Following the successful debut of Leadwerks Game Engine: Indie Edition on Steam, Leadwerks Software today announced the launch of Leadwerks Standard Edition. This DLC on Steam adds support for programming in modern C++11 with Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2013.
C++ is the game industry’s leading programming language, due in large part to its superior performance and flexibility. However, the language is sometimes considered to be too complicated for indie developers to take advantage of. Lead
Leadwerks Game Engine on Steam has been updated with bug fixes and a host of new features that are now out of beta.
Crowdsourcing Post-Processing Effects Although Leadwerks 2 featured an extensive set of post-processing effects, they were all hard-coded into the engine. This limited the ease with which new effects could be added, and caused all Leadwerks screenshots to look similar. In Leadwerks 3 we decided to implement a post-processing stack of shaders. You can attach post-processing ef
Leadwerks has added new features that allow users to take advantage of Steam features.
Steamworks Integration Leadwerks now has native support for the Steamworks SDK. You can make your game ready to publish on Steam by calling Steamworks:Initialize(). This also enables the in-game overlay so you can take screenshots, chat with friends, and access the entire Steam community in-game.
Screenshot Publishing The new screenshot publishing window allows you to upload rendered images directly to
Leadwerks 3.1 is nearly ready for release! In Leadwerks 3.0, we focused on making a solid cross-platform art pipeline and editor. In 3.1 we're adding graphics that go above and beyond the capabilities of Leadwerks 2.
New Features in 3.1
OpenGL 4.0 deferred renderer with up to 32x hardware MSAA.
Geometry and tessellation shaders.
Support for the Linux operating system, for both the engine AND editor.
Leadwerks 3.1 is now available for pre-ordering in the Leadwerks s
Wow! We crossed the 50% mark in less than a week. At this point, the campaign has shown enough strength that I am willing to begin allocating resources to the development of Leadwerks for Linux. (To be clear, we will only deliver a Linux product if the entire target amount is met.) Kickstarter has been fantastic because it allows us to gauge demand before we do the hard work of supporting a new operating system, so we can figure out in advance whether it's worthwhile. Fortunately, it appears the
Leadwerks 3.0 has been updated with bug fixes and productivity enhancements. To get the update, run the Leadwerks Updater. Use the Project Manager to update your project with the latest files.
Resolved bug reports are listed in the Bug Report Forum. This release fixes a few issues including Android multitouch indexes sometimes not working right, sphere casting that was sometimes wrong, and several other small problems.
Some new enhancements have been made to improve productivity. Cam
You did it! Leadwerks 3.1 is coming to Linux.
As traditional gaming platforms are becoming more and more restrictive, software developers, hardware vendors, open-source coders, and gamers are working together to build a better future for gaming on the open platform Linux. I count myself fortunate to have found my place in this movement, and am very grateful that over 700 Linux gamers believed in this idea.
What now?
I'm driving over to the IGDA Summit today to sit in on a few sessions. The
I wanted to add some default procedural generation tools in the Leadwerks 3.1 terrain editor. The goal is to let the user input a few parameters to control the appearance of their terrain and auto-generate a landscape that looks good without requiring a lot of touch-up work.
Programmers commonly rely on two methods for terrain heightmap generation, Perlin noise and fractal noise. Perlin noise produces a soft rolling appearance. The problem is that Perlin noise heightmaps look nothing like re
Leadwerks is a prize sponsor for Cereal Hack 3 at the Sacramento HackerLab. I stopped by in the morning to listen to the pitches and say hi. Here are a few photos from the event:
I'm pleased to announce the full stretch goals for the Leadwerks for Linux Kickstarter campaign:
$26,000 - Android + Ouya for All: We will provide all backers who pledged $100 or more with Android support. We’ll also add support for OUYA, the Android-based open game console. This will let you build games for Android and OUYA, without ever leaving the Linux operating system.
$30,000 - Blender integration: We want to integrate Leadwerks with the free 3D modeling package Blender. We’ll star
I'm starting to get terrain integrated into the Leadwerks 3 editor. For the most part, it stays pretty close to the design of the terrain tools in Leadwerks 2, and you should have no trouble figuring it out. I'm implementing the critical features first: This will be added into version 3.0 before the release of 3.1.
As I described in my previous blog, my goal is to take all the lessons learned from Leadwerks 2 and come up with something more refined and powerful.
The Leadwerks 2 terrain system was expansive and very fast, which allowed rendering of huge landscapes. However, it had some limitations. Texture splatting was done in real-time in the pixel shader. Because of the limitations of hardware texture units, only four texture units per terrain were supported. This limited the ability of the artist to make terrains with a lot of variation. The landscapes were beautiful, but somewhat monotonous.
With the Leadwerks 3 terrain system, I wanted to reta
Leadwerks has been successfully Greenlit for Steam, meaning we can integrate great features like the Steam Workshop and Valve file formats right into our game engine! Thank you so much to everyone who voted.
