Pixel Perfect

You should only need to store a pointer to the instance of the class and the class type in the entity itself (this isn't even necessary as you could just have a unique Id and use a lookup table for the pointers). Then, if the classes are designed well, you should have functions to easily access and update data for the NPC. OOP should make it easier not harder

shadmar was looking at techniques to increase the texture layers available with some success, but with regard to the vegetation layers ... there is no limit on those as I understand it (apart form the graphics cards ability to render it all lol)

Been away so just got to try this .... pretty cool if you ask me, sure you have some issues but I'm sure they'll get sorted out. I can see where your heading with this and it looks great!

No terrain in the first release but then it's planned to have streaming terrains eventually from my understanding. Not sure about multiple terrains but then streaming terrains may remove your need for that ...not sure you didn't say why you wanted multiple terrain support.

Sounds like a good move but yeah, a whole load more work Looking forward to it NA.

Cool ... those have a whole 'richer' look to them color wise! Do you have an ETA yet?

Nothing to stop you assigning your own unique IDs as you can simply loop through the level objects children assigning them to a new key value. You probably already loop through them in order to create internal game objects so there is no additional overhead really. As these are static then this should always be repeatable. With a base class that all dynamic object classes are derived from containing the ID and a set of virtual functions for loading and saving; each derived class can have its own save load functions which can save/overwrite key data for the restored level.

Ok, I just created a source and reassigned it's position every frame. Simple enough workaround but I still wonder if I'm missing something here!

Is there anyway I can stop a sound playing when using EmitSound in C because unlike Lua and BMax it doesn't return a soundSource? I want the source tied to a moving entity created at run time so it makes sence to use EmitSound but I need to be able to have it loop untill I choose to stop it. How does it even get freed? Does this only occur when the entity it's attached to is freed?

Very nice indeed!

Thanks for the comments and link Rick, I'll make a point of reading through that. Indeed, if Josh has accepted it's an issue the solution might lie with him Cheers for the feedback ChrisV, it's all helpful. You're right on the collision on the plants, that's better removed and I'll do so. I always think it looks a bit odd being able to walk through larger plants/bushes but being able to stand on top of them looks even odder lol! I guess game environments are always about compromise. Regarding the grass texture, I'd probably introduce other items to mask this somewhat in a finished scene like vegetation, leaves, and decals possibly. The problem with releasing scenes like this is the tendency for everyone to assume it's a finished article, which I had gone to lengths to explain it's not, but they are fair criticisms non the less. The lighting issues with the edges of walls I've often experienced with 'off the shelf models'. I'm guessing it's some sort of geometry issue (I'm not a modeller). As a programmer I have to accept there are limits to what I can achieve on the modelling/artistic side. I have already agreed to team up with an artist/modeller who approached me after I posted the demo so I'm hoping I will have some much more talented help with these sorts of issues in the future. The fire place was very noticeable and I was wondering if I could construct a simple double sided model to fit into the fire with the invisible material just to block the light (cast the shadow). I'd also noticed the door popping when turning inside the house and assumed that was to do with occlusion, there is also a problem with the inside appearance of the door too when in the open position. I need to investigate this further. I'd not noticed any texture swapping but I'll take a look again. Learning loads from this so thanks for all the comments, it's been a useful exercise putting this out there.

It seems I already have the controller sets to iterations = 1 and physics quality = 3 (linear) so I'm not sure what else I can do under these circumstances. I assume it's the continuous stream of collisions which causes this slow down with it firing constantly when sandwiched between other collision objects! I only get a minimum of 17 fps but that's a huge reduction in frame rate non the less. Need to give this some thought, any further suggestions welcome.

Great feedback guys, I'll experiment with that. Many thanks!

Thanks BES, do you know where the 16 fps occurred ?

Thanks shadmar, yes it's packed using smartpacker pro. I picked it up in the recent sale they had as I thought it might come in useful offering some reasonable asset protection, at least during this development stage. I am a little nervous still of using the inbuilt pak file mechanism with assets I've purchased as the security is quite low. It's an Achilles heal in the Leadwerks 2 system. Although this has been essentially an exercise in preparing a suitable test level for AI development it's paid huge dividends already in as much that it's: Got me into Lua scripting of objects for the first time Allowed me to test and fix some bugs in my engine as it stands (thanks to all who replied pointing out issues) including a few issues I had with the display of the inventory system when displaying in different screen resolutions. Inspired me to extend the object picking and inventory system yesterday making it a lot more robust and adding the ability to drop items approximately 1 metre in front of you with ray casting to detect obstacles which may require a shorter distance. Objects like the key are now fully dynamic and emit sound when dropped adding to the realism. I can literally pickup the key, walk round with it and go back and place it back on the mantelpiece or just drop it and kick it accross the floor. Of course, having it open a door would be useful I'm going to stop at this point and move on to character AI development with the first job being to extend my existing Leadwerks to EKI One exporter functionality to allow for dynamic game objects and character spawn waypoints to be flagged and exported. A simple text support system is already in place for object descriptions and text display of items like books. I have character facial animation and speech developed and tested too but have yet to integrate it into the engine. It's AI, and bringing static worlds alive, that really motivates me and I feel I'm finally starting to get somewhere. Still a long way to go though and lots more to learn.

