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Leadwerks Winter Games Tournament Kicks Off

The first Leadwerks Winter Games tournament has begun!   How to Enter Submit your playable game to the Leadwerks Games Catalog, before January 15th. You can use any Christmas or non-Christmas related ideas. You can work together in teams or on your own. On the day of January 15th, a review of submitted games will be posted. Prizes Rather than a competition, this tournament is a "co-opetition". The community is encouraged to help one another make fun playable games. Everyone who participat

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Leadwerks Winter Games Tournament 2016

At last, it is time for the 2016 Leadwerks Winter Games Tournament! This is going to be a big one, for a few reasons. We're very likely to reach 100 games in Leadwerks Game Launcher, which means it will be ready to move out of early access mode and be an official release on Steam. As an experiment, you're getting two extra weeks to polish your games, with an extended deadline lasting until January 15th.     WHEN: The tournament begins Monday, December 5, and ends Sunday, January

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Game Tournaments, Schwag, and American Apparel

I have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am very bad at shipping posters.  The Winter Game Tournament was completed in January and I have yet to deliver your prizes.  If you have a job opening for someone to ship prizes, or to ship anything at all, I am probably the worst candidate you could ever hope to find to fill said position.  Seriously. Part of the problem (although it's still not an excuse) has been that it is actually incredibly difficult to have custom USB keychains made. 

Josh

Josh

Leadwerks Game Engine 4.5 Released, Enables Easy VR Development

Today we are pleased to announce the release of Leadwerks Game Engine 4.5. Version 4.5 introduces support for VR headsets including the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and all OSVR-based hardware, allowing developers to create both room-scale and seated VR experiences. The Leadwerks virtual reality command set is robust yet incredibly simple allowing you to easily convert your existing 3D games into VR titles. To help get you started the source code for our Asteroids3D game has been updated for VR a

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New Physics Features in Leadwerks 4.4

Leadwerks Game Engine 4.4 features an upgrade to the latest version of Newton Dynamics, along with a bunch of new features to enhance physics. Kinematic Controller The new kinematic controller is a joint that lets you specify a position, rotation (Euler or quaternion), or a 4x4 matrix to orient the body to.  You can set the maximum linear and angular force the joint may use to orient the entity.  This allows you to create a kinematic controller that only affects position, only affects rot

Josh

Josh

4.6 Beta Available with Multiplayer Support

An update is available on the beta branch on Steam that adds support for multiplayer games with the following features: NAT punch-through with relay server fallback. Connectionless peer-to-peer UDP messages with multiple channels and optional reliable flag. Public server list of available games to play. Voice-over-IP for in-game chat (and taunts). The new multiplayer system will open up a new range of game types that can be easily created with Leadwerks Game E

Josh

Josh

Ultra App Kit Released

Built to power a new generation of game development tools, Ultra App Kit provides an easy-to-use C++ programming SDK for creating desktop GUI applications. Unlike other alternatives like Dear ImGui, the Ultra App Kit GUI renders in retained mode rather than immediate mode, and is specifically designed for desktop GUI applications. This makes applications snappy and responsive when resizing or refreshing a window. DPI scaling is baked into the design for resolution-independent

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Hang Out with Leadwerks

The Leadwerks team will be hosting our first Google Hangout on Sunday, July 1, at 17:00 GMT (that's 10:00 AM in California). We'll spend 30 minutes talking about all the cool things happening in the community, and answer your questions about our upcoming new game engine.   Follow us on our Google+ page before Sunday and check back to join the Hangout. We're limited to ten participants, so first come, first serve. See you then!

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Leadwerks Game Engine 5 is Coming

Leadwerks 5 is going to be developed alongside 4.5 with an extended period of beta testing and feedback.  My goal is to build the world's most advanced game design software, tailored to the needs of our community and clients.  Development will first focus on a new programming API updated for C++11 and then a completely new editor using Leadwerks GUI and based on the workflow developed with our current editor. The first beta will support the following features right away: Shared Point

Josh

Josh

Summer Game Tournament

Summer is here, and you know what that means! Yes, it is time for another LEGENDARY game tournament. This year the theme is "Retro Gaming". Create a modern take on an arcade game hearkening back to the days of NES, Neo Geo, Sega, or just make anything you want. Either way, you get this totally radical poster as a prize! How does it work?  For one month, the Leadwerks community builds small playable games.  Some people work alone and some team up with others.  At the end of the mont

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Leadwerks Engine 2.5 Update Available

Leadwerks Engine 2.5 has been updated with a few small fixes and added commands. -Added GetModelLODEntity(), CountModelLODEntities(). -Added vegetation index in pick structure. -Improved vegetation terrain coloring. -Fixed terrain color map.   You can download the update by running the Leadwerks Engine sync tool.

