deadlinegrunt

@gamecreator a direct message sent to you. This satisfies the request and willing to compensate time invested. I now have a link to demonstrate my point to some people. Thanks!

This post, if not deleted by admins or moderators, will serve to demonstrate a point about community, technical support, and feature requests. Is anybody able to post some code that can demonstrate how to animate a 2D sprite in an equally straight forward manner like creating a window, context, and an entity object that displays on the screen similar to "Hello World" example when first starting out. You can use a texture atlas or separate images; your choice. Additionally, for simplification of requirements, Lua or C++ is acceptable. The primary request is that it should work with the current version of Leadwerks API, 4.5 as of this posting, and not an outdated version where previous features never migrated, it follows a "standardized" format like the help sections in the API which is self contained sans assets, and can be executed. Not seeking a framework, library, or extensible solution. Looking for simple and concrete example via code. This is not a question about theory and discussions "how you could go about it", e.g. use a shader, use a timer, uv texture mapping adjustments on the fly, etc. Seeking a concrete example that matches the criteria above to demonstrate a point. If a response is made within 24 hours of this posting and this thread is not drowned out with pointless conversation (prior to said solution meeting criteria set forth) I will donate $50 to the first person to respond with an actual concrete example through convenient digital payment methods that are considered the norm as of this posting. As an added bonus: If you can provide a link to an already existing post that matches the criteria above but is not found using the following: "2d animated sprites" or "2d sprite animation" then I will double the reward to demonstrate the search issues with this site. *Payment will be received with 24 hours of this bounty being fulfilled.

Branding is a difficult thing to achieve. Companies re-brand themselves many times over the course of company solvency. The only input I can give on this subject is when there is a core shift in the cultural ideas of said company. This isn't to Josh, whom is more business oriented actually running one while I still work for one, this is to anybody reading in general. Successful companies know when they evolve so does its culture and its ideas and that is where re-branding comes in. Regarding pointers and Lua. Lua is so highly underrated for a scripting language. Of all scripting languages it's the closest to C in simplicity. Combine that with C++, which as an aside by the time C++23 comes out raw pointers are *OUT*. C++ was always meant to lean towards references but that backward compatibility with C made it what it was; although now you don't hear about pedantic conversations of C/C++ being interchanged. They are two different languages now and continue to diverge. Hate to sound like I am ranting or rambling but I will say this: Leadwerks is the only proprietary piece of software I am not only willing to shell out my own money for, I actually do with every opportunity...pitching ideas in unrelated circles to Steam or the wanna be game programmer and that whole "speaking with your money" part in the States where I reside this means something. I have seen many pro's and con's with Josh, Leadwerks, etc. on social media that it made me a late comer to this product and community. Some things I have not liked but in the end the actual product speaks for itself which is what matters most; even if I disagreed with Josh. I believe, and I may be wrong, but it is my belief Josh wants a successful business while still having a loyal customer base not because of his company or his product but both and that is something I have subscribed myself to supporting as a customer. Apologies if this sounds like some pointless rant but I am juggling a family, a successful Principal Engineer/Manager, and ready to work for myself instead of someone else. I have to finish cooking dinner, get the kids to bed, and then get back to my side project with LeadWerks. After 25+ years doing this I see a way to break the cycle without being beholden to the hamster wheel.

No apology necessary. Trying to be helpful was all. I'll leave you be to more important stuff.

The actual download link is missing in Chrome/MS Edge/IExplorer: When you go to your profile->Store->Purchases->Manage->Enterprise Edition you get the following: Product Information Thank you for your purchase. Your download is below. The password for the installer is --8<--[CUT FOR OBVIOUSNESS]--8<-- The password is present but there is no link for the installer to be found.

That's good to hear - That the Enterprise lags behind for stability. As you are probably aware an "Enterprise/Business" environment lags behind with toolsets. I purchased the 5.0 Beta subscription myself outside of R&D from a work slant; meaning I bought the enterprise and the Steam 5 Beta support just for clarification. Apologies for spam like responses from this thread. Appreciate your patience, truly. I would like to pitch this tech in work circles so the Enterprise makes this possible. I will wait patiently for the passwords needed to unlock the install and my own purchase of the BETA 5 forums. Thanks again for listening to your customers as well. Much appreciated.