No worries, that was the assumption I'd made when reading it. I assume their high encryption setting is 256 with 128 as the medium but it doesn't actually state that on the interface. I did indeed use the highest setting on this which, as you rightly point out, has probably contributed to the speed issue. I'll experiment a bit more. This was the first occation I'd had a chance to use it. [Edit] I stand corrected. It does state the encryption algoryhms and block size: Low (Blowfish) Medium (Twofish 256) High (Rijndael 256) That makes a lot of sence.

Excellent, thanks again. More things to look at. I'm aware of the inside of the door issue when open, not at all sure what's causing that as it's fine on the outside but I'll take a closer look. I could really do with applying some proper collision meshes to objects as I suspect that would help with the issues of getting pushed through the terrain. Happens in a few areas. Yeah, the elapsed time is a throw back to some debugging I was doing and I forgot to re-enable it, I'll sort that. I fixed two issues with the inventory system I found this morning before posting it again but that's working well now. It's pretty generic supporting any amount of internal slots and skins. Works out all the positioning from just the dimensions of the image and the specified size and quantity of slots and handles everything for you. Can be placed anywhere on screen and auto positions dependant on the resolution. It builds a layered set of data which is then used to render it each frame. You're the first to mention it which is interesting. It's by far the most complex thing operating in the demo. I agree about the birds, the shadows and then the almost automated checking the sky response does give an air of reality. It's a simple thing but I put a lot of work into getting the bird flight functionality right. I don't have path finding plugged in yet, but as soon as I do the animals can become free roaming (within limits) and respond to peoples appoach in a hopefully realistic way. I will be working on populating the village with interactive people first though, which has been the whole point of designing the scene in the first place.

Thanks. With regard to the loading, it's a commercial packing package I bought just to try out as I was concerned about asset safety. It's good for demoes but not really an end delivery solution for a game. The splash screen and progress bar is a feature but is of course tracking their own unpacking of the exe contents into RAM. The actual load of the game starts as soon as the splash screen disappears but is somewhat faster as all assets are preloaded into memory at that point. Its way faster if you use lower compression or none at all, but then of course it takes a lot longer to download. Swings and roundabouts. If you were to use it often then uncompressed would be the way to go.

I'm very aware of Sophos. It's used extensively by NHS Trusts and has caused us a few problems with our database systems on occations in the past! It has an excellent reputation though. I agree, I'd be a lot happier if our pak files could use 128-bit AES keys. The current support for ZIP 2.0 encryption is too weak and in reality offers little protection at all. That's exactly what it's doing. It's not my own software though so, like yourself, I can only speculate on how they are doing this. I don't really have any experience of Linux, the closest experience I've had to unix based systems was working with IBM's AIX back in the days where we used to supply systems on IBM servers (at vast expense to all involved). Extremely stable operating systems, would run forever, but a command line interface and syntax that would baffle a rocket scientist initially. I guess it's like anything else, once you get used to it its ok I have particular recollections of occationally having to use vi to edit config files, which not being used to it was like 'one step forward, three steps back' lol. But in the hands of the experienced was a thing to marvel at.

Thanks for the feedback Mumbles, I'll check the speed issues. Sorry about the performance on the decrypt and unpack section. I used the highest compression ratio which more than halved the overall size of the download, it's a lot faster with no compression. It allows some pretty decent encryption and hence protection of the assets, unlike the Leadwerks password protected zip file mechanism that doesn't support the better AES encryption available in most ZIP apps these days (I seem to recollect winzip has had this for at least 8 years). As for Sophos lifting it's eyebrows I guess any virus checker is going to raise an alert on this type of software, although funnily enough my own Kaspersky seemed quite happy with it! [EDIT] Your quite right, the speeds definitely need adjusting, sideways running is insanely fast! Fortunately these are easily fixed. Thanks.

Looking great!

Moose went on to work with other engines and was at one point part of a game dev team with Paul Thomas. No idea what he's up to currently but have fond memories of Moose from the early LE2 days.

New exe posted in same post above (as a zipped up file this time). It's working on all my PCs now! Was down to a hard coded path in the code I missed ... doh! Have now added a loader splash screen with progress bar which will give some feedback once the splash screen loads.

ahha ... that explains it ... cheers Roland

Thanks again for the feedback guys, there is definitely something wrong here. It doesn't run on my other two PCs either, just my development PC. Looking into why this should be right now. The initial high memory/cpu usage is normal as it unpacks and decrypts the contents into memory, it does that on mine too, but a few seconds after the white window appears mine bursts into life instead of crashing! I tried the normal underlying files (unpacked) on my other PCs and that failed too in exactly the same way so I'm guessing its not the exe mechanism itself. Other projects of mine work on the other PCs, just not this one for some reason.