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Monday, October 29, 2018

This Week in Game-Guru - 10/29/2018

What a crazy week.  Life at home has been absolutely nuts and this week we've got a fairly jam-packed series of updates that I need to unpack here.  So I'm going to blitz through this as quick as I can and hopefully haven't missed anything critical.

Official Game-Guru News:

So this week they updated the Fantasy pack again with more PBR assets but also added an 'ally' knight character.  I'll have to take a look at that code, should be fun.

https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-fantasy-pack-updated

Of particular note was this tidbit:
"Back in the main engine, we working on multiple fronts, including our forthcoming GLTF support, improved AI and improvements to FBX importing, which will allow up to 170 bone character models, making extra room for detailed finger and facial animations."

Now that's exciting!

Third Party Tools and Tutorials:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220102 - SegAutoWelder free.  This program, by "BoredOfTheRings" does the following: 'it takes FPSC segments / levels and converts them fully textured and saves directly to Game-Guru without the user needing to do anything'.  Sounds great for old users looking to update their assets to Game-Guru!
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220100 - Another "BoredOfTheRings" creation - a Free DBO to X converter.  Not bad!
https://www.moddb.com/tutorials/lighting-in-game-environments-the-hows-and-whys Someone linked this fantastic demi-chapter from a book on lighting and I have to say having read it it's totally worth the 20-40 minutes reading on it.  

What's Good on The Store 

This week on the store, I want to mention first off I've updated the normal mapping for MANY of my terrains (really the only one that hasn't been is the tropic terrain due to some errors in the DDS files).  This improved normal mapping is only noticeable on the 'highest' setting for terrain but fixes some long standing issues I've had with my work's performance on those settings.  The biggest offender was my '1024px HQ Roads' terrain.  Current owners should re-download them in Game-Guru by choosing 'download from store'.



This week has a lot of great stuff.  Teabone has continued to update his value priced Crime Scene Pack and now has an 'all scripts' pack which I believe is a fantastic value for some really great utility scripts.

BSP's put out some excellent PBR animated trees.  Personally I'd prefer static trees but if you want the highest quality available, accept no substitutes!

And lastly I have to say I really love MStockton's 'crystal terrain and model pack'.  I've been playing a lot of ARK: Aberration the past few months and this is just the ticket to create something similar!


Random Acts Of Creativity (WIPs):

I'm adding the (WIPs) tag just so new users know what this section is.
Graphix has some really nice new model updates - https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220156#msg2607189
Granada posted a pretty awesome cowboy WIP up:
Very impressive, for a meager 6400 polys!
Here's a screenshot from a WIP called 'The Acolytes' by VincentHendriks:
Some work to be done but an interesting first go, reminds me of Quake 1 for color palette.
And... a lot of videos..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U1gy1Lq4Ng&feature=youtu.be - AI and Particles
https://youtu.be/ugsHu2-0650 - Bonesy's SCI-FI Shooter is coming along nicely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEgcRdMpWVQ - MaiaCombra put out this interesting build using stock assets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-MuBNOkz6o - Synchromesh released a video of something he calls 'SmileFPS'.  Interesting stuff.
 =VX=Doggy has a pretty sweet video he posted I felt needed some love about a morning jog:



Now that, I have to say, caught my attention. Really looks smooth and the art, while a little over-saturated on purple for my tastes (you need to throw in some complementary colors like yellow!), is damned impressive.  

 

Free Stuff: 


Nothing here.  Unless you count the 3rd party stuff listed above.

In My Own Works:

I've updated the normals as mentioned above for my terrain(s).  I also got a HUGE amount of book related work done with a whopping 11,000 words or so written this week. I'm now sitting just shy of 90,000 words which puts me nearly back on track with where I need to be!

Well, I think I got everything.  If I missed you, feel free to shoot me a comment or a message.  I'll be sure to add you in for next week!

Monday, October 22, 2018

This Week in Game-Guru - 10/22/2018

So I'm back from my business trip and there's a lot of catching up to do.  Let's get started!