I see from filename it is 4.4_b2 which would have been nice to know on the store page but not a deal breaker. Also purchased 5 beta subscription for the Steam version so I can play with bleeding edge. Could anybody familiar tell me where I can find the password required for the Enterprise edition I purchased? It was not included on my receipt email, etc. Not intending to be a pain.

I have this in the cart ready to purchase. Will this be the 4.5 version of Leadwerks or Version 5 that is in Beta? Apologies if this is detailed somewhere but I was not able to determine. Appreciates the patience involved answering my question. Thanks in advance.

Thanks! Apologies for not looking there first and taking the time to answer despite this being easily answered had I searched more diligently.

Has there been any further business discussion regarding Leadwerks without a Steam dependency? I am fully aware you can run Leadwerks through Steam in off-line mode but that is not the actual question. Even if one has to pay for a version of the engine without updates at an inflated price; is there any chance this is being considered?

TL;DR Listen to Rick. Expanding: Definitely going to want to prototype in Lua for sure. I would do everything in Lua and then use C++ as the crowbar to get around anything special you are attempting to do. I think you'll find you never really need the "crowbar" to do something during the short term of learning the engine, editor and API Lua/C++ itself. If you are some kind of game making genius the reason to listen to Rick is the flexibility. Also when you start using the C++ API of Leadwerks it is not absurd to assert you will code faster having faster iteration cycles with Lua first and less throwing objects at the wall to see what sticks for a solution. There are a lot of C++ peeps on here that are knowledgeable. I haven't seen a survey on this site but it would be curious to see how many C++ peeps using this engine started relying on Lua instead of doing everything with pure C++ for quick prototyping, etc. I know Josh likes to gather data and metrics and then make decisions instead of ignoring the former and basing it on emotional outcome. He might be able to chime in on the ratio of Lua to C++ projects with this engine(?) Lua and Leadwerks are more than capable of making prototypes and even working games without ever touching C++. Just a courtesy FYI.

@jen @Rick @Josh - Exactly my thoughts from my humble standpoint. I really wished I hadn't missed the hangout now without question. I could NOT agree more with all three viewpoints. Precisely why I have very high hopes for this product. It is so extremely capable and even though I can't gain mind share with my circles currently, I keep coming back to it on my own time...which is way more valuable than what I get paid professionally...and I am not hurting and living a life long dream; getting paid to make games, middle-ware, and platforms. My contribution is going to do what @aggror does (and why I am making a Patreon contributions to him monthly - hint hint if you are not): He makes tutorials. I am going to make games in rapid succession if for no other reason to contribute back to this community. Having the beginners and the experts build the bridge so that the people in the middle make that "keystone" happen. Unfortunately I am late to the game but I have seen what @Roland and @Rick (and a lot of others...@Shadmar etc) do and I will be doing the same. @Jen - You even inspired me to start going on-line making records of the journey. I only started last Sunday though. Go you trail blazer you! You make a very expert observation of which I could not agree more. Family calls so I will get off my soap box and just say this product, the community, and the intelligence of all is very refreshing and we are all on the same team of wanting something that works without limiting nor inhibiting accessibility. I am relieved to hear Josh is being objective even though other decisions he has made I did not particularly agree with...he listens to his customers and he runs analytics. He is being objective which I was not entirely sure of being this is a "one man show" if you will. Apologies if I offended anyone - been very busy today. I really do respect everyone that contributes. Period.

