Pixel Perfect

I know of no way of converting 3DWS terrains to a DarkGDK format unless having imported it via a dbo format it can then be converted internally. Either way, the questions you are really asking are more to do with DarkGDK and might be better posted on the TGC forums. One possible answer might be to export the 3DWS terrain as a heightmap and import that into DarkGDK if it supports terrain generation from heightmaps. By the way, there is a seperate forum for 3D World Studio which you can access by scrolling down towards the bottom of the main forums page, you might be better posting any further questions in there rather than the General Discussion forum.

I like that idea

Well I'm impressed. The most professional opening to a game I've seen yet in Leadwerks. Polished menu and presentation with a good introduction. Sound and graphics quality looks pretty nice. Unfortunately, on my old PC although it runs well and looks great I have no main character being rendered, just the gun. I do have an old ATI driver on this PC so maybe that's the issue. But I also managed to walk through a wall and then off the terrain which crashed the game! I'll retry it on my nVidea machine which has up to date drivers but I can see you've put a lot of work into this since the last demo you published. Great work Juuso!

I guess that would keep it in line with most other apps. Makes me feel like I'm missing out on something though as I never have enough sbx files to forget which one I'm currently working on

Well that's true. Anyway, downloading as I speak ... I'll reserve my comments until I've had a chance to play it.

lol ... could you not find anything nice to say about it Lumooja

Yeah, thanks for the advanced communication; it is nice to know what's in the pipeline. Good news on both items. Would be really nice to see some improvement on the texture layer limit in the next bout of development though if possible.

A big thankyou ... this is a great improvement

I've said this before and I think its worth repeating. Most Indie game engine developers would go out of business if they only sold their engine SDKs to people who were actually capable of producing games and taking them to the marketplace. Obviously the intension is to have people do just that but in reality it's not their main customer base. The main customer base is all the people who dream of making a game and have sufficient liquid assets to purchase a nice looking engine but in reality have little to no idea of how much work is involved and will end up playing at it. There is nothing wrong in that, but it does make a big difference to the priority that a developer puts on his development list; which may seem at odds with the wishes of the smaller percentage of genuine game developers. Basically, a candle that burns brightly will attract more attention and that represents survival to a small developer. So eye candy is important for raw sales; as is perceived ease of use. Integrated and sophisticated toolsets are expensive to develop and small fixes and improvements to things that are not going to be obvious to a new buyer do not generate new income of as themselves. It's a cynical view I know but one which I believe is part reality if the developer has not reached a certain level of financial security. I believe Marcus was quite correct when he inferred a one man business cannot realistically compete on the same level as some of the bigger outfits. I've stuck with Leadwerks primarily because I think the API is so well written that it’s a pleasure to code with and because whilst I'm going through the learning curve of 'making a game' it's as good a vehicle as any. I hope new people keep buying the engine and give Josh continued stability so that eventually some of the much needed improvements and toolsets come to be. I do have great faith in Josh's ability and perception and hope that by the time I am nearing the end of my exercise in building a game engine with LE2 that these issues will have been addressed and we can take advantage of them.

That looks very nice!

That's where I think Josh's idea of a community game is a good one. With him driving it hopefully it will come to fruition and some of the problem areas in the engine will be exposed and get fixed. Some are just a question of performance improvements where as others are a little more fundamental. This is a natural evolution for any game engine as some issues do not become apparant until people start to push the limits ... and who better to push those limits than the developer who is best positioned to fix them! I agree with you Lumooja too, in as much that my normal mode of operation is to apply solution 3 whilst opting for 1 as well. The problem with 1 is they don't always get fixed and I have requests for functionality which have been outstanding now for over 6 months and are unlikely ever to see the light of day! So I've settled for second best in some areas which detracts from an otherwise outstanding engine.

The trouble is you can wait for ever and a day for someone to hand it to you on a silver platter. Some times it's better to just jump in the deep end and swim. You never forget what you've learnt and you completely understand it once you've done it. There is no explicit need for source code and a documented development process as these are already available elsewhere with other engines and games. There has in fact never been so much access to 'how to make a game' information as there is today with web access. If people can't learn from them and adapt it to Leadwerks they won’t stand much more of a chance of adapting anything you do present in the way of a finished game other than changing the assets in it much as we saw with the previous Leadwerks Launcher. You don't have to have written it to understand it, but your understanding is usually much more complete if you have! Everyone naturally wants a helping hand but there really does come the point where you have to just get stuck in and get your hands dirty I have been a member of these forums since LE2 was first released and have seen lots of fledgling community game projects. Every single one has never made it to the point of a finished game with documented code and development process, most never even really got of the ground. My advice is basically... don't wait for things to happen, you could be waiting a long time ... make it happen by doing it yourself and learning on the fly. There really is no better way and the forums are full of people who will help when you get stuck.

