Engine Details
| Leadwerks Engine 2 |
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| Leadwerks Engine 2 features a unified lighting system with dynamic soft shadows. Our advanced deferred renderer can draw dozens of dynamic lights at good speed. Advanced shader effects and support for huge terrains up to 33 million triangles delivers next-gen technology at an affordable price. |
| Author |
Leadwerks Software |
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| Graphics API |
OpenGL |
Operating Systems |
Windows |
| Programming Language |
C/C++, Java, C#, D, Delphi, Pascal, BASIC, Ada, Fortran, Lisp, Perl, Python, Visual Basic 6, VB.NET |
Status |
Productive/Stable |
| Documentation |
Yes |
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| Features |
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General Features |
Object-Oriented Design:
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Leadwerks Engine is provided as a DLL for use with virtually any programming language, a scriptable executable, and a BlitzMax module. |
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An object-oriented design is combined with a procedural command set to deliver an easy-to-use yet powerful API. |
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See an overview of features here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAYPTWqgF5U |
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Built-in Editors |
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Leadwerks Sandbox features real-time lighting and physics, and allows the user to place models and build terrain. |
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See an overview of Sandbox features here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmN7OLy6yUY |
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Physics |
Basic Physics, Collision Detection, Rigid Body, Vehicle Physics:
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Powered by Newton Archimedes. |
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Support for multicore-optimized processing. |
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Fast and accurate rigid body simulation with support for spheres, boxes, cylinders, capsules, convex hulls, and triangle meshes. |
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Supports ball, hinge, corkscrew, slider, and universal joints. |
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Built-in character controller with smooth movement and accurate stair climbing. |
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Physics-based vehicles with support for any number and configuration of tires. |
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Lighting |
Per-pixel, Volumetric, Radiosity:
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Unified lighting system with dynamic soft shadows. |
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Support for point, spot, and directional lights. |
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Deferred renderer can draw dozens of dynamic lights at good speeds. |
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Advanced lighting effects like screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) and volumetric light scattering. |
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Shadows |
Shadow Mapping:
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Dynamic soft shadows with per-light control of shadow map resolution, softness, and quality. |
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Masked texture effects for tree and plant shadows. |
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An optional color texture can be attached to a light to simulate cloud shadows or stained glass effects. |
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Texturing |
Basic, Multi-texturing, Bumpmapping, Mipmapping:
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Customizable materials system. |
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Support for normal and parallax mapping with specular reflection. |
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Each material can have a number of textures and effects defined, as well as a shader. |
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Choose from our library of material shaders, or create new effects with a custom shader. |
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Shaders |
Vertex, Pixel:
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Leadwerks Engine supports vertex and pixel shaders, with support coming soon for geometry shaders on SM 4.0 cards. |
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Scene Management |
Octrees, Occlusion Culling, PVS, LOD:
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An internal scenegraph silently manages and optimizes the world. This provides fast performance of culling, raycasting, and physics without complicating the end user experience. |
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Hardware occlusion culling performs per-pixel culling of all meshes on the GPU. |
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Support for mesh and terrain LOD. |
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Animation |
Forward Kinematics, Keyframe Animation, Skeletal Animation, Animation Blending:
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Skeletal animation system allows the user to specify any time in the animation sequence. |
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Animations can be blended or transitioned in any way. |
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All skinning is performed on the GPU for fast performance. |
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Objects can be parented to any limb to add weapons or accessories. |
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Meshes |
Mesh Loading, Skinning, Deformation:
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Support for Autodesk FBX, Collada, .obj, .x, .3ds, .md3, .3dw, and .b3d formats. Load FBX and Collada files directly, or convert any of these formats to our own Game Model Format (.gmf) |
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An export plugin is provided for exporting GMF files from Ultimate Unwrap 3D Pro. |
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Meshes can also be constructed in code by adding vertices and triangles. |
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Special Effects |
Particle System, Depth of Field, Motion Blur, Sky, Water, Fire, Explosion, Fog, Weather, Mirror:
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Particle emitters. |
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Refraction and reflection effects for water and glass. |
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Post-filter effects like DOF, bloom, SSAO, volumetric light scattering, and more. |
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Multi-world rendering can be used to display 3D skyboxes. |
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Terrain |
Rendering, CLOD, Splatting:
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Terrains up to 33 million triangles are supported with real-time lighting and shadows. |
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Alpha blended texture layers with constraints for height and slope. |
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Mesh layers allow the user to paint grass and plants onto the terrain, simulating billions of grass instances. |
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Modify terrain in real-time. |
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Terrain editor with heightmap filters including fluvial erosion and fractal noise. |
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Sound & Video |
3D Sound:
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OpenAL is used to provide compatibility with Windows XP and Windows Vista. |
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Support for WAV and OGG files. |
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3D spatialization. |
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EAX effects like reverb and echo. |
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Seamless sound looping. |
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Rendering |
Deferred Shading, Render-to-Texture, Fonts:
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Advanced deferred renderer draws many dynamic lights at superior speeds. |
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Fast instanced mesh rendering. |
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Render buffers can be used to create post-processing effects, or render-to-texture effects. |
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Render to any graphics context to create windowed applications. |
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| Date Added |
Sun, 20 Jul 2008 |
Last Updated |
Sat, 10 Apr 2010 |
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There are currently 67 reviews for this engine
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| License Name |
Price |
Source Code |
Comments |
| Other/Custom |
$150.00 |
No |
Single user commercial license |
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Screenshots:
Member Reviews |
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NOTE: The ratings and reviews below reflect the opinions of their respective authors and as such, do not reflect the opinions of DevMaster.net or its staff.
The reviews are not moderated and some are completely inaccurate. Therefore, most reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. If you find any inaccurate or inappropriate reviews, let us know by stating in detail why you think the review should be removed and any links/documents that support your contention.
| Best OpenGL engine we have ever used ! |
We've been using NeoAxis for several years now.
When we started using Leadwerks 2 Engine,we never looked back.
The terrain system is also amazing !
I'm sure this engine has a very bright future ahead. |
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| Very nice engine ! |
- Amazing water shader.
- Up to 33 million triangle terrain system,nice !
- Easy to use OpenGL API.
- To be able to use it with C++ gives you the hi-performance of AAA title games.
- Rivals technology that is comparable with modern game engines that costs thousands of dollars.
- The PhyGen tool makes it easy to make rigid bodies without even coding it in C++ or BlitzMax.
I know for sure that I'll be glued to this amazing engine for a very long time to come. |
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| Beats the heck out of Unreal Engine 3 and Cryengine 2 ! |
| I got awesome frame rates on a third person shooter I was working on, even more then when I coded it directly in DirectX 9c. Also, this was the only engine that was actually easy enough to use and had the proper documentation to let me actually write a video game from scratch that did anything! I find the support awesome ! Overall, the best thing to happen to computer graphics technology since the "3D Engine era" ! |
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| Definitely the future game engine of choice for newer generation game developers. |
I have tried Torque,3D Gamestudio,Unity,DarkBasic Pro.
Leadwerks Engine 2 beats them all.
A friend at SIGGRAPGH recommended me this engine.
Nice to have a cheap engine like this with all the features of the higher commercial game engines !
And it rocks ! |
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| Very feature rich,easy to use and yet powerfull at the same time. |
I've been using Leadwerks engine for a year or so now, and I'm very impressed. It has an active development community, all the features I need, and it's completely next-gen.The forums and the wiki are a great source of information and tech support.
If you haven't checked it out yet, I strongly recommend it. |
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| Good high-performance engine. |
After brief evaluation I bought the full version one week ago.I found the API extremely well organized and powerful. Rendering, physics and systems are perfectly integrated !
Another good point is advanced ragdoll and skeletal animation support that you can only find in expensive products !
Tech support has been very good so far.
