- Migrating to Leadwerks Game Engine 5 - 11 November 2025
As part of our long-term plan to consolidate users into a single app ID on Steam, we are migrating all Ultra Engine users to the Leadwerks app ID. This week, your Steam account will be automatically upgraded to include Leadwerks Game Engine.What this means for you:You will automatically receive Leadwerks Game Engine in your Steam library.If you purchased Ultra Engine Pro, you'll also receive the Leadwerks Professional Edition DLC, which includes C++ programming capabilities.We're also excited to announce that Leadwerks Game Engine 5 will be launching soon. Rest assured, this is the same powerful application formerly known as "Ultra Engine," so your workflow and projects will remain unchanged.Thank you for your patience and support during this transition. We look forward to seeing you during the next game tournament and beyond!
- Level Design Session - 7 November 2025
We’re excited to invite all our community members to a special live developer meeting happening this Saturday morning on our Discord server. This is a fantastic opportunity to connect directly with out community, ask questions, and get the latest updates firsthand.In this special session, we will share our experience using our editor's powerful level design features in to bring our vision of the SCP Foundation to life. Discover the creative techniques and tools we are using to craft detailed, realistic environments. We will also review the new 3D Spatialization tutorial series, designed to provide you with comprehensive knowledge about three-dimensional geometry for game development, with nearly three hours of video footage and many code examples.Mark your calendar and join us this Saturday morning on our Discord server. We look forward to seeing you there!Join us on Discord
- Ultra Engine Pro 1.0.1 Released - 13 October 2025
Ultra Engine Pro 1.0.1 is released, with a host of improvements and fixes, as we prepare to exit early access.Game Menu SystemA new game menu system has been added into the default project template, for both C++ and Lua. This will enable a menu system for your game, along with options for graphics settings, and automatic save and load of your game's settings in a JSON file. Since all the code is included in the project, you can modify it, remove it, or use it as-is.Lua Entity ScriptsThe Lua entity scripts system has been updated to allow attaching of properties and functions directly to entity objects. This eliminates the need to flip back and forth between the script and entity object, and allows a more straightforward approach to game programming that takes full advantage of Lua's dynamically typed design. Additionally, the need to call RegisterComponent() in your entity scripts is el…
- Ultra Engine Pro 1.0.0 Released - 4 September 2025
Ultra Engine Pro 1.0.0 is here with new features, improved usability, access to thousands of free 3D assets, and hours of new video tutorials. This release marks the last major update before we exit Early Access on Steam.Lua Language Server IntegrationFor the first time, we're able to offer first-class autocompletion and syntax hints for Lua. Integration with Lua Language Server transforms our built-in script editor into a professional-grade development environment, combined with all the fun and productivity of Lua.New Video TutorialsTwo new video tutorial series will get you up to speed in record time. The Crash Course series walks you through all the major editor features, and the Lua lessons teach you the fundamentals of programming with Lua, starting from scratch. Written articles are also provided with each lesson. More Free Game AssetsOur integrated downloads manager has been upda…
- Ultra Engine Pro 0.9.9 Released - 26 May 2025
Ultra Engine 0.9.9 is here with new features, improved usability, and access to thousands of free 3D assets to use in your games. This new update is the most stable and user-friendly version of our engine and editor to date. Revised Interface We've made great improvements to the user interface and workflow, based on conversations with the community and usability testing. Mouse tools have been moved into a left-side column for convenience and greater ease of use. A slick new color scheme gives the whole UI a distinctive feel. The new icon set really pops, but it's also functional, making it easier to identify buttons so you can work more quickly. Built-in Code Editor Due to popular demand, we've brought back the integrated code editor, with a slick new interface that looks great and provides a clutter-free coding environment. A new Lua debugger provides insight into your game code, witho…
- XFORM Post-Mortem - 20 December 2024
Join us on Discord for a GDC-quality presentation detailing the challenges and solutions we encountered during the development of the first-person shooter example, internally known as XFORM. The presentation will be full of helpful advice every game developer needs to know.
