Pixel Perfect

Or there is this taken from a little util I wrote: void loadOutputFileDirectoryFileNames(void) { DIR *dp; struct dirent *dirp; fileListData* pFileListDataItem; std::string fullFileName; std::string fileName; std::string fileExt; if((dp = opendir(appData.currentOutputDirectory.c_str())) == NULL) { MessageBoxA(0,"An error occured trying to open the output directory","ERROR",0); // errno return; } clearDirectoryFileList(); while ((dirp = readdir(dp)) != NULL) { fullFileName = dirp->d_name; // Check the file extension if(getFileNameComponents(fullFileName, fileName, fileExt)) { for(int i = 0; i < vecExtList.size(); i++) { if(fileExt == vecExtList[i]) { pFileListDataItem = new fileListData; pFileListDataItem->currentFileName = fileName; pFileListDataItem->currentFileExt = fileExt; pFileListDataItem->updated= false; vecFileList.push_back(pFileListDataItem); break; } } } } closedir(dp); return; } requires dirent.h form the C POSIX library It's doing more than you require but its another alternative. Sorry for the poor tabs ... this container always seens to screw them up. How come your's is perfect Roland

Thanks for the feedback ... damn windows lol. Going to try it on my other PC now. Maybe someone else could try it, not that its going to fix it on your PC but at least may give me an indication if this is a general problem or more isolated.

I've often wondered that, I guess the drive to reduce the final byte count was a big factor in the past but shouldn't be any more. Nice scene btw

Interesting, I've never really noticed that!

Link to my test demo if anyone wants to try it: The Village Save the zip file and extract the exe to somewhere on your harddrive. The demo is packed into one executable which will decompress itself into memory and execute the level demo from there ... it installs nothing on your PC. Due to the amount of compression used this can take quite a while (about 2 mins on my PC!) I have now added a splash screen for the loader so you can see the progress once the screen is loaded. It's currently fixed to a resolution of 1280x720 windowed. Usual WSAD controls for movement, 'i' key for Inventory screen and right mouse click to toggle 'selection mode'. The KEY (as shown in the video) is the only pickable item I have in the world right now, for what the levels intended for there didn't seem much point in adding others right now. There is a known bug with the geometry around the last building on the left of the main street; where collision with the vegetation on the wall can lead to you falling through the terrain (I'll get round to fixing that but have other things to do right now). Any others ... please let me know Also, if the demo doesn't run please let me know, first time I've tried this method. It will need the C++ runtime on your PC, however this is normally already on most PCs these days.

Sorry Rick, I misunderstood. So many people seemed to have missed the point To be totally honest with you it seems easier initially to get some experience under my belt of working with EKI One to develop some AI for my adventure game as I have some difficult decisions to make regarding the FPS AI. A lot of it is written already in C++ and not easily transferable to EKI One which uses Lua. But then Lua and C++ don't talk to each other easily without, it would seem, libraires to interface them and support the OOP aspect of C++. So having EKI One just call my existing functions isn't easy either. I have to sit down and plan some strategy at some point but for right now I want to maintain the momentum with EKI One as I believe its a tool I'll be using extensively for my AI solutions from now on.

Long term users of this engine have been trying to extract this info from Josh and failed to date! I suspect you will be no different, it's a commercial decision and likely to remain a secret until just shortly before its released.

Thanks. I agree on the detail but this test scene might not even make it to a final scene. It's too much effort to go to for its current purpose. Cheers. It's what makes it all worth while I think Mike. Bringing some life to otherwise static scenes. I enjoy that aspect of game design the most. Have so much more to learn still though!

For sure, any finished scene would have. Yeah, as i'm trying to develop two different game styles, an FPS and an Adventure/RPG style it requires different scenes really, Call me strange if you want but it seemed more fitting a scene to develop and test test a medieval role playing type AI in; than a derelict modern scene used to test an FPS. People need to be mingling in a town/village type environment and going in and out of houses etc. The FPS scene isn't tied in any way btw to my A* implementation. That stands completely alone and can be simply applied to any scene. It is however very much tied to the engine. I will still be able to use that in conjuction with EKI One if I want to.