I managed to put together my prototype in 3/4 days! Its surprising for such a cheap software. I would certainly use this engine for the real game in place of licensing a multiplatform expensive 3D Engine. |
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| a good artists engine |
i think i'll just say what i rated this engine by
features are a 5, excellent features such as SSAO and light scattering, sandbox editor is fun and easy to use, i'm art so i can only really comment as such but it seems easy to program for and add features. it really is unparalleled in it's price range you have to go looking at stalker clear skies or crysis to see equivalent tech.
ease of use 4, it's an easy engine to use, but it's not a case of assembling a game from premade components and letting cash flow in. you need to know what your doing before hand
stability and performance 5, moreso for performance. what it does on screen runs very well. it doesn't crash very often, which is batter than i can say about most vista apps
support 4, josh is geniunely helpful, the documentation is lagging developement but the community is trying to keep up with the wiki. |
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| Great Engine - Scaleable, Reliable, Perfection |
I have been using this engine since version 1.21, and it has come a long way.
I program using the Leadwerks SDK using a multitude of languages (C++,C#,BlitzMax,LUA, and Python), and the performance is great no matter what!
I can get a nice app with physics, sounds, lighting, etc, in a few lines of code.
The documentation grows and grows everyday, and Josh is always there to lend a hand. The new tutorial every day is also a big help.
This engine would definately rate better than UnrealEngine3 and CryEngine2 in my book, and it still has room to get better. |
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| This is the one |
| I came to Leadwerks engine after using the exellent Blitz 3d and found it just as easy to use.The results are VERY impressive even on a sm3 graphics card. There is a built in scripting language or you can use any dll supporting language.Support is good,documentation growing. |
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| Greatly Impressed |
This engine is destined to be one of the top game engines out there (and yes, I am comparing it to Crysis and Stalker.) I really believe that soon this engine will be capable of true triple-A titles. There are some features I hope to see soon and I have read that Josh will be adding them (for example, realistic moving water.) As others have said the documentation is getting better (via the community supported wiki) but obviously there needs to be more.
Another thing that bears repeating is that this is not a "click-n-create" engine like FPS Creator. It is not difficult to program with but it does require some. If you are an artist the Sandbox editor makes the game design and artistic portion a joy to work with and the quality of graphics will not disappoint. However, if you are an artist only, do try and team up with someone who can do basic coding (for simple games) and perhaps more advanced coding if you are planning a professional triple-A title.
The price is awesome considering the quality of engine you're getting.
If this engine shapes up like I hope I'll be forced to come back here and give it straight 5's! |
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| It can't be beat |
What more do I need to say...the engine speaks for itself.
I myself, and our team, all have licenses to this engine, and are working on an up and coming true triple A title for the PC platform.
Expect great things to come from this engine! |
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Good in some cases, bad in othersPosted by:
DaveW
at Aug 8, 2008 |
First, it's good to clarify two main types of engine. Game and Rendering, game as the name would suggest is "game ready", as in, it has a lot of framework required to make a game in it. Rendering is something like OGRE, no framework at all - just graphics.
Leadwerks would best be described as an awkward mix of the two without the community or tools to really push it to the "game engine" side. C4 Engine, for example, has a lot of things for a game intergrated into the editor while Leadwerks would require those things to all be done in code. A button, for instance - in Leadwerks you would have to manually code the button to trigger an "AddBodyForce" command to the door. Even with rendering engines - OGRE, for example - there's complete art pipeline tools with exporters to the native format. With Leadwerks, the answer to all exporting troubles is to buy another program that's actually made for UV mapping to convert to their own format (rather than just including a converter to their own from Collada or FBX like most other engines).
It has a very nice renderer, it must be said. Dynamic lighting based on shadow maps with vaugely similar rendering capability to some of the high end titles. That said, some things are very awkward and the engine works on a "leave it to the programmer" philosophy. As such materials are created manually with text files, which can actually be very awkward at times.
As far as the 'game' side is concerned - well, it's kind of there (after a long while). There are still problems due to the physics solution, but these will (eventually) be fixed. Hopefully.
As far as support goes, there is a fairly good community surrounding the engine - problems are generally solved by either Josh or Lumooja. Although if a problem cannot be fixed right away it has a tendancy to be ignored, which can get very annoying. Suggestions to the engine are either taken on board (in about 0.5% of cases) or simply ignored (99.5% of cases) with no response. The most annoying thing is having a genuinely good suggestion that would make the engine better ignored.
Really, overall - there are better engines out there. Their renderers might not be quite as good. C4 Engine comes close, but it is based on stencil shadows mostly which don't look quite as good - although you get a promised upgrade to all versions of the engine (unlike Leadwerks, where it's free updates until Josh decides to charge more for it). The only advantage Leadwerks has really is price - and if the $200 is worth more hassle to work with it, then go for it by all means. Mind you, that lower prices means it comes without source code. If you're easily annoyed and have a short temper, I wouldn't try it. |
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| Coming along nicely |
Features:
Rendering looks pretty. If you want the new editor be ready to fork over $$$. No console path.
Ease of Use:
No source access, which is needed as their are MANY features missing.
Stability & Performance:
Hardware hog. Fine if you aren't developing for a large market.
Support:
Josh lacks basic social skills. Does not take constructive criticism well at all. Tends to be very condescending.
Advice:
Look at Unreal Development Kit or Unity, both of which are free and surpass Leadwerks in everyway. |
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| A Wonderful Tool! |
THere isn't much to say about the engine. Try the demo/evaluation kit and you will see that the engine couldn't be better.
The creator took the great approach of exposing everything he could to the end user, instead of hardcoding every little specialised function one person asked for. Sure, it may be hard to create your own water effects, etc (even though the creator has added such example shaders), but the open-ended system is a great approach.
On the issue of everyone who posted reviews with 0/5 stars for everything because they use an AGP SM1.1 graphics card and can't afford $30 for an SM4.0 card, they are just being cruel in their reviewing. This engine runs great on SM3.0 cards, and there isn't a single issue that needs to be complained about. |
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| Decent, for the price. |
Features:
Wow, the features in this are great!
C++, VB, Bmax, LW Script, and lots more.
And with the 2.1 upgrade, the Sandbox makes terrain making too easy!
Ease Of Use:
Depending on the language you use, it can become quite burdensome.
I only used C++ and Bmax, so I will only write for those.
BlitzMax: Very easy, physics were a breeze, no built in networking commands and I hate the Bmax ones so it lacked there (this is being added though). Overall, easy to use.
C++: Horrible.
Lacked proper documentation, syntax seemed off from what was in the docs, couldn't even figure out how to make a friggin camera as the closest I found to that was
"Camera(1);"
And C++ worked 1 time for me, after that, I kept getting errors.
I gave this a 4 because when I owned Leadwerks, the docs were lacking, now they seem to be much more ordered and there is much more on C++.
Stability:
This is why I returned the product! It was unstable and horrible!
The game itself was stable, sure, but I got the most random error after using this for only 2 weeks.
I got an error, you can search it on the Leadwerks forum, it was written by "Mike". (No I am not the same Mike who reviewed this).
The error I got was
"GL_INVALID_OPERATION" and Leadwerks wasn't outputting my OpenGL version. Happened one day and I couldn't use Leadwerks anymore after that so I had to return it.
Performance:
Well depends on your card, I got 24FPS max on a physics demo with a bunch of boxes falling from the sky, I also outputted the number of boxes on the screen and on a 8400GS, I got up to I believe, 1740 boxes with physics until it became "unplayable".
I gave this part a 3 because of the error I had.
Support:
The forums offer great support, and Josh tends to reply fairly fast to most subjects, great mod and developer. Quick confirmation of order.
Overall:
This engine is great, I am thinking of repurchasing it as I just ordered a HD4870 1GB card, this should run Leadwerks so easily... and if it doesn't, I am coming back and changing that Performance score to a "0" lol.
Support, like I said is great, as well as the ease of use.
The features can only be surpassed by a whole set of tools for modeling and texturing that come with it, lol.
There has never been a charge for an update either, I was given Sandbox for free, that is a steal compared to what it is worth.
