[SplineTools update 1.04: wires]

That's great! You almost have recreated the "physic wires" of Hammer there! It's a feature I'm missing a lot. Could it work with a chain texture?

The only big downside is that Leadwerks cannot run a script segment in edit mode that would show you what you're doing. 

[How infinite terrain can be implemented in Leadwerks Engine 5]

Hi, for generating terrain, I would not use randomized data. You could use function like voronoi noise that is based on fractals. Then the user data would be a modifier over that generated noise. I think they use an approach similar to this in No Man's sky to generate the planets and the terrain. So if you would be doing a multiplayer game over that terrain, everybody would see the same thing.

[Leadwerks 5 Beta Rollout]

Hi!

Good news for the new engine, and keep up the work! Do you plan to have the new engine have it's own editor later, when the framework is made stable and most of the required features?

Unfortunately I will never subscribe to anything. Dropped Adobe the minute they switched to this, and decided to use Krita and Manga studio instead of Photoshop... 

If you would later on, offer like for payments for a full year (5$ month x 12 = 60$), and pay for renewal, I would take this immediately!

That's the only way I accepted to join and play with my friends on Eve Online. For me the problem with subscriptions and my low income, is that something could happen and I would be in problems. Paying "per year", would allow me to pay when I have sufficient funds and stay in control.

Since Adobe, Autodesk, and others drive from way of transaction, it's really good idea to try this out. It just that this mode of payment is not for me.

[EuroTrip II]

Cool! I will have to prepare more then for the next game tournament. For networking, you could check on "nat traversal method" (similar term as punch thru), that consist of the client to maintain the connection with the server. I looked a little about the theory about this for making SIP phone connecting correctly thru a router without having to do port redirection. Enjoy your trip there!

 

[Tutorials and paid scripts]

Hi. The spline tool is MORE than useful! If Josh would add a new LUA/C++ method so you can put "editor" stuff in there (called in editor mode) and have an enabler in the menu (like VIEW menu -> enable editor scripts), then you would be able to have scripts interacting with the editor and even use the new GUI. That would be something I would like to have!

There is a lot of use for having "scripted sequences" in any game! The only other method of doing that is doing it inside a 3D Application and create an animation using bones. If you move anything, you have to redo the whole animation. Doing it inside the editor is much more easier and less error prone!

I was looking how they were doing "Star war Trilogy arcade" and it surely used spline paths to make move the ships and create the cutscenes, if you look closely, the user is able to "move" a little in offset on that spline path when he's targetting...

So yes, I'm really interested to buy this script. I really enjoyed watching at all your videos! Thanks!

[The path we are on]

Hi!

 

I really like the idea of templates ready made for game specific genre. To follow Rick idea, theses could be sold as addon "pack". With it the desired gameplay would be demonstrated and the engine stay full featured.

 

You could buy 2 or more templates, learn from them and create hybrids from both of them when you know more.

 

The template show us how to use the engine to do the desired type of gameplay with assets that work correctly. (Weapon pickup and drop, inventory, animations triggered from events, etc.)

 

Learning from a good template with good polish, would require some form of funding because I'm sure it would be expensive to make them.

[Structura devblog report]

If you plan to have consequences, you will need to use branching. It's simply a flag that will be checked and need to have 2 actions based from it (true/false).

[Beta update available]

I doubt that bone animation alone would make those drops.

 

More likely check for skinning (Is it using a hardware or software solution?) or the geometry since there is no LOD. (Is the geometry is using hardware instancing or copying the mesh data for each instance of the crawler to the GPU?)

 

Animations will only do transforms on the bones, this require some CPU calculations but with the improvement that Josh have made, I'm almost certain it's not related at all with the frame drop, on the contrary it should improve when you have lots of meshes animating. Most meshes have less than 75 bones..., But with 10 crawlers, there is around 750 bones to animate per frame...

 

Skinning is much more data intensive as it will take the information from the bones transforms and will adjust the position of EACH vertices using a weight factor. If this is done on the CPU, each instances will like drop the FPS as you report. If your character have 10k vertices, the geometry will likely update the data of all those 10k vertices per frame. So 10 crawlers will require updating 100k vertices per frame! Also I know that normals need to be recalculated (normal maps on animated models), and this might also take a toll since the vertices are being manipulated.

 

@Crazycarpet

I'm sure that Josh never thought that you were lying. He was only not sure about your results and asked if you can provide him with some tests so he can double check. Thanks for the screenshots and the scene.

