steeleb

I'm a scientist so I always read the references. From there I got a lot of what I was looking for for instance, this site full of linky's. http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/gameprog.html#design For instance this article alone was really interesting. http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/understanding-component-entity-systems-r3013 Moreover, I think leadwerks is really geared to employing those kinds of systems.

I think you hit the nail on the head. From a software standpoint, that's exactly what I am looking for, wisdom from people that have completed a game project and know correct ways on how to implement common things, and can identify the wrong way. Not working in the industry, I only have then net. I will check out the attachment, thanks! Edit: After looking at the zipped document, that is exactly what I'm talking about, thanks again.

@Aggror I agree Aggror, at that level, it's very much up to the developer to decide how they want to implement something. However, I am talking a bit more at a lower level. For intance, take the use case, of NPC, which can move on to patrols, and are capable of being engaged in conversations via a right click menu from my NPC. Writing my NPC class, that does everything I want to do, is totally specific to my games. However, NPC's state management, and NPC conversation interfaces, is probably something that follows some kind of object pattern that might be considered industry standard. I don't know if it is... But if it is, and it's referenced somewhere, I would love to know if such references exist. This is why I said it's sort of on topic, but not really. Not really looking for a tutorial, but more for design patterns for handling "algorithmic task" that aren't in engine design. Things like AI, gui event handling, game maps, quest scripting. Each game probably does things a bit difference, but I imagine there are some higher level design patterns, which say that NPC state management is very similar to this object pattern, and you can use that to manage your NPC schedules. Like I said, I don't think it's pertinent, for leadwerks to make these tutorials, I was just wondering if there was a good reference for common game algorithm/activities that are a bit higher level than engine specific things like pathfinding, in which are there are some good design patterns for handling. I have seen some good stuff, for instance GUI code, event code, and AI code, but I was just kind of wondering if it existing more at the design level, rather than actual implemented code.

Kind of on topic, and I don't think this necessarily would fall on Leadwerks, but is there good reference material, for commonly used patterns for creating certain features that games generally have? For example, efficient ways to schedule and manage NPC's paths, weather it be a random walk, or a patrol. That was just an example, a pretty complex one, but many games have done this, and I find myself doing activities like this all the time, and I think to myself, I'm reinventing the wheel, and I am sure it's been done better than the way I am currently implementing it. Don't know if algorithms or game design patterns are proprietary, but I have been unable to find good resources on things like that.

Don't have the code in front of me, but last night I was trying to find out why a model, was not getting "Pick"ed. I was quite confused, until I realized that once I removed the SetScale method for the model, I could *Pick* it. Is this working as intended, are scaled models unpick-able? It was just a simple rectangular model with a material applied to it, that imported from blender, and I did not scale it in the editor, it was done in the code. Thanks!

I am determining that my problems exporting my animations to an fbx had to do with rigify. Just speculating, but I don't think blender's fbx exporter, handles rigify's bones. The rigify bones are not only numerous, but a have a lot of complexity as well. I have a feeling that it's just not reading the rig and key frames correctly. I have since made a brand new rig, using a set-up similar to the tutorial found here http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/blender/building-a-basic-low-poly-character-rig-in-blender/ And thus far have had no problems exporting the animation. Honestly, the rig I made, while much simpler, I think has better forward kinematic controls for the arms. It's simpler and easier to use, but all the bone naming is kind of a pain in the butt.

I agree I think with a lot of hard work, you can pretty much be strong in anything you want. I will never be the best in the art department, of course the games I plan to make will never require that, so I think I should be OK.

I feel extremely gimped having very little artistic talent. I do think one of the coolest things about indie development is all the hats, you have to wear.

My major problem is trying to export an fbx animation/mesh from blender to a leadwerks mdl *consistently*. When I export a mesh there is a chance of one of the following three things happening. Either no animations will get exported, I will have very weird deformations happening in different frames, that do not in any way appear to look like the original animation, or the animation will export perfectly. The current process that I am using is with "rigify" skeleton, and then building the animation from posing that rig. When exporting the fbx, I normally only include the armature and mesh, turn off modifiers, don't use the default take, include all animations, and optimize key frames. Now while that is what I normally do, I also tweak the various knobs, to see if they change help explain the inconsistent behaviour. However, I don't really get any inconsistent animation behavior from that. My hypothesis is that the rigify skeleton, is perhaps overkill, and the fbx exporter has issues exporting a rigifiy skeleton, and that is why I get inconsistent results. That, or I may be applying scaling to the armature incorrectly, or something like that. However, it is all pure speculation. I was wondering if there was any general advice on the do's and dont's with regards to exporting animations/meshes from blender, considering that I am a complete novice? And if anybody uses rigify, and knows all the quirks with regards to it? Finally, is it better to just make a simple rig, and use that for basic animation, instead of rigify?

Yeah, that's kind of what brought my attention to this thread. I can make all sorts of objects in a 3D tool, and attach various scripts to them, to determine how a player can interact with a particular object. But what I was unsure of, is if the base code for the game is in C++, how do I communicate the script information to the (CustomObject*)userdata of my entity. Currently, I give entities a particular name, and that name determines what their CustomObject will be, and allows me to check the data. I normally check this on map loads. If it's something like a building, or a wall, then I say not walk-able. And while I would like to take advantage of the Lua scripts in the editor, and set data that way. Now that I think about it it would be nice if I could assign the (CustomObject*)userdata to an entity, in the editor, in much the same way the lua script data is assigned? Or perhaps use the lua-binding utilities to bind the lua script, to my C++ custom object. Seems a little daunting, however, since I know very little lua.

I am currently using the Entity::GoToPoint() function on left clicks. However, I was thinking about it doing picks on a mouse hover as well, and then show the player what actions are possible, but perhaps changing the mouse cursor. Another problem I've encountered with GoToPoint, is if the player clicks on some place, which the playing character cannot reach, I do not know how communicate to the player that his character cannot reach their. Instead they will continue to walk, effectively stuck at the point of closest approach to their unattainable destination. This typically happens if I clock on a CSG wall on accident, or something.

I have two major use cases for this. The kind of game which I am currently prototyping is a point and click isometric perspective. Therefore, I have a desire to know immediately, what the player has clicked, and is pointing at. 1) Any object that I want the player to interact with, for instance, a barrel, box or chest, needs to be an entity. I might want to show an animation of the chest opening. Perhaps I have some rubble I want to pick up, and remove from the map. Also there are NPC's, vendors things like that. Currently, I interact via a right click, pick, peruse the user data and get an appropriate right click menu based on type of entity. 2) I want to be able to determine what an entity is so I can determine, via a mouse click, the spot on the map the player is currently selecting is navigable. Currently this is very difficult to, since pretty much all CSG's are considered navigable, so the only way I know of to let a player know, what locations are considered navigable is to make everything a type of entity.

Is sounds more like an inefficient garbage collector to me. Since the garbage collector does free the memory, when called manually. Memory leaks are bad with garbage collection schemes, because it can imply that the system is incapable of freeing some memory.

I have been using the AlignToVector method to face my model in the appropriate direction, is there any advantage to using SetRotation, or SetInput over AlignToVector? I use the AlignToVector method because it can interpolate between rotations. However, if the angle is large, the model rotation is sometimes *jittery*.