At $150 and if you have a computer that can run this, you would be a fool to pass it up. |
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| Next-Gen Engine at Bargin Basement price!!! |
The recently released LE v2.0 Engine is literally MILES AHEAD of any other products I have tried like Gamestudio A7 (Slow & Old) and TGAC (unstable & overly complex), C4 (ugly interface, beginner unfriendly), Unity (need a Mac to run it, expensive), PowerRender (support?)
This young but feature-rich engine is extremely powerful, fast & stable and easy to use . With unified lighting system with dynamic soft shadows, SSAO, Volumatric Shadow, Render enormous landscapes up to 33 million polygons, custom addable shaders, Multi-platform, dll with Newton 2.0 physics, and since it's a .dll you can use any language you like to write with it.
Deferred Rendering has just been released in v2.1 along with a realtime editor called "Sandbox" which is unlike anything I've ever seen . (you can edit / move / add / change properties on-the-fly while physics , lighting/shadow & sound are dynamically updated in real-time)
Support is fast as Josh actively check his email and the forum is very active.
To top this off. The engine is currently priced at $150 - you can't get any better than that!!
Dont' just take my word for it, take a look for youself ! |
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| Getting there |
As a first point release it's pretty good, the graphical quality for a SM4 engine is as you would expect very good. But is it a full game engine ? That's the question. Certainly not on the same par as Crytek's technology as some forums members would have you believe.
No multiplayer network support, no AI, the physics engine is Newton and as such is very accurate but slow, just look at some of the videos dotted around the forum. It will only run on windows and there is no console support. As a RAD tool it's pretty good, but as an affordable AAA game engine, there's better out there.
The licensing is expensive, quite a few indie game engines only charge for the source license and the rest of the team, artists etc do not count as a licensable seat, however Leadwerks is per seat. It may seem cheap at face value but digging down it can end up being expensive. Couple with this a non-standard animation import format creating an inexplicable need to purchase UU3d to convert animated models for use in the engine (more expense).
My biggest bone of contention is the lack of source code, when I use a game engine I would like to get the complete source as well, especially if you want to change core engine parts rather than relying on the author. Yes I appreciate that Josh knows people can break parts of the engine, but hey, aren't we all experienced devs knowing the implications of what we take on ;)
The direction of the development seems to change on a regular basis, is there a long term design for the engine ? Josh seems to use a lot of trial and error approaches to get where he's going. Although over the last few months it seems as though LWE has finally found its course.
The forums can be quite intimidating, one or two members are agressively in your face when asking about how to do something trivial. Complete beginners stay away.
It's going to be interesting to watch the engine evolve as long as Josh doesn't end up completely changing his development direction ... again. Let's hope the pipeline cleans up as well, fbx, COLLADA anyone ... |
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| Leadwerks Engine Review |
| I am very new to the Leadwerks Engine, but I have worked with 6 different engines and Leadwerks Engine 2.0 is a very easy to use, feature rich and very stable engine. I was very surprised how easy it was to work and now with Sandbox well on it's way, it will be even easier to create games. My only concern is with the support documentation, but this will be enhanced very soon and I am sure it will be of the same high quality as the engine itself. I am very excited to continue working with the Leadwerks engine. |
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| A mixed bag of rendering features, but not an engine |
The Leadwerks Engine is initially very impressive but there are some major reasons not to invest any time or money developing with it.
It relies heavily on hardware and needs a higher end graphics card to be usable. This is apparently by design so while I consider it a negative, some may not.
The biggest issue is with the the developer. The problem is simply that every week he changes the entire direction of it's development. You just cant be sure next week he wont decide to work on something entirely new and abandon this project for something else he'll charge you for. It has been something he has done with many of his projects in the past.
Documentation is nonexistent, the developer would point to their Wiki but that simply consists of user's often incorrect guesses at how things work.
It is also developed using a sort of kiddie language, and its easy to wonder about how serious an engine could be written in BASIC. People have complained about a lack of source in other reviews here, but it would be useless to any real developer anyway.
Most importantly, the engine is simply NOT complete, and not close to being capable of being used for a real project. Don't tell the developer that, though. He does not accept anything remotely negative on the engine's forum and openly states his belief that his engine is already better then Unreal and CryEngine. On the other hand, reading his posts can be good for a laugh.
The CSG level editor (a hammer clone) by the same author is a very good product, however, and definitely worth the price. |
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| Just seems to go from strength to strength |
There seem to be a lot of conflicting reviews here regarding this engine, so as someone who has spent two and a half months programming with it I would like to try and give a balanced view of my experience with it to date.
Hardware requirements:
The engine is openly advertised as requiring a minimum of SM3 support from your graphics card and ideally SM4. Likewise a reasonable processor is required with a dual core being recommended. This is hardly surprising when you look at the specification and capability of this engine. Why anyone moans that you can't run this engine on old hardware is beyond me, show me any game engine with a matching spec that would do so!
Having said that, I'm running with a Pentium4 and an nVidea 7900 card and I can load 300,000 polygon scenes consisting of terrain with multiple layers and over 680 models with directional lighting giving real time dynamic soft shadows on all models along with 23 point and spot lights in the scene and I'm getting nearly 30 fps. Mine is hardly state of the art hardware! I'd love to see what I could get with an 8800 (which are not exactly expensive these days).
So with that myth out of the way ....
Engine Stability:
I have to say that this is probably the most stable game/graphics engine I have ever used given that the engine is so young. The only official release so far, being version 2.0, proved to be stable full stop! I never experienced any crashes on my system. Subsequent releases have all been beta versions of 2.1 and have suffered from some issues ... but these are clearly released as beta software and as such it’s almost inevitable that there will be bugs. The current version 2.1 beta6 seems to be very stable and I fully expect the final release to be stable.
Documentation:
This is minimal and comprises a wiki where virtually all of the engine commands can be found along with their syntax both for BlitzMax and C, the two main languages being used. The descriptions of the functionality are somewhat minimal and could be a problem for new programmers who have no previous game engine programming experience. However, having said that, posting a sensible question on the Leadwerks forum will usually get a quick response and answer often from the developer himself. There is example code around too, both provided as part of the engine package and available from programmers within the forums.
Evolution of the Product:
This is one of the most exciting areas of the engine, the rate at which the developer has expanded the core functionality and improved areas which have been found wanting. The final release version of the 2.1 build will be a far better engine than the original version 2.0 There is obviously a knock on effect on already written code but the gains have made that acceptable and it has been fairly minimal on the whole. The Developer is hinting that the engine is approaching a more stable era where the current syntax should remain pretty much unchanged in the future although hopefully not excluding additional functionality.
Support:
My personal experience has been very good. Given that this engine has been developed and supported by one individual, so be it helped along the way by some other key members of the Leadwerks community, his support has really been first class. All the way through the beta process I have logged issues as I've found them and have found these have been dealt with in a timely and professional way. Solutions or subsequent releases with fixes often occurring within days
Engine Design and Capability:
This engine really is from my experience all it promised to be. It is indeed capable of a superb level of graphical quality and I'm sure with top quality art work capable of competing with a lot of the major professional game engines out there. I'm pretty sure the Crytek engine 2.0 served as a major influence in the design of this engine and it shows. No-one is pretending that it rivals Crytek but it really does get pretty close at times, which for a $150 dollar engine is no small achievement!
The architecture of this engine is where the developer has really hit the nail on the head. It's a joy to program with, having been very carefully thought out. I'm using it in conjunction with C++ and its a really rapid development system! The use of Newton Physics has proved to be a good choice, I am finding it pretty stable and reliable.
Art Pipeline:
From a programmers point of view I initially found this troublesome although I am finding it easier as time goes by. Basically, the engine supports virtually no standard model formats, requiring everything to be converted into its proprietary .gmf file format. The only exceptions to this are the .obj and the .md3 format which the engine can load directly. However, invest in the Ultimate Unwrap 3D application and you have a way of converting just about any major format to .gmf with ease.
There is also a free tool provided to convert from the Blitz .b3d format to .gmf
But in terms of level design you need look no further, as the engine comes complete with the Sandbox editor, which although still in beta release, is proving to be a superb real time level editor with dynamic physics and lighting and shadowing enabled!
