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AggrorJorn

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  1. AggrorJorn
    I have uploaded a new version containing save games and some improvements regarding restarting a level, going to back menus etc.
     
    Saves
    Every time you finish a level, a property is set to keep track of the levels you finished. Only downside when using the launcher is that this will only get set, when the game is closed. So when you finish 4 levels, it will not become clear you finished these levels until after you have restarted the game. But still a pretty nice feature to have.

     
    Track generation
    The level generation has been altered for the first time since the first blog. Nothing too complicated though, just a different seed when using a car or ball (One variable is called ballSeed ha). The tracks also now have a weighted percentage added to them, meaning that some track segments have a little less chance to get picked over others.
     
    Corpses
    The ball, just like the car, now has a corpse everytime you reset the level. Corpses of the car and the ball are now removed when going back to main menu to prevent cluttering up the game world.

     
    Sound
    Sound has been added, but they are ogg files. So for now, you wont hear anything yet in the game launcher.
     
    Car physics
    The car physics are driving me crazy (no pun intended). I got a reasonable/playable result but it is not entirely there yet. Ah well, it will do for the tournament. Everytime I get a combination of decent properties, there is always something wrong. Either, accelaration, steering, jumpiness, crash sensitivity (
    ) or rolling over with the slightest road curve. I think I have spend more time on the cart, than on everything else combined. Maybe I will give it one last go this week and otherwise I will have to revert back to the basic car. 
    Only 1 more week to go everyone! Good luck.
  2. AggrorJorn
    I am currently looking into some 2d basic/arcade game tutorials which might follow up on the OLED project once all the lua basics tutorials are done.
     
    Think about games like:
    Minesweeper
    Tetris
    Pong
    Bejeweld (match 3)
    Asteroids
    Snake
    Arkanoid (breakout)

     
    Minesweeper is already finished:

     
     
    Replicating all these games myself gives a great indication on their complexity, even for arcade games. Grid based games like minesweeper, bejeweled and tetris are the easiest and share a lot of functionality. So doing all of them might now prove usefull. Pong is great in the sense that it introduces vector mathematics. All these game have their own little mechanics. The trick in making the tutorials is also finding the right game order.
     
    One game that you might find missing in the list above is Pacman. Although certainly doable, the ghosts have their own behaviour which makes them a little trickier for beginnners. All in all it is a good way to really start tinkering about lua once you'r done learning the basics.
     
     
    What are your favorite arcade games?
  4. AggrorJorn
    Back in 2010 Josh, creator of the Leadwerks Engine, asked Dave Lee to create a part of the exclusion zone. 7 years later, this project has been revisited and rebuild.
    Original footage from Leadwerks 2.3
     
    With Leadwerks 3 I asked Josh if I could convert the assets to the new engine. Most assets were uploaded to the workshop, but they lacked proper physics, materials etc. Back then the Leadwerks 3 engine didn't have the vegatation editor and no deferred renderer. So building the entire map was not pointless.
    Now in Leadwerks 4 the tools are perfect to recreate this beautifully designed scene. Josh gave me once again all the assets, and I started rebuilding the zone piece by piece. Many hours later in just the time span of 2 weeks we have some good results.
    Step 1: Terrain import and basic terrain painting. 

    2. Painting general layout and some first vegatation

    3. Placing the first bridges

    4. Placing the first large buildings. as you can see the texture are missing. 

     
    5 Reapplied building textures. Holy **** that was a lot of work. Some textures did get applied automatically, but a lot of the textures were combined in larger shared folders. A lot of manual searching and applying the right textures.

    6 Props, props and even more props. The more I started placing props, the more respect I got for Dave Lee's original design and prop placement. The amount of props is growing significantly. Here is a comparison of Bober station, with and without the building.

    7. Fine-tuning terrain textures and terrain.
    8. Adding more vegatation and rocks.
    9. Swamp emitters.
    10. Some more props.
    11. Performance optimizing. View distance, billboards etc. More on this in the next blog.
    12. Adding some post effects and sound.
     
