This Week in Game-Guru - 05/21/2018

Official Game-Guru News:

So there's a lot of traffic at this point on Game-Guru.  Lots of bugs being squashed.  Looks like lighting is getting looked at, specifically an SDK called 'enlighten' as a possible solution.  In the meantime there's a host of new functions on the github iteration of Game-Guru that are lighting related.  Looks like I might need to go make an Advanced lighting kit :)  ...


Also in official news there apparently progress being made on an underwater state for the player, which should really open up the gates as to how water is handled.  Lastly it appears that mega pack 3 has gotten more PBR assets - the roofs really pop with the shine they have now!

Check it out here:
https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-mega-pack-3-dlc-update-2

New Products On The Store: 

So a few new things available.  I'm really digging these complex and ornately textured lamps by Mad Lobster.  Reliquia has made some absolutely amazing skies which you should absolutely take a look at.  I've noticed that the quality on campana production's models has gone up, check out this cow skull!  And lastly Shadow Man appears to continue to be on his building-making rampage.

Free Stuff:

Good lord, there's a crateload.
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219680 - A must have ... Reliquia has put 16 free zombies up!

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219692 - Lafette II has put up two zombie kids and some desert props.  Be aware that having shootable children may violate local laws (Notably in Germany).  Caveat Emptor.
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219523 - Here's a good AI script for the soldier, a wandering type script. 

So from here, I'm going to stop and just sort of separate things so you can really get a sense of how important these next two are.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/215012?page=16#msg2600572 - This has been a Long, LONG time coming.  Amenmoses and Bod have teamed up to make a really awesome vehicle script for a truck - this looks and feels awesome. 





https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219628 - Honkeyboy has added his own flavor to the drivable vehicle scene with this racing bike script!

Those two should keep you busy for a while.  Amazing stuff, truly.  Looks like I owe someone a prize from my bounty board!
 

Third Party Tools:

I'm working on the notepad++ update.  It's a lot of work because they keep making updates over at github!  But it's coming along.  There's a LOT of XML to pour through and verify/cross check.

Random Acts of Creativity:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219296?page=1#msg2600665  - DK's latest update in his wasteland saga.  Looks good though personally I gave him the following input on discord:
"So observations @Duchenkuke for your test #3 - 1) I don't like the new coloring. There's not enough contrast. It looks too black, white, grey, and drab. Sorry! 2) The inventory looks easy to use but I'd really work on cleaning up the interface elements. Maybe use a color other than white (maybe a white-orange?), some asymmetrically sized boxes, etc. 3) The vehicle was awesome. What kidney do I have to give you so I can build a truck driving game for my son? Overall though your level design looks fantastic. Your use of clutter is second to none and honestly aside from the coloration issues I'd say you're coming along really well."

In my own works:

I'm continuing to procure more items and art for the book's sidecar modules.
It's a lot of headache but at the same time there's a big payoff for those who will purchase by getting a combination of high quality free, store, and exclusive assets.

This Week in Game-Guru - 02/19/2018

This week's update will be short and brief.

A few major components that are worth mentioning in my area at the end about my own works.

ENGINE UPDATE PROGRESS REPORT

This week was a HUGE week for Game-Guru.  Lee dropped a new public preview update onto our heads and aside from a minor issue with one of my levels loading a strange view (due to something wonky with the AI waypoint system causing my camera to screw up) it is a MASSIVE improvement.  Speeds are way up.  Weird stutter and lag is gone.  Crashes caused by decals are gone.  Other associated fixes are still on the way.  Impressively, Preben (a forum member who does a lot of code fixes for us) has been getting increasingly involved and it shows.  Updates to the update came in quick succession with minor bugfixes deployed often times in several same-day hotfixes.  It's a huge jump.  Expect a little delay before the next major release as they transition this PP to an actual Game-Guru release around April.  For now, it's a great gift and seems to really run well on my system.

Full notes and information can be found both here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219024
And on the news update here: https://www.game-guru.com/news-post/gameguru-new-public-preview

NEW PRODUCTS IN THE STORE

This week on the store we have several new items.

You're not dreaming, my name is actually up there for once.

Mstockton has put in a low-priced 'burn pile' for junkyards.  I like it though I do wish the texturing was a little better.  That said it's impressively low priced so it could definitely find a home in your inventory.  https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11005

Also we have several updates - Teabone has added a 'gain health by drinking water' script.  It's expressly listed as being similar to the ones in Skyrim and Fallout.  https://www.tgcstore.net/product/31049

Graphix has also included something eerily reminiscent of fallout - a 'mech hangar'.  This is a nice piece though I do wish he'd have done a little more to differentiate it from Fallout 4's power armor station.  I worry that one might run into some snags legally if they used it in a product for sale.
https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11006

AlexGCC has put together a DAMN fine building called the 'derelict building'.  This building unfortunately has a slightly ajar door but the overwhelmingly high quality output of the model makes up for that little misgiving I have.  It's priced to sell.  https://www.tgcstore.net/product/31046

Lastly my own product - the Camerakit (aka camkit) is on the store.  This product is expressly designed to make camera work for security monitors, cutscenes, etc much easier for the average user.  More on how and why down below but for now, check out this video:

It can be picked up from the store here:  https://www.tgcstore.net/product/31048  (NOTE - IT'S on sale until 2/25!)

