be interested in donating to the tutorials project OLED. There hasn't been much activitity on it, so this is something that I probably will discontinue.  A big thanks to ones who did support me though :).
     
     
  8. AggrorJorn
    The easiest, but none the less effective, way to optimize a large outdoor scene is setting a view range for an entity. Here are some basic rules that I used during the rebuild of the Return to the Zone project.
    Max: Here you can think of essential buildings and large structures. Think about distant buildings, powerlines, bridges and entities that stick out above the vegetation or water plane. Far: Here we have the larger props: containers, trains, vehicles, walls, statues. This also contains props that are exposed in open areas. Think about road side props like stone piles, crates or oilddrums. Medium: Props that are placed inside buildings can have either Medium or Near as a view range. When a building has several large indoor areas or contain a lot of windows and doors use the medium setting. Near: Tiny props, like cans, toys, garbage and pretty much all props that are placed inside confined rooms. Also, a few static camera points showcasing the Zone:
     
  9. AggrorJorn
    Back in 2010 Josh, creator of the Leadwerks Engine, asked Dave Lee to create a part of the exclusion zone. 7 years later, this project has been revisited and rebuild.
    Original footage from Leadwerks 2.3
     
    With Leadwerks 3 I asked Josh if I could convert the assets to the new engine. Most assets were uploaded to the workshop, but they lacked proper physics, materials etc. Back then the Leadwerks 3 engine didn't have the vegatation editor and no deferred renderer. So building the entire map was not pointless.
    Now in Leadwerks 4 the tools are perfect to recreate this beautifully designed scene. Josh gave me once again all the assets, and I started rebuilding the zone piece by piece. Many hours later in just the time span of 2 weeks we have some good results.
    Step 1: Terrain import and basic terrain painting. 

    2. Painting general layout and some first vegatation

    3. Placing the first bridges

    4. Placing the first large buildings. as you can see the texture are missing. 

     
    5 Reapplied building textures. Holy **** that was a lot of work. Some textures did get applied automatically, but a lot of the textures were combined in larger shared folders. A lot of manual searching and applying the right textures.

    6 Props, props and even more props. The more I started placing props, the more respect I got for Dave Lee's original design and prop placement. The amount of props is growing significantly. Here is a comparison of Bober station, with and without the building.

    7. Fine-tuning terrain textures and terrain.
    8. Adding more vegatation and rocks.
    9. Swamp emitters.
    10. Some more props.
    11. Performance optimizing. View distance, billboards etc. More on this in the next blog.
    12. Adding some post effects and sound.
     
    13 Some missing things: due to a tight deadline, no time for physics yet. Except for models that have box physics or where physics do not really matter that much. Optimizing and organising the scene is also far from done. I came across a nasty bug where all my assets were removed from the filters I had in place. That was painful.

     
    The final reveal of Return to the Zone project will be done by Josh. In the mean time...enjoy....


     
     
  10. AggrorJorn
    I started out 7 months ago with splines and it turned in to one of those annoying projects you start but then fail to finish even to it is in the back of your head the entire time. The reason this time was that I managed to delete my online repository and my local files, leaving me with nothing of the work I had created. I finally had the spirit to sit down and start rebuilding.
     
  11. AggrorJorn
    I am currently looking into some 2d basic/arcade game tutorials which might follow up on the OLED project once all the lua basics tutorials are done.
     
    Think about games like:
    Minesweeper
    Tetris
    Pong
    Bejeweld (match 3)
    Asteroids
    Snake
    Arkanoid (breakout)

     
    Minesweeper is already finished:

     
     
    Replicating all these games myself gives a great indication on their complexity, even for arcade games. Grid based games like minesweeper, bejeweled and tetris are the easiest and share a lot of functionality. So doing all of them might now prove usefull. Pong is great in the sense that it introduces vector mathematics. All these game have their own little mechanics. The trick in making the tutorials is also finding the right game order.
     
    One game that you might find missing in the list above is Pacman. Although certainly doable, the ghosts have their own behaviour which makes them a little trickier for beginnners. All in all it is a good way to really start tinkering about lua once you'r done learning the basics.
     
     
    What are your favorite arcade games?
  12. AggrorJorn
    We have seen a lot of statistics on the forum recently. I thought I'd share some from my Youtube account.
     
    The stats below are from the past 365 days, including only videos that are relative to Leadwerks.

