Christian Clavet

Hi, Thanks! There is no issue with the player collision with the vegetation. Nothing is slowing down with the player. There is no issue with the NPC UNLESS they switch to CHASE mode. With 5 Zombies (Zombie pack) in an map with vegetation. Everything worked fine until they changed their state to CHASE mode (when they detect the player) then the game felt it stopped and I was seeing 7000ms at the UPDATE time on the debug screen. I waited a couple of seconds and then everything got back to nornal. The zombies and the player were moving normally. Disabling the collision on the vegetation layer seemed to fix the problem but the level only contained the terrain and vegetation. Here is a screenshot so you can see the UPDATE time going crazy.

Yes, Simply set the specularity of the material to a lower value.

I'm sorry Jen. The problem I currently have does not really affect the render loop. This "SetInput" command is not causing the problem actually. It affect the update loop at a very specific moment (switch to chase mode). The results I have is a constant render time, but a sudden bump in update loop time, because of something that is happening from the AI with the collision models. I posted a bug report for this specific issue and would like that we stay on the subject. Thanks.

Hi! I'll try to see if I can modify the script to have a transition time. Checked Aggror video tutorial and learned much more on how to use Lua scripts.. Thanks!

Hi, You would need to change the particle shape to what you need. The current method your using seem to way to do it.

Thanks for the information Josh!

Same for me. I was not using Leadwerks for a while, then 4.4 released just before 3 day weekend. Good time to get into it again. It has improved so much since then!!

It might be. I looked at the water shader and it was modified to account for the new fog. I can't change the transparency either.

Hi! Have you tried to comment out the Window.Center command? I know that Ubuntu might cause an issue with windows management because of Unity. Is your Linux distribution is Ubuntu? For the other map, I really don't know with the information you provided... Did you use a custom shader in there? A custom shader will work almost 100% on NVidia and may crash on AMD or Intel hardware... If you are not sure, please investigate that map to be sure it only use the provided "stock" shaders. If not, then there could be the source of the crash.

Hi, Angelwolf! I've tried and it work. Can you recheck and do it the same as I do as: 1 - Select the brush you need to change with the "select object" icon 2 - Once the object is selected (red), press the "select face" icon 3 - Click on the face you want to change, it should become red (only the face you want) 4 - Drag a material over it from the ASSET tab. The materials are spheres. You seem to use it right. That are the steps I'm used to do. If you want the nice reflection effects, you need also to add (with the reflection probes), the SSR shader (Screen space reflection) on the post process filter list. If you look the screenshot, the SSR post process filter is ON and if you look at the truck, there is nice reflections on it. Be careful that the SSR will use the specularity factor on all the environment to do it's trick. Some models you have in your map might have too much reflections. I had to tweak the values on the building you see in the screenshot has it was too shiny and had a grass mesh giving reflections. Just lowered the specularity a bit on the material and it fixed it.

Ok. I decided to create a new script based on noise.lua. Called it noisemix.lua. If you look from the screenshot, it provide an input for switching from the first song to the second. And it finally work! When the NPC goes in chase mode after the player (modified monster.lua to have an output for this), it trigger the switch to the other song. All the songs are loaded at start, and the first one is discarded before the second start. Fell free to give any suggestions! Here is the new script:

Hi, I've tried lots of things to make the background music change during gameplay and I'm still failing to do it properly and now getting out of ideas. I'm using the flowgraph editor to start the music when the player take ammunition and this part work correctly. The part that is failing is that when a designated NPC is killed, I want to pause the current music and start a new music. The pause of the current music works, but the new music if failing to start. I'm using NOISE.lua and modified it slightly with monster.lua to give them the output to flowgraph. I've applied the noise.lua script to 2 pivot. One for each song. Set the script for each song. I was able to make them play both by making them play at start. The second song refuse to start when the NPC is killed, the pause work, not the other song. Here is a screenshot of my flowgraph setup: The only thing I could think of now, is look at the LUA code for noise.lua and modify it to handle 2 tracks so everthing is handled in the same script. BTW, the flowgraph editor is really powerful!! Too bad we can't group items and zoom-in/zoom-out...

Hi, Jen! You mean rewriting your own version of monster.lua or rewriting the whole AI system (Navigation AI C++ side)? Your "AI system" term is confusing me a little here. I'll assume your meaning the LUA script that is used for AI. This is the part that activate in the LUA code of monster.lua when the player as been seen (in range). I don't see anything there that could do what I've experienced. For my current needs this script is Ok. I don't see any big loop in there if the NPC switch from IDLE to CHASE, and this the current symptom I have. (update loop take more than 7000ms to update then goes back to normal after a few seconds) What I've seen, is that the update loop (not the render) will take more than 7000ms to refresh once the NPC see the player (goes from idle to chase mode), after that it move and update refresh goes back to normal. It could be something to do with recast/detour, that copies the world collision models data or something that initialize lots of data at once then release. (What I'm currently thinking the problem could be, but only Josh could tell.) With only a terrain and nothing else, I was able to make it work correctly by disabling the collisions on the tree models of the vegetation, so it seem directly related with collision models.

