Absalom

Well, that sounds better than my idea.

Here's a video reference to Torchlight that I just uploaded if anyone needs to see what Rick is talking about. I don't have a diablo vid to upload, you can youtube that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC2jNxIUaDo [EDIT]: Rick, I didn't see a screenshot posted so that's why I posted the vid.

I assume that when you are creating the levels, you would either cut off the ceiling (for indoor and underground scenes) or not paint the outer faces of the ceiling. Paint faces for everything else, like those pillars you see in torchlight, and lock the camera to a specific rotation range. Then again, I am no artist so I am just spit balling.

I am standing in Microcenter looking at Murach's C++ 2008. It looks like a very good beginner to intermediate C++ walk through. [EDIT]: And the ebook price at http://www.murach.com/books/pls8/index.htm is pretty sweet.

As far as MySQL, yeah you must be running a MySQL server for that. I was just giving an example topic of what you might find in a C++ Cookbook. For games you would want to figure out a different way of storing information for single player games. I have used SQLite in the past with some success in storing character details, saves, inventories, etc. By the way, I am about to hit the book store now, I will look around for a tutorial style C++ book that I can suggest, but you can do the same thing by surfing http://www.borders.com or http://www.amazon.com. I'll let you know when I am at the store.

You know, there are also books that walk you through a C++ project, like a tutorial. You might look into some of those. I can't think of any off the top of my head. There are also C++ cookbooks (one from O'Reilly) that serve as a good reference for figuring out how to accomplish something (like reading a file, writing a file, connecting to a MySQL Database, etc.). Those cookbooks are a good supplement, but in the end you will probably end up having a tutorial book, language reference, and a cookbook. And a good site for learning C++ is http://www.cplusplus.com

I bought this one a while back: C++ Primer Plus It's a bit dated now, but pretty good as the concepts haven't really changed. Definitely look at the customer reviews on Amazon (or other review sites) about the books you want.

I can understand the guys frustration, but Rick and Pixel Perfect are right. You will be able to do so much more with your ideas after you have learned the necessary skills. I attempted to jump right into game development back in 2002 and just met frustration around every corner because I didn't know C++ (that was the language required by my software at the time) so I ended up getting DarkBasic thinking it would be an easier way. Then I realized that I knew nothing of DarkBasic, but it was easy to learn so I continued past that block. Then I realized that I knew nothing of how to structure a game system, and I knew nothing of generating art, and I knew nothing of this and nothing of that....and it goes on and on. I ended up going to college in 2004 and getting my BS in Game Software Development. Four years later (graduated in 2008), and about six years after I really wanted to start getting into game dev, I finally had a much clearer picture of what I needed to do. We focused mostly on C++ and assembly. We went from basic object oriented concepts to some pretty advanced C++, and only touched on C#. We also covered how to design a game system, how to design a game engine, how to design levels, learned what makes a game fun and playable, and we learned how to test our game. It was a lot of work and a LOT of frustration, but now I know where my weaknesses are and what sort of people I have to look for to help make my ideas come to life. I am weak in the art area. I can create some decent art, but it takes me a long time and it takes away from my programming, so I purchase my art from capable hands. I am a musician as well, but I don't have the equipment to produce game music and sound effects, so I leave that up to capable hands. I stick to what I know, programming, and I only know the most popular languages (I am trying to master just one, but to be familiar with them all, and I still have a long way to go). It's not an easy task, but learn learn learn. Know your weaknesses and don't try to do everything yourself. If you cannot afford to pay folks to help, there are lots of people (probably in this community too) who are willing to jump in to a project as long as your concept is solid. Anyway, good luck and listen to folks like Rick. He's already set me straight on a couple of issues. Smart man he be.

That did the trick. Thanks. I try to avoid rebooting when possible because I have some services running that take a while to shut down, like VMWare server.

Thanks for the info. I will check it out!

I would post in the Leadwerks forum about this, but I don't yet have access (the request is in). Anyone know what might cause this?: http://derikwilson.com/files/video/leadwerks/le_editor_flashing.wmv The flashing actually went down when I started fraps, but without fraps running it flashes white to gray constantly and consistently. Also, the navigation is a bit jumpy. This didn't happen in the demo version.

Well, I just switched my project over to C++ because I am going to go with the expert on this one. I might run a parallel project and benchmark them to see the difference in performance. Would you suggest any good benchmarking utilities?

Besides, with C++ and C# you are, in many cases, at the mercy of the optimizer because it will rewrite your code as efficiently as it can, and in many cases it produces very efficient assembly. C# is not an interpreted language. It is a compiled language. Nope you are correct, C# is indeed interpreted. Sorry about that (just showed my C# ignorance there. I am and always will be a C++ man, but I absolutely love C# because of the doors it opens to non-game applications, and I would love to see it successfully used using leadwerks).