    13 Some missing things: due to a tight deadline, no time for physics yet. Except for models that have box physics or where physics do not really matter that much. Optimizing and organising the scene is also far from done. I came across a nasty bug where all my assets were removed from the filters I had in place. That was painful.

     
    The final reveal of Return to the Zone project will be done by Josh. In the mean time...enjoy....


     
     
  5. AggrorJorn

    Saturn and Tunnels

    By AggrorJorn,

    If you don't know that the blog title exists out of game names, you are probably a little confused . My upcoming job interviews are almost 2 weeks away, which gives me plenty of space to do some development stuff on the side from my main project. Besides my main project I have been working on the tutorial project Saturn as well as reviving the the Tunnels demo from Leadwerks 2.
     
    Project Saturn
    I didn't think I would have so much fun making project Saturn. It proves that making gameplay can be done very quickly. At the moment of writing this blog, there are 13 video tutorials. There are enough subjects left to cover, so if the videos gain some more popularity, I will start making some more.
    in the meantime you can also download the source from my website and you can even play the game directly via the workshop game player. Here are some topics that are in the queue for possible upcoming tutorials:
    Healthpacks
    Ladders
    Inventory
    Camera on rails/cutscene


     
     
    Tunnels
    The tunnels and Island scene from Leadwerks 2 are made me fall in love with Leadwerks in the first place. Having a go at reviving the Tunnels scene is therefor extra motivating. With some scary sounds and a dark ambience, the tunnels demo is nice little demo for the Leadwerks game player. Expect some more updates on this project later this week.
     
    Jorn 'Aggror'
     

  6. AggrorJorn
    Now that the steam updating works again, the Spline Tools 1.04 package has been uploaded on Steam.
    Update 1.04
    This version contains some updated maps for Leadwerks 4.5. The moving platforms map unfortunately is not working properly and will have to be sorted out. Wire splines added.  Wire splines can be used for creating wires, cables or rope. By default, wires have no physics. Physics can be added as static shapes by selecting the wire type.  There is also an experimental dynamic wire type which creates joint for all rope segments. Doesn't work properly yet but is fun to play around with. Wires require some more work, like attach multiple splines geometry but I didn't want to wait any longer. Map added: "Wire - Electric poles.map". Demonstrates wire splines with no physics and static physics. Map added: "Wire - Tireswing.map". Demonstrates the experimental dynamic splines that uses joints for movable wires.   
    Todo list
    Reversed spline travel for spline followers  Ease in and out for spline followers  Rivers Improving the ropes  
     
     
  7. AggrorJorn
    I was working in the cantina of the school the other day when I noticed a showcase by 2 (second years) game developer students. Their project for the last 6 months was to build some kind of interactive system for a rehabilitation center. I was really cool to see and to think of it that only 2 seconds students made this. Really impressive. They also made a bunch of small games but I didn't make a recording after this one.
     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiNCt0m-HXY
  8. AggrorJorn
    A little extra information regarding the end of the Leadwerks Community Project.
     
    Why did we stop
    There are many reasons for ending the project. The most important reason is that we think the motivation and amount of time people will invest in the project will drop extremely once LE3 has been released. It was allways something that played in the back of our heads. What if we are halfway through the game development process and LE will be released. You bet your *ss that the project will be discontinued.
    Another reason that is just as important: internal communication and team building. It has proven to be extremely difficult to organise the project. It might seem very simple at first but WOW, things can get out of hand so easily. Everyone was free to programm in the way they wanted to and restrictions were almost non existent. A disadvantage to this is that code gets messy or structures within the code are unclear. It is a good lesson though how to deal with this next time.
     