Summary:
This has been a fairly positive review of the engine as I have had a mainly positive experience with it and would like to recommend it to others. I cannot believe that most Indie game designers would not find lots to like in Leadwerks Engine 2. I sincerely believe that it will only be a question of time before a game appears which will truly showcase the strength of this engine! |
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| Watch out John Carmack |
leadwerks will be showing you how to build engines.
This engine is awesome, it blows Crytek and Epics engines out of the water and its only 200 you cant beat it. Don't believe any of those negative comments they abviusly arent users.
The mastermind to this engine is Josh he is an absolute genius, the speed new stuff is added beats any other engine out there. Be quick to buy it as I think Epic will be wanting to buy it like they did with Artificial Studios.
And then support is great, Lumooja is creating the C++ side of things and now suports thousands of languages for scripting. This engine will work with any language.
Awesome !!!!!!! |
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| Best engine so far |
I have bought many 3D engines, including Blitz3D, BlitzMax, TGE, TGEA, C4, RealmCrafter 1 & 2, Leadwerks Engine 1 & 2, and tried also some opensource engines like CrystalSpace 3D, Ogre3D, Panda3D.
Amongst all those engines I find Leadwerks Engine 2 the easiest to use, and it seems to have the most advanced graphical features too. I like the engine because I can program it to do what I want, since it's so easy to learn what and how you can do things with it. I've not seen an engine where you need less coding, with 10 lines of code you have already a rotating cube on the screen with lights and shadows. I prefer to use C++ to code with the engine, and the engine supports over 300 languages (=all which can load a DLL), and in addition also native BlitzMax coding is possible using a mod file which comes with the engine, and even a scripting language (which has almost the same syntax as BlitzMax).
It's simply amazing that everything is in real-time, all lights, shadows, and physics. Of course it needs a modern graphics card for that, although the minimum cards which work are still ATI 1550 and GeForce 6800.
With a GeForce 8600 and better, you can already have hundreds of dynamic lights and shadows at the same spot, or even more if they are not all visible at the same time.
Now that the engine version 2.1 is finished, the developer has started to convert it to C++. This will be great, since then it can run also as a native application under Linux and Mac. Right now it runs fine under Linux WINE, usually only a few FPS slower than under native Windows XP.
Although the engine is written in BlitzMax at the moment, it doesn't have any noticable performance issues, since the engine is using the GPU to do most things. The GPU is the bottleneck. BlitzMax is not a BASIC language like many seem to think, although the syntax is similar to BASIC. It's a special RAD game development language written in GNU C++, which then generates assembler source code and uses FASM to compile it. Indeed BlitzMax programs run faster than GNU C++ for Windows programs (=MinGW), but that's because MinGW is not a very good optimizing C++ compiler. The real GNU C++ under Linux beats Visual C++ in compiled code speed.
Support is the best I have seen for any game engine, as the developer has often fixed things within a few minutes.
Game development using Leadwerks Engine 2 is done 90% in Sandbox, where you can visually design your game in real-time, and add your own custom game items and logic using entities. Entites have a position and rotation, and can contain any kind of text and values, so you only need to tell in your game how that entity is used. The engine comes with full source code of a game example, which you can use and add more game specific features to it. There are also community projects going on, which are based on this game example, so you will find fully working game sources for free. And many more examples will come, when people from the community have finished them. |
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| A Year Later... A Second Look |
A RE-REVIEW... ALMOST A YEAR LATER (July 09)
Leadwerks appears to be out of beta as of the end of July, 09... the author says he has incorporated everything he set to put into the 'engine', and it appears he in fact has, at least based on the results of a weeks long testing of my recently acquired license...
this warrants a review of the critical review I gave Leadwerks almost a year past.
First off, if you license this 'engine', NOW, you won't regret it... unlike a year ago when i posted my critical
review, there has been a host of improvements, and the code appears to be much more stable...
while i still don't consider this to be a game engine (unlike Torque or Crysis or Unreal it's more a
framework from which the developer will base his/her engine on), it is now much easier to implement the
your game engine using Leadwerks, and with a lil coding you will find yourself able to implement a decent
OOP based game engine in either c++ or BlitzMAX... some new under the hood logic, plus a few user
developed wizards, will help get even the most uninitiated coder's engine up and running...
there's much more documentation available than a year ago (not such a surprise), plus the author has spent considerable time whipping up some really useful video tuts... these will probably be the best way to get started...
the framework, while appearing to be fully cross platform capable, is still only available for Windows... this continues to be a sore spot as far as i'm concerned... an OSX version, or at least the ability to compile the code on a Mac would be a BIG plus... i'm sure the Linux crowd feels the same way...
there are indications that this may change... at least partially, in the near future...
as for scripting... regardless of what you may have seen in print, scripting had been abandoned for quite a
while, but... judging from what i've read in recent LW blogs, the author appears to soon be adding a lua
scripting interface to the editor in hopes that it will make it easier for non coders to use Leadwerks to
express their creative intentions... while i probably won't be using it, i think this will be a good thing...
the art assets workflow is marginal (from what little i've seen so far)... gmf is a native format that you need
to use to get models into Leadwerks... i use the UltimateUnwrap plugin which crashes UU3D every time so
far, but at least it's after each attempt, and i do get the model in gmf format ok... there are no textures...
that's no biggeee though, and there seems to be other paths available, and a few converters come with
the license... plus, reapplying the textures is super easy in code...
the sandbox editor continues to be a bright light here... i said this last year, and there has been small improvements with stability, and a few under the hood tweaks that keep this true today...
performance wise... well, it has definitely gotten better... until recently, every time i ran anything done with LW, whenever i turned the view cam quickly, i could see the meshes pop into view... that is gone in the latest release... stuff written using Leadwerks seems to run well (40 fps) on a GeForce 8600 (not the most desirable or recommended gpu for LW), and this is with most of the eyecandy turned up, and a decent amount of unnecessary vertices (result of my best programmer art) in a scene...
to summarize (without getting into the personality of the author, which was one of my biggest concerns a year ago), Leadwerks seems to have found a direction... at least you don't wake up any more and discover that the latest update has changed the api and functions without so much as a mention... i think the core api is pretty much settled on...
if you're a BlitzMAX coder, this is one of the very few viable and modern 3D tools... in my opinion, most of the others will eventually be a dead end for serious game developers... Leadwerks' similarities to Blitz3D will make it very easy to transition to, and you'll become productive with it within a few days of getting the
license...
capable c++ coders will probably look around a bit before choosing... they'll be more comfortable picking the perfect combination of renderer, sound, physics, and net libraries to suit their needs...
finally, non coders (not a put down as a good art type is worth at least 5 programmers :) ) will jump on Leadwerks after seeing the pretty pictures... but after replacing a few of the demo models with some of their own stuff, most will give up and move on in search of a tool with that legendary make_my_game_for_me() function in it... or they'll wind up contracting out the coding...
with all this said i'm raising the ease of use grade i gave it from a 1 to a 4... i was able to get up and running in c++ and in BMax within minutes... seriously...
i'm also upping the stability and performance grade to a 4... i've gotten a few crashes of my exes, but only after exit... and most likely because i'm doing something (or not doing something) i should be (or shouldn't)...
support i'm also upping... from a 2 to a marginal 4... the tuts and docs loom big here...
in short... Leadwerks has gotten a lot better and is much more capable today than it was almost a year
ago... i was prepared to be disappointed... i wasn't...
if you're a Blitzer... and you want 'bleeding edge' 3D... get a Leadwerks license... or wait for BlitzMAX3D...
if you're not a Blitzer, you might wanna take a second look at this... like i did...
i only call em as i see em...
--Mike |
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| full of features |
first- you will never find an engine with this prize and full of next gen features .
in the ease of use i give it 3 star , i think it cold be easer , and i hope it will .
in stability it get 5 star and it deserve it , i never had any crash since i start using it .
in terms of support , 4 star >>> to josh WE NEED MORE TUTORIALS please :)
== my only complement is i wish it have some basic AI and GUI for us the beginner programmers to be a full Next-Gen game engine
PS : for Mike ... there isn't a perfect Engine |
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Leadwerks Engine 2Posted by:
degac
at Sep 7, 2008 |
Well for a newbe like me the Leadwerk Engine represents a real - stable - and powerful solution. With small steps you can create, setup and render you first scene.