     
    Geo stats

  13. AggrorJorn
    Something that has always been a time consuming process is getting the audio right in my recordings. Although I have a very decent headset, recordings allways contained a lot of static noise and voice 'pops'. To get an acceptablequality I required a finetuned microphone placement for every recording. 1cm to the left could make a big difference. The recording software that I use has some build in noice reduction filters, but they do not always guarantee a smooth audio track.
     
    Since there are going to be many new videos to be recorded I finally invested in a good recording setup. I bought a studio microphone which could be placed on a small stand which would be placed in front the keyboard. A bit weird when simultaniously typing but I will get used to that.
     
    The first recording had a much better default recording sound than the headset. The static noise is pretty non existent but there are some occasonial pops. So I went ahead and also bought a popfilter (never relly bevieved how a simple' piece of synthetic fabric could improve sound quality). But the 'pops' in sentences have been significantly reduced.
     
    While I was on a spending spree anyway I also just went ahead and bought a good recording stand, which I can adjust freely without getting in the way of typing.
     
    Here is the final setup.

  14. AggrorJorn
    This is the final blog post for my game entry this tournament.
     
    GUI
    I am really happy the way the GUI came together in the end. UI really isn't my strongpoint so being able to produce something doable is a great reward.
     
    Car physics
    Although most car tracks can be finished with a car, it is not an easy task. The car tumbles over far to quickly. There is also a bug left were loading a new car level causes the car to glitch. Since I am reusing the same car here, I have no idea what is further causing this. I didn't have this in my first demo so there must be something on my end.
    The ball's swept collision physics have been disabled. There is a bug where object with swept collision collide with each other even if one of those items has the collision type set to none.
     
    Final version
    Although I released a final version, there have been 4 or 5 updates already. But then again that is one of the common phrases in the IT world: you are never done programming.
     
    Game Play Tournament
    I think I want to organise a little game play tournament with On the road again. There will be a couple of pre-selected levels and the person with the highest score per track will get a steam key for a game.
     
    All in all I am happy with the end result and I am looking forward to see that leaderboard fill up. I have also enabled the game analytics. I wonder what kind of conclusions we can draw from it.
     

  15. AggrorJorn
    I have uploaded a new version containing save games and some improvements regarding restarting a level, going to back menus etc.
     
    Saves
    Every time you finish a level, a property is set to keep track of the levels you finished. Only downside when using the launcher is that this will only get set, when the game is closed. So when you finish 4 levels, it will not become clear you finished these levels until after you have restarted the game. But still a pretty nice feature to have.

     
    Track generation
    The level generation has been altered for the first time since the first blog. Nothing too complicated though, just a different seed when using a car or ball (One variable is called ballSeed ha). The tracks also now have a weighted percentage added to them, meaning that some track segments have a little less chance to get picked over others.
     
    Corpses
    The ball, just like the car, now has a corpse everytime you reset the level. Corpses of the car and the ball are now removed when going back to main menu to prevent cluttering up the game world.

     
    Sound
    Sound has been added, but they are ogg files. So for now, you wont hear anything yet in the game launcher.
     
    Car physics
    The car physics are driving me crazy (no pun intended). I got a reasonable/playable result but it is not entirely there yet. Ah well, it will do for the tournament. Everytime I get a combination of decent properties, there is always something wrong. Either, accelaration, steering, jumpiness, crash sensitivity (
    ) or rolling over with the slightest road curve. I think I have spend more time on the cart, than on everything else combined. Maybe I will give it one last go this week and otherwise I will have to revert back to the basic car. 
    Only 1 more week to go everyone! Good luck.
  16. AggrorJorn
    Instead of spending more time on getting the car to work properly, I added in a simple ball real quick and to be honest: I like the faster gameplay a lot more. What do you guys think? I do miss the ghost cars, so those will definitely come back.
     
    I have updated the game in the launcher. http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/viewitem?fileid=821020417

  17. AggrorJorn
    Here I thought that I would be done with my entry in no time. Finetuning everything turned out to be a pain to be honest. Luckily the GUI was set up rather quickly and most of the game state switching worked almost instantly.
     


     
    Tired of the tires
    The real time consumers came when suddenly my tires wouldn't update with the vehicle. Spend a good time trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, but eventually just decided to leave it until the very end.
     