Hi, Seen the new GUI system in Leadwerks. And I'm wondering if it could handle accented character like in french or other languages? Done a quick check on the menu.lua and changed one item by adding a "é" symbol and it doesnt seem to be able to display it... Will it support UTF8?

Hi, I would like to report a problem that I've seen with the NPC that are making the "update" loop much longer when they "awake". Description of the problem: On a terrain that have trees(vegetation layer) with collision enabled, when the player (std FPS controller) get near a NPC(crawler) the update loop can get as high as 7000ms for a few second and come back as normal. Disabling the collision option on the vegetation layer, seemed to fix it. But I "feel" that it does that for every type of collisions (models / brushes). The more you put on the map, the more time it will take on the update loop. Reproductability: 100% How to reproduce: 1. Create map with the FPS template. 2. Create a terrain. 3. Place some (3+) Crawlers NPC on the terrain. 4. Create lots of tree (density of 2.2 or less), and enable the collision option on the layer. 5. Start the game and move the FPS player near one of the NPC. 6. Notice the "lag" and stop when the NPC emit the detect sound. Also notice the update loop time increasing a lot! My impressions about this: I feel like the navigation system is doing some kind of data copy of collision models from all the surrounding with no filtering of geometry when the AI find the play "in range". An investigation would be welcome... My current system that was used for the testing: CPU Intel I7 3770K, 16Gb ram, 512GB SSD + 1TBHDD, NVIDIA GTX1080 at 3840x2160 desktop resolution. Windows 10 Home (version 1703)

Ok. Thanks!

Cool, I see the shader that will do this, but is there more information on how to us use it?

Hi, I have not found this option on the terrain tool. That's why I'm asking if that could be implemented in future Leadwerks version. Currently the vegetation tool for terrain is really awesome, but for rocks or other objects that are not trees, it would be desirable to have the object line up with the terrain surface. Here is a screen showing some rocks on a hill. With a checkbox to align the object with the surface of the terrain, it would look better:

I have a similar issue with NPCs that are seeing the player and become active, then game "lock" for less than 1 second. If they don't see the player, the FPS maintain. I'll try to see if I put a mesh model with no script if it still will do this. EDIT: Done a quick tests with some props in my 1024 sized map and still good. No frame drop when I'm far or near them. This only happen with NPC for me. EDIT: Hi, most of the problems I had came because I was using an old map (updated at each release). Did you tried to make a new project and new map using Leadwerks 4.4. It might fix the issue you have...

Wow. This is an interesting subject! Everybody should stick to 1024 map size then and wait that future Leadwerks version manage the video memory of the hardware it's running on and do streamed loading of the map. (This doesn't seem to be easy to do) Is there a way to report the video memory usage taken from the current map? Since I have a GTX1080 here, I could go overboard and my map would not play anywhere else! For NVIDIA, I have found SMI GPU tool.

Hi, Just enjoying this new release of Leadwerks 4.4 and decided to make a map with vegetation just for fun. Not really tried the terrain tool before today, and I'm really impressed. It really good and precise to use! I'm using the Zombie pack addon and the fps pack addon. I've placed 5 zombies in a group near of a "bunker" i've made with brushes. I've got the game almost stop when the zombie see the player, and found that the game update were going in 7000+ms update time, was not a render problem. In debug mode, the FPS drop to about 0-1 fps. ... EDIT: Fixed the issue for the update time, by creating a new project and a new map. Adding back the zombies did not create any issues. So I suspect that is related to all the changes since then. The "mygame" map I was using, was made since Leadwerks 3.1 and was updated by the project manager at each release! EDIT2: Found out the REAL issue with it. I started putting tons of vegetation again and enabled COLLISIONS for the tree and this is what make the problem with the NPC. Disabling the collision on the vegetation layer fixed it. So something make the update really-really long if you put collisions on vegetation models and use NPC's.... With the new map, I was not able to have the game work in debug because it crashed on launch. (I've recompiled the game with MSVC), but the release build work 100% ("esc" key now display me the new GUI menu) The debug build seem to crash on newton... Is this because I've recompiled the project with MSVC community 2015? I've got a game crash each time the player is being killed by NPC. I tested it with the crawler and the zombies and it's doing the same thing. Each time the player is being killed, the game crash with an exception error. (The screenshot is the last to display when the player is killed and the game crash)

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.

I mostly refer as scale based on a character size. Since you can export a brush from the editor. Create a brush to cover a single character, and export that brush. I use that box as a reference in your modeling application. Most of the time the character size I assume is 6 feet. This always worked great when I was making models for a game.

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).

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.