Thanks MG, sometimes I wonder why I bother typing anything

I suspect it's a typo, no-one to my knowledge outside of Josh's office has a copy of LE3. Well ... no-one that's lived

Looks great

Well I can't take any credit for the models, these are the work of our good friend Steve from Arteria3D True, but please don't think of this as a finished scene. It's primary purpose is to test AI so I've added no vegetation layers or terrain decals; which is what I'd eventually use along with more textures to embellish the scenes with to break up that uniformity. None of these are needed for the path finding and AI tests. The ground is a totally flat terrain too which in any final scene would not be the case.

Thanks Aggror, might take you up at some point on the character voices ... cheers for the offer:) The steps are already in there (in three places) I just didn't demo them as the vid was getting long enough as it was.

Came to this late, but well worth watching. I like the way you tackle issues head on and find solutions. At your young age I suspect you have a great future in the games industry be it your own company eventually or working for an existing one! Always makes me smile when I see others writing the same functions I have previously. We all reinvent the wheel but it's the best experience we can get. Having code handed to us teaches us little, even if it sometimes saves time in the short term.

ha ... you're so right Mack That frog spawned a whole menagerie. Thanks Ken. Yeah, its going to be a first person adventure/rpg type game with the emphasis on a good story line rather than combat as such, but there will be challenging elements. There's a mystery that you get embroiled in from the very beginning which slowly unfolds and changes as you get into the game. It's still all a WIP at the moment and any scenes, whilst sketches for locations the game may have, primarily serving as vehicles to test emerging game play and AI against. The development goes hand in hand with my FPS game which is supported by the same engine. Thanks Thanks, you can of course enter the water, but I need to develop some water based effects to bring some life to that. Water just looks pretty in LE2 at the moment, but lacks a dynamic element.

I checked with our Meterological Office and apparently its official ... Summer ends when LE3's released

After a year of not much free time, and what little I've had being spent mainly on the EKI One integration project, I'm pleased to be finally back working on my game engine. I've recently designed a small level based around an Medieval village to use as a test bed for some AI development for my adventure game 'The Kingdom Of Soul'. Whilst designing it I decided initially to play around with Leadwerks object scripting which I've never really tried before. The video below shows the results of this and the test level I designed for my next task which is behavioral AI development for my NPCs using EKI One. Once that's complete I'll be plugging that into this level too. As per usual, best watched in 720p mode by clicking on the 'gear' icon once the video is playing

Personally, I think it would be a mistake to underestimate Crytek.

Clearly a discerning artist when it comes to chosing engines! Look forward to you joining the community.

Nice feature, very usable

Not sure, but I suspect it's not Crytek as CE3 is set to 'Melt PCs' again according to a recent statement by Cevat Yerli. C4 possibly?

I'm sorry but I had to laugh at your list of features as I don't know of any engine that has all of these! Does this represent your ultimate wish list? The specifications for Leadwerks Engine 2 are published on the Product page and the evaluation version is available for download which, if your serious about this, will provide ample time for you to explore the many features of the engine along with support from the forum members should you need more information. I don't have time to answer your long list of questions but suffice to say LE2 is a game engine SDK and as such you are expected to code a game engine framework of your own (rendering is handled for you by an internal framework). There is no in built AI, you need to code that yourself and no current path finding (LE3 addresses this with it's inclusion of Recast and Detour and some simplistic AI built around this). There is good support for shaders and, as such, a lot of the things you reference which are not inherently provided in the SDK can be added. No it won't run properly on an onboard intel chip ... do you honestly expect it to? Put a mini engine in a Ferrari and it's going to run like a mini You need the equivalent of an nVidea 8800 or better to use all of the features at playable frame rates. Leadwerks is not an 'off the shelf' ready to go game engine, if that's what you need then I'd look elsewhere as I'm assuming from the list of features you specify that your looking to make a serious game but without having to do much of the functionality development yourself. The release date for the initial version of LE3 is to date still unknown but likely to be inside the next couple of months! It is a reduced version though in terms of the final feature set so not suitable for all applications depandant on what it is you want to do. The full feature set will follow in again some as yet unspecified time scale. Sorry for summarising, maybe someone with more time can answer each individual question.

Thanks again for all the information. I'm heavily involved in other things just now but will take a look at this when ever I next have some free time.

There is simply no comparison as far as I'm concerned having originally started with dark basic and dark GDK. Leadwerks is by far the better game development SDK but it does require a reasonable graphics card. People wanting to support antiquated hardware might struggle with Leadwerks, otherwise it's a no brainer! Both the feature set and ease of use are far better. But as Mack says, don't take our word for it (we are a little biased ), try it for yourself! Did I mention its a great community too