I don't think you read my post fully. I said it was "incredibly efficient" not "the most efficient". And I did mention using C/C++ and assembly for the low-level stuff.

I notice on the Wiki there is mention of a /csharp directory in the SDK which contains the c# wrapper. I don't see it. Is it no longer supported? If not, then I will have to write my own wrapper. I would ask in the Programming forums but I don't yet have access to it.

I am not 100% sure, but you might want to check the user permissions for the path that you are attempting to run the updater or copy files to. If you are running Windows 7 then you are not, by default, the administrator. It treats the administrator account kind of like linux treats root. You have to give explicit permissions for any directory outside of your user account's set of directories for the session (for example, C:\Users\YourAccountName). Ah yeah good point. I didn't mention that in my post and apparently we replied at the same time. lol. Definitely don't want to use C:\Program Files for a 32-bit app.

Ok, my LE Updater is running. Wooot! It can't finish fast enough! I am very excited to get started!

I will let you know once I have my license. I am definitely going the C# route because I am a pioneer. lol. I love C++ and C#, but I have grown to love C# more for application development, so I will see how well it plays with leadwerks. I used C# with another game engine (I don't want to plug another engine name in this forum) and it was fantastic!

To whomever said "The games that are pushing the boundaries will always use C++", while that may be true for the low-level logic (networking, rendering, etc. .. and by the way Assembly is still used too) that is not true for the entire project. In fact, more and more developers that used to use only C++ are starting to open up to C# simply because it is the best way to take advantage of the full .NET potential. You can do that with C++ too, but it is much easier to do with a language that was meant for .NET, such as C#. And it seems that C# is incredibly efficient these days, both from a developer standpoint and a performance standpoint.

Amen brother! I love C/C++ and C# myself. It's really not that hard to get into, and it is a skill that can be used throughout the IT industry.

Yeah the both engines are great. The thing I look for in an engine is whether it is extensible or not. Both Leadwerks and NeoAxis come in the form of DLLs so the answer to both is yes (not 100% about whether Leadwerks classes can be inherited, but I assume so). I don't yet know how leadwerks sdk is packaged, but the NeoAxis is packaged where every piece of the engine is a separate library. You have your network library, the Ogre3D libraries, the file system libraries, windows app libraries, and many others. It's a lot of libraries, but you can use each piece as needed. For example, I can use the network libraries without involving the Ogre3D renderer in any way. This is great for writing non-game applications too. Another thing I like about both NeoAxis and Leadwerks is that they both support C#. C# allows you to easily implement the full potential of .NET which is good for anyone who wants to do things like publish their game to a browser (which is pretty sweet and makes packaging and publishing a breeze). The one thing I have noticed about NeoAxis vs Leadwerks though is that NeoAxis does have more tools (or it seemed that way in the past), but just the fact that I can use both 3DWS and Blender with no problems is a pretty good deal, so I came to Leadwerks. It's difficult to find an affordable, easy-to-use architecture type modeler that can do what 3DWS can do. I used Torque Game Engine Advanced for a long time too, and I will say, that was a badly designed engine. It was a pain to modify the engine, and it was a pain to write the entire game in script. It wasn't easily extensible, and it seemed tightly coupled in many places, which means if you break one piece you took the chance of breaking the entire engine.

Actually, I found it to be quite a pain to use with other engines (like NeoAxis which uses Ogre3D). That is why I am looking into Leadwerks. There just weren't any good converters to get my structures into the correct format for Ogre3D.

I just resubmitted my purchase and now I just wait. and wait .... and wait... ...and wait .... .... .... I can't wait!!!!

Well thankfully I purchased 3DWS a long long time ago (in this galaxy and not too far away).

It was this thread: http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/topic/1504-unable-to-import-x-files/page__p__14041__hl__3dws__fromsearch__1entry14041 I might attempt to purchase it again soon if 3DWS is going to continue to be the preferred structure builder. I think it is better than anything I have tried. It is very simple to use, and you can generate some pretty high quality props and structures with it. I have been using it since it came out and I love it. I am both a C++ and C# fan and have been working with both for a while now. I am primarily into C# now as it has become incredibly efficient and really helps to prevent some of the common problems that programmers run into with C++ (primarily pointer problems resulting from bad logic). It also allows me to easily publish games over the web through the browser (e.g. the NeoAxis player). The reason I am leaving NeoAxis is so that I can more easily use 3DWS and I have to admit, the Leadwerks engine looks very nice. It seems like there were enough tools to get me by, about as many tools as NeoAxis, so I think it will work out fine. I also like the solid network logic. That is going to be important as we have been working for more than a year on an MMO Space Combat/Station Siege sim concept that we would love to get a demo of sometime soon. Anyway, thanks for the reassurance about 3DWS. My team is all programmers so we have to be able to prototype quickly without artists so that we can recruit artists! Lol.