Search This Blog

Monday, April 9, 2018

This Week in Game-Guru - 4/9/2018

Apologies for last week.  I missed the update completely as my day job as Chief Linux Systems Engineer is reaching it's yearly crescendo (culminating in early May) and so I'm finding myself exceptionally busy, compared to what I would only term the 'off season' where it's much easier to focus on secondary tasks, which unfortunately this blog falls into.

As such you may notice for a few weeks a reduced focus on this blog but I promise you it will return as soon as I can steadily manage it.  I'd like to give a quick shout-out to Graphix for a freebie he sent me (unsolicited) as thanks for the blog.  Give his products a look here - he's been doing some great things with the new PBR system. 


OFFICIAL GAME-GURU NEWS:


Not sure what I can say here.  Work continues, Preben is doing a lot of fantastic things with the shaders for DX11 but there's some serious issues that are still being worked on.  So as such we're stuck with a more updated public preview edition but hopefully will see movement forward towards a stable 'release' sometime soon.  To be sure, this is not the upgrade path I'd have chosen if I were Lee.

NEW PRODUCTS IN THE STORE:




Teabone (the king of clutter objects, IMO) has released a few new pieces of high quality clutter objects, notably some paintings.

There's also some interesting medieval horror objects by Lafette that literally the first words out of my mouth were (and I quote): "Wow!  That's.. really really nice.  I mean that's absolutely top shelf stuff."  And the best part is?  They're EXTREMELY WELL PRICED.  I mean the entire pack is something like 7 dollars, US.   This is something on the level of Wizard of ID level of quality, for a fraction of the price.  Definitely worth the investment.


FREE STUFF:


There's a fairly large body of 'free stuff' to go through:
First of all, Bod has made some new PBR remakes of his old stuff that look great!
Second we have Lafette (same one as above) making some 'free little mountains' which honestly are fantastic!  I hope to be able to include them with my book!
Thirdly we have a 'free PBR industrial pack' by JPH Games
Here's a script for making a MOHAA (Medal of Honor, Allied Assault man I haven't played that game in a lonnnng time) style bomb script: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219519
And lastly there's a pretty great script set of RPG style functions. 

All in all, a pretty solid week for freebies!


THIRD PARTY TOOLS:


Some news:  The Heightmap Importation tool is being integrated into the GitHub source - eventually!  Still, this is a huge bit of news and I'm excited to see it finally getting it's day in the sun.

Also GG loader by Preben has gotten another update of some underwater shaders.  That guy has a lot of free time.  I don't know how he does it.


RANDOM ACTS OF CREATIVITY:
There's too much to cover (cries quietly)...*takes a deep breath*

Bugsy added cubemapping to some objects in his Redacted2 shooter - https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/216903?page=3#msg2595699

Murmia, that weird game by 'beanz' is coming along nicely: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218909?page=1#msg2597459

Death House of Barker Creek by new creator 'HellreaperX' looks like a solid first attempt: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219542

Urban Explorer by Tarkus1971 looks promising but needs some fine tuning: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219549

Lastly there's a really fantastic update by Cybernessence that needs to be seen to be believed for his Cogwheel Chronicles masterwork.  His day night transitions are looking good! https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=4

IN MY OWN WORKS:


The book is making steady progress though a lot of the lower hanging fruit is taken.  One interesting tidbit I posted online which readers of this blog might find interesting is my analysis of what's wrong with using the base AI without a navigation mesh for it:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219508#msg2598602

Check it out.  I'll discuss it in more depth in the book, by a large margin.

No comments: