Leadwerks Game Engine News

Fall is in the air. The leaves are changing colors, people are bundling up, and game developers are itching to try their hand at another community game tournament. How does it work? For 30 days, the Leadwerks community builds small playable games. Some people work alone and some team up with others. At the end of the month, on Halloween day, we release our projects to the public and play each other's games. The point is to release something short and sweet with a constrained timeline, which has resulted in many odd and wonderful mini games for the community to play.

WHEN: The tournament begins Sunday, October 1, and ends Tuesday, October 31st at the stroke of midnight.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE: Publish your Halloween-or-other-themed game to Steam Workshop or upload it to itch.io before the deadline. You can work as a team or individually. Use blogs to share your work and get feedback as you build your game. If you need models for your game, we've got a Halloween Model Pack for you to use for free from Leadwerks Workshop.

Games must have a preview image, title, and contain some minimal amount of gameplay (there has to be some way to win the game) to be considered entries. It is expected that most entries will be simple, given the time constraints.

On November 1st we will post a roundup blog featuring your entries.

Black as your Soul by RagingMages is a short horror puzzle game about a scientific corporation trying to do everything to save mankind from total extinction.

Sometimes it is better to not play god, sadly it is too late.

In this game you have to explore, fight, and solve puzzles to uncover the truth.

Made in Leadwerks Engine, the world is set in a near future where water has become scarce and a very precious asset.

Play time is around 25 to 40 minutes, depending on your play-style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Yme56DQr8

Leadwerks Game Engine 4.4 is now available on Steam.  This version adds a new GUI system, support for inverse kinematics, and enhanced visuals.  The free update goes out today to over 20,000 paid users on Steam.

Leadwerks Game Engine 4.4 sees the introduction of Leadwerks GUI, a system for creating resolution-independent in-game menus.  Custom GUI elements can be created with Lua script, or an item can be selected from a number of pre-built GUI scripts including buttons, tabbed panels, slider controls, and more.  Leadwerks GUI is designed for the future, with support for 4K and 8K displays, as well as VR menus of any resolution.



Inverse kinematics are now supported, with two new joints that provide fine control over the orientation of physics bodies.  These can be used to control the end effector in an IK setup, or for precise control of moving objects.  The Leadwerks physics system has been updated to the latest Newton Dynamics 3.14.



Post-processing effects have been updated to enhance visual quality.  Bloom, HDR iris adjustment, SSAO, and fog have all been updated for improved graphics.  A new shader has been added to the vegetation system that scattering millions of rocks across a landscape to make terrain more detailed and realistic.



The Leadwerks learning materials have been converted into an all-new documentation system.  This allows easier searching and browsing of tutorials, API documentation, and examples.  A new series of tutorials has been added to teach the basics of C++ programming, in addition to the existing lessons on Lua scripting.

Leadwerks Game Engine can be purchased at a discount during the Steam summer sale.  All Leadwerks games have Steamworks support integrated out-of-the-box and are ready to publish through Steam Direct.

Let's take a moment to review some of the great new features coming soon in Leadwerks Game Engine 4.4. The release is due out at the end of the month, but you can try it now by opting into the beta branch on Steam.

Leadwerks GUI
Leadwerks GUI provides you with an in-game GUI to handle all your game menus and interfaces. Each widget uses a Lua script that controls drawing and user interaction. You can choose from our provided scripts to create panels, buttons, sliders, and other interface elements, or create your own. Oh, and Leadwerks GUI is designed to be 100% resolution-independent, so it will render pixel-perfect at 4K, 8K, or any other arbitrary resolution.
Read more

Enhanced Visuals
Some of our post-processing effects have been updated, and a few new effects are included to make your games more beautiful.
Read more

Inverse Kinematics
The new Kinematic joint in Leadwerks 4.4 gives you precise control over the orientation of any physical object. You can even use this to create advanced IK systems for robotics (games are okay too!).
Read more

New Documentation System
All documentation has been migrated to a brand new easy-to-navigate system that lets you easily find the information you need.
Read more

These updates will be available soon. Thanks for your support!

An update for version 4.4 beta is now available.  The Newton Dynamics library has been updated to the current version.  Vehicles are temporarily unavailable, but everything else should work.  The Newton DLLs have been moved into external DLLs, which allows the author of Newton to debug his own physics code in Leadwerks from Visual Studio.

You can get the update by opting into the beta branch on Steam.