Official Game-Guru News:

Every once in a while TheGameCreators, makers of Game-Guru, release two press releases inside of a week. Makes it a little difficult for me as a weekly updater but in case you missed them there are two new updates to cover:

https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-buildings-pack-update-released Finally, with all the PBR retexturing done they got to the buildings and... they look... ok-ish?  I guess?  I don't know.  They seem to lack the really high quality finish some of the other PBR redos have.  I use these models regularly as stand-ins or as actual elements and it's just a little disappointing to see that the textures seem marginally better as a result of the PBR treatment.  I'll have to play with it to see if I can improve it, but judge for yourself:


In better news, however, there's a new pack out - the "Medical Pack".  This pack is really ripe with tons of goodies like really well textured models of x-ray machines, gurneys, doors, desks, curtains, etc.  I'd put this in a 'must buy' category.  It's currently on sale for 20% off.



These materials can find a home in a great many different projects so definitely consider picking it up!

Free Stuff:

Animated Wooden Crate by Lafette II: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220151
This crate is unusual in that it performs the function of being "a wooden box that opens when you approach it and let all the objects you can pick up in the two rooms float first and then slide into the box after a short while. It can be used excellently in fantasy games, but it also looks great in modern shooter games." ... will need to try this one out myself later.

Third Party Tutorials and Tools

Information on how to make an animated TV monitor: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220149

Random Acts of Creativity

Now in this particular area I have a lot of updates to go over so bear with me as  I cover them all.

New assets are on the way!


First and foremost there are a significant amount of new assets in the pipeline for store users.  If you're interested in purchasing these and want to see what's coming soon - check this subforum and just look at all the big names in there - Lafette, Graphix, Wizard of Id, etc.  Tons of really good stuff is on the way! 

Bellidos meanwhile has been hard at work on something he calls 'mastaba':

It's an interesting recessed temple model.  Not much more to go on but it showed up in the discord while I was out of town and I like the way it looks.  Expect it on the store soon!

A lot of work was done on particles...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLebdDTJgis Preben's at it again with some GG Loader particles that produce excellent weather effects.

https://youtu.be/Tm_u6HsI7Lg  Graphix and Amenmoses have been working on some interesting particle stuff in this video link given as well.

Game-Guru users have been hard at work as well...

Len the man has been hard at work at his cowboy shooter and while I think some may complain about the graphics what he HAS shown limit on talent with are his creation and use of cutscenes.  Check out this gif and just try to figure for yourself how it was accomplished, because I can't manage it shy of frame-by-frame video editing:






Yeah, I wish I could do that.  I've asked him for info on how, so I can maybe write it up in my book but dang.  Good work Len!

New user 'Bonesy' has continued his work on 'cyberfi' and it's starting to look more and more like a real game.  Admittedly it's a bit too spartan and the colors are very polarizing by my standards but it's always good to see people steadily improving their product.  He's even added some mech with custom AI to it, so it's definitely going places though it still needs a LOT of polish.


I'm looking forward to see where it goes from here.

A frequent favorite on here, Duchenkuke won the most recent contest (I was not a participant this time, due to work - though I don't think I'd have beaten this entry) on a ghost town theme with this beauty:



However little did you know he also makes music as well - check out some of his most recent stuff here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHbM5ph8VeU

Oh and lastly, in case you're interested in how NOT to act as a Game-Guru user you can check out some juicy controversy here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220157

In My Own Works

I have my work cut out for me, I knew this already but this last week really set me back a LOT.  I now have an additional 5k words I need to write this week meaning I'll be lucky if I can make it to 8k words.  That means long days and longer nights as I try to get caught up.

I have some really great ideas for projects and products for Game-Guru but can't get the time to work on them.  Such is life.  Once the book is clear I have to do the sidecar game to go with it so I'm probably going to be running 100% until next June.  Lovely!

Monday, October 15, 2018

This Week in Game-Guru - 10/15/2018

This week's update was pre-staged because of some real life work obligations. Apologies for any content which was missed in the lag time between staging and deployment here.

Official Game Guru News

https://steamcommunity.com/app/266310/discussions/0/1730963192547852809/ - Per synchromesh it appears the long standing 'disappearing model' issue may be resolved.  Time will tell!

Also this came out this last week: https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-melee-weapons-pack-updated-2
So apparently more updates to the already really decent melee weapons pack were done. They added 6 more melee weapons.  Pretty impressive stuff for those who already own it!

Lastly all of the incremental AI updates are here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220075?page=2#msg2606583

We also have our list of winners from the Survey (all of these people got free DLC!):
  • Archor
  • Simon Cleaton
  • Rogy 
Very cool, congrats all!

What's Good in the Store

The same stuff as last week, sadly.

Free Stuff

Nothing new for free as of this writing.