For BlitzMax users (like me) the engine is easy and powerful: the ideal 3dengine for BlitzMax.
In any case the engine is available for many languages, so there is not limit to your imagination and skills.
Finally the engine comes with Sandbox, a simple but very powerful world-place editor: only this program is a great added value to a great engine.
Documentation, Tutorials and support
Every week there are new informations (the wiki is growing up) and new tutorials (some are in video form!) for BlitzMax and for C language.
The forum is very responsive and positive, any question posted is considered and a reply is granted: you will never feel lost.
Tech
The engine is not a 'full-game-engine': Leadwerks Engine 2 (at the moment) handles advanced 3d graphics, physics and 3d sound. All the rest (IA, scripting, networking) must be handled by the programmer, but this is NOT a fault (in my opinion).
For the tech-fan the graphics engine itself is heavy based on Shader (SM4) so it does the best on recent hardware (but it works well - optimizing what you want to draw - on a GeForce 6600). But nowadays every engine (if you want all the great graphics fx...shadows, bump & co) a 'decent' graphic card is needed.
The engine is growing: the main lead programmer adds new features (like the God's ray) or fix/update the engine.
Cost
150 USD is the 'correct' price for this engine (and for the Sandbox you get) |
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| Cool Game Engine!! |
| I used this engine for 1 month. It very cool game engine. It's easy to use and very good feature to made good game. |
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| Best engine? No, or better not yet! |
I try it and i need to say is very easy..
Trust me i am a real NOOB!
But those guys help me a lot and now i can use it and i feel myself "fast".
I wanna finish my game and i feel to have the possibility to do something really great with this engine.
Now there is an evaluation kit, if you are searching for a good (and not so expensive) engine keep a look on this.
Aza |
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| leadwerks the future of game making |
if your looking for a good an affordable game engine.then the leadwerks engine is your answer!
with great graphics and a easy to use interface,you wil make great games in no time! |
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Good for few, bad for most.Posted by:
Aurora
at Apr 16, 2009 |
Im not gonna go into too much detail here, just a few pro's and con's i feel is important.
Pro's:
+ Fast engine.
+ Has a "decent" support for todays technology.
+ The sandbox is a nice tool, but not wysiwyg, (con here) you have to program all loading rutine in yourself for the entities..
Con's:
- No asset's protection, and most likely wont be added.
wich means everyone have access to your scene data and so on, wich makes it hard to distribute any games created with this engine.
- Support is only forum based (besides a few c++ tutorials, and some video displaying how to use it in c++)
The con is, it says it supports C# and many more languages, it does support C# via wrapper but its not always working as intended and there is virtually no tutorials on how to use it in C# (though the forum users are very nice).
- No source code access (and there is no FULL source code for the engine, atleast some parts) i heard.
****************************
I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS ENGINE.
****************************
I did alot of engine testings, and i have to say the guy at leadwerks is truely unprofessional when it comes to feedback and such, if its not good feedback, he will just ignore or delete the post(s), seen this happen.
I'd say go with bigger, but cheap engines like Unity3D (now support windows) or Torque3D (upcomming engine from garagegames), and you are WAY better off. |
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It's the one I went with...Posted by:
at Jul 26, 2010 |
Like a few posters, I have used and or evaluated most of the engines here, which means I have used this site as a resource for years.
And though I have never posted I felt the need to "correct" certain, found by experience to be, inaccuracies that could lead to misunderstanding. And for the sake of just plain fairness.
So, first things first;
C++ programmers can just dive right in... I did. Some people use LUA script, and yes, some do indeed use Blitz, I assume one can guess which route I took (I think there are more, as well. To keep you from having to scroll "C/C++, Java, C#, D, Delphi, Pascal, BASIC, Ada, Fortran, Lisp, Perl, Python, Visual Basic 6, VB.NET").
One of my favorites is that LeadWerks hasn't crashed, yet.
After going through the many, actually quite informative tutorials I found I had to usually slow the frame rate, quite a bit, actually.
Come to think of it, LeadWerks also gives you access to OpenGL, too. And ... some few engines no longer give the kind of finer grained access to the underlying functional elements as LeadWerks, still, does. Which is how I ended up posting here in the first place, lol. In other words there are things you can do in LeadWerks (directly) that you simply cannot do (at all) in some of the higher ranked engines listed here.
The proof is in the pudding though ... so, check out the screen shots in the gallery, perhaps? And perhaps StarCraft, which comes out tomorrow will have better graphics than you will see there, but not many; and I am talking commercial offerings, here, do. There is a lot of very good work being done with LeadWerks, obviously.
The community is great, and it is entirely possible that you would have any questions you needed to ask or issues that arised answered or addressed by the devs themselves.
I consider my two hundred bucks well spent.
Again, you must check out the gallery and the community blogs. |
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Powerfull Next Gen engine.Posted by:
Aggror
at May 30, 2010 |
I consider my self a game enthousiast, rather then a game developer. I can't program but I can do some moddeling and typing over some code of the files that come with tutorials.
I bought this game engine pure out of interest and fascination by games. The videos on the leadwerks website and the website itself explained to me more then enough about what I can do with this engine. I don't need a super advanced engine with tons of features.
I consider the engine "Next Gen". Why? Because the graphics you can achieve with this engine are astonisching. Leadwerks engine provides a good lighting system and a robust physics system (Newton). The games you can make with this engine are specificly ment for newer systems. I;ve heard many people complain about the system requirements. It clear from the beginning that this engine is for the newer generation, and if your hardware doesn't support it: too bad.
What the forum and tutorial make clear fast enough, is that this is a 'game engine' and not a 'game maker'. I have small experience with Torque 3D and 2D, FPS creator and Darc Basic. Do not think that this engine allows you to set up an entire game without programming. However, if you are motivated enough, this engine is perfect to make your entrance as a beginner programmer or gamedeveloper. This because of its ease.
The forum of leadwerks is a clean and clear forum. The community is very active and you will get a reaction on like 99% of your forum posts. Also in the wiki for leadwerks you can find every single command availeble, often with an example.
Pro's:
- powerfull 'next gen', updated frequently game engine
- very good price for its features and power
- strong forum and community
- TUTORIALS: especially for beginnners: a good way to get started!
- easy to use sandbox system, drag and drop, realtime lighting modification.
Con's:
- Features: For beginners actually just enough. However, scaling or object editing could be handy.
- Sometimes crashes for no good reason
summary:
Deffinetly worthy of it's price. powerpull, clear engine, no bullshit, good forum, wiki, community, good tutorials for starters. The fact that there are always reports of new features and improvments gives you the idea that this engine has a good future.
Aggror,
VisualKnights |
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| Awesome visual and easy engine |
This engine rocks, it got an easy syntax and yet it offers massive terrains and breath-taking effects.
I can say that this engine is for everybody because it got support for beginners and is still VERY powerful for the experienced.
Its worth the money :P |
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| A good inexpensive instant fun ride. |
UPDATE: v2.31 is out... and things have come a long way.
Features: 5
Pros:
Lua Scripting/Physics/Editor/_Incredible Graphics_/etc.
Ease of use: 5
Pros:
- To the point, powerfull api.
- You'll be able to create something that really looks amazing with this engine in no time.
Cons:
It would be really nice if animation could be integrated into the editor.
Stability & perfomance: 4
- Feels solid but does crash now and then. Reading logfile's for a clue sometimes doesn't help at all.
- Performance is decent.
Support: 4
Pro's:
- Video/pdf tutorials! really good!!!
- Wiki style online documentation
- Forum/Community support is pretty good.
Cons:
- No form of offline documentation whatsoever.
In general it is a nice engine, and as time passes it keeps getting better.