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Leadwerks Gets Update for Workflow Enhancements, New Features

Leadwerks Game Engine on Steam and standalone versions have received a major update that include enhancements to the workflow and new features.   The FBX model importer will now auto-generate materials for imported models, and select the appropriate shader to use. This even works with animated models that use GPU skinning, so it's super easy to get new models into Leadwerks. Other enhancements include support for multi-track animations and animation sequence names.   Lua script post effe

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"Games of Winter" Tournament

Winter has descended upon the land, and with it comes the frost. The nights are long and the days are cold and grey. How long it shall last we do not know. But we do know it is time for another Leadwerks game tournament!     WHEN: The tournament will start Monday, January 18, and end Sunday, February 21th at 11:59 P.M. (Pacific Standard Time).   HOW TO PARTICIPATE: Publish your winter-or-other-themed game to Steam Workshop or upload it to the games database before the deadline. You can

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Leadwerks GUI

After a lot of research and development, Leadwerks GUI is almost ready to release.  The goal with this system was to create an in-game GUI that was customizable, extendable, and could also serve as a windowed GUI for application development in the future. Widgets The GUI system is based on the Widget class.  Once a GUI is created on a rendering context you can add widgets to it.  Each widget is a rectangular container with a padding area.  The widgets can be arranged in a hierarchy and

Josh

Josh

Leadwerks Halloween Game Tournament 2017

Fall is in the air.  The leaves are changing colors, people are bundling up, and game developers are itching to try their hand at another community game tournament.  How does it work?  For 30 days, the Leadwerks community builds small playable games.  Some people work alone and some team up with others.  At the end of the month, on Halloween day, we release our projects to the public and play each other's games.  The point is to release something short and sweet with a constrained timeline, whic

Josh

Josh

Leadwerks Game Engine 4.6 Beta Update

The beta branch on Steam is now updated. Version 4.6 introduces peer-to-peer multiplayer capabilities with a new multiplayer game template. Check out the new features in the documentation: P2P Lobby Voice The physics library is updated to the latest version of Newton. The editor has some enhancements as well: Model editor view range is calculated from model extents, so if you load a model that is huge it won't be invisible. Model editor displays n

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Lighting enhancements and fixes in Leadwerks 3

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

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Saving In-Game Settings

An update is up which saves all menu settings into your game's config file.  When your program calls System:SetProperty() the inputted key-value pair is saved in a list of settings.  Your game automatically saves these settings to a file when it closes, located in C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\local\<GAMENAME>\<GAMENAME>.cfg. The contents of the config file will look something like this: anisotropicfilter=8 antialias=1 lightquality=1 screenheight=720 screenwidth=1280 ses

Josh

Josh

Game Launcher and game distribution

Three years ago I realized we could safely distribute Lua script-based games on Steam Workshop without the need for a binary executable.  At the time this was quite extraordinary. http://www.develop-online.net/news/update-leadwerks-workshop-suggests-devs-can-circumvent-greenlight-and-publish-games-straight-to-steam/0194370 Leadwerks Game Launcher was born.  My idea was that we could get increased exposure for your games by putting free demos and works in progress on Steam.  At the same time

Josh

Josh

Leadwerks Game Engine 4.6 Beta Available

A new build is available on the beta branch. This changes the model picking system to use a different raycasting implementation under-the-hood. Sphere picking (using a radius) will also now correctly return the first hit triangle. You will also notice much faster loading times when you load up a detailed model in the editor! Additional parameters have been added to the Joint::SetSpring command: void Joint::SetSpring(const float spring, const float relaxation = 1.0f, const float damper =

Josh

Josh

Ultra App Kit: Let's Solve the Desktop UI Problem

The foundation of our new game development tools is here, with a close-to-the-metal framework for building desktop applications. Close-to-the-Metal Framework for Desktop Applications We're approaching the end of a loooooooooong cycle of research and development...several years, in fact, have been spent building the fastest game engine in the world. A great game engine needs a great user interface, and Ultra App Kit provides exactly what we need. This will provide the backbone of o

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Procedural Terrain

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

Josh

Josh

Leadwerks Game Engine 3.2 Unveils Steam Workshop

Leadwerks Software today announced the release Leadwerks Game Engine 3.2, the newest version of their game development software on Steam. This update brings integration with Workshop, Steam’s system for user-generated content. The Leadwerks Workshop gives developers a head start by launching with more than 50 free packages of content ready to be used to make games.   “Leadwerks was created to give people who love games the freedom to create something of their own”, said Leadwerks CEO Josh.

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Leadwerks 3.3 Released

Leadwerks 3.3 is now available. This update adds usability improvements and a few new features.   Two new entity classes that extend the model class are present. Sprites are a quad that can face the camera, a specific direction, or can rotate around one axis. These are useful for lighting effects and the axis rotation is great for making laser beams or tracer rounds.   The Lensflare class extends the sprite class and adds a simple glow effect for lighting.   The editor now support shift

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