    Analytics
    I added Josh's new analytics api to the game to see what kind of information I would be getting. So far I can see the kind of seeds people are using and how often levels are reset. I guess it will be really interesting after a couple of people have actually played the game.
     

     
    Leaderboards
    Again I got stuck here far longer than I had anticipated. For some reason the highscores get updated with a new value. Meaning, that no matter your track time, the highscore table will always be set by it. I can do it manually, but it should happen automatically. Another downside is that I can't do any querying on which seeds were popular overall or last week. I would love to add that to the game as that is really what would make this game so powerful. Unfortunately, there are no means for me to do this right away.
     
    Game player
    The game has been uploaded to the game player now. Everyone can try it out and fill in a random number to get a unique track. The seed number should give people an identical track though. Looking forward to seeing some results. That way I can also finalise the highscore leaderboard after you reach the finish. There are plenty of bugs, missing features and graphical incompletions, but important is getting those highscores from other players right now.
     
    Controls
    When you are racing, you can WASD for car movement and your mouse for the camera.
    Use R to reset the level. When you have finished the level you can either reset or go back to main menu.
     
    If you could try it out with seeds '1337' and '1234', that be great.
    http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/viewitem?fileid=821020417
  18. AggrorJorn
    Finally done moving to my new house and today I got my computer setup again. And as a start, I thought, lets give it a go for the winter games tournament.
     
    It is a little racing game where the tracks gets randomly generated on the given seed. I think I will call it "On the road again", named after the song and because of the fact that the level generation allows you to skip parts of the track if you simple fall down on the track below you.
     
     

  19. AggrorJorn
    The past 30 days have been very hectic but fun none the less. While it all started with the thought that I would have some time to spare, it became one of the busiest months of the year. It started with a non-Leadwerks project, where I am currently working on with 2 artists. I was done with the coding for the current sprint (we are using scrum). This meant simply waiting for the artists to do their part. The sprint ends December 14th, so that would mean time for a new project.
     
    Back to Leadwerks
    I hadn’t touched Leadwerks for a solid 6 months so it was time to download it again and see how things were going. I started working on a new big Leadwerks project. Something that I want to work on with other Leadwerks users. For this project I needed camera paths and BAM! Before I knew it I was working on a new project creating tracking lines, curved splines, camera paths, ropes, cables (joints and everything). It is one of the up- and downsides of programming (or game development in general). You get an idea and before you’r even properly halfway through, your attention falls on something completely different.
     
    Lines and Splines
    The splines project became a lot more versatile than I had anticipated and I realized I had to tone it down a little. So no ropes and cables for now. The lines and splines are done at last. I had some issues with fine-tuning everything but the end result is pretty slick. Only thing left to do is recording some videos/tutorials and it is ready to be published. I want to make them available for a few dollars on the workshop. If it is successful I wil think about other useful tools that people might want. However time is not on my side...
     

     
     
    Moving
    My girlfriend has a new job and that means that we are moving. We have been looking for a house and this week we actually managed to get the keys. That means that free time will be very scarce as it will all be spend on moving and finishing the new house. It also means that releasing the splines and camera paths will be postponed a bit.
     
    Games
    If I want to take a break from programming there is always that other hobby which consumes a lot of time: playing games. And boy are there some time consuming bastards out there this month. At first I bought Cossacks 3. Massive armies and spending some later hours on the battlefield against the AI is what I love about this game. Then there is also Transport Fever. A great indie title game for the transport tycoon lovers. I already played their previous game a lot (train fever) and by the looks of it, this game will keep my busy for a long time to come. Not even mentioning Planet Coaster which looks awesome as well…
     
    Transport Fever (with Leadwerks logo)

     
    Cossacks3

     
    Tutorials
    When the new Leadwerks UI is done, I think it is time to do some new Lua tutorials. The existing videos are getting outdated very fast. I really want to help boost the community and with the upcoming winter tournament and existing monthly script challenge it will only get better. For the latter one I am afraid I will have no time left. A shame, because Thirsty Panther did a great job on its preparation.
  20. AggrorJorn
    I downloaded the Saturn tutorial project yesterday to see how the project was holding up after all this time. After some bug fixing and adjusting some of the scenery ingame, I came to the conclusion I really liked the parcours part of the scene. So I thought lets just turn it in to a run and jump game real quick and add it to the winter games tournament.
     
    http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/viewitem?fileid=616857680
  21. AggrorJorn
    Terrain tutorials
    There are 2 new video tutorials on how to use the terrain editor.
     