- Ultra Engine Pro 0.9.8 Adds Material Painting, Tessellation, and an FPS example - 12 December 2024
Ultra Engine 0.9.8 is here with a groundbreaking material painting system, robust tessellation, and a first-person shooter template to provide a head start on your next game. New features and enhancements make it easier than ever to create games and simulations that look great and run fast. Material Painting Our new material painting system brings your scenes to life with unique details painted everywhere. You can easily turn plain tiled textures into lifelike environments in a few seconds with this game-changing feature. Tessellation Made Practical The new update features comprehensive integration of hardware tessellation, resulting in a practical feature you can use every day. Per-vertex and per-edge displacement settings provide fine control so you never have to worry about cracks and seams. Combine tessellation with material painting to turn flat walls and floors into realistic 3D s…
- Ultra Engine Pro 0.9.7 Adds Decals, Particles, and More - 27 August 2024
The latest update to Ultra Engine, version 0.9.7, introduces an all-new decals system, particle emitters, enhanced entity and material properties, and improved flowgraphs. New features and enhancement make it easier than ever to create performant games and simulations that look great and run smoothly. Decals A new decals system built on our clustered forward+ renderer allows you to display stains, graffiti, puddles, and other details to enhance the appearance of your scenes. Because they are rendered in a single pass, there are no z-fighting issues, and decals work great with transparent surfaces. Color, normals, metalness / roughness, and even light emission are all supported and blend seamlessly with PBR surfaces in your world. The new decal layer setting give you control over which objects decals will appear on. Particles Particle emitters make their first appearance in Ultra Engine…
- Ultra Engine Pro 0.9.6 Introduces a new Foliage System - 15 July 2024
Ultra Engine 0.9.6 is here, with a new foliage system that replaces and improves the vegetation system in Leadwerks. Whereas Leadwerks used a geometry shader, Ultra uses a compute shader that provides more power and better performance. The biggest improvement is the inclusion of sublayers, which allow a mesh layer to use multiple variations to easily populate a scene with a variety of different objects, while spacing them out in a natural way. Imposters Imposters are also added, which allows high-poly meshes to be reduced to just a single quad when they are viewed from a distance. A series of images are generated for color, normal, and roughness/metalness values, to provide an accurate representation of the object from any angle. Nature Starter Kit The first DLC for Ultra Engine is the essential Nature Starter Kit, which provides trees, plants, and rocks for your outdoor environments. G…
- Version 0.9.6 - 8 July 2024
Existing projects must be updated via the project manager. See "Synchronization" here: https://www.ultraengine.com/learn/projectmanager The previous version 0.9.5 is still available as an optional branch you can opt into, if you need to for any reason.
- Weekend Workshop - 10 May 2024
Join us on Discord to review the week's progress and discuss continue development. This week we will review the finished foliage system and discuss ongoing development of our sample game XFORM.
- Weekend Workshop - 26 April 2024
Join us on Discord to review the week's progress and discuss continue development. This week we will walk you through a short tutorial on how to use the new foliage system.
- Ultra Engine 0.9.5 Released - 14 April 2024
Version 0.9.5 fully supports AMD cards, with a new OpenGL 4.6 rendering backend for improved stability and performance. A lot of new shaders are used and existing projects must be updated using the sync tool in the Project Manager dialog. It is recommended that you make a copy of your existing projects and keep it for use with version 0.9.4 before syncing the project. See the documentation for more information on updating projects. You should also delete the file "C:\ProgramData\Ultra Engine\settings.json" to reset your settings before running the new version. A new world properties dialog replaces the scene properties in the side panel, with support for sun and fog settings, environment reflection maps, and post-processing effects. A new selection tool is available in the toolbar, along with drag-selection mode that allows you to select a group of objects at once. The flowgraph editor…
- Weekend Workshop - 30 March 2024
Join us on Discord to review the week's progress and discuss continue development. This week we will discuss the new mesh layers system, for terrain vegetation, rocks, etc.
- Ultra Engine Pro 0.9.3 - 29 January 2024
Ultra Engine 0.9.3 is here, with usability improvements, bug fixes, and new AI-powered features to make game development easier. "Futuristic Room" by Dennis Cliofis Object creation has been overhauled with a more visual approach that lets you easily select the object you want to add to the scene. You can also insert a new object into the scene tree, under the selected node, or in the scene root. A new component creation tool simplifies new component creation for C++ and Lua. A new smoked glass effect will appear behind some windows. Besides looking great, this provides additional visual cues about the transparency of an image or model. AI-powered features are now available on the Steam build with support for text-to-image and seamless texture stitching. Additionally, more than 60 bug reports have been resolved since initial launch. New commands: - Camera::SetOrder - Camera::SetSweptCull…
- 0.9.2 - 31 December 2023
This is a bug fix update. See the bug reports forum for all recent changes: https://www.ultraengine.com/community/forum/120-bug-reports/