Rendering wise it's not comparable to anything else I know of anymore, this is as good realtime graphics as I've ever seen... |
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| Good engine for the price. |
It's a good engine for the price, but it's really more suited to Blitmax users. This is understandable considering the engine was orginally written in Blitzmax.
The support for C++ is very poor and many of the C++ tutorials are already outdated and don't work.
I purchased the engine because it all seemed concise and easy to get into. But after attempting to create a basic scene in C++ I quickly realized that things weren't going to be as easy as expected.
If you're a Blitzmax coder then things should be much easier as there's a framework that can be built upon. Although some may find that the framework a little too complicated and it has a considerable learning curve all of its own.
Finally, the developer of the engine isn't very supportive at all. He kinda reminds me of a frustrated yoda with his cryptic one line answers. Although dealing with people over the internet can take its toll, so I do sympathize with the dude.
To sum up:- "the force use you must" |
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| LOVE Leadwerks Engine |
Hi, I am a 3d technical artist and currently studying game development in Canada. I have used so many game engines in the past and I can honestly say this game engine has a bright future.....
I love the engine design structure, Tools, and how easy it is to use this game engine in a professional level....
I just started using the engine couple of days ago and so far support team has help me out and I am very happy with that.... |
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| Great engine |
I'm enjoying working with this engine a lot, and being part of the community.
Great engine, great performance, great features, great price. What more could you want?
5 stars. It deserves it. |
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| 2.23 |
Came from Dark Basic Pro to this Engine and purchased it a couple of releases ago. 'It's a Ride'. Really still in it's development stages but making good headway with release 2.23 I enjoy using it though some of it is well over my head, I can still create a scene and even got an object to animate in a world recently. I use Blitz Max to write and compile as it's close to DBpro language. Using the Sandbox makes world creation fairly simple and the art pipeline has just taken a leap forward with FBX support and a new Terrain Creation update. Spreading trees and grasses etc is fun and easy. It looks like the next version will be a further improvement too with terrain colour blending..
If someone were to ask me if the Leadwerks Engine is for them, I would say it would depend what they were trying to accomplish. I think it has a way to go to be a complete package yet.
It must be said that Josh, the Author, although being an obviously clever fellow has a poor track record of support for previous applications and tends to make it up as he goes. (Nothing wrong with that of course). It just means that One is hesitant to commit with confidence to a project. So far, so good with the LE because this is his current baby. I'm hoping that support for Blitz Max won't be dropped entirely in favour of C++, that would be very problematic for me.. so fingers crossed that the 'ride' will continue and that the current economic recession fuels rather than hinders the Indie cause. |
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| nice engine |
| Its Really nice engine . i see in the future will be one of the best engines in the world .also its easy in use ,and good performance with nice quality. i hope the performance will be More good with the next version. |
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| Leadwerks or not to Leadwerks! |
open your browser,
goto: www.leadwerks.com
download evaluation kit.
now you can go to bed. :D
(don't spent your money just for your tummy)
------------------------------
This engine will be best game engine for just a few years later.
I WILL BE HERE, so see you then! ;) |
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| Pile of junk |
- Very poor C/C++ support
- Quite buggy and sluggish engine
- Very poor compatibility with video cards, especially older models
- Very unprofessional developer who thinks he is a professional but is really just an amateur wanting to be a professional. Cannot take any form of criticism even the helpful kind.
There are much better engines out there than this. Most are much more expensive.. but you get what you pay for. |
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| Extremely capable engine |
I bought Leadwerks about 5 minutes after I saw this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4uh5j4BM7w and have not had any regrets about my purchase since.
The absolute highlight of the engine for me is that it enables my very mediocre Nvidia 8600 GT to render hundreds of thousands polygons on screen with reasonable framerate, amazing!
It ships with a couple of handy tools concerning creating textures, terrains or gamelevels, the most noticeable of which is Sandbox. Sandbox is a terrain/level editor that allows you to sculpt terrain and place objects. It also allows you to assign properties to those objects, which in turn can be used inside your game, so it's quite easy to create waypoints, trigger zones, etc.
Pro's
- fast, high quality rendering
- great physics engine
- great level building tool (Sandbox)
- usable with, but not limited to, C++ (can be used with most programming languages)
- price/quality ratio is great
- deferred lighting!
Cons
- 5 textures per terrain limit
- textures can only be in DDS format (you may need to re-save a lot of your models) |
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| ..nice.. |
| ..i cant say much what are real reasons why some people hitting this rendering engine so low...I suppose, everything has its purpose, long as you using it properly and so do this engine, long as you using it in proper way withing given limits (every engine has it)..my experience with this system is rather positive, and i do have almost all stuff outside within range of 2.5K US$..for me, only downside is actual non multiplatform nature of engine, and long as you are happy with windows development only, i see no reason why not to give a try...community is rather helpful and contributing with tutorials..developer itself were quite responsive on pretty much everything I have been asking for, so i dont know why some folks here exposing quite negative thoughts about developer..I dont want to judge anyone but my experience so far is very very good and everything I have been asking for, were replied instantly and if not then 24 hours later(respecting countries/continents we are living at)..anyway..if you looking for puzzles, and similar games and such things..drop this engine because its no use for that..if you wanna make decent looking 3D game, then go for it..just my 2 cents.. |
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| Leadwerks - The Artist's choice |
Leadwerks Engine 2 have so far been great to work with, extremely simple to to use with a very forgiving art pipeline.
Issues I have encountered over the last year have been easily solved by simple methods.
The tools provided with the engine makes life quite easy.
But best of all is the future direction of this great engine, it provides power of freedom coupled with choice of scripting.
I say, the price justifies quality ten folds! |
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| Excellent Engine |
I bought this engine back in 2008 and I was very pleased with my purchase. This is the first engine I ever used, and learnt how to use all the tools very quickly and easily. The new version (2.3) to be out soon, looks mind blowing. The addition of scripting to this engine will surely make it the best, cheapest engine out there. If anyone will ever ask me about a game engine to use, I will definately point them over to leadwerks, As the ease of use and quality of the engine is just mind blowing.
Richard. |
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Are you experienced ?Posted by:
diedir
at Nov 17, 2009 |
This engine is a great renderer, the lightning is fabulous,
the water planes are quite real, even if sea waves disappeared in recent versions...
this point is quite annoying though, that an update can cause all that worked well before to no func without an advice... shaders are commonly the cause for my case... ATI card and LE shaders are not always friends ...
in fact, if the lead developper, Josh, found a thing not at his taste, (not as god as he wanted) he drops it out as this...
If you want to practice you need to be xp cause Blitzmax license is not delivered with the pack and C++ is not fully supported (as far i know), need to read all wiki/forum before asking a question if you don't want a laconic answer...
As i am not a developper, in the futrure release,
Lua script will be a time saver for me, don't get Blitzmax and don't master C++, hope so...
All in all, it is a great little jewel engine among a lot of others on the market.
Big Bang for your Bucks |
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| Best engine i've come across... |
When i bought LeadWerks engine a year ago, i was amazed by the graphic quality, features, ease of use, stability, and support.
Updates are very frequent, it has great documentation and wiki, the tutorials are the best i've seen, makes learning c/c++ easy, if that's your language of choice. It's extremely stable, never crashes on me, and a very helpful friendly community.
With Leadwerks 2.3 coming out soon, with all new Editor, scripting, it's the best bang for your buck, hand's down. |
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| Buy LE Today |
I have enjoyed using LE. I have found it relatively easy to navigate the artwork into LE as well as getting a starting base program for my game. The graphical quality really cannot be beaten for this price.
The only drawbacks at the moment that I see are the constant upgrade releases that break other features or lack of documentation to show how to fix said broken feature. Documentation is a little flawed atm but hopefully will be revamped and updated with the new LE 2.3.
As for the other engines mentioned here... if you want to go mod something, use those engines. If you want to make your own game with the only limitation being your imagination, buy LE.