    Sculpting terrain:

     
    Terrain painting:

     
     
    Tutorials: Project Saturn
    It has been a while since I made a tutorial for Project Saturn, but that will change in the near future. Since there are so many new members using Leadwerks I am going to make some free time for some new tutorials. In the past 3 months there were only a handful of viewers and that didn't quite way up to time spend on making the tutorials. That said I also upgraded from a parttime to a full time job which obviously really cuts in to my Game dev time.
     
    The first new video tutorials are already here:
    21:
    22:
    23:
     

     
    Lua beginner tutorials
    I am also going to make some tutorials for the absolute beginners. For those that have very little to no experience, theses lessons should be very useful. Although these are Lua tutorials in general, they will be aimed towards usage in Leadwerks.
     
    FlowGUI
    I took the plunge in to selling my own Lua GUI library for Leadwerks: FlowGUI. Selling scripts/code for Leadwerks is something I wanted to do for years but I never really had the guts to actually try it. Now that I have made an initial release via webdownload, I am glad I did. I am happy with the amount of licenses sold so far, which makes it also a lot more fun to work on upcoming features such as inventories.
    I also hope that by providing extra downloadable content for Leadwerks, we will attract more people, were Leadwerks on itself will only benefit from. Last but not least it might also inspire other developers/artists to start selling their own work as well. Maybe when payed items are added to the workshop, this will really kick off.
     
    Jorn 'Aggror'
     

  22. AggrorJorn
    So school time is over. I graduated from the Hogeschool of Amsterdam as a Game Developer which means I can officially put 'ing' (from engineer) in front of my applicant name. Now that the 'study' period of my life is over (although it isn't really, right? I mean when do you ever stop learning!) it is time to get a job and start earning some money.
     
    Guerrilla Games
    For the past 6 months I did my thesis internship at Guerrilla Games. Which was awesome. I was surprised at first that they offered me a internship and being it was an opportunity of a lifetime, I gladly accepted it.
    I spend most of my time on research rather than doing programming. But still, I spend a solid 2 months digging myself in to the engine, tools and what not the company has been developing over the years. Overwhelming, insanely complex and mesmerizing at the same time, I slowly began to understand the enormous process of making a AAA game. How they are able to produce games like Killzone is, from my point of view, a pure miracle.
    I did gain a lot of new experience in C++ since I was stationed between the Game coders. Working with Game designers was a lot of fun since I never ever worked in a team before which had team members which had such focused tasks. I met some very cool people along the way. One of them was John Gonzalez, who was the lead writer for Fallout New Vegas. It was so inspiring and awesome to have such people surrounding me. Also really cool: the building was located in the centre of Amsterdam near a beautiful canal.
     


     
    Looking for work
    So with a certificate in my pocket and a cool intership on my resumee it is now time to start seeking a job. Game developer jobs are not super scarce but it is not that you get a job without making any effort. I have yet to send out my first job applications but remarkably I did get a lot of offers to work as a software developer or web developer. That is kind of motivating and I am sure that if a job in the game development stays out, I will go for one of those. But my passion lies with games and a job in the game industry would have my preference. We'll see how it goes..
     
    Tutorial project Saturn
    In the mean time I am busy on my own project as well as a new tutorial series going under the name of 'Project Saturn'. The idea here is that we make a playable level and in each video we see the development take a direction. Nothing is really predetermined in to what kind of game it eventually should turn out to be. All assets and scripts needed for the tutorials are either created during the tutorials or they are already part of the Leadwerks SDK. If you have some nice gameplay mechanic that would be a good idea to add, you can leave a comment. Maybe it is something we can add if it is not to massive to implement during a video.
     
    See the first video here:

     
    Jorn
  23. AggrorJorn
    The last year of my Game Development study has already started. With only one year to go it is time so look ahead and view the possibilities that are available.
     
    Focus
    The coming 20 weeks I am following a minor in advanced software engineering and Game Technology itself will be put in the background. Game development will mostly be something I will do in my spare time. I thought that this year would be really busy one but so far it has been very quiet. The focus of the minor lies on Java, the Spring framework and web applications. I don't have much experience with those so that might come in handy for later. After those 20 weeks I will start my graduation trainee ship, although I first have to find a decent company where I can actually learn something.
     