FREE STUFF

The realm of free stuff has really slowed down a lot. 

This is all I could find this week - an updated copy of the sandstone building that comes with the base Game-Guru system: https://forum.game-guru.com/attachment/18255

THIRD PARTY TOOLS

Looks like OldPman is still improving the normalizator utility which I understand will have full PBR support if not now, then soon.  Latest update is as follows:

Hey. Pirate Myke and Earthling45 , thanks for the feedback.
I'm working on expanding the toolkit at the moment and there will be many opportunities added. A square brush, applying text, stamps is the first on my desktop. Adding the color of the texture and several other filters are now also in development. If you had in mind the choice of the color of the brush, then to the left of the alpha under the paint button, there is a rectangle clicking on which you open the colorpicker.
- OldPMan

This is a really good utility I need to get my mitts on when I get some free time.

RANDOM ACTS OF CREATIVITY

There's a lot of stuff on youtube.  I found a new project with a purported '239 hours' of development.  That's quite a lot for a single project!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP4I-Xq1auA

There's also this great lighting tutorial by DuchenKuke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6-7m6QLQMA

He also made a pretty good mountain-making tutorial showcasing an interesting method of using the flattener tool to create realistic shapes.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlLS7Kts9mI

And a totally Russian (I think?) tutorial.  Feel free to watch it if you dare, though I recommend using auto-translate to read it.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb1zCS8kPxw

Lastly Teabone (a generally awesome forum-bro) has been doing some really great scripting work of his own: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVjoOoSRzwg

IN MY OWN WORKS

So I just wanted to bring up a few things, things which are going on in my world here.  Foremost, I have my Camera Kit (shown above!) on the store.  This project has been a while in the making and has some really cool features such as tracking, re-use, multi-camera setups, cutscene style location triggers and more.  I may add a trigger zone in the future but for now I have more than enough to get people started.  This kit came from my work with the Notepad++ API I made.   I realized camera controls in this game engine could be fairly complex.  I wondered if maybe it'd be easier to have a camera that had a place you could easily point to instead of calculating Euler angles and rotations.  I mean who really wants to use a rotation matrix just to figure out where to place a camera?!  So I created a very simple camera system which sort of blossomed from there into an easy to use kit for the 'everyman'. 

Simply place an object, attach the camera initiator, then choose it's target.  Easy!

The multi-cam system works the same, except the camera and initiator are separated so you can multiple cameras. 

Next, I submitted my proposal to a publisher.
What, you ask?

Let me say that again - I submitted my Game-Guru book proposal to a publisher.  I've been in contact with several prominent forum members,  Lee, Rick V, and a publishing house (CRC Press).  I am currently working on a very lengthy print-on-paper book which will be a start to finish guide to Game-Guru.  I'm looking forward to working on that over the next year.  It will be eating a lot of my spare cycles but I don't mind even in the slightest.

The book is probably going to be on the order of 430 pages, tons of pictures, tutorials, a complete walkthrough of how to build a high quality game, and more.  Keep an eye out for more details as I complete the work on it.

This Week In Game-Guru - 2/5/2018

ENGINE UPDATE PROGRESS REPORT

If you keep an eye on https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/issues you can get an interesting sense of what is being looked at and what isn't. Currently there isn't a huge amount of 'buy in' for the github repo but it is coming along and in 6-10 months I expect it to be trucking along fairly well.  There's a good body of issues being brought to the attention of Lee and company.  So we'll see but for now, mum's the word.

NEW PRODUCTS IN THE STORE

What you see above is the whole of it.  Gtox is adding new weapons (this knife apparently has an alt-attack, which is pretty cool!) and M Stockton has done some great work making a skate parka nd some parking blocks.  High quality models are always good thing!

FREE STUFF

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219294 - DuchenKuke has offered a really great variety of free music from his old fallout work.  I love this type of thing and highly encourage people to use it to help differentiate their product from stock offerings.
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/215012?page=15 - Bod has given us a great deal of things over the years and he continues to deliver.  This time it's a Mallard train, carriage, and a really fantastic looking train station (check out the picture below!).  Make sure you tell him how much you appreciate his work - I think he's getting fatigued a bit and it always helps to hear some encouraging words. 

This is a really brilliant new piece, in my opinion!

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219211 - In HonkeyBoy's thread about his survival system, there's a new Lathe that's been added by GraphiX which is pretty impressive and definitely worth a download.

THIRD PARTY TOOLS

Nothing really new and exciting here.  Preben did make an interesting change to GG Loader which apparently improved framerates significantly by reducing draw-calls.  Hopefully this will have some future implementation in Game-Guru.  I have more to do for my notepad API but it's going to be a bit.  I simply have too much on my plate at the moment..

RANDOM ACTS OF CREATIVITY

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219296 - DuchenKuke's new project looks promising. 