I would like to point out specifically that I went out of my way to qualify my entire input that I am not Josh's target demographic. On this note I would like to point out my intent is not to hijack the thread either. What I can do is influence the next generation of tools for the places I work if they make sense. Right now the tech is there but the business model and the product design to support the business model is not anything I can pitch in my circles. So it is just a toy for me at home. I already have five gaming laptops, three gaming rigs, and every console available right now, including the dev kits. I would pay the money just to not have to carry around yet another piece of hardware as it is. Again, I am NOT the target audience and tried to qualify as such without sounding arrogant or pompous. Sticking/Picking on Unity since it is the biggest Indie tool on the block right now...My point was that LE can display in scene rendering that will bring Unity to its knees in its editor, even with the Enterprise edition. This is not how Indies or professional use these tools. They use them as deployment platforms, e.g. The engine is target and everything is done as a framework over the underlying API of the engine and the the number of platforms the engine supports may influence which choice you make. If I am not clear then consider Unity is deployed as a C# platform with 2D/3D library and a virtual machine often times with a single game object in the editor in much the same way one would use Java or C# has the "platform" since they are VM's under the hood. Josh never mentioned selling it at a $500 price point for stand-alone, I did. That being said, for the demographic I am referring too, Josh can charge A LOT more than $500 and he knows this. Fortunately though he is not catering to my demographic which is why I tend to shy away from these threads in general. I was simply saying I am interested in where LE moves going forward as an engine and a business. I was about to write it off myself as nothing more than a toy for personal use until hearing some of the things I have heard in this thread. While I will not hold my breath I will not write off either. When you consider money vs. technology and how these are used professionally, LE is forever relegated as a stepping stone to other engines unless his business model changes. How Josh overcomes these issues is exactly why I will read his articles on Gamasutra or GDC conferences when they happen. I mean no disrespect to anybody nor introduce any noise so feel free to IM me if someone has an opinion or wishes to hear mine regarding any input I submitted.

I always viewed having LE tied to Steam limited its adoption in things other than hobby/indie/academic targets. I work in the casino industry during the day for the last decade+ and installing Steam is not a thing that is going to happen. Obviously the casino industry is not a target demographic for LE but even Unity has special licensing for casino content created than the Free, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise license due to the money it makes and requires contract negotiations. I mention Unity only because it is what casino game development are using these days in most of the major player game studios moving forward from legacy in-house engines. I paid $100 for LE3 std, $100 for LE3 pro, and I would pay and additional $200~$500 just to be able to ditch being wed to Steam...and yes I am aware of running Steam in Offline mode; not my point. I am surprised I haven't been charged for an upgrade to LE4.3...which I would clearly pay until such time as I outgrow what I need from this product. It has also been my understanding there is no mobile support moving forward with LE 3+ on because Josh doesn't believe it is profitable for a variety of reasons that may or may not be fact. If this is the case then mobile VR can't be a possibility. I also remember console support was written off because the dev rig cost and licensing for PS, XBox, etc. prohibits it being anything more than an advertising gimmick because the average hobby/indie/academic target I mentioned previously is not going to have this kind of access. That can only mean VR for the PC. I want to point out that I really enjoy LE even when I dislike it - despite being geared at people whom have no experience making games, it is VERY capable of making them with someone that does. As a "hobbyist" game maker off hours I think highly of LE but it seems very narrowly focused. I am clearly not the primary demographic being targeted so none of this is a slam on the product or the business of LE. Just an observation. Wished I was able to attend the hangout personally but prior scheduling prohibited it. Thanks for the summary though. I find this stuff interesting. *Note: My mention of Unity is not for promotional value. I believe Unity will collapse under its own weight from trying to do and be too much to all things which is one area Josh nailed correctly. Anybody using Unity professionally will understand what I am referring if they are not emotionally tied to a tool.

I commented on this very subject in the suggestion box forum [ http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/15019-one-to-rule-them-all/#entry101928 ] Unity, for example, allows you to do this along with other toolsets/editors, e.g. wxWidgets like DialogBlocks. In regards to AggrorJorn OP this is not a one off experience. The lack of this functionality is not a deal breaker but is a nuisance.

You might check the physics tab and ensure that you have the Physics Mode as a Character Controller and Collision as Character in addition to what AggrorJorn suggested of ensuring you don't have an extra camera in your scene(?)

