Assistance Starting Out

[Defranco]

Good day,

 

After weeks of debating; I've decided to purchase this program and start designing again.

 

I have a background in map creation - not really game creation. I've created dozens of published Counter-strike and other valve maps, some that are used in tournament play in the past. So I'm no stranger to level design.

 

I spent about an hour on the program yesterday doing a test level, and came across some issues.

 

1) I can't group up objects to combine, or group-moving. This makes it hard to do high level design. For example; in other software I can create a full custom object like a firepit with a cooking grill in 5-10 minutes and combine it into 1 object for easy duplication and moving. However, with Leadwerks, it takes almost 40 minutes and each piece then still needs to be selected to move/copy. The scene tab works great for easy selection once pieces are named. But it still takes a while.

 

2) Light from light sources seem to leak through walls when using certain camera angles. In this photo shown; I'm behind a double-wall with a light on the other side. (a double wall is because all my rooms contain their own walls, instead of 2 rooms sharing 1 wall. This is typical to provide a leak-proof rendering.

 

3) I am personally having issues using transparent textures with this program, it seems to loose the transparency during converting from TEX to MAT. Like, a chain-link fence. Shows white or black instead of see-through between the links. Any assistance with this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

4) With the 2 other photos I attached; we have a lot of torches; and most the game will contain them. Is there a pre-built way of using a trigger to turn off the fire, smoke, and lighting flicker effect when using the torch? I tried to play with it briefly but only the sound turned off. Do I need to custom script stuff?

 

5) Is there a way to load up workshop shared textures/prefabs and alter them? It seems to be stuck in the Workshop folder. (Steam version)

 

6) Is it already setup to allow different footstep audio on different materials, concrete, gass, wood, etc, or does this need to be scripted?

 

Any information is much appreciated. I would like to sort out many of my issues before I bring my whole team on board with 5 other copies.

 

Thanks, I look forward to being a part of the community.

[gamecreator]

You have to do some non-intuitive things to get transparent textures to work. This thread may help.

 

Others should be able to help you with the rest of your questions as I code in C and it sounds like you're using Lua. Welcome to the community!

[AggrorJorn]

Hey and welcome to the forum. That is a nice looking map.

 

1. Grouping objects in your scene is not a smooth as most of us like it to be. For now you can create pivots, (via the objects tab on the right and select miscellaneous- >pivots). Since pivots are nothing more than 3d points, you can use them for grouping.

3. Transparent textures need to be set to DXT5 (double click on the tex file and select DXT5 in the compression field). Also, when you have created a material, make sure that for the shaders, you have selected a diffuse+alphamask shader.

4. If you send me the torch and everything that is attached, I will make you a script you can attach.

5. Currently, I don't think this is possible. Even if you go to the local app data folder, the zip file containing everything is password protected.

6. This would need to be scripted. Again this would be something I can help with, but it is highly depended on what kind of character controller script your are using. Let me know what you are currently trying to do gamewise and we can create something.

[macklebee]

2) in previous versions of LE, this was lessened/resolved by chamfering / beveling the corners where walls/ceilings/floors meet combined with thick walls.

[Defranco]

Thanks Gamecreator, we got the textures to work by following the guide, much appreciated!

 

Thanks, Aggror, we've converted everything to a pivot base organization system, it works well. Thanks!!

 

Thanks Macklebee, it solved the issue for most wall areas affects! much appreciated.

 

I've run across a few more notable things. NevMesh doesn't generate if its turned off on the pivot if floor is attached to the pivot. Took me a bit to figure this one out but got it running as I was typing this up.

 

I've imported a model for a creature and altered some values (in a copied AI script to test) for it to follow the animation of the new model and it seems to be working except for 1 thing. When it lands an attack, it crashes (freezes without error) Almost like it instant-kills, but the values are all so low it cant be.

 

Here's what I've changed in the script; My model has 7 animations:

 

0 - blank

1 - Stand

2 - run

3 - attack1

4 - attack2

5 - hurt

6 - death

 

--Private values

Script.damage=1

Script.attackrange=1.5

Script.updatefrequency=500

Script.lastupdatetime=0

Script.prevtarget=nil

Script.animation={}

Script.animation.idle=1

Script.animation.run=2

Script.animation.attack={}

Script.animation.attack[3]=3

Script.animation.attack[5]=5

Script.animation.death=6

Script.followingtarget=false

Script.maxaccel=10

Script.speed=3

Script.lastupdatetargettime=0

Script.attackmode=0

Script.attackbegan=0

Script.sound={}

 

 

Any help as to what I messed up in the value would be greatly appreciated.

 

Overall I am liking this program, I wish there was more tutorials. I have seen dozens of videos many times already and it really only touches on 10-15% of the overall capabilities.

[Defranco]

Update: I got the hostile create AI script to work. The error was:

 

Script.animation.attack[3]=3

Script.animation.attack[5]=5

 

I wasn't sure which value was the animation value and what the other one was.

 

It's been changed to:

 

Script.animation.attack[0]=3

Script.animation.attack[1]=5