LawMaker Game Engine Overview - Part 1

The LawMaker Game Engine is a full-feature commercial game engine that is built to provide game developers with a fully mature game development suite that rivals that of other commercial game engines (Source, Unreal, FarCry and Doom3). With just a fraction of the cost of other commercial engines, you and your team can see your dream - your game vision come to life. When you use the LawMaker xgame engine for your next game, project, and/or 3D simulation, you can rest assured that the design goal of LawMaker is to make game development easy for both artists and programmers.

For artist, you are provided with a powerful editor that is designed to minimize programmer aid so you can develop your level the way you see fit and manage your art asset - all in one place.  For programmer, you are provided with a development suite that provides the power of Object-Oriented Game Programming, LawMaker Native libraries, lua libraries and a great Visual Studio-like environment to develop in.

Features that make the LawMaker Engine a great toolset for your next killer game (indie or professional):

• Powerful rendering engine that supports the latest DirectX9 cards as well as older generation cards such as Riva TNTs. (Deliver to a wide PC market)
• Advance scene management that allows for large indoor and outdoor worlds that render ULTRA-fast.  You are only limited by your game vision!
• Mature toolsets such as the LawMaker editor and viewer that allows you and your team to work in an AAA editor environment.
• Manage your digital art content within the editor to build, transform and update with a single click of a button. 
• Built-in native game code and lua game code to allow you to get your game up and running fast.  Use the extensive library functionality that are exposed to you as a developer to create any type of 3D game genre you like.
• Coding framework that provides AI support, AI network path nodes, HUD rendering, Inventory, Weapon (dualies), Gameplay, object serialization, math library, etc.
• Development Wiki Forum for licensees to communicate, share and collaborate on ideas, innovation and LawMaker features.
• WYSIWYG Viewer tool that allows other art personnel within your team to develop parts of your game asset without using the editor.  Be able to drag-n-drop data such as textures, materials onto your prefabs, models, etc.  View your geometry assets with flat shading, vertex-lighting and per-pixel lighting.  Allow artist who work externally from you to build your textures, models, animation, prefabs.  Producers can view and approve data before it is checked into the editor. All data rendered is the same look as it is in the engine.
• Superior customer service that will make sure your concerns and questions are answered.

For a more comprehensive overview of the engine feature set, please visit our technology section.

Continue to the In-Game Feature Section

The LawMaker Editor And You

Intuitive Art Content Workflow that allows you to easily manage each of your art component via a project and solution file.	Manage textures, prefabs, shaders, models, animation, script code, levels, etc through the dockable explorer window.

Set preferences such as build location, intermediate data storage, file extension mapping to resource data using the project customization dialog.	Output window provides detail information when performing operations such as compilation, art content builds, etc.

Array of dockable\floating toolbars for fast access to normal LawMaker commands (CSG operations, Primitive Construction, texture wrapper operations, render modes, etc).	A single resource viewer that is the window into all your art content. Just click on the resource item in the workspace explorer to view it in the resource explorer.

Map all exposed commands in LawMaker using the editor for optimal production. Build, compile, navigation, UV mapping, CSG, Undo\Redo, Copy\Paste, Load, Save, etc.	Provides the attributes of all editable game entities in LawMaker. Lua scripters are able expose their game entities to level designers for modification.

Fast access to routine operations on any entity via the popup context menu.

• Be able to switch between dynamic lighting and shadows to static radiosity-based lighting.
• BSP, Portal, PVS and occluders allow for both static and dynamic culling of level geometry and game entities.
• Seamless rendering of both complex interior and large outdoor worlds.

Sectoring out your levels can be pain-free with the portal plane viewer. Just click on a set of planes to isolate your sector.	Take total control of your level compilation process. Change compiler options such as csg construction, bsp optimization, sectoring, pvs calculation, lightmap, physics, etc.

• All game entities in LawMaker are accessible via an object hierarchy.
• All class instance in LawMaker provide RTTI, serialization support and garbage collection.
• Leverage the native game code of LawMaker to build your game. Character, Weapon, Weapon Dualies, Activators, Inventory, Gameplay, Movement, AI, AI Goals are just some of the prebuilt support in LawMaker that is available to your programming team.
• Develop and compile all your code within the editor. Use the output window to check your compilation results.
• Now Available!Visual LawLua IDE for developing, debugging and deploying your LawMaker game.

Color-coded text editor for LawMaker lua script programmers. Edit, compile and see your game entities modified without ever starting the game in the editor.

• Build Large Expansive outdoor worlds for flight simulation, epic battles, cross-country racing, etc.
• Raise, Lower, and smooth your heightmap in realtime.
• Paint terrain sediments in real-time using the texture-splatting technology. Choose the amount of blending influence that each of your texture will have on the final pixel of your terrain.
• Texture Terrain blending tool that allows you to setup base sediment contribution.
• Paint foliage (grass, tree, shrubs, bushes, etc) onto your terrain.

Terrain tools that allow you to manipulate your heightmap (rasise, lower, average, etc) in real-time. Use brushes such as circle or square. Change the size or the strength of your brush.	Setup the sediment layers for your terrain and paint them onto your heightmap in real-time.

Use the terran texture blender tool to generate the texture terrain blending amount. Terrain blender takes such factor as altitude, slope, skew, angle constrants, azimuth, etc. Save your blendings for reuse into other terrains.

• Physics support using ODE. Editor currently supports simple ODE objects, composite ODE objects (made up of simple ODE geometry) and complex ODE objects (made up of simple, complex and joint objects).
• Vehicle support for land, air and sea.
• Constraints such as joints, hinges, etc.
• Editor allows for the creation of physics entity objects that you can populate in your world.
• Real-time preview of physic object interaction.

Use the physics editor to generate complex or complex physics entities. Use base physic primitives to build ontop of your renderable entity. Attach physic entities using joints and breakable joints.

Physics entities before execution in real-time in the editor.	Physics entities after executing in real-time in the editor.

• Develop environmental effects such as fire, rain, snow, waterfalls, fog, dust storm, volumetric lighting, etc.
• Real-time preview of your particles in action using the editor
• Attach particles to any game entity to get effects such as projectile trails, muzzle flashes, etc.

Use the particle editor tool to develop your custom particles for your game. Rain, sleet, snow, fire, waterfall, clouds, lighting, volumetric fog and lighting.	Self-illuminating fire created by a particle system that emits smoke, fire, sparks and illumination.

In-Game Story Telling And Cinematic Editing

• Convey your storyline using the cinematic editor. Choose whether your audience will view it in widescreen or fullscreen.
• Apply spline pathing to your cinematic movements for smoother fly throughs.
• Apply post-buffer rendering effects such as motion blur, black/white, sepia, old-movie flicker or build your own!
• Coming Soon! New Intuitive UI that makes it much easier to key-frame your cinematic workflow.

Draw out your cinematic fly paths for in-game story telling.

Bot Navigation And Waypoint Editing

• Provide your AI with detail information regarding your level layout.
• Preview your character traverse your level layout in real-time.

Add waypoints to your level to build a navigational map for your AI. Setup sniperpoints, hiding points, etc.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE LAWMAKER GAME ENGINE

Continue to the In-Game Feature Set Section