This is an exciting time at the LE community with the new LE 2.3 coming and various users showing AAA work on the forums. Expect big things from this little engine. |
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Unbeatable, worth 10 times its price.Posted by:
Lazlo
at Nov 18, 2009 |
With a very permissive license and features paralleling the AAA engines sich as CryEngine and UnrealEngine, the Leadwerks Engine has an unbeatable pricing of only $150. The best part is that it keeps becoming better and better, and so far the updates have been free of charge (hope they still will). Its more than usable for anyone who has any programming knowledge, and soon will be entirely scriptable. It performs at high FPS on regular-end machines. Really, I almost feel bad for buying it at such a low price: as if I was stealing it.
The only counterpart is that since the developer is independant, it isn't possible for him to provide professional support. However, the forum users are quite efficient and nice, and you rarely need support if you even do. Works for me, if it keeps me from paying an incredibly high price.
A definite 5/5. |
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Very good and cool enginePosted by:
wchris
at Feb 2, 2010 |
Updated review of LE 2.3 engine.
FEATURES (5) : The engine really generates fantastic visuals. that's the main point. many 3d engines make me sick when i watch them for too long because their 3d render is unrealistic and my brain simply refuses and flips my stomach ... Leadwerks does not make me ill, and gives beautifull renders.
Everything is there HDR, normal mapping, vehicles, physics, bloom, fog, SSAO ...
The only features missing are :
- no console path
- only basic waterplane.
EASE OF USE (5) : If you're a programmer the engine is very easy to program. The engine even can handle some things by itself like the player Tcontroller, that's cool. If you're not, the new Lua way of 2.3 will help you alot when seeking help with coding. The latest scene editor is now really wysiwyg and customisable.
The only annoyance in the ease of use is the missing feature of an integrated art path. Some things must be done manually like converting DDS, and the only supported 3D format is the proprietary GMF that makes the additional buy of Unwrap3D a must have if you're not going the 3Dstudio path.
STABILITY AND PERFORMANCE (4.5) :
The performance is fair for the render quality, but low end graphic cards can't run the engine even if they handle SM 3, complex shadows are not replaced by stencil shadows automatically so fps drop quick with shadows enabled. My 8600GS runs between 20 and 25 fps on a complex scene with maximum settings. It's a fair result for such a medium card but limited for playing.
I can't give 4.5 stars, so i'll give 5 it'll compensate a little the idiotic bashers that gave 0.
SUPPORT (3) : the real weakpoint. It's only community support. Leadwerks is a one man engine, so he cannot be in the forums and work at the engine the same time. And when he is active in the forum he will only provide short hints but no code samples... so if you're already skilled in coding it's ok, if not.... The community is great and will try to help, but you just depend on the mood of the forumers there is no guarantee the one that knows the answer will see your question. Also tutorials and samples are very slowly updated for the same reason. But the engine now reached what i consider a stable state where the lead develloper can say "ok i did it, let's rest, it's complete now". And then write samples and focus for a while on LE 3.0 roadmap.
With 2.3 Lua will allow better support and allow the exchange of reusable code... and hopefully more forum answers with code samples instead of vague suggestions that lead to a guru meditation. |
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| State of the art engine at an unbetable price |
Leadwerks is a fast-growing engine that has evolved from being just an awesome graphic engine into a fully-fledged game engine.
Its multi-language support and the recent addition of lua scripting makes it easy for any user-level to pick it up. Advanced programmers will squeeze the best out of it while newbies, like myself, also feel comfortable with the provided tools, tutorials and samples to get started.
A great community and social game development network backups your growth with the engine and it's very supportive. The community, that once started with a few users discussing about the future of the engine, has also grown along with the new features Leadwerks has gained through these past years.
Its developer is permanently listening to the user's needs, suggestions and feature requests and is very supportive and honest towards what's and what's not possible to develop for/with Leadwerks.
The engine's features and specs are available at the site, but only till you check out any of the videos available around the net or get the latest demo SDK to run its examples can you harness the real power.
Leadwerks' engine is bright, it can only evolve into one direction and that's getting better day by day.
I think this is a great moment to hop onto its train and be a part of a proactive development. For that price you're getting a lot more than other engines offer for a much higher price.
It is indeed targeted at high-end computers, so maybe not having the ability to export to web may be a drawback, but day by day the required technology to run leadwerks is becoming the standard, and who knows, maybe someday we'll be able to publish to web with ultra high settings! |
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| Pure³D relies on Leaderks technology |
It's a bit hard to write a review for a game-engine which is updated to freqently. I also have to ask myself how should it be compared to other engines to determine how many stars Leadwerks 2 (LE2) is worth? Unreal- or Cryengine? I think every engine will be compared with the best. This is the nature of game developers. Everyone wants the best tech available. ;)
I'm an artist only and have no idea of coding. So I'll write about level design, environments and how the engine "feels" while editing/designing. I also think coding has been covered here quite well. Theese LUA scripting looks clean and powerful.
I use LE2 since August 2009 as my engine of choise. I also worked with game-engines in a professional field since 2001. Leadwerks offers a good tool pipeline which is also supported by a nice and helpful community.
You can export models with materials right out of 3dsmax and use the basic Leadwerks material editor to fine tune and preview the materials. The material editor could be a bit more optimized for an artist concerning the shader selection. All the code monkeys will get used to it very fast. ;)
There are some file (texture) converters with batch functionality to speed up things.
So I think this area is covered very well. Last but not least does LE2 support a nice amount of file types. I don't miss anything in the tools pipeline.
The abstract file system is another nice addition although I needed some time to get used to it. But it's because I use a lot of underlines in my asset naming conventions which results in new folders in LE2.
After getting used to the system it's easy to pass project assets to the client and have them all together clean and organized which is very important for my business.
The Sandbox editor - your main tool - is clean and tidy. It's possible to create own color shemes and reorganize menu buttons via text formated files. You can drag and drop objects, entities and whatever you coded right into the main window. Some small things need to get polished and needed to be added but taking a look at the development speed I'm sure it will be in there soon.
Talking about stability, I was testing the engine back and forth and really push it to the limit. So I overdo it some times and the editor crashes after placing millions of trees or doing incredible large terrains with crazy shadow ranges and uebersized textures. For the regular user it'll be stable in most situations. It's always possible to sent broken or buggy files to Josh for evaluation and bug tracking.
Performance depends strongly on the set up environment and detailing of objects. I ended up doing one more LoD level to the objects to keep my stuff in a playable but detailed way. As a site note: I like that every LoD model is a seperate file. You can work on it in a clean way and don't have to export all the models again.
The visual fidelity can compete with most engines out there. Crap assets will still look crap on a top engine.Thats a well known fact. A talented artist can squeeze out eye candy even on most engines. In LE2 I can use AO in a different UV channel, use satellite images for my entire terrain have lots of vegetation objects, streets, water and so on. It would bust this review but no questions will be left after looking at the feature list. :)
For further versions more of everything would be nice to really match engines like Cryengine. Especially more terrain layers. But I'm sure this often requested feature will be added soon.
The price is an aspect every professional developer has an eye on. I think the engine is way to cheap. 150$ for such an amount of work and features you get could create the impression the engine is not that good.
I think something between 500$ and 1000$ would be adequate. Or at least a basic cheap price with a plugin like structure to buy needed features depending on the project. Some engines use this plugin model and I think it's a fair solution for everyone.
I know Josh did the whole project alone and I still can't believe this but I feel he should organize himself a bit better. I really can imagine that he's getting bombed with emails, bug reports, requests (a lot from me, hehe) plus has tons of ideas and dreams what LE2 should look like. In my feeling this ends up in finished but not polished features sometimes. He should concentrate on one feature make it rock solid and 100% done then pass over to the next on his list/roadmap/whatever.
This is one main difference between working with a 250.000$ engine and a 150$ engine. The 250k engine feels almost "done" in it's workflow and stability.
To sum my review up I'm happy every day that I've found LE2 with Josh Wink as a skilled developer. He's a nice guy with an open ear for my wishes and I trust in his capabilities. I'm starting my arch-viz and realtime-engine business in 2010 with experimental and innovative stuff. For this business I rely on Leadwerks Engine 2 technology and I trust in further development because I know Josh is doing LE2 with heart blood like every deverloper out there who loves his "digital baby".
