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A Second Date with Leadwerks Software

The Leadwerks team will be hosting our second Google Hangout on Sunday, July 22, 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 3 Update Brings Rendering Enhancements to Mobile

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

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A first look at the terrain editor

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.

Josh

Josh

Leadwerks Game Engine on Steam gets plugin post-effects system

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

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A Look at C++11 Shared Pointers in Leadwerks 5

C++11 introduces shared pointers, a powerful language feature that provides easy memory management without the overhead of garbage collection.  The example below should look familiar to you: #include "Leadwerks.h" using namespace Leadwerks; int main(int argc, const char *argv[]) { shared_ptr<Leadwerks::Window> window = Leadwerks::Window::Create(); shared_ptr<Context> context = Context::Create(window); shared_ptr<World> world = World::Create(); shared_ptr<Camera&

Josh

Josh

3 Ways Leadwerks Game Engine 5 Makes Game Programming Easier

Leadwerks Game Engine 5 moves Leadwerks forward into the future with massive performance increases and more advanced features, it also makes game development easier than ever before with three great new programming features. Shared Pointers I could write a whole article about the benefits of shared pointers.  Shared pointers are basically a simple form of garbage collection that relieves you from the need to manually delete objects, but doesn't suffer from the slow speed of full garbag

Josh

Josh

Unicode in Leadwerks 5

I've begun implementing unicode in Leadwerks Game Engine 5.  It's not quite as simple as "switch all string variables to another data type". First, I will give you a simple explanation of what unicode is.  I am not an expert so feel free to make any corrections in the comments below. When computers first started drawing text we used a single byte for each character.  One byte can describe 256 different values and the English language only has 26 letters, 10 numbers, and a few other cha

Josh

Josh

Ultra Engine Beta Updated

An update is available for the new Turbo Game Engine beta. Fixed compiling errors with latest Visual Studio version Fixed compatibility problems with AMD hardware Process is now DPI-aware Added high-resolution depth buffer (additional parameter on CreateContext()). Subscribers can download the new version here.

Josh

Josh

Leadwerks Software Announces .NET Support

Leadwerks Software has released version 2.5 of their game development software Leadwerks Engine, featuring enhanced graphics and support for the Microsoft .NET application framework. Josh, CEO of Leadwerks said, “.NET support fits in with our goal of making game development simple and more approachable for programmers. We have an energetic community of coders who have been requesting .NET support for some time, and we’re happy to deliver that in Leadwerks Engine 2.5 along with enhancements to ou

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Lightmapping curved CSG objects

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.)

Josh

Josh

Stretch goals revealed for Leadwerks for Linux Kickstarter campaign

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

Josh

Josh

Refining Smooth Lightmaps

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

Josh

Josh

Leadwerks 3.0 Update Available

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

Josh

Josh

Leadwerks Adds Native Support for Steamworks SDK, Steam Controller

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

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Leadwerks Winter Games Results

The results of the Leadwerks Winter Games Tournament are in! I think you will agree, this tournament produced some very fun playable games. You can download all of these games and more in the Leadwerks Games Listing. Each author will receive a Leadwerks sticker via mail (Gonan gets a Leadwerks T-Shirt since this is his second entry.)   So without further ado, let's look at the games, in no particular order:   Crime Closer By nick.ace Catch the crooks before they get away!     Next

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Leadwerks Game Engine 3.5 Now Available

Leadwerks Game Engine 3.5 is now available on Steam. Along with version 3.5, we're rolling out a new tutorials to teach you everything you need to make games. A step-by-step series of lessons teaches how to use the editor, write Lua scripts, and create gameplay. No preexisting knowledge is required. Read the new material here.   A new project templates system has been added. This provides different game types you can choose from to create a basic playable game in a few seconds. We're lau

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Halloween Game Tournament Roundup

