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Considering LE


freeflyklown
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Hello,

 

I am considering to buy LE engine. But there are a few questions I need to have sorted out.

 

1.) Is there more documentation available to Licence owners than what is available on the website?

2.) What kind of user created resources are there? Is there a lot of useful content in the forums only accessible to registered users?

3.) In the past, I read that the engine often had problems with ATI display drivers. Is this solved now for good?

4.) ON www.gameproducer.net, there is a nice review of LE. However, it turned out that newer engine versions often broke functionality. Is this still the case?

5.) Is there more demo content in the full version than in the eval?

6.) Are there game frameworks available?

7.) As there is no GUI, what are others using? Are there examples?

8.) Is there a particle editor?

9.) Will the next engine version be 3.0 or are there more 2.x releases planned?

10.) How is the art pipeline if one does not own UU3d pro? I know it supports other formats than gmf as well, but how good is this support? What about animated meshes?

11.) Are there any bad bugs right now?

12.) In which parts do you think LE is lacking?

13.) What are it's best features?

14.) Would you consider 3d world studio a must have for LE?

 

Thanks a lot!

 

Andy

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Hello,

 

I am considering to buy LE engine. But there are a few questions I need to have sorted out.

 

1.) Is there more documentation available to Licence owners than what is available on the website?

All documentation is here:

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/documentation/le2

 

2.) What kind of user created resources are there? Is there a lot of useful content in the forums only accessible to registered users?

The Leadwerks Asset Store is launching early next month, to create a user marketplace to buy and sell models. We have several merchants signed up already.

 

3.) In the past, I read that the engine often had problems with ATI display drivers. Is this solved now for good?

ATI's drivers have improved a lot in recent years. They used to be really bad. We recently resolved an issue ATI cards had with terrain rendering, and that was the first bug we've seen on their drivers for a long time.

 

4.) ON www.gameproducer.net, there is a nice review of LE. However, it turned out that newer engine versions often broke functionality. Is this still the case?

He was using an early version of the engine, and unfortunately there was a couple of things that had to be altered. The current version is stable and mature. I would not do anything to it at this point that changed any behavior.

 

5.) Is there more demo content in the full version than in the veal?

The evaluation kit is a time-limited trial of the full version and contains everything.

 

6.) Are there game frameworks available?

There are a couple of community-provided ones.

 

7.) As there is no GUI, what are others using? Are there examples?

ceGUI, or make your own with the drawing commands.

 

8.) Is there a particle editor?

You can edit the particles settings in the entity properties dialog and see the results as soon as you press "Apply".

 

9.) Will the next engine version be 3.0 or are there more 2.x releases planned?

There will be additional 2.x versions, but new features aren't going to be added to 2.x.

 

10.) How is the art pipeline if one does not own UU3d pro? I know it supports other formats than gmf as well, but how good is this support? What about animated meshes?

You don't need UU3D. Just drag an FBX file onto the FBX to GMF converter in the Tools folder, and it creates a GMF file for you. There are also converters for OBJ and X.

 

11.) Are there any bad bugs right now?

You can see any outstanding bugs in the bug tracker. There's no show-stoppers, just some maintenance stuff:

http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/tracker

 

12.) In which parts do you think LE is lacking?

It was designed to be a programmable engine and a lot of people want more of a visual design tool.

 

13.) What are it's best features?

Very easy to code with, amazing graphics.

 

14.) Would you consider 3d world studio a must have for LE?

No, but it is great for making buildings and interior scenes. In the future, we're going to merge 3D World Studio into Leadwerks Editor.

My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without.

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Thanks a lot for the answers. I have downloaded the eval now and will play around with it a bit.

There are some more questions however:

 

- What kind of shaders are included?

- As the next version will include the features of 3d world studio, will it be cheaper to upgrade if one already bought 3d world studio and LE 2?

- When will Vs2010 be supported?

- Is there an auto-Lod system in place?

- is there some sort of occlusion culling?

- Is there a place where I can read about LE 3 features?

- the LE commkunity: is it big and active? Hopefully not too big as with unity, where the forums are full with nonsense nowadays...

 

Thanks again for the quick reply!

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1) HDR, Bloom, Fog, DoF (near and far), GodRays, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, SSAO, SSAA, Glow, Fullbright, Skin, Cubemap, Sway, Lakewater, and some more. Additionally there are also more shaders made by the community like Vignette, Chromatic Dispersion, SSGI, Toon, Rim, Motion Blur, etc....

2) It's cheaper if you have already LE2, haven't heard about a 3DWS discount offer, but I would assume so too.

3) VS2010 is already supported, as well as VS2008 and GNU C++ (MinGW 3.4.5 and 4.5.2.1), and Dev C++ works too because MinGW works (as they are both ANSI C++ compliant).

4) Yeah, 9 level LOD.

5) Frustum culling, distance culling, somekind of visibility occlusion culling too (haven't tested lately).

6) There's a roadmap

7) It's not so big, maybe 300-1000 (10000 including 3DWS) users, but quite active and innovative, and all nonsense has been consolidated into my off-topic thread.

Ryzen 9 RX 6800M ■ 16GB XF8 Windows 11 ■
Ultra ■ LE 2.53DWS 5.6  Reaper ■ C/C++ C# ■ Fortran 2008 ■ Story ■
■ Homepage: https://canardia.com ■

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VS2008 isn't in the SDK at this point. We'll add it soon.

 

Cartoon, vignette, chromatic dispersion, and rim shading aren't in the official SDK, but there are additional shaders available from the community.

 

3D World Studio and LE3 are unrelated in terms of upgrading.

 

It's not so big, maybe 300-1000 (10000 including 3DWS) users, but quite active and innovative, and all nonsense has been consolidated into my off-topic thread.

Now that was funny. :)

 

- the LE commkunity: is it big and active? Hopefully not too big as with unity, where the forums are full with nonsense nowadays...

That's one of the consequences of making a free version. If we ever do that, the free users are going to be corralled in one little sub forum, and won't get status updates, blogs, and other privileges.

My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without.

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thanks guys for the answer. At least so far the community seems to be active ande constructive ;-)!

I have just tested shortly LE using the project wizard. I created a console vs2008 app, then loaded it in vs2010 and ran it. All worked fine, but why is there no intellisense available (in vs2010)? Am I doing something wrong here?

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