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LE with Substance


SnakebitSamurai
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I'd like to see support for Allegorithmic Substances. Full materials in a teensy package biggrin.png

Max, Maya, Unity and a few others already have native support. Not to mention the materials you can create with Substance Designer.

 

Check it out:

http://www.allegorit...ucts/substances

He who joyfully marches to the music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice. - Albert Einstein

 

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Silo 2/Hexagon 2.5, Photoshop CS4 Extended, UU3D, Sony Acid Pro

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With anything like this, there's no super-compelling reason to not just export to a regular image file. You could potentially save some storage space at the cost of increasing load times.

 

Not saying it's a terrible tool for artists, but our strategy isn't buying middleware at one price and selling it at another. I've seen these kind of things be the flavor of the week for many years, and it's always about hype more than technology. How many people are still asking about SpeedTree?

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

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Why would you want me to replace our vegetation rendering system with something less powerful?

 

Troll post, right?

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

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NONONO! I love your veggie system, but I do not enjoy modeling the trees. Blender has a nice plug-in application for tree modeling, but it is not very fun to use because it's not as flexible as Speed Tree looks. Plus moss and things like that look very easy in Speed Tree.

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Nevermind, Speed Tree costs $900 unsure.png

If you talk to the SpeedTree people, they are very firm about their product being an SDK, not the modeling tool.

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

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This actually raises a good point. Is Leadwerks to become an interface for third parties to showcase bits of technology with? I think when you get to that point, it means real internal innovation is pretty much over.

 

A game engine has a life cycle, and a finite number of features that can be added to it that still make an impact. Opening things up to third party plugins is something that can extend that life a bit, but doesn't make for a very well-planned or cohesive experience. I see these types of things as "extra" that come after the internal innovation ends. It's a way to stay relevant and try to stay in the news.

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

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I dunno. One of the main reasons Eclipse took off was its flexible plugin architecture. Some of those plugins were commercial, many of them open-source. While I agree that the core of an application has to be driven by a cohesive vision and implementation, making it easier to extend it around the edges can still provide benefit without compromising the original goals. A simple way to extend the editor with specific menus, dialogs etc for one's own workflow, e.g., would be a nice thing.

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I thought the whole idea of plugin architecture was to allow people who specialize in areas to provide that specialist functionality. With the best will in the world Josh you can't be all things to all men. Besides, plugins are up to the end user to implement at their own discretion. There will be good and poor quality plugins for sure, but I fail to see that the use of a poor plugin reflects more negatively on your engine than someone choosing say to use really poor textures and level design for instance, which is already totally out of your control.

 

I'm an advocate of opening up systems not locking them down, as I've stated before, and I believe it would make your product more attractive.

Intel Core i5 2.66 GHz, Asus P7P55D, 8Gb DDR3 RAM, GTX460 1Gb DDR5, Windows 7 (x64), LE Editor, GMax, 3DWS, UU3D Pro, Texture Maker Pro, Shader Map Pro. Development language: C/C++

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Seriously, I've seen designs much worse than that of Eclipse. And you could even say it proves the point: It has acquired a very large user base in spite of its design because it can be easily adapted to different users' needs.

What would be so different about plugins than, say, tweaking or even replacing the default shaders for things like oceans and SSAO or exchanging scripts for day-and-night-modeling (assets that, by the way, let me finally drop the CryEngine in favor of LE because I wouldn't miss a single thing)?

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You are asking for an undefined feature with no potential user in mind, and just expecting wonderful unspecified things to come from that. That's not design, it's a lack of design. It would be premature to try to implement anything like that right now.

 

In order to do it properly, I would have to get at least two middleware authors interested and work with them to figure out where they need hooks inserted into the engine. No one is interested in doing that with an unreleased game engine. You're putting the cart before the horse.

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

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You are asking for an undefined feature with no potential user in mind, and just expecting wonderful unspecified things to come from that. That's not design, it's a lack of design. It would be premature to try to implement anything like that right now.

It's just as easy to find reasons for doing something as it is for not doing something ... it's just a mindset thing! This has been spoken about many times before in these forums, so it's not like its come out of the blue. No-one is saying it has to be there at the initial release. It would just be nice to have a plugin architecture on the road map at some point.

 

The world is full of creative people, how about giving them a chance to surprise you ;)

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Intel Core i5 2.66 GHz, Asus P7P55D, 8Gb DDR3 RAM, GTX460 1Gb DDR5, Windows 7 (x64), LE Editor, GMax, 3DWS, UU3D Pro, Texture Maker Pro, Shader Map Pro. Development language: C/C++

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Guest Red Ocktober

also... you're just one person... you're not going to be able do everything yourself... Leadwerks cannot be expected to be everything to every dame developer...

 

This actually raises a good point. Is Leadwerks to become an interface for third parties to showcase bits of technology with? I think when you get to that point, it means real internal innovation is pretty much over.

 

i don't think that this is true... the use of third party addons won't in any way be an intrusion... and, as said above, this can be looked at later...

 

--Mike

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also... you're just one person... you're not going to be able do everything yourself... Leadwerks cannot be expected to be everything to every dame developer...

There's two of us, plus the half-dozen contractors I rely on from time to time.

 

Have you asked the actual authors of this lib why they aren't contacting me to integrate it with Leadwerks?

 

I react negatively to requests for brand names. Last time this happened was PureLight. A campaign started on this forum with people insisting they couldn't make a game without baked GI loghtmaps like they saw in GarageGame's promotional videos. I met with them, we integrated the product, and when it was finally released, people were angry because it was no longer the flavor of the week and they had moved on to something else.

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

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Guest Red Ocktober

TWO !! oh... well that makes a world of difference...

 

so... i guess i can now expect all sorts of capabilities that already exist out there in gaming land to also appear in Leadwerks... streaming terrain, unlimited oceans, real world topology, VR headset integration... all sorts of neat stuff... and maybe some of it might happen THIS "spring"... seeing as last "winter" has already been postponed... or are we going to have to wait for the Leadwerks version of the wheel to been recreated...

 

hey... you're gonna go in whatever direction you decide... we're just offering some suggestions, some of which might be worth a just lil consideration...

 

 

--Mike

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None of these flash in the pan middleware authors are interested in writing a plugin for Leadwerks. They integrate with Unity because they are trying to get as much visibility as possible so they can convince Autodesk to buy them out. They will not be interested in a game engine with a small user base.

 

The only way to change that is to grow the user base. The only way to grow the user base is have a tight focus on a really good game development environment, not by chasing after every trend of the week.

 

Most of these authors in fact are not even interested in selling a "plugin". What they want is for me to buy their middleware and build it into my engine. I am against this because I do not want to pass on licensing restrictions to source code licensees. I also think it's BS to license middleware for its brand name and then resell it at a lower price. It dilutes our name and is often totally unnecessary (Umbra).

 

Leadwerks is a technology company. We're not a middleware bargaining collective.

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

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