The 2015 Leadwerks Halloween Game Tournament is complete, with results above and beyond any previous game tournament. The quality, content, and fun of the lineup of games this tournament is really spectacular.   Halloween Pumpkin Run http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/viewitem?fileid=540259470   If one game summed up the spirit of this year's tournament, it's this title. The atmosphere, gameplay, and fun of this title make it an instance classic in the Leadwerks catalog of user-made

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Leadwerks Game Engine 4 Preview Available

A preview build of Leadwerks Game Engine 4 is now available on the default branch on Steam, with a new vegetation management system and other features.   We completely rethought how large-scale scene management should work to bring you a one-of-a-kind vegetation system for handling massive amounts of foliage. Instead of storing each instance in memory, our new system uses a distribution algorithm to dynamically calculate all relevant instances each frame for rendering and physics. This allows

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Three New Model Packs available in the Workshop Store

Today we are rolling out three new paid model packs by artist Nova Dimension.   The Urban Interior Pack contains everything you need to populate your decaying urban settings with fixtures, furniture, and survival supplies.         The Morgue Model Pack provides a creepy setting for horror or apocalyptic games. Just imagine how scary this could be with the right lighting and music.     Finally, the Old Furniture Pack provides an extended collection of every type of furniture pr

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Leadwerks Game Engine 4.1 Released

Leadwerks Game Engine 4.1 is now available on Steam. This release cranks up the already legendary Leadwerks visuals to new levels of awesome.   Environment Probes The new environment probe entities can be used to add global illumination and reflections to any scene.  Volumetric Lighting Each light in Leadwerks can now display an adjustable volumetric effect using a ray-marching technique to give your game dramatic visuals.  Enhanced Post-Processing Effects Leadwerks 4.1 includes

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Leadwerks Winter Tournament Roundup

The Winter Games Tournament is complete, with a long list of fun mini-games made by the community. This tournament saw the release of many new and innovative types of games you want to be sure to try. To claim your prize, go to "My Profile" in the drop-down box that opens when you click your name in the upper-right part of this website:   On your profile page, click the button that says "Edit My Profile" and enter your name, shipping address, and shirt size.   Lone Water: Prologue Lon

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You're Making your Visual Studio C++ Projects Wrong

Visual Studio gives two options for creating C++ applications. Console applications use printed text to communicate with the user, harkening back to the pre-GUI days of DOS. The other option is a windowed application with a GUI interface, simply called "Win32 Project" in the Visual Studio project creation dialog.     A console application will use the regular old main function you know and love: int main(int argc,const char *argv[])   This is cross-platform compatible and runs on an

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3 Ideas You Must Understand to Use C++11 Shared Pointers in Leadwerks Game Engine 5

Leadwerks Game Engine 5 is being designed to make use of shared pointers.  This eliminates manual reference counting, which has probably been the most difficult part of programming games with Leadwerks.  Here are three concepts you must understand before you start using smart pointers in Leadwerks 5, Don't Create Multiple Shared Pointers from One Object When a shared pointer goes out of scope, it deletes the object it references.  If another smart pointer was created separately that re

Josh

Josh

Making Leadwerks.com More Scalable

Our website stores a lot of user generated content in the forum of images and attachments.  Before Leadwerks Game Engine was on Steam the demands were even higher, since we had our own downloads and gallery sections that stored data on our server.  Since the implementation of Steam screenshots and Workshop a lot of that has been offloaded onto the Steam servers, relieving our server from some of the data storage and transfer costs.  (If you're interested, all our old content is archived on Googl

Josh

Josh

The Great Halloween Game Tournament Roundup

Our most recent game tournament was a smashing success.  We had fewer entries this time, but they more than made up for it with the great quality of this round of games.  Without further ado I am happy to present the entries... Behind Enemy Lines Wow!  This game by burgelkat features a variety of missions from blowing up drug manufacturing facilities to sabatoging a plane.  Although the same mechanic is usually used, the action never gets old and you will keep playing just to find out

Josh

Josh

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