    Tips
    A must have for a community project:
    A wiki for maintaining tasks, protocols and documentation
    Forum
    Bug reporter
    Storage for code and assets
    Sub team leaders: Artist, Programmers, Sound
    Everyone has to write a part of documentation when it comes to programming or level design. Other members of the team have to easily find how things work that other have created.
    Make sure you test the game thoroughly in BOTH debug as release mode.

    The wiki was very usefull and also under used. Protocols, code planning and structure should have been documented better. Severall members added awesome code to the project but were forced to leave the project early. At this point documentation is the most important part. Even with comments in the code it is very difficult to understand how everything is connected. Here a few images to show some of the documentation and forum communication:

     
     
    What went wrong
    - Use the combination of google drive for assets and SVN storage.
    - Assembla (SVN repository) offers 1 GB of storage. We never should have used it in combination with Google drive. Files got deleted or were missing.
    - Use level locking: editing a level is dangerous when it doesn't get updated with all the assets present. Level was redesigned many times.
    - Making things to difficult. It has been said over a million times: Lets keep it simple. haha. Here is how you do that: Try to make it simple. Then we you are done brainstorming about 'simple', make it even simpler. Repeat about 5 times. If you would see the initial target list of what we should have had with the tech demo, you would be surprised.
     

     
    Comms down
    The most frustrating part on my side was the lack of communication. Despite sending many emails, using twitter, creating video tutorials, posting sticky forum topics, internal communication was disasterous. Response has allways been at a very dangerously low level. Because of this, making a planning or having good progress was very difficult. This is something I would like to see improve with a next community project.
     
     
    Having fun and learning something
    The most important thing about the community project is having fun and learning something on the side. For most of us this was the case. Whether it was programming, managing or designing, there were things that no one had thought of before or had done before. Besides that it is nice to work together as an international community.
     

     
    Now what...
    A next community project? Heck Yeah. I hope to see a new community being created with LE3. I would love to participate, although I would like to do some exploring of the new engine first.
     
    A big thanks to all the project members and everyone who has done some testing!
     
    Greets,
    Aggror
  9. AggrorJorn
    The world of games, game development and game design is awesome. I just love it. The fun part is, that I only realised this since the past year and a half. Before that, I just liked playing games. Nothing else slipped in to my mind about "how a game is made etc.".
     
    I like to tell you a little story about myself. We didn't have a computer at home until I was 10. Before that, I used to play games at my neighbours house. My neighgbours where German and their kid had a computer at his room with one game. This game was some kind of science fiction game. The first level you would have to fly above this icy landscape shooting all kinds of robots, including this really huge weird elephant kinda looking robot.

    It took about me about 5 years to understand that this was called "Starwars".
     
    I was 10 I think when my dad got himself a computer including 2 games specially for me. Since my dad worked in Germany, the games he bought were also German. Although the village where I live in lies in the Netherlands, most of the people are either German or Americans (Awacs airbase and Military Outpost are like half a click away from my village.) The 2 games where Abe's Oddysee (German)and Delta Force (my first English game).
     
    Okay now here is somethin funny: I liked playing games on my computer, but for the rest I disliked computers. I didn't like typing in this green/gray interface that was called 'W98'. I rather prefered writing stuff down on a piece of paper. When The first Dial-up connections were introduced most of my classmates started talking about a program called EM ES EN. Anyway I did not care about computers and their stupid programs and especialy not the inter net (back then I thought it were 2 words). I only liked the games. My first game that had an editor was 'Cossacks'. And alhtough it was a demo, you could play with it for as long as you want. Al the enemies in the game feared my massive armies muahaha (evil laugh).