Very true ... there is no pressure on people to have to write games; they can indeed do whatever they like. It's a free world!

I'm still continuing to work on putting a game engine together for my game STRANDED. As it's primarily intended to be a single player FPS with some RPG elements it requires some pretty good AI which certainly isn't going to be written overnight ... but is progressing. I have path finding, a player object with full animated weapon support and weapon aquisition and destructible objects. I am now concentrating on getting combat in and am quietly confident that I will have something reasonable up and running in the not too distant future.

I'd have a look at the turorial Making a skybox with Terragen I'm pretty sure there is nothing special about the DDS Cubemaps that Leadwerks uses. You could of course PM Rasterbar directly.

I completely agree with you Rick. My intension is to get my engine to a point where I can demo an hours worth of game play using placeholder art in order to raise interest in the engine. If no interest follows then that's probably as far as I will ever take it as it would need either financial support to purchase the services of professional artists or direct collaboration from Artists/Modellers/Animators to complete it. It is beyond most individuals to complete a sizable modern day game title.

I find myself in a similar position to you, full time job, family commitments and so on and the learning curve when trying to put a game together on your own is so great and time consuming. So any thing that helps speed this up, like this video, is always greatly appreciated by people. Well done, I'm sure many will thank you for this.

Very impressive Michael. Good luck in your new endeavour!

Thanks for these TLD, will take a look

I couldn't agree less. The first is one of my favourite games of all time despite its bugs and its failure to deliver on its original promise; as once you got beyond that it was one of the most immersive games I've ever played and also one of the best first person shooting experiences I'd ever had. I remember an intense battle in the Garbage area where I lost an entire hour and a half in continuous fire fights with bandits. I played the original release through completely un-modded and that was really challenging as they dumbed the combat down a bit with the first series of patches due to complaints that it was too hard and too realistic from the arm chair brigade of virtual combatants For about three weeks my life became the Zone and I considered it a landmark in fps evolution. The sequel Clear Sky was a poor and almost inexcusable release full of the same bugs that tainted the first and with almost no concern to maintaining the look and feel of the original level design. With most of the latter part of the game feeling like a typical closed corridor type game rather than an open exploration type. Despite that, it still had some magic moments. I've been playing Call Of Pripyat now for a week since its release over here and I have to say this is a much more polished offering with little to no bugs and much improved areas of the game bringing a more satisfying experience. It's definitely back to the feel of the original with much larger levels and that open play feel again. My only criticism so far is the poor terrain graphics and bad level design on the opening level where the hard coded vegetation layer draw distance is set so short and the contrast of the vegetation so high with the bland terrain texture that the 'popping' effect of vegetation constantly coming into view in front of you detracts from the illusion of the virtual world. But despite that and the now aging looking graphics (oh how much nicer this would look in Leadwerks) it's still capable of delivering some stunning landscape scenes that take your breath away in that typical bleak STALKER style; and the God Rays are the best I have ever seen in a game. On top of this, it's one of the cheapest 'new release' games I've seen so thanks GSC and the publishers for that! So it's a big 'thumbs up' from me. Sorry no more time for idle chit chat, the Zone is calling and I heed its cry

You made some good points in your Video, moving objects and the expanded object list are two of my pet hates with the Editor as it stands, well that and the lack of an undo button (especially on terrain). Gets a + from me.

Welcome simmsman4 ... feel free to ask questions if you need any answers. The community is great here and pretty responsive.

Great link Fredrik, thanks for that

Anything is acceptable if it works for your game but the reasons for using navmesh over anything else seem quite compelling. If I were starting out at the beginning with the hindsight I now have I'd be using a navmesh system from the word go. However, I have implemented an abstraction layer in my AI allowing me to swap fairly painlessly in the future should I need to.

Having a grounding in both is really useful as it aids communication when working in teams however, in the end, you will normally have a leaning towards one or the other and concentrating on that will probably benefit you more. Both Rick and Niosop offered good advice but I think Niosop touched on the two key things ... you need to have a fairly analytical mind to make a good programmer with good problem solving skills and it's almost certain that you need to find it enjoyable as if you don't you will never put the work in that's required. Good luck with whatever direction you chose to go. I fully understand as I'm a programmer but feel drawn towards the level design/modelling side too as it appeals to my creative side