As I began the 6th and last series of the 3D Buzz tutorials – Creating a 3D OpenGL engine – I decided I’d like to focus less on the core mathematics of displaying pixels and more on the creation and design of actual games. I’m not a very good mathematician after-all, and getting into that kind of stuff requires low-level efficient code. Code I really don’t have the skill to write just yet.

So I started looking around for graphics engine libraries that’ll allow me to focus on the game itself. There are a startlingly huge number of graphics engines out there, both free and not, and while I went through quite a damn few I want to talk about just one.

Leadwerks

http://www.leadwerks.com

I’ve been using the Leadwerks engine for about 6 months now and I’m loving it. Why?

1. The Engine – Built from the ground up to be a user-friendly and complete package. Modelled after the Crytek Crysis engine, it has all the features one could possibly need for both a wide-open game (Like Crysis) or an in-doors game, complete with a real-time sandbox editor. I think what I love most is that it is a very OO-centric engine. The code is just so clean and easy to understand – The huge plus for someone starting out like me.
2. Documentation - The documentation is all built up on a very-well organised and clean wiki, which you can freely browse for yourself. Josh, the creator, has made video tutorials for almost all aspects of the engine. This means you can pretty much just jump in, follow the tutorials, and you WILL have a running game in under a day.
3. Community - The Leadwerks forums, also freely available, is a small but very helpful community. Josh, the creator, is often on there as well. You’ll find that any questions will be answered in under a day.
4. Cost - One of the more problematic issues about Leadwerks. The cost is $100US upfront. Meaning you need to dish out early to really start. On the other hand, once you pay the initial fee you’re done. You get the engine for life, including any updates, and you can do whatever you want with your application. Which makes this engine one of the cheapest going around.

All in all, Leadwerks seems to be the perfect engine for someone who has a basic understanding of OO C++ and would like to dive into game development. Although the initial $100US fee can be a bit daunting for some, I highly recommend it.

What You’ll Need

• The Scribblenauts NDS image file: Downloaded from your favourite torrent search engine.
• An Emulator, of which there are currently two options. There are reported problems for both of them so you’ll need to find the one that works best for you:
  • Note: The following has been tested on Windows XP and Windows 7.
  • NO$GBA 2.6a – Old but very good emulator. Very basic. Reported problems with Scribblenauts:
    • Very low quality crackly sound.
    • There appears to be a subtle dull blue hue over the screen.
  • DeSmuME 0.9.4 - Another mature emulator. Has many options including the nice ability to increase the size of the screen. Reported problems with Scribblenauts:
    • The sky appears to be the wrong color (white instead of blue) – It may not be displaying all the layers.

Instructions (Using DeSmuME)

1. Open DeSmuME 0.9.4 change the following settings:
   1. Config -> 3D Settings -> Choose SoftRasterizer as the Renderer.
   2. Config -> Emulation Settings -> Tick Use 8MB debugger mode when starting execution.
   3. Done! Reload the cartridge and play!

Instructions (Using NO$GBA)

1. Open NO$GBA 2.6a and run Scribblenauts, then change the following settings:
   1. Options -> Emulation Settings -> Change NDS Cartridge Backup Media to EEPROM 64KBytes.
   2. Options -> Save Options.
   3. Done! Reload the cartridge and play!

Always looking for feedback – Have you had success? Failure?

You Will Need

• Dungeon Keeper 2 - Obviously very hard to come by in legit form, so I think it is OK (Read: Still not legal) to leech from somewhere. Get it / buy it, then patch it:
  • Patch to v1.7 – DK2 needs to be patched to v1.7, the latest and last update. That too can be understandably hard to come by, so get your Google on.
• (Recommended) Dungeon Keeper 2 (Silver Edition) – The full DK2 game, but packed full of all 3 bonus packs, pre-patched to v1.7 and installs without a hitch. All thanks some some random die-hard fan. Can be found on many torrent trackers.

Instructions

Step 1. Install DK2 and update it to v1.7 if you need to. Attempting to run DK2 now should result in a crash to desktop.

Step 2. Right-click the DK2 desktop shortcut and click Properties. Click on the Compatibility tab and tick Run this program in compatibility mode for: and choose Windows XP (Service Pack 2). Apply and close the window.

Step 3. Launching DK2 now should get you in game. It appears that for some people that is all that needs to be done. But for me, and I suspect this is graphics card based, I get rather bad graphical artifacts in the form of pure black elements covering most of the screen. If you get these issues or similar, complete the 4th step.

Step 4. Go in game and proceed to the Graphics Options. Within this menu will be a Hardware Acceleration option. Disable it. OK out of the options and play a quick game such as the Pet Dungeon game mode. The reason for this is that the game doesn’t appear to save the options unless you go all the way in game and back out. Once in game, quit immediately and restart DK2.

Done! That is all there is to it.

This all works great, but my game crashes out randomly!

Tips:

• Running a dual monitor configuration? Try disabling your secondary monitor.
• Use Quick Save (ctrl+S) and Quick Load (ctrl+L) religiously.
• A known crash point is when dropping human NPCs in Pet Dungeon mode.

Please feel free to offer any feedback if you are still having issues.

You will need:

• GTA: Chinatown Wars – Probably worth buying legit and then ripping to the HDD. Or don’t. Pick up the game from somewhere. I guess just make sure it is in NDS format.
• No$gba Emulator 2.5c – This emulator works almost ‘out-of-the-box’ for GTA:CW. Apparently DeSmuME works as well if you manually compile the latest version straight from the SVN.

Instructions:

Step 1. Load up No$gba and go to Options > Emulation Setup. Change NDS Cartridge Backup Media to FRAM 32KBytes. Hit OK.

Step 2. Go to Options > Save Options to save the options permanently.

Step 3. You’re done! Drag ‘n’ drop the game in or open it from the File menu. Simple as that!