     
    Now here comes the most ironic part of my live. I finished mid school aged 16 and I had absolutely no idea what to do next. I actually went to an open day for a Health care education. But the idea of changing old people's diapers quickly made me change my mind. A friend of me said he wanted to go IT because he new a lot more about computers then I did and it seemed interesting. I was still totally blunt about my direction, so I decided as a total "computer-newb" to join IT education. Ironicly my friend did not go IT after all. I felt really misserable the first year. Everyone knew more then me (which wasn't hard anyway, since I knew zero.). From Operating Systems to CPU, from Windows to something called "Linux". They could as well talked Chinese, because I did not understand a single word. I realise that my smartest decision I have ever made was when some IT student gave me this sticker saying "I Love Firefox.". Since my computer knowledge was pretty much nihil I hadn't the slightest idea what Firefox was. The decision was to not say that out loud. (I personally think that they would have killed if I had.) Yes, I still had trouble leaving my naive idea of my opinion towards computers. The 'Internet Explorer idea' was the biggest of them all. I thought that 'Internet' was an abbreviation of Internet Explorer, thus meaning the same thing. Probably 99% of the IT students played a game called "War of Worldcraft" or something like it. Since I already fell behind on everything, I decided to buy it as well. And I didn't like it. Sure it was fun at the beginning but it just boring after a while.
     
     
    But as time went by I became more and more familiar with the IT world. Year 1 was okay after all, since the rest of the education sucked big time. The education supposed to teach you a way to prepare yourself for adulthood. Big wonderful HAHAHAHA. I had a hard time understanding this all, because my education was more something like a pre-school slash prison slash citydump. If you want to see a collection of criminals, junkies and stereotype nerds, just visit my class. second problem: no girls what so ever. In the past 4 years there hasn't been a single women inside the school building. (except the cafeteria lady).
     
    In the mean while, games kept playing a big part of my life. I bought my first console: xbox 360. Although it is a great product, it can never, never break through the wall of computer gaming.
    So to sum up this part: 3,5 years ago I knew nothing about computers, programs, Operating systems and above all nothing about game development.
     
    This changed a little bit when I found a program via youtube, called '3ds Max'. Back then I used it for making small movies and animations, but not for game designing. This changed when I played this game called Marble Blast. It was made by the Torque engine. I don't know why exactly but I started googling this torque engine. We are talking about 1.5 years ago here. The Torque engine itself seemed too difficult, so we (Dreamhead ) started with buying the Torque game builder. It is a great program for making 2d games. However, due to bad documentation this program was very soon abonded. Dreamhead mentioned "FPS creator.". So we started using FPS creator. It was fun, it was cool, even made a few cool examples, but we reached the limits very soon.
    My first model in Fpscreator.

     
    The biggest mistake I made then was going for Darkbasic. With absolutely now programming experience I just couldn't handle darkbasic. And then I saw this add on the game creators forum about the Leadwerks engine.....!!
     
    So I am 8 months further and a lot has happened since I purchased the engine. First of I graduated my IT education . For the past few months I have been looking more and more for my upcoming education. At first I thought about NID (Netwerk Infrastructure Design), then I thought of Programming(C# and ASP.net) and only since a couple of months I have been considering going in to game development! At first I was sold when I went to an open day at the SAE Qantm college in Amsterdam (International college for media and game creation). However lady unfortunate came looking around the corner: Games programming was to be no longer given at the Amsterdam location. I would have to go to either Munich, Berlin or London. Luckely another option was available: High School of Amsterdam. They offer a game development education for 4 years. Many languages from Java, Actionscript to C++ are being tought there. I have subscribed for the classes of next year, so if that would come true, man what would be great!!
     
    What I want to tell you with this blog is the following: Josh mentioned in one of the video tutorials that he got in to games programming because of quake. For me it is the Leadwerks engine. And that is why I want to say to Josh (and his team)as well as the Werkspace community: Thanks for finnaly opening my eyes! It has been a dream for me to become a game developer, but I never realised it that it is actually possible to become one! Lets hope I can start at Game development in Amsterdam next year. :D
     
    Thanks for reading!!
  10. AggrorJorn
    Okay, so last night I got a burst of inspiration after seeing a horror movie. I wanted to use that energy to create a simple horror game. Recently I played Slender and I was surprised to see how 'easy to create' it seemed. Ofcourse that is easier said than done. So lets get to work
     
    Rebuild for Leadwerks
    So how hard can it be right? Within 2 hours I had a nice little start. You jump over a fence and thats were the fun begins. I have added a temporary ending to set the mood a little.
     
