LeadWerks 3

Posted By: ratchet

LeadWerks 3 - 02/26/13 21:46

A serious contender is coming.

scripting and workflow video
You can see on comments a trial version coming next months, so very near laugh

Game with LE 3 (mobile or PC ?)

Art pipeline preview

It will be somewhat like Unity in terms of workflow and it has some flowgraph that is like code templates and visual code modules assembling.
You have a door script, just re use the flowgraph for ny games you make, same for fire torch, 3D effects or any other stuff.
Posted By: Toast

Re: LeadWerks 3 - 02/26/13 22:38

Interesting although I always kept thinking how "ugly" and blocky all that stuff looked. It also didn't really blow me away content wise and when it's about that normal map compression issue I'd rather think that something is wrong with his shader because the normal mapped material really looks extremely bad there - actually too bad in order to stay unnoticed everywhere else where compressed normal maps work perfectly whithout turning the appearance into a blocky mess. So in the end I don't think LE3 will become a serious "contender" for e.g. Unity...

BTW - is there already any pricing? The store on the website seems to be empty...
Posted By: ratchet

Re: LeadWerks 3 - 02/26/13 23:32

It is not delivered already to public.
LE 3 announcement
Posted By: Toast

Re: LeadWerks 3 - 02/27/13 00:20

Wow, in that announcement the price is told to be 999$ plus 999$ for mobile support. Weren't the old Leadwerks versions something in the 200-300$ price range or am I just mistaken here? Still the pricing seems pretty wrong to me especially when you develop for the mobile platforms...
Posted By: ratchet

Re: LeadWerks 3 - 02/27/13 18:58

I think it will be some revisions.
It will depend on what can do the engine, what features it will have , what workflow will it be.
I also find tha pretty expensive, but i htink it will be prices drop and i think we will see interesting and competitive prices laugh
Posted By: Toast

Re: LeadWerks 3 - 02/27/13 22:17

Well I browsed a bit through their forums and it seems the LE community recently is "not amused" being faced with those prices. It also seems that in terms of the PC version of the engine the new one is a step backwards from LE2 for whatever reasons that is (seems he had to rewrite tons of code to make it compatible to Android etc.). This list of negatives of LE3 really made me scratch my head when thinking about the pricing:
  • Currently a vastly more primitive renderer compared to LE2 or any other engines at the asking price, so no deferred rendering and no shader support
  • No support for real time shadowing
  • No support for terrain at all let alone streaming terrain
  • No support for a vegetation system
  • No inherent GUI support
  • No built in networking support
  • Limited physics support as I understand it (no joints for instance)
  • Reliance on flow graph building of scripted objects leaves you dependent on the provision and quality of such objects if you are unable to write them yourself which can seriously limit your game design options
  • No inherent plugin support to enable communities and third parties to add and embed functionality into the editor
  • Virtually no additional game development toolsets
  • A price which is comparable with a fully fledged engine with most of the above features
  • No given time scales as to when further functionality will be introduced (as yet)
  • No given promises that this will not incur additional cost (as yet)

Well it will be interesting to see how this turns out but I think the developer really went way too far when thinking about the pricing. Especially as he's going to wipe away all the hobbyists who might spend several hundred dollars but not 1000+. I also understand that several users are quite shocked as even when paying for LE3 they still cannot be sure that they won't have to pay again in order to get real time shadows or advanced shader support (because if that's not finished in the one year of free patches one gets then one has to buy the following patches and spend money yet again)...

So from that perspective I'm now even more sceptical about LE3. Even if he cuts the pricing in half or more the featureset still is pretty sad. Some flowcharts and a nice asset browser really don't make up for this...
Posted By: sivan

Re: LeadWerks 3 - 02/28/13 09:42

a lot of LE2 users moved to Esenthel engine currently, because of the news you mentioned above.
Posted By: ratchet

Re: LeadWerks 3 - 02/28/13 18:17

Yep some people have moved specially for features ready of Esenthel and low prices of Android.

I think things will change in prices, specially with more and more engines coming to indie domain and new versions coming :
Esenthel 2 , Shiva 2 ...

Let's wait some month.

But the engine i think can go very far and become very competitive in indie market.
Posted By: Toast

Re: LeadWerks 3 - 03/01/13 00:39

It seems the price did undergo a "small" correction and is now at 199$ instead of 999$ (although that might turn out to just be the upgrade price when you own LE2 so newcomers might have to pay around 400). Now that's a more realistic price although if 400 turns out to be the final price - well while it's okayish I still think that it's a little bit too much for this new engine which despite its name isn't a real successor to LE3... wink
Posted By: ratchet

Re: LeadWerks 3 - 03/02/13 11:07

Yes i agree , the price is a bit high compared to Esenthel platforms and features for 400$.
© 2024 lite-C Forums