Michael Betke
www.pure3d.de
www.michaelbetke.net |
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| no sir |
It does not work on older vid hardware and even on newer hardware it runs lke my grandmother and is pretty unstable.
It's also written in a Basic Language called Blitz Max which is an extremely nooby type language. Professional engines are written in pure C/C++.
It's no wonder the engine runs like my Grandmother on a graphics card that doesn't cost $1,000.
The documentation is also poor compared to what you could get with other engines.
I'm not quite sure who these people are trying to compare this to something like Unreal or Cryengine but they obviously have no idea what they are talking about. This does not even begin to compare. |
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| Its okay, but compared to other engines it falls far behind |
Its feature set is nice, but if you're serious about game dev, there are much better solutions out there for you. Many like comparing it to the
CryEngine, but its definitely not even close to that level. It's more comparable to Blitz and Dark Basic level, with a few more fancy features.
Performance is something I would consider horrible. Its very slow, so if you are wanting to target a wide range of end users for your app then
its simply not going to happen (even with plenty of optimization).
Its fairly stable, and I didnt run into many problems, which is pretty good considering that there isnt a large team behind the development of the
engine.
Support is also very very weak. Getting straightforward answers is like pulling teeth sometimes. The forum community is also quite rude at
times, including the main developer.
Ease of use is okay if you're a programmer. If you're an artist you'll definitely have a hard time with it, and expect to run into a myriad of
problems. But even for programmers it can be problematic as well.
This engine does have plenty of potential to become something really good if a team was assembled to take it to the next level. But seeing how
other indie engines out there like Torque, Unity and UDK are moving forward quickly, LE2 is starting to fall far behind very quickly.
Overall if you're a hobbyist, then its not bad if you just want to play around with it, but dont expect to finish any game within a reasonable
amount of time, in fact there arent any completed and published games from this engine yet, so that in itself is not a good sign. |
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| Excellent. |
When I first started to look for an engine I demo'd as many as I could, in the end the choice (for me) was simple. Leadwerks Engine 2, and as soon as the upgrade was available to 2.3, I had no reservations about going that route too.
Ease of Use:
Extremely easy to use, currently I use Blitzmax, C++ and now lua. The wiki documentation has all the engine commands along with their syntax for the three languages I use. There are tutorials with new ones in the works. A big plus was the helpful and friendly user community that has been a true source for help with just about every aspect of the engine, from programming to graphics and modelling issues.
Features:
Packed full, and still growing. Even now after upgrading to 2.3 last November I am still trying to get to "play" with all the features, and that certainly is not a complaint, considering some of the new ideas and features being talked about and currently being worked on I have plenty to be getting on with.
Stability:
I have had no problems at all in this regard. I have a pretty standard run of the mill, mid ranged PC, and it all simply flies along. On a side note when searching for an engine I read quite a few reviews, one of the complaints about this engine, from a few, is it does not support low spec hardware, well if you have to boot your PC with a shovel full of coal and a cranking handle and only when the wind is in a certain direction you really only have yourselves to blame for missing out on the delights a pretty standard run of the mill, mid ranged PC can bring.
Support:
The developer Josh Klint has always been very helpful, and as stated in "Ease of use" the helpful and friendly user community has been a true source of help with just about every aspect of the engine and game design in general. |
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| Lightweight engine capable of competing with the heavyweights |
There are many complaints about the engine having high requirements, and these are quite unfounded. Even in May 2008. The requirements were far from extreme, a GeForce 7 series card was not expensive, which is about the only hardware requirement for the engine. Processor-wise, games written with this engine could need as low as 1.5 GHz to work, so the requirements are quite low.
The graphics are rendered in OpenGL, and the engine requires that a graphics card that supports OpenGL 1.2 be present. Due to not requiring DirectX 10, with this engine, you could theoretically have a next-gen title, playing on Windows 2000 - whereas most other equally capable engines require at least Windows Vista for DX 10 support.
Many indie developers will undoubtedly have played around with many cheap 3D engines, most have the same hardware limitation, 8 lights. With Leadwerks 2.1 and up there is no limit to the number of lights, and the performance is not hit very hard by large numbers of lights either.
Post-processing effects are made simple with the addition of 'Framewerk' an optional extra that is bundled with the engine at no extra charge. Which is useful for programmers who are not especially shader-literate.
Whilst most of the engine seems too good for its price, there are one or two very minor issues. The first is networking: Networking was a late addition and it costs and additional $50 to upgrade to a 2.3 licence from a 2.0 licence (2.0 is no longer on sale, so new users have to fork out an extra $50 for this, regardless). For $50 you might expect an example packet-set to demonstrate tracking numerous players. Their health, items, world position or even which avatar they chose. In reality, what you get UDP only with only one example of sending a single string, followed by receiving one. Reliability and sequencing are available, but it seems that someone has missed the point of UDP by a country mile. UDP is not designed to be reliable nor to ensure correct sequencing of packets. TCP is designed to do this, and it does so without using RAM or CPU cycles. Hence the reason that TCP is still in widespread use, TCP is also better suited to multi-threading, but multithreading a very minor issue, as the engine is not thread-safe anyway. With winsock available for free, providing both TCP and UDP support, the upgrade seems to be a large rip-off. However, in the engine's defence, the 2.3 upgrade does offer more than just networking support.
The other issue is assets. The 3D model format is proprietary, and whilst plugins are freely available for most 3D packages, it still can be a little confusing making sure you do everything correctly so that after exporting your models, all the textures and animations are correct. Despite being proprietary the file format is available so it doesn't make it any harder for your work to be used without your authorisation. Additionally, the only way of protcting your assets at the moment is with a password protected zip file. It's not possible to load models directly from an address in RAM, which means even if you encrypt your files, you still have to place them out on the hard drive so they can be loaded into your game.
Aside from those two small issues the engine is extremely good for its price. Almost as if it's a limited introductory offer. Additionally, the listed issues are only really likely to impact larger, more successful titles. The engine is backed by a strong, friendly community. This is rather lucky as aside from a wiki, which could probably be updated a little more frequently, they are the best form of support. Leadwerks Software appears to be a one-man company, and so it seems a little unfair to score the support so negatively. But unfortuntely this is probably a harshly accurate reflection. It seems like the engine's developer has a choice of either:
Help those that get stuck, but have hardly any time to improve the engine. or, Hope the community can help instead, and devote more time to the engine, with the latter being the apparent choice. |
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| Aurora is GROSSLY MISTAKEN |
To Aurora's review to NOT RECOMMEND this engine.
First off, the GMF file format IS PROTECTED, and assest's CAN NOT be modified. Also, if you really want to protect more that that, then you can load ALL the assests into a password protected PAK file, that only your coding has access to.
second, I think your recommendation of GG is quite funny, because their system absolutely has NO protection on assets or the scripting... Now with the LUA, you can even encrypt the lua script, password protect the PAK file, and viola, source protected.
Third, if you think for $150 you should get access to the source, go to GG and pay them $150 and demand the source. Good luck.
For now $200, you can not find a better engine,and you will NOT feel like your money was waisted.
And yes, I have TGEA, DARKPro, BlitxMax, RealmCrafter and RealmCrafter PRo, and ALL of them, I don't even remotely feel like I got a good deal. |
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| overall basic somewhat poor |
Something like Abyssal Engine is better than this even if more expensive and doesn't support all the latest FX because it's coded properly in pure C++ and has a much better tool set. Anything in C would be better...
This engine is poor because it is written in BlitzMax. A very amateur language. It's performance seems poor on anything other than the best most expensive 3D cards which would hurt sales of a product built on it.
It uses Newton Game Dynamics for physics which is just a free Physics library that anyone can download and use. Yet the website states that it's "the most precise" system in the world which is just plain BS.
Also there are no commercial games that have ever been published with this engine as far as I know which means no serious professional company cares to use it which is very telling in itself I suppose.
It's basically just a poorly coded rendering engine IMO which concentrates far too much on stuffing all kinds of meaningless "FX" into it rather than having good tools and proper coding conventions. |
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