This really is a nice engine! I jumped ship from DGDK as I could not get dynamic lighting and shadowing working in either DBPro or DGDK and saw no sign of this ever arriving in the near future. It's taken a little bit of work to get my 3DWS level loaded in LE2 but it's now working complete with glorious unified dynamic lighting with all objects and terrain casting soft shadows. What's more it's all running with a really good frame rate too!
The bonus is also, it’s far easier to code and I'm still able to use C++
As much as I enjoyed programming using the Dark Basic products I don't think I'll ever come back to them as I am now convinced that the Leadwerks engine is a whole generation ahead in terms of quality. I'm sure I'll find problems and challenges with this engine too but I'd rather put the work into something that is in my opinion going to produce a far better quality end result.
Josh is constantly in the forums responding to peoples questions and one gets the feeling that any problems that arise are going to be addressed, as have any of the issues I have already raised. New functionality like deferred lighting is already being talked about and probably likely to be delivered in the first update promising huge extensions to the lighting possibilities and a possible speed increase too.
The documentation is a little sparse at the moment, but the Wiki is expanding all the time and there is a concerted effort going on now to add examples in the major languages supported and also introduce some tutorials.
No one engine is going to suit everyone, so you have to make your choices carefully, but I thought I'd give some feedback on my findings so far.
No matter how good your code is, someone will improve on it