    Level
    The level itself is very easy. Just let leadwerks distribute some trees and place a fence around your level. Add some distance fog and remove all the lighting.
     
    Player
    Next: the player. Nothing special there either. Just a simple character controller that has been used in countless tutorials. Also added a small flashlight.
     
    Sound
    The most fun untill now was the adding of sound. The sound boosts the scare factor of the game immensly. I spend a good hour searching for sound effects and a background music. I mostly use http://www.freesound.org/.
     
     
    Next blog
    The pages: adding some page in the game scenery. Giving the player some raycast abalities to pick them up etc.
    The slenderman-system. When do you see him and how do you die?

    Version 0.1
    http://www.leadwerks...le/378-slender/
  11. AggrorJorn

    Time and time again

    By AggrorJorn,

    The past 30 days have been very hectic but fun none the less. While it all started with the thought that I would have some time to spare, it became one of the busiest months of the year. It started with a non-Leadwerks project, where I am currently working on with 2 artists. I was done with the coding for the current sprint (we are using scrum). This meant simply waiting for the artists to do their part. The sprint ends December 14th, so that would mean time for a new project.
     
    Back to Leadwerks
    I hadn’t touched Leadwerks for a solid 6 months so it was time to download it again and see how things were going. I started working on a new big Leadwerks project. Something that I want to work on with other Leadwerks users. For this project I needed camera paths and BAM! Before I knew it I was working on a new project creating tracking lines, curved splines, camera paths, ropes, cables (joints and everything). It is one of the up- and downsides of programming (or game development in general). You get an idea and before you’r even properly halfway through, your attention falls on something completely different.
     
    Lines and Splines
    The splines project became a lot more versatile than I had anticipated and I realized I had to tone it down a little. So no ropes and cables for now. The lines and splines are done at last. I had some issues with fine-tuning everything but the end result is pretty slick. Only thing left to do is recording some videos/tutorials and it is ready to be published. I want to make them available for a few dollars on the workshop. If it is successful I wil think about other useful tools that people might want. However time is not on my side...
     

     
     
    Moving
    My girlfriend has a new job and that means that we are moving. We have been looking for a house and this week we actually managed to get the keys. That means that free time will be very scarce as it will all be spend on moving and finishing the new house. It also means that releasing the splines and camera paths will be postponed a bit.
     
    Games
    If I want to take a break from programming there is always that other hobby which consumes a lot of time: playing games. And boy are there some time consuming bastards out there this month. At first I bought Cossacks 3. Massive armies and spending some later hours on the battlefield against the AI is what I love about this game. Then there is also Transport Fever. A great indie title game for the transport tycoon lovers. I already played their previous game a lot (train fever) and by the looks of it, this game will keep my busy for a long time to come. Not even mentioning Planet Coaster which looks awesome as well…
     
    Transport Fever (with Leadwerks logo)

     
    Cossacks3

     
    Tutorials
    When the new Leadwerks UI is done, I think it is time to do some new Lua tutorials. The existing videos are getting outdated very fast. I really want to help boost the community and with the upcoming winter tournament and existing monthly script challenge it will only get better. For the latter one I am afraid I will have no time left. A shame, because Thirsty Panther did a great job on its preparation.
  12. AggrorJorn
    After 8 months since I purchased the Leadwerks Engine I'm still doubting about which direction to choose when it comes to game developing. At the moment I'm at a point where I can't choose whether I should focus more on moddeling, or if I should pay al my attention to scripting/coding. I'm doing a lot of these things at the same time without actually making some good progress. I never expected that I would learn how to programm by just messing around in the Leadwerks editor, but I have to admit that I expected to know a litlle bit more then that I do at the moment. I always thought that programming would be just a matter of time and lots of practice and since I'm on the waiting list for the programmers academy, I thought that I could take it easy.
     