Is it possible to add a configuration setting in the main preferences so that when you click the edit icon on a script it opens a user preferred editor(?) For example, someone may wish top open with VS Code, Vim, Emacs, Notepad++, etc. It's probably not a "mainstream" must have but even engines like Unity, etc. support this and to be honest it is really nice feature. The request isn't to change the tooling itself and most of us that use different code editors find ways to do this regardless but I would donate money for this feature just because it makes the workflow easier for those of us that work in multiple environments. Worth noting that for those of us that do use the supplied feature know how to pass in arguments so essentially if the preference is undefined/blank it uses your built in Lua editor for example otherwise it calls the user defined command preference. You're obviously smart so I don't need to explain how to do it but you get the gist of of the request I hope. It's a minor one but really nice to have.

While I truly appreciate the advice given in this thread, some of it I already knew but others may not, please disregard and close this thread. TLDR; I have multiple computers and I am an idiot not realizing I was streaming instead of working off the PC I was on. This was the cause of my missing files that should be in the template folder...and of course it was a BETA version. Hey, at least I owned my mistake. lol or sigh or both(?)

@cassius - another point I am trying to make you back up. Video tutorials are great but some of us learn from actual code. I don't mean copy and paste but reading the code like a book and walking away with a better understanding. Myself, sure I am a lone in this camp, show me code and keep the video. The videos are nice, PLEASE do not get me wrong but some of us learn better from actual code. For example: I don't know what this line of Lua/C++/Language of choice is doing - I go look it up so I can understand the languag, without the teacher having the burden of trying to cover every separate learning style possible.

@Jen "- It lacks community activity. I need support from time to time but there's no one to reach unfortunately. The forum is too quiet. There are a few I'm grateful of (Mattline, tipforeveryone) who are always there to help, thanks. " Exactly. Now in an effort to be intellectually honest there has been ZERO post that I have made that have received NO response so it would be unfair of me to criticize these forums as being non-active but then they don't always answers the questions an intermediate user will ask. It seems to be polarized between advanced and noob. (Subjective observation from a myopic vantage point of mine, not fact) I don't know the best resolution to this particular dilemma but I could not agree more with the point you make.

Thanks. I will check out the YouTube Channels mentioned and I no longer opt in on BETA builds except to see how things are progressing, especially when interested in a particular update, but then I roll back. Again I can't stress this enough - I AM NOT HATING on the engine or any of the community; just trying to make sure I am not doing something wrong because scripts that came as templates when starting a new project are no longer present, e.g. Third Person Camera, Follow, etc. I have done integrity checks via Steam which will reinstall whatever is corrupted and even pulling in a template script on a "blank project" that included very little from the Steam installation location if needed all the way to WIP that were functional now getting errors. @Thirst Panther - renaming default scripts that I use I learned early on. I believe one of the tutorials even hints about it for the example on this site but does not really cover why this is a good idea in general; regardless that is great advice of course. I never modify the default scripts directly.

I really push this engine every chance I get. The problem is you compare this to something like Godot and I my productivity is through the roof. Is it because i have my "steam" setttings to always have the latest beta or what? I find scripts that where part of a project no longer available. All the youtube channels seems to be geared towards Leadwerks 2.5. This engine seems in a constant state of flux and a script I write a few weeks ago no longer works without debugging. I am not slamming the engine, the community, or the forum but I am confused as to what I am doing wrong. Case in point a a TPC to a a dice that rolls off of a slanted off camera plane that works perfectly just quits working. Where are all the the third person scripts that were easily available now at? Forget youtube. Engine has changed too much for those tutorials to be useful. I make games for a living and this is the hardest engine to learn with the most potential that just leaves me perplexed. Rather than rag on the engine, what am I doing wrong? Respectfully.

lol @ SGB. I troll people at work all the time...well played my friend!

OK. Home from work. How did you split the window?

I have the worst luck searching these forums... That will work for me. I was unaware that was possible. Thanks SGB!