Search This Blog

Friday, November 20, 2015

BSP's SCI-FI weapons pack

My original BSP weapons (pack 1) review is here.

I have been waiting a long time for something like this.  I've had a Sci-Fi project on the back burner which I have wanted to do for a long... LONG time.  Years before even doing anything with FPSC:R.

So without hesitation, I purchased the kit.




  Hot damn.  Sci-Fi always gets the blood pumping.

 I was not disappointed.

This kit cost a meager 8 dollars; that's a pittance for what you get:

5 guns, one low price.
Lets review the 5 weapons given:
You get the IronFist Shotgun.  I have to say as a firearms owner and enthusiast - this thing is awesome.  It behaves EXACTLY as I want a "Space Shotgun" to behave.  It fires out of an eight round drum magazine and the animation is smooth as butter.  It's easy to handle and frankly just feels good.  

Next up is the Quasar Gun; this is a full-auto carbine which has a good bit of recoil.  Of the bunch, its my least favorite aesthetically though it does have a pretty nice alien feel.  I really enjoy watching the drum rotate as it fires.  It features a thirty-two round box magazine which then feeds into some kind of accumulator drum that rotates.  There's one minor flaw and really my only complaint here.  If you really go frame by frame on the box magazine it shows some pretty gigantic bullets.  I don't really care honestly because it happens too fast for the user to notice but it is a fault and bears mentioning.  That said, ejected shell casings are PERFECT on all weapons - no more full cartridge ejections! 

The S4-VC6 pistol is a fantastic weapon; it's a nice all around weapon with good visibility of the gloved hand.  Now normally I'd complain about how you can see the hands but honestly I don't plan on using non-standard weapons and if I do, I will simply reduce the weapon's visibility via configuration files.
A pre-alpha WIP screenshot of my upcoming space-shooter.

The Sniper R400 Panther is a well rounded sniping weapon.  I have a confession to make - I hate sniping weapons in this game engine.  They are quite simply too strong.  They make the game exceptionally easy on a number of levels.  This gun, however, feels balanced and decent with it's twelve round stick magazine- unlike the base level 'remington hunting rifle' that comes with gameguru.  It's a good weapon in most circumstances and basically acts as a long range 'upgrade' to the pistol.  It's also gorgeous in the right lighting.

The Typhoon is straight out awesome.  At first I thought "oh great, another full auto gun."  But in truth, it's a weapon unto itself with a fifty round magazine of what are effectively pistol rounds.  It does less damage than the Quasar but slams out the rounds so fast and cleanly it is my preferred weapon of the bunch.  This little monster feels fantastic and is right at home in any Sci-Fi game.

One important note: All of these guns actually come with an alt-fire mode.  Literally press left-alt and you get a melee attack animation that's not shown in the video or really documented at all.  Your character lowers his gun and throws out a quick right hook.  It's a nice freebie and makes the 'what do I do if I have no ammo' situation less difficult to work around.

Overall opinion and observations: This pack is extremely well priced.  You get 6 weapons for the price of 4, effectively, which is a helluva deal.  The weapons all feel unique enough and their respective weapon boxes/ammo boxes look great too.  The muzzle flash on all of these guns is SPOT on and looks fantastic.  The minor flaws of the other weapon packs (recoil, gun feel, ejected weapon cartridges, etc) have all been clearly lessons that were learned from.  BSP has outdone himself.

If I had to buy just one: It's 8 dollars.  Just buy the pack.  There's really no reason not to.  But if you are absolutely trying to be as cheap as possible - get the Typhoon.  It's too fun not to have.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Game-Guru v1.1

The 'FPS Creator Reloaded' engine is now called "Game Guru".   I rather liked reloaded in the title, but Game-Guru probably has wider appeal, so I can't fault them on that.  Actually it's been called Game-Guru for quite some time; it's only recently that it I came back to playing around with it.

And that's literally all it is, playing around.

I have plans to make an FPS based around a combination of some of my favorite games from the 90's.  I don't plan to go over the top with it, just simply to make something functional that in my thought process doesn't suck.

So I've had a little time to mess around with the Guru v1.1 update.  I'm impressed.  Speeds are up significantly vs previous builds (and speed was always an issue).  I'm running a Radeon 5870 and never saw my FPS dip below 30-40ish on a heavily populated scene.  This is contrasted to regular dips in the 13-20 range previously.  On top of that (and more importantly, I believe) the user interface is VASTLY more consistent.

I mean... it's night and day.  On scenes when I was unable to click on lights, or internal items in rooms I can now click them with ease.  Scaling and sizing is significantly easier as it's less 'extreme' than it was before.  Previously you'd  pull the bar and potentially get a MONSTROUSLY large item or impossibly small.  Now you have a much more intelligent and granular level of control.

Also, the grouping of objects is a godsend.  Click and drag, how I missed you.

Now all we need is copy and paste and it's a real party.  A unity-style 'object group container' would be fantastic.

That said, as a development tool this has come a LONG way since the first few iterations of FPS creator reloaded.  I was an early, early backer after being a longtime user of Acknex A8/7/6 and Lite-C (which I still desperately love but unfortunately it's just way too outdated).  The early iterations were something interesting, something of a blend of older FPS creator X9/10 engines.  Then Lee got the great idea to work on a terrain engine and while initially it really limited the possibilities it's come so far.

And really that's what has kept me going.  The small community of game-guru devs is tight knit but awesome.  The developers are constantly making improvements and always listening to feedback and that means a lot.  I half expected with the 'steam release' that it'd just be a situation of 'ok guys, have fun' but it seems like they just keep improving.  I'm cool with that.

On top of that they have their light mapper which does some pretty impressive things.  A few more little pieces come together and this thing will really be in business.  And yes, it's no unreal engine but the reality is the cost of assets for this (often time, high quality) are so absurdly low it's hard to pass up as at least a means to do mockups if nothing more.

Kudos to the guys at game-guru.com for their continued quality of work, for such a small team it's very impressive.

Welcome to the new blog!

Thanks for coming.  As you can see, I've redone the place in honor of the rebranding of 'FPS Creator Reloaded' to 'Game-Guru'  (http://www.game-guru.com)
All the old archived blog pages are at: http://fpscreloadedreview.blogspot.com

I've got tons of reviews over there and some good original content if you're interested.  Here's some hotlinks to the 'good ones' (In my humble opinion):

A list of my reviews (albeit outdated, given the volume of new updates by the authors):
These are from oldest (First) to newest (Last).
Thanks!