    Unfortunately, due to delayed exams I missed my entrance into the programmers academy. I have to wait for another 8 months before I can go there. Sooo frustrating, because I'm someone who can learn well, as long as a teacher gives me an instruction. I have 2 books for C# (one cheap thing which is just sad, and a more expensive one from Microsoft), but I'm always stuck when I reach the OOP chapter (which is like after 70 pages.), but even when creating small programms I just get stuck. I've seen a lot of comments like 'If you want to learn to programm, don't expected to learn it when you are using Leadwerks' and 'Try to start with making some simple programs first, instead of making games'. Sometimes I wonder if programming is the thing for me to do and whether I'm making a good choice going to that programmers school. I don't think I lack the motivation, otherwise I would have quiet trying long a go, but perhaps programming just isn't my thing.
     
    In the mean time I'm wondering what I should do? Should I continue my struggeling with LUA? (C++ is certainly out of the question.. ) Or should I drop the programming for those 8 months and focus myself more in modeling, texturing and animating?
     
    To program or not to programm...It's the question that keeps me thinking. Don't get me wrong: the game development world is awesome and it has bin really motivating to see some stuff actually work. The community is awesome and some of the work I've seen is often just the thing I need to get the motivation flowing again.
     
    Some good advice or suggestions are welcome.
  13. AggrorJorn
    Something that has always been a time consuming process is getting the audio right in my recordings. Although I have a very decent headset, recordings allways contained a lot of static noise and voice 'pops'. To get an acceptablequality I required a finetuned microphone placement for every recording. 1cm to the left could make a big difference. The recording software that I use has some build in noice reduction filters, but they do not always guarantee a smooth audio track.
     
    Since there are going to be many new videos to be recorded I finally invested in a good recording setup. I bought a studio microphone which could be placed on a small stand which would be placed in front the keyboard. A bit weird when simultaniously typing but I will get used to that.
     
    The first recording had a much better default recording sound than the headset. The static noise is pretty non existent but there are some occasonial pops. So I went ahead and also bought a popfilter (never relly bevieved how a simple' piece of synthetic fabric could improve sound quality). But the 'pops' in sentences have been significantly reduced.
     
    While I was on a spending spree anyway I also just went ahead and bought a good recording stand, which I can adjust freely without getting in the way of typing.
     
    Here is the final setup.

  14. AggrorJorn
    Terrain tutorials
    There are 2 new video tutorials on how to use the terrain editor.
     
    Sculpting terrain:

     
    Terrain painting:

     
     
    Tutorials: Project Saturn
    It has been a while since I made a tutorial for Project Saturn, but that will change in the near future. Since there are so many new members using Leadwerks I am going to make some free time for some new tutorials. In the past 3 months there were only a handful of viewers and that didn't quite way up to time spend on making the tutorials. That said I also upgraded from a parttime to a full time job which obviously really cuts in to my Game dev time.
     
    The first new video tutorials are already here:
    21:
    22:
    23:
     

     
    Lua beginner tutorials
    I am also going to make some tutorials for the absolute beginners. For those that have very little to no experience, theses lessons should be very useful. Although these are Lua tutorials in general, they will be aimed towards usage in Leadwerks.
     
    FlowGUI
    I took the plunge in to selling my own Lua GUI library for Leadwerks: FlowGUI. Selling scripts/code for Leadwerks is something I wanted to do for years but I never really had the guts to actually try it. Now that I have made an initial release via webdownload, I am glad I did. I am happy with the amount of licenses sold so far, which makes it also a lot more fun to work on upcoming features such as inventories.
    I also hope that by providing extra downloadable content for Leadwerks, we will attract more people, were Leadwerks on itself will only benefit from. Last but not least it might also inspire other developers/artists to start selling their own work as well. Maybe when payed items are added to the workshop, this will really kick off.
     