    Starting a career
    I am a little nervous about comes after finishing my study. I could study further if I wanted to, but the experience I have had so far is that you just have to sit down and make something. Especially if you have someone (either friends or colleagues) that can help you develop your skills. I want to start my own game company but I do have a small college debt that I need to pay of first. So most likely I will start seeking a job withing the Gaming or Software industry.
     
    Projects
    My main project is still in combination with Leadwerks. Especially now that terrain has arrived I can really test out my work that I have been preparing for it. Progress has been going really well, although actual gameplay is still really far away. My game will be playable both singleplayer as multiplayer which adds an extra level of complexity and delay to the development and gameplay.
     
    Tournaments
    It is really nice to see more activity and interest with the Leadwerks Tournament. Although it can be really difficult to actually make something work in the amount of time you have available, it can be just the push you need to produce something. I have to admit that I was very enthusiastic about a themed tournament but in the end it didn't really helped much at all. Anyway, the third tournament will be a big one and has yet to be announced. The prizes will be even bigger and the length of the tournament will be extended to 3 weeks.
     
    Tutorials
    I haven't made a tutorial in a while although I do still want to make at least one of them (Particles). When the terrain has had some patches and/or new features, I will make some videos about that as well. I have created a nice little Tower defense game entirely with Lua. This game will be rewritten from scratch in a large video tutorial set. I am thinking of making this a paid tutorial set, which I can make available to users for a small fee. I have yet to see whether this is worth its time, but experimenting with it can't hurt.
     
    FlowGUI
    Besides the tutorial set, I'm also thinking about releasing FlowGUI as a simple GUI library for like 2/3 dollar. That depends a little on whether people would be interested in it or not. I stopped working on it when Josh announced a GUI editor with the Kickstarter, but since it might not be part of the engine for a while, it might be worth taking a look at it again. All scripts would be freely accessible and could be altered to a persons desire.
     
     
    Let me know what you guys and girls think.
    Jorn
  24. AggrorJorn
    So now that game week is over lets have a look back at how things went.
     
    Game play
    Gameplay itself was done really quickly. The idea for Lenga is basically Jenga with a twist of colors. I thought of creating an AI that would remove blocks based on a calculation. However I though it would become really boring. So instead I let the player remove a block of a specific color.
     
    Scripts on the wrong entity
    At some point during testing I came across a script error. I lost a good hour trying to figure out what I was doing wrong in my script, but as it turned out it was something else: a lua script was somehow attached to a different entity even though I never attached a script to that object. It did turn out that I am not the only one experiencing this.
    http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/7275-script-properties-showing-different-script-properties/
     
    Lua script editor
    A very annoying thing about the Leadwerks 3 script editor is that every new line starts without any indenting or tabs. This is really frustrating. Whether you enter for a new line or when you want to move your function one line lower. It breaks the flow and you are wasting a lot of time making sure that every line is aligned correctly.
     
    Physics
    The performance of the physics is just bad. There is not much else I can say about it. The newton 3 demos that you can play show a lot more physics activity and that without any fps drops or weird behavior. On my laptop I can barely run the game (For the record: I can play GTA 4 on my laptop). As soon as the tower falls over (24 blocks), the game slows down to 3 fps.
    After the game was finished I recreated it in C++, just to see if the physics performance would be better. Unfortunately that is not the case. I even went back to Leadwerks 2 (with newton 2) to do the same test. The performance is so much better. I can have 200 boxes in a tumbling tower without any fps drops.
     
    I am 100% certain that there is something wrong with the integration of Newton 3 into Leadwerks 3. Ofcourse this is really difficult to pinpoint but it sure is a showstopper. It isn't the first time this happened in a project with Leadwerks 3.
  25. AggrorJorn
    After creating my Component based engine structure for my main project, I have now moved on to the next stage of development: an in-game console.
     
    Possibilities
    To sum up what you can do with it, here is a little video demonstration.
     


     
    On the To-Do list
    Although the core of the console is finished and working the way I want it to work, there are some slight improvements.
    Grapics are simple boxes at this point. I want to go for Valve's in-game console look , which looks simple but suits its purpose really well.

    Used command are stored and can be retrieved with arrow keys.
    Error message or help text should be displayed above the command line.
    Show a cursor.
    Adding useful commands, like toggle sound, sound volume, load level, set players health, ammo, armor etc.
    Trying to build the console as a library so that it can be easily included in other projects.

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