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Leadwerks 3 begins closed beta test

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

Admin

Admin

Introducing Voice Chat in Leadwerks 4.6

The next update will include a new networking system with built-in voice chat for multiplayer games. Voice communication is built into your game and can be enabled simply by turning it on when a specific key is pressed: void Voice::SetRecording(window->KeyDown(Key::T)) You can selectively filter out users so your voice only gets sent to your own team or to a specific player: void Voice::SetFilter(const uint64 steamid, const bool state) When another player sends their voice

Josh

Josh

Introducing the Workshop Store

Leadwerks Workshop provides a repository of free game items for game developers to use in their projects. Workshop content has been heavily used in several game tournaments to make many different games of different genres.   Today we are rolling out the Leadwerks Workshop Store. This allows us to add new and better quality content for you to use in your games. All assets are curated and verified to work correctly with Leadwerks Game Engine. This includes material setup, sizing, and correct

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Admin

Introducing the Lobby System in Leadwerks 4.6

The new Lobby system in Leadwerks 4.6 allows you to create a public listing of your multiplayer game for others to join. This uses the Steamworks library. You can tap into the Steamworks lib by piggybacking on the default "SpaceWar" example game, which uses the Steam app ID 480. This is set up by default when you create a new Leadwerks project. Now you might think of a lobby as a place where people hang out and chat before the game starts. You can treat it like this, but it's best to keep t

Josh

Josh

Introducing Leadwerks Marketplace

Steam Workshop was a compelling idea to allow game asset authors to sell their items for use with Leadwerks Game Engine. However, the system has turned out to have some fundamental problems, despite my best efforts to work around it. Free items are not curated, causing the store to fill with low quality content. Some people have reported trouble downloading items. The publishing process is pretty tedious. The check-out process requires adding funds to Steam Wallet, a

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Industrial Cargo Model Pack Released

The Industrial Cargo Model Pack is now available for only $9.95. This package includes three cargo containers and two wooden spools. All assets are certified game-ready for Leadwerks Engine. This is just some of Dave Lee's work, and there's lots more coming!  

Josh

Josh

In-Game Menu

Along with Leadwerks GUI, Leadwerks 4.4 adds an in-game menu that is available with the default Lua scripted game.  You can use this to allow your users to adjust settings in the game, or provide a more sophisticated way to quit the game than simply pressing the escape key. The default window size has been changed to 1280x720 when run from the editor.  Your game will now run in fullscreen mode by default when it is launched outside the editor. All of these changes are contained i

Josh

Josh

How to Request a Payout from Leadwerks Marketplace

Some of you are earning money selling your game assets in Leadwerks Marketplace. This quick article will show you how to request a payout from the store for money you have earned. First, you need to be signed into your Leadwerks account. Click the drop-down user menu in the upper right corner of the website header and click on the link that says "Account Balance". On the next page you can see your account balance. As long as it is $20 or more you can withdraw the balance into you

Josh

Josh

Hangout with Leadwerks Software

The Leadwerks team will be hosting our next Google Hangout on Sunday, September 16, at 17:00 GMT (that's 10:00 AM in California). Aggror will talk about his experience leading the Leadwerks Community Project, and we'll provide a sneak peak at the new Leadwerks 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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Admin

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!

Admin

Admin

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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Admin

Halloween Game Tournament

Fall is in the air, which means evil spirits, good beer, and the annual Leadwerks Halloween Game Tournament.   WHEN: The tournament will start Thursday, October 8, and end Thursday, November 5th at 11:59 P.M. (Pacific Standard Time).   HOW TO PARTICIPATE: Publish your Halloween-or-other-themed game to Steam Workshop or upload it to the games database before the deadline. You can work as a team or individually. Use blogs to share your work and get feedback as you build your game. If you need

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Admin

Greenlight Status

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

Josh

Josh

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

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

Game Engine Gems 3 Now Available for Pre-order

The book "Game Engine Gems 3" by Eric Lengyel is now available for purchase at Amazon.com (ISBN #978-1498755658). This title, set for release April 21, 2016, features 22 chapters of game programming knowledge, including a chapter by Leadwerks founder Josh titled "Vegetation Management in Leadwerks Game Engine 4". The accompanying CD even includes source code for an early version of the Leadwerks vegetation system, so you can see exactly what is going on under the hood of the engine. Pick it u

Admin

Admin

FPS Weapons Pack now available on Steam

The Leadwerks FPS Weapons Pack is now available on Steam as a DLC. The FPS Weapons Pack provides a small arsenal of game-ready weapons, with no coding required. Drag these objects into your map for the player to pick up and use. Pulverize your enemies with a machete, .22 pistol, combat shotgun, MP5 submachine gun and an M4 carbine. Each weapon includes sounds, effects, animations, and scripted behavior that make it ready-to-use in your Leadwerks games.   The pack can be purchased with a 15% d

Admin

Admin

Four New Texture Packs Released in Workshop Store

Today we've got four new texture packs available for purchase in the Workshop Store.   The Blood Decals pack provides 30 hand-painted textures for spatters, drips, and puddles of human, animal, or alien blood. This is perfect for adding atmosphere and a sense of foreboding to an otherwise ordinary scene. You can even create trails of blood going down hallways and around corners.     Another creepy addition is the Spiderweb Materials pack. Create a sprite and use these materials to inst

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Admin

Fog in Leadwerks 4.4

Distance fog is one of the most basic visual effects in 3D graphics, going back to the 1990s.  Here is the effect in the Quake 3 Arena map "Fatal Instinct", which was shrouded in a dense orange fog: Leadwerks Game Engine 2 had this available as a built-in effect, while the more flexible effects system of Leadwerks 3/4 had several Workshop shaders available to use, including one by Klepto and another one more recently added by myself.  However, this has not been part of the official SDK

Josh

Josh

Five Programming Changes You'll See in Leadwerks 5

Leadwerks 4.x will see a few more releases, each remaining backwards compatible with previous versions.  Leadwerks 5.0 is the point where we will introduce changes that break compatibility with previous versions.  The changes will support a faster design that relies more on multi-threading, updates to take advantage of C++11 features, and better support for non-English speaking users worldwide.  Changes are limited to code; all asset files including models, maps, shaders, textures, and materials

Josh

Josh

FBX Converter Updated

A small update has been published to the default branch of Leadwerks Game Engine on Steam. This updates the FBX converter so that the scene units (meters, feet, etc.) are read from the file and used to convert the model at the proper size. Previously, the raw numbers for position, scale, and vertex positions were read in as meters. The new importer also supports both smooth groups and per-vertex normals, so models can be imported more reliably without having to recalculate normals. An error

Josh

Josh

Dexsoft Games Releases Five Material Packs in Leadwerks Workshop Store

Dexsoft Games, producers of game content with a library of thousands of game assets, have released five new material packs in the Workshop Store. All materials and textures are ready to use with Leadwerks, with source image files included in TGA format.   All of these can be purchased now through the links below, or through the Workshop interface in Leadwerks Editor. See the links below for more information and additional preview images.   Sci-Fi Materials 1     Sci-Fi Materials 2  

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Admin

Data Loss Announcement

First, so you don't have to read through all my rambling, the website database is set back to November 2010, and there is no way around it.   I was working with the forum software on Sunday, 4-17, and I was just very pleased with how things were working. I saw there was an update for the bug tracker application, and the change list just mentioned some bug fixes, so I felt okay installing it. The new version removed custom issue fields, which we use extensively for listing hardware, drivers,

Admin

Admin

Creating Realistic Skyboxes with Vue

This tutorial demonstrates how to create a high-quality skybox for Leadwerks Game Engine using Vue. Download Cloudy Blue Skies.zip FixVueCubemap.zip Required Third-Party Programs Vue Esprit Exporter Module Loading the Example Run Vue and select the File > Open menu item.  Extract the zip file above and open the file "Cloudy Blue Skies.vue". Atmosphere and Clouds You can modify the appearance of the sky with the Atmosphere Edito

Josh

Josh

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