    Jorn 'Aggror'
     

  15. AggrorJorn
    Paid scripts
    I am looking in to publishing paid scripts to the workshop. There are 2 script collections that others might find interesting:
    Advanced Third Person Controller Many tweakable options: from double jumping, to camera offset, camera snapping, smoothing, speed controls etc Spline paths Not just useful for camera paths, but also for instance factory belts, vehicular movement (static cars, trains etc), airial paths (birds, planes), VR on rails. Tutorials and Patreon
    The newer tutorials (part of Project OLED, ) do not have a lot of visitors. Perhaps my focus on tutorial subject is just not right or people don't like the way it is setup. Perhaps the focus on editor tutorials is far more important. Who knows... With the lack of feedback in the past months I am quite hesitant in recording new videos, thats for sure.  
    The patreon page was an experiment to see if people would be interested in donating to the tutorials project OLED. There hasn't been much activitity on it, so this is something that I probably will discontinue.  A big thanks to ones who did support me though :).
     
     
  16. AggrorJorn
    I have been using Visual Studio Code for a couple of years now and it is my defacto text editor next to Notepadd++. I mainly use it however to write Lua scripts. 
    Opensource Lightweight Cross platform Completely adjustable hotkeys (or automatically map from Visual Studio: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode.vs-keybindings) Fully customisable theming (with standard themes included) Supports all major languages. Lua is supported via an extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=trixnz.vscode-lua Build in GIT source control Has a huge amount of extensions: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/extension-gallery Supports creating custom extensions: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/extensions/overview Supports creating custom debuggers (on top of the ones that already exist).  
     
    Leadwerks extension
    Personally I would love to see it if Visual Studio Code would be the default code editor for Leadwerks (either with 4.x or 5.x). So I got started on working on a custom Leadwerks extension.  You can download it here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=aggror.Leadwerks
    Todo list:
    Done: Leadwerks extension has a dependency on the Lua extension. So this Lua extension is automatically installed when you install the Leadwerks extension. Done: Snippets. Every time you create a new script in the Leadwerks editor, you get a couple of default scripts like Function Script:Start(), UpdateWorld(), PostRender(context). Using a very simple snippet, these kind of functions can be inserted with ease. prop[type] : Creates Leadwerk editor properties print: Shortcut for System:Print("") lescripts: Inserts all entity script functions (commented) class: Creates a basic class objects with example functions start: Start function of an entity script updateworld: UpdateWorld function of an entity script updatephysics: UpdatesPhysics function of an entity script collision: Collision function of an entity script with all parameters PostRender: PostRender function of an entity script with the context parameter function: Creates a function for either a custom object or for the specific script if for pair ipar For instance: just type 'col' followed by 1 tab and you get:  function Script:Collision(entity0,entity1,position,normal,speed) end  
    Partially done: Supporting intellisense (sort of) with Leadwerks entities. Lua is a typeless language (not a strong typed language), which makes intellisense not really possible.  VS code is smart enough to recognise some functions that are available in your script, but it is not as complete as when you would work with C# or C++. Done: Generate snippets for the entire Leadwerks API.  Snippets are created per object and a second one without the object. For instance Entity:SetPosition() SetPosition() TODO: Classes with parents, would require matching functions. For instance: a pivot is an entity and thus requires Pivot:SetPosition() Done: parameters into placeholder slots. If I can extend the intellisense so that it recognises Leadwerks entities, perhaps we could see correct variables and functions of those entities. TODO: Loading in the API documentation in a split screen.  The API documentation is written in an XML format which I can retrieve in VS code. I can display it in a splitscreen.  I would have to play with the styling a bit but in general this should work really fast API documentation can be cached if in online mode. Documentation could also be periodically fetched. Moving the API documentation to Github would help improve this process. (newer file versions etc) Debugging Josh stated that he is getting someone to make this for him. So fingers crossed. The biggest issue at the moment is the lack of debugging support. Visual studio has debugging options of course, but it can't communicate with the Leadwerks editor. If you have an error in your script while running from the editor, the default Lua editor is opened.
  17. AggrorJorn
    Finally done moving to my new house and today I got my computer setup again. And as a start, I thought, lets give it a go for the winter games tournament.
     
    It is a little racing game where the tracks gets randomly generated on the given seed. I think I will call it "On the road again", named after the song and because of the fact that the level generation allows you to skip parts of the track if you simple fall down on the track below you.
     
     

  18. AggrorJorn
    Here I thought that I would be done with my entry in no time. Finetuning everything turned out to be a pain to be honest. Luckily the GUI was set up rather quickly and most of the game state switching worked almost instantly.
     


     
    Tired of the tires
    The real time consumers came when suddenly my tires wouldn't update with the vehicle. Spend a good time trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, but eventually just decided to leave it until the very end.
     
    Analytics
    I added Josh's new analytics api to the game to see what kind of information I would be getting. So far I can see the kind of seeds people are using and how often levels are reset. I guess it will be really interesting after a couple of people have actually played the game.
     

     
    Leaderboards
    Again I got stuck here far longer than I had anticipated. For some reason the highscores get updated with a new value. Meaning, that no matter your track time, the highscore table will always be set by it. I can do it manually, but it should happen automatically. Another downside is that I can't do any querying on which seeds were popular overall or last week. I would love to add that to the game as that is really what would make this game so powerful. Unfortunately, there are no means for me to do this right away.
     
    Game player
    The game has been uploaded to the game player now. Everyone can try it out and fill in a random number to get a unique track. The seed number should give people an identical track though. Looking forward to seeing some results. That way I can also finalise the highscore leaderboard after you reach the finish. There are plenty of bugs, missing features and graphical incompletions, but important is getting those highscores from other players right now.
     
    Controls
    When you are racing, you can WASD for car movement and your mouse for the camera.
    Use R to reset the level. When you have finished the level you can either reset or go back to main menu.
     
    If you could try it out with seeds '1337' and '1234', that be great.
    http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/viewitem?fileid=821020417
  19. AggrorJorn
    Instead of spending more time on getting the car to work properly, I added in a simple ball real quick and to be honest: I like the faster gameplay a lot more. What do you guys think? I do miss the ghost cars, so those will definitely come back.
     
    I have updated the game in the launcher. http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/viewitem?fileid=821020417

  20. AggrorJorn
    This is the final blog post for my game entry this tournament.
     
    GUI
    I am really happy the way the GUI came together in the end. UI really isn't my strongpoint so being able to produce something doable is a great reward.
     
    Car physics
    Although most car tracks can be finished with a car, it is not an easy task. The car tumbles over far to quickly. There is also a bug left were loading a new car level causes the car to glitch. Since I am reusing the same car here, I have no idea what is further causing this. I didn't have this in my first demo so there must be something on my end.
    The ball's swept collision physics have been disabled. There is a bug where object with swept collision collide with each other even if one of those items has the collision type set to none.
     
    Final version
    Although I released a final version, there have been 4 or 5 updates already. But then again that is one of the common phrases in the IT world: you are never done programming.
     
    Game Play Tournament
    I think I want to organise a little game play tournament with On the road again. There will be a couple of pre-selected levels and the person with the highest score per track will get a steam key for a game.
     
    All in all I am happy with the end result and I am looking forward to see that leaderboard fill up. I have also enabled the game analytics. I wonder what kind of conclusions we can draw from it.
     

  21. AggrorJorn

    Youtube statistics

    By AggrorJorn,

    We have seen a lot of statistics on the forum recently. I thought I'd share some from my Youtube account.
     
    The stats below are from the past 365 days, including only videos that are relative to Leadwerks.

     
    Geo stats

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