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Continued Development


Josh

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At this point I would like to share some plans with you on continued development over the next several months. I generally avoid detailed roadmaps for two reasons:

  • It's more fun to announce something with a short notice than to say "we're going to do X, Y, and Z, by these dates...". If people know too far in advanced they sort of take it for granted, and it doesn't have as big an impact.
  • Plans change. When they do, people often consider cancelled plans to be "promised features". I like to dynamically adjust my plans as I gather more information and see how people react to the software.

 

I do have a plan for Leadwerks 3.3 and 3.4. They will each likely include some useful features and graphical enhancements.

 

Another idea I want to expand on is pre-made game-ready content. The simplest manifestation of this is a model pack, like the SciFi interior DLC that was released. A more advanced implementation would be something like a character or weapon pack. Rather than just offering 3D models, I want these to be finished game-ready items with scripts and sounds that you can drop into your game and get instant functionality. I find the idea of no-programming game development very exciting, when you can do it without the terrible limitations other products that attempt this have; When you're ready, you can start cracking open scripts and looking around, and if you want to go a step beyond that, you can always drill down the to C++ layer. Leadwerks is unique in that it's perfectly suited for noobs, but is capable of taking you all the way to the professional level, if you have that desire. We're not really taking advantage of that concept yet, but I hope to soon.

 

I am also planning on something that will give your Workshop games a lot of exposure, so if you have a Lua game you want to share, now is a good time to submit it. Don't worry if it's incomplete or "not good enough". The Workshop is for prototyping and testing each other's ideas. I love playing the simple games that are up there now, and each update brings something new and exciting. The ease with which people can produce simple games is my measure of how good of a job I'm doing.

 

Oh yeah, and official Linux support on Steam is coming soon.

 

That's all for now. To all newcomers, welcome to the community, and to the old-timers, thank you for helping them.

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Thanks for the forecast on the next updates. Some ideas sounds really nice.

 

I like to share my thoughts in this comment ...

 

I totally understand that you dislike to pin yourself on promises and plans but it would be great if you can incorporate some community ideas in your plans for Leadwerks 3.3 and 3.4 as already statet out in this thread.

 

Unfortunately you didn't reply on this discussion yet. It would be great to get a statement if any of the listed ideas go along with your plans for the feature updates. I didn't recognized a kind of process which synchronizes the community needs and ideas with your own plans yet. Your response sounds like "don't bother and let yourself be surprised". This makes me feel like a kid waiting for santa claus. :)

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I read everything, but I usually don't announce things ahead of time. It's always possible for something to sound like a good idea, but I don't know how well it will work before I actually implement. Sometimes, things make sense to develop in a particular order, and sometimes they have to be weighed against the bigger vision of where the software and community are going.

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I would prefer to see a much more smoother workflow and customisable user experience rather than new functionality. For instance my recent discovery of the non-existence of rectangular selection tool is a major dealbraker for now.

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Thanks for your reply on my comment. I was just wondering why the current list of requested features of the community was not mentioned in your forecast.

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One of the most important lessons I have learned is you can't let customer feedback drive product development. Features are requested without regard to the cost and order of implementation, and usually without regard to an overall plan and focus.

 

It's definitely important to get feedback on usage. For that kind of thing, it works best when the user describes their problem instead of suggesting a solution without really saying why they want it. We've had some usability issues turn into same-day implementations here, like the recent changes to the model editor interface.

 

So product development requires good judgement and although customer feedback is important, you can't abandon responsibility for the design and just do whatever gets asked for.

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