Third Party Tools and Tutorials


There's some pretty good info in this thread about how to use styleguru, which is a fantastic third party program that can help you customize your Game-Guru menus.
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220056

Random Acts of Creativity

Particle Test by Kevan Hampton - https://youtu.be/08zG7FczACM

Extraction Point X11 https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220128
Now the above should really get your attention.  Someone put a lot of hard work and care into this but used mostly stock game assets.  They have a very good cutscene and HUD, as well as a neatly modified menu.  Sets a good standard Game-Guru game-making attempts.

Environmental Particles in GG Loader: https://youtu.be/ItEVjI0HX9Q

Pirate Mike's walk through of his upcoming game: https://youtu.be/wFLuupCC5A4

Someone made a kindle e-book with Game-Guru graphics... speaking as someone who's made a kindle book before it's no picnic to arrange those things.  I am fairly impressed!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J1VZRYC

In My Own Works:


Recently this week started work on the 'how to make a desert' walkthrough.  It's coming along well though is tricker than I first thought.  Here's a screenshot:

This is far from final and sadly the book will only include B&W stills, but regardless, the basic shape is there. There's more grasses, background materials and the like to add but atmospherically speaking it's what I wanted.
I also have this for the Semi-Arid type of desert, but it needs even more work:

Piece by piece this book is coming along.  Just two more desert types to do for the book and take all the necessary screenshots, do final cleanup, etc.

I also need to rework my 'how to make a city' section as well, which falls into a similar situation.

Monday, October 8, 2018

This Week in Game-Guru - 10/08/2018

Official Game-Guru News:

There is a new survey available which offers users the chance of getting a free DLC pack as incentive for completing it so give them your thoughts! https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-users-enter-our-survey-to-win-a-dlc

There were also some AI improvements made to the most recent public preview. Apparently some input was run by smallg (one of the resident scripting experts) who cleaned it up.

They updated the PBR materials to include mega-pack 3:
Details on the above here: https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-mega-pack-3-dlc-updated-2

And lastly there was ALSO an update to EAI's weaponry:https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-mega-pack-3-dlc-updated-2

What's Good in the Store:


Tarkus's music.  I usually like his stuff but this isn't my speed.  That said it would work well for many games seeking some well priced work that can fit a wide range of modern/post modern genre games: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11055
Pasquill's PBR construction vehicles were completed and are now available at a very reasonable price in a pack! https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11054

Free Stuff

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220103 - This beautiful gateway by Lafette II
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220124 - This Bizarre Spongebob/Domo-kun esque character for cartoon style games.  Free, follows waypoints, has Gtox's quality on it.  Nice stuff. Characters are always a fairly expensive proposition so it's particularly noteworthy when one is available for free.


Third party tools and Tutorials

There's this interesting texturing tutorial (care of Bugsy): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8d6p-E4KSE

Random Acts of Creativity

Amenmoses has been working on physics and particles a lot this past week.  He put together a nice demo reel of his physics-based leaves here: https://vimeo.com/292789619

There's this campfire with smoke physics and fire particles: https://vimeo.com/293305766
And he even made an aggregate thread for all of his scripting work (finally!) here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220055
What a busy man!

Duchenkuke detailed his picture below (I promised not to name names but he made a video so it kind of betrays him a bit!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWsEVUgcYIw&feature=youtu.be
He's also updated his web presence, check out his new site here:
https://sites.google.com/view/dkproductions/startseite

In My Own Works:


I created a screenshot for an impromptu private contest for other GG Forumites.
Came in dead last.  Was based on 'forests'.  I gambled on going Alien Fungal and lost big!

That said, it is what it is.  Next time, I guess and no, I will not tell you where this contest was as it was fairly secret/private.  I can't post all of the pictures at this time as it will make this page unreasonably long to load for some.  So here's mine (dead last), the runner up, and the winner!


Mine:



Runner-Up:

Winner:



Congrats to the winner :)

That said I also got about 4500 words done thanks to said contest on how to make a forest, though admittedly I wrote it post-picture as a sort of 'lessons learned by my failure'.  Still, the overall nature of it came out well.  I plan on doing a city and desert/Tundra style one as well.

See you next week!

Monday, October 1, 2018

This Week in Game-Guru - 10/01/2018

I notice (@LeeBamber) that I'm still not showing on the news section.  Not that it's any skin off my back.  I do this for fun, but I wouldn't mind a followup so I'm not twisting in the wind (nudge nudge).