We saw an incredible response from the Steam Linux community, both here and on our Kickstarter campaign for Linux support, which is nearly 85% funded. If the campaign reaches the first stretch goal, we're throwing in Android and OUYA support for everyone who pledged $100 or more to the c
I wanted to post an update on our Steam Greenlight campaign. Basically, we're doing better than most of the top compaigns did during the same time frame. However, because items in Greenlight are never removed, they slowly accumulate votes over time. Some of the software in Greenlight has been there for almost a year, and we've only been in there about three weeks. So their number of votes will be higher than ours for a while, even if we are accumulating votes much faster.
The campaign go
Last weekend I attended an OUYA game jam and got to play around with the OUYA dev kit for the first time. My goal was to see if I could get Leadwerks running on it over the weekend. I had problems with the USB driver, but compiling went smoothly:
I didn't have any problems with controller latency, but did not finish mapping the controls or updating our project to use some newer functions we need. In the end, I had to manually copy the compiled .apk file to the device to deploy it. All in
You may recall a few weeks ago we added consideration of smooth groups in the lightmap calculations. (Explanation for new people: we use a forward renderer with static lighting as a fallback that runs across-the-board, and are working on a deferred OpenGL 4 renderer for the next major update. I've been working with deferred rendering since 2006, so this is relatively easy to add.)
You may recall the case of luxels (lightmap pixels) that fall outside a face were problematic, and I used a bi
Last week we launched our Steam Greenlight campaign to get Leadwerks into the hands of the Steam community. This week, we're rolling out the second stage of our plan with a Kickstarter campaign to bring Leadwerks to Linux. This will let you build and play games, without ever leaving Linux. The result of this campaign will be Leadwerks 3.1 with a high-end AAA renderer running on Linux, Mac, and Windows, with an estimated release date before Christmas.
Valve has given Linux users a taste of
Linux is a solid and secure operating system that’s perfect for gaming, but at this time Windows remains the lead platform for PC games. One company wants to change that by putting the game development process right on Linux. Leadwerks Software has launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring their game development software to the Linux operating system. The company says this will allow users to build and play games without ever leaving the Linux operating system.
The company's Kickstarter page
I first connected with Valve Software during GDC 2013. I recognized an opportunity to work together, so last week I paid a visit to Bellevue, Washington and met with Valve employees (no one has job titles in the company except Gabe) and discussed Leadwerks and the evolving Steam platform.
Today, I'm excited to announce our Greenlight campaign for Leadwerks 3: Steam Edition.
This software will be distributed through Steam and allow you to build games with Lua script and publish
This update brings the addition of lightmapping across curved surfaces with smooth groups. The image below is a set of lightmapped CSG brushes, not mesh lighting. You can read a detailed account of our implementation of this feature here.
The project manager now includes an "Update" button, so you can easily update your project any time we modify files in the template folders. Although we tested with no problems, it is recommended you back up your project before using this feature.
An update for Leadwerks 3 has been released, bringing new graphical enhancements to mobile games. Building on the efficient art pipeline and user-friendly tools of Leadwerks 3, the engine now supports projected shadows for characters and other dynamic objects. This technique works by casting a shadow onto the surrounding world geometry, to provide real-time shadows that run fast on all platforms.
To enable dynamic shadows on a single object, just select it in the editor and choose the
I'm a big fan of constructive solid geometry because it allows people without advanced modeling skills to design a game level that looks great. In fact, I originally got my start in game development using the Quake and Half-Life modding tools, making game maps.
One of the criticisms of CSG has been that it only allowed creation of faceted objects. (Valve's Hammer Editor has a workaround for this that lets you set smooth groups, but you can't see the results until they are run in the game.)
Leadwerks Software announced today the release of Leadwerks 3, their new development platform for building mobile games with native code. Based on the technology developed for their successful game engine for PC, Leadwerks 3 brings a totally new approach to mobile game development.
While environments such as Unity and MonoDevelop use managed code...that is, code that is designed to be easily run on multiple devices...Leadwerks uses an approach called native code. Applications built with na
After a wild week at GDC 2013, it's nice to be back doing what I do best...writing code!
A new build of Leadwerks 3 is now available. We've added light vector maps so that lightmapped surfaces can display normal mapping effects. Lightmapped materials with normal maps should use the texture "Common/lightvectormap.tex" in slot 4. (If you create a new lightmapped material, this will be done automatically.)
This technique works by calculating the average light vector that influences eac
Leadwerks 3 is a new game engine purpose-built for mobile. By building the entire platform on pure native code, Leadwerks aims to bring a new level of performance and flexibility to 3D mobile games.
After two years of development, the team is now beginning a closed beta test. Select members of the community will provide feedback and testing so that final bug fixes and refinements can be made.
You can sign up to our mailing list for up to date information as we finish up development o
.thumb.png.930e14f6185274fc318c83d22a72a188.png)
101
85
.thumb.png.930e14f6185274fc318c83d22a72a188.png)
101
85