[Subwindows!]

Wow! With all this Leadwerks will be able to make more than games! Nice!

[Leadwerks GUI for Linux]

Do you plan to use the new GUI system to be used in the editor too at some point?

[GUI Design]

This really look interesting... How about using LUA to create the widgets that would be represented as a new node type with input and output from the node editor?

 

Since the node editor is good for logic, It could really fill the gap, users could exchange scripts of GUI designs that could be easily used after with the node editor.

[Beta update available]

Wow! That great! I always had this problem when I was using Irrlicht. I had to have a PC that was using a intel card to make it work on all. From what I tested the intel compiler was the strictest.

 

This tool, is great so you don't need to have a separate PC, just to "clean up" your shaders.

 

I almost think it was a marketing strategy from NVidia to make their compiler be so permissive. It would only run on their hardware... Or a strategy from intel & Amd.. who knows...

[Leadwerks 4.1 Beta]

Really good work!

 

Just tried the volumetric light and it's really great! I think I will really love this release!

[Battle Plans For 2016!]

Thanks Reeblue. Your demo of Vectronic is one that I felt the most polished and had very solid gameplay. Hope that all goes as you planned! Congrats!

[Try the new environment probes]

Thanks Josh! That was it. Once I have set this, I was able to use the environment probe! I really like it!

[Try the new environment probes]

Tryied it. I've updated the project and all seem fine but the instant I select the menu CREATE -> EFFECTS -> ENVIRONMENT PROBE

Got a EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION.

 

I'm running Leadwerks Beta branch on Steam / Windows 10 / GTX 780 / I7 3770K

The test level I made is on the same project as the examples.

 

I am already set to use the beta build, but you are talking about modifying a config file. I haven't done that, where is this file?

[Global Illumination Research Pt 5]

If you had a dynamic model instead of static model, would it be in the cubemap? I'm thinking if we had a player model, would we see in the reflection?

[Global Illumination Research Pt 4]

If you store the vertex normal in world space, would it be a way to cache them? Good work Josh!

[Ambient Light Research Pt 2]

Environment probes? Great! thanks Josh!

[Shifting to DLCs]

I'm ok with this, as long as Leadwerk, verify the content before publish the DLC.

 

Some third parties might be tempted to "dump" their stuff, and I would not like to buy something that is incomplete and without the sources.

 

Releasing as a DLC for me mean, that the content has been tested and approved.

[The Financials of Custom Content]

Hi, Josh.

 

I tried to buy it (soldier) from the Workshop in Leadwerk. Strangely, It did not work, it was doing nothing, when I clicked to put money as reserve (Normally I pay my games directly), once I clicked on reserve money button, it falled on a reserve money on account page about the same.

 

I decided to try it directly from the Steam page, when the reserve money button, was pressed, it asked me to confirm the browser with a code, then I was able to use the reserved money to get the object. I then loaded back Leadwerks and was able to download it.

 

When I buyed the DLC, I did not any problem, because it was on steam, and was using direct payment (no reserve). For the workshop items, the best would be that we put some money in reserve, if not, use the steam page to put the money in reserve to buy the workshop item.

 

Since it kind of complicating things a little, it would be preferable to have a DLC (Since it come from Leadwerks). I'm still interested by other characters if you can provide them... Saw that you have him ready with AI set. That is really nice.

[Very Low-Level Advancements]

Hi, At first to have leadwerk running with Vulkan, I assume that Josh will have to translate what he have from OpenGL to Vulkan.

 

So it might be a little slower than openGL, but then he could check how to use the new options he have from Vulkan as multithreaded rendering. Can check here that is taking less CPU:

 

Apple will use its METAL api, for their product. Too bad for them. At least they still support openGL

[Beta Update available]

I've seen some tools that can carve caves in terrain, but they use Voxels, then smooth out the result. They have to add stuff then to adjust the smoothness.

[Vegetation]

Looking at this comments and that you want to individually add/remove instances. How about using a texture mask on the terrain to define the area of coverage? You could use it to paint tree and vegetation...

 

The texture mask could surely be used directly by the shader. I'm not able to do this myself but I think that could be possible.

[Reflections on the Steam Summer Sale]

Lol, I've build recently a Linux Mint development machine based on Elite 120 case! I just need to add a dedicated GPU for starting there with Leadwerk.