Official Game-Guru News:




This week we got a PBR update to some assets in the Sci-Fi pack and also a new 'ally' AI delivered via a drone.  I'll be interested to dig into that one to see what's different as the current AI is a bit of a slush pile that can be difficult to interpret.

You can find the official news release here: https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-scifi-pack-dlc-update-released-2

On the note of AI, it appears that's Lee's primary focus right now and so far I hear the results are promising.  Those results can be found in detail here but essentially there's a demo level out there with a lot of cover objects.  The AI *SEEMS* to be productive and functional, but time will tell.  That said if the vast majority of users are claiming it's improved then I think that's a fair litmus.  I watched the demo video and I noticed a few good changes, notably that it won't shoot through walls and will path far better than it used to.

What I'd like to see:
  • A system for enemy accuracy; right now they still hit 99% of the time and that's just absurd.
  • Better synching of the movement to animation, which often times is a configuration setting but should be the default.  
  • A system for enemies running away when injured/hiding/etc.
  • A module in the AI itself that allows us to 'hook in' as modders, as it is it's more of a black box with a few function calls outside of it.
Forum AI link:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220075 (AI)
Now for those of you who are using the EAI Weapon Pack, which is phenomenal mind you, you may have noticed some errors or bugs with assigning said weapons to enemies or NPCs.  This apparently is going to be resolved in a future release after verification by EAI himself. 
Forum link for EAI Info:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219912

What's good in the store:


You know I was going to say there was nothing going on and just move on, but this week has been a big drop of lots of really great assets.  Of course as the quality goes up you may notice the price increasing but some of these are ... top shelf stuff.  I don't know any other way to put it.  Stuff you'd see in a AAA game.

Let's go over a few.
First of all, Gtox is really into fish... Well, that's true but apparently he's also into porpoises as well.



If you're making a sea-world game, this is probably right up your alley.

What's really intriguing to me is that Teabone, Robert Fitzy and Gamepoly (A new challenger appears!) all created fantastic high quality models this week.  I mean just look at this:



I really like GamePoly's work, this is a new level of quality that is desperately needed in Game-Guru's overly-asset flipped environment.  You can also see some new models by Mad Lobster and Pasquill at the bottom (the exacavator). 

Not bad for a single week!  Make sure you swing by http://en.tgcstore.net and check out the latest for yourself!




Third Party Applications and Tutorials


This week I was poking around on a project I can't discuss at this moment (wait till next week!) but I did end up at this wonderful tool - https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/
This is a free heightmapper that I found worked a bit better than the one for terrain.party.  Definitely give it a look, the values on it are fantastic for use with the game-guru 'Heightmap to MDAT' tool.

Also in the forums, Wolf showed an older tool that I wish I'd have had in the past for my own imports - an import scaler tool to help adjust the scale on your FPE files: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218348

And lastly there was a pretty nice video posted by Bugsy in the discord chat discussing how Mirror's Edge used lighting:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0sM7ZU0Nwo


Free Stuff

Nothing free that I could find this week.  Sorry guys!

Random Acts of Creativity

So in the WIP section we have some things from VincentHendriks who continues his use of the stock assets in the only way they could ever potentially be used - as a desert combat game.  It's looking ... well, like a reasonably good desert combat game!

Reminds me of the photos my buddies would send me from Iraq.

It's coming along well, I'd say.


There's also a new asset flip for us to look at on Steam.  Now I will say while the game itself was a fairly bland and boring flip, the demo video for it was interesting - the guy took live video with some basic video modding to provide a little more oomph to a Game-Guru game than I'm used to.  That said, it's not worth the price asked for and apparently is a buggy mess.
See it here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/798710/Voltage/

Also another new user showed up, this time with an odd cyber-punk style game where I guess you're on a rooftop?  He took some of the advice I offered him but it needs a lot more polish.  Regardless though it's getting there and at least it doesn't look like the same old same old.  I can respect the effort.

In My Own Works

This week I've been working on a special project, which but it's allowed me to focus on getting another segment for the book done - specifically a 'how to do a forest in Game-Guru'.  This is a difficult topic that I think most will benefit from a little personal understanding on.

That said though I'm still behind the curve here.  I need to bang out like 20,000 words this month to stay on track and that's no easy feat.

I also aggregated all the new Lua commands since 5/12/2017 for you here:
http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com/2018/09/new-lua-commands-since-5122017.html

See you next week!