I love post-apocalyptic games and this one looks like a solid piece.  It's interesting, I've asked him what his method is and he mostly just wings it.  I guess some do have a natural talent for level-building.  Lucky bastard was apparently gifted with it more than I was, apparently. 


https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217908?page=3#msg2595102 - Dimoxiland has done some major reworking to his "Space Losers" game and I think it's really going places. 

Check out the above video for details.  Very cool stuff.  Check out how clean the scripting and game play is!  Definitely one to keep an eye on.


https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219258 - Honkeyboy's latest creation - Death by Daylight shows a remarkable increase in level design and proficiency for Game-Guru's most prolific author.  He's got rapid development down to a science at this point and it's really starting to make strides.


https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219277 - Teabone has done some... very curious...  things with scripting and automobiles in Game-Guru.  Definitely worth a look.

IN MY OWN WORKS

I've made some progress on the Camera system I'm working on.  I have 3 out of 4 of the major pieces I want before I release it.  Once I get the last piece in play, I will build a demo level, zip it up, and sell it (for about $4).  It'll start off on sale at 3.50.  The camera kit will have some very interesting components which I believe most will appreciate.  I may add some niceties to it but that's not required at this point so it may get added down the road. 

After that I have to finish my other two kits.  So keep an eye out for some interesting news there.

Weekly Status: 6/30 Current Events

So if you haven't seen it, I've added a new (somewhat popular - finally got to be a top weekly seller) item to the store:

My 1024px High Quality Dungeon Terrain - I got the idea for an isometric top down game and though of this concept where instead of making every single wall you could literally just use terrain to prototype your levels.  It came out better than expected!

 

Hard to believe this isn't using anything but terrain right?

So I also added another one, a Sci-Fi terrain as shown below:

 

And added it to a pack as well; so there's a whole mess of new goodies at my store here: https://www.tgcstore.net/artist/190502

I also have a new tutorial in the works on advanced lighting techniques.  Here's a teaser pic:

 

This isn't even a good one!

So looking forward to finishing up some of these posts and what not and starting up my own projects again.

Monday Status Update 2/1/16

Another monday, another project.
I keep getting more added to my plate at work here without getting much taken off.  I find myself accidentally 'volunteering' for more stuff.

Anyways...

Non work related, my wife bought a very expensive 'print-making' printer for her paintings.  If you're interested, check out her poll over here: http://mariemessina.blogspot.com/2016/02/paintings-for-prints-poll.html

Current status:

• Books - I began work again on 'MITC' - which is something I don't talk about much.  It's designed to be a short story for a collection I will do.  I'm up to 10k words on that one.
• Game stuff - Made a free HD sky for game-guru owners here:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/214534
• Tyr's Blade (My mechwarrior unit) is growing slowly and steadily.  Things going well there - newbies are getting better!
• Game design - I bought the Sci-Fi pack from TGC; I'm satisfied with it but need to figure out what I want to make with it in terms of my existing project.
• MWDA - did some work on my custom re-work of the game rules.  I have some new ideas I am going to run through and possibly integrate shortly.  Thinking of taking my work into offshoot territory.

Coming up this week:
A review of OldFlak's work!
A technique post on 'how to do interior shadows' in game-guru!
And more :)

Project Status Monday 1/4/2016

Projects projects everywhere.

Soon I'll be swamped at work, at least in the short term.  For this moment though, I have a little free time.
With that time, I find ways to keep myself productive.

Idling projects:
MWDA Game - you know the score here.  Just not on a primary burner right now.
My book - I read a piece by George RR Martin about how he hated working for deadlines and wasn't going to finish his newest book in time for the show.  Well... yeah.  I don't know if I will ever finish this book series.  That last bit of bad criticism really put me in a sour mood and I don't think I want to just jump right back to that.
Other books - Book writing feels so tedious, you know?  I guess I enjoy shorter pieces but not so short they fit in a magazine's scant 7-9 pages.  Novellas just don't sell and expanding them into novels is a boring chore.  I have enough of those as of current, thank you very much.

Active projects:
Sci-Fi game in game guru.  I've been advancing my toolkit steadily towards my goal of completing a quality low budget title.  I made my own skies and placed them on the tgcstore (available here: https://en.tgcstore.net/artist/190502 ).

They are selling well, which is a welcome surprise.

I'm waiting for the sci-fi kit coming from TGC; they have some excellent enemy characters in the kit.  The rest is pretty meh.  But the characters will be worth it.

I'm working on learning 3D modelling.  It's an experience but coming along nicely.  There's a lot to remember in blender but overall I'm surprised at how easy it is to develop organic or complex shapes.

It actually gives me a whole new perspective on model development and I will be sure to incorporate that into my reviews.

I've started putting together asset libraries (my usual first step before making a level) for the next few levels in my game.   I want the pacing of my game to be very different from other GG games.  Faster, more overwhelming is the goal.  I want it to be DIFFICULT.  Too many of these homebrew games are ridiculously simple and easy.  I want to incorporate my lessons from the Doom series into this and try to produce some interesting 'kill puzzle' challenges which will force the player to think.  A lot of these homebrew Game-Guru and FPS Creator games tend to have a very easy and simple game play style which I'm sure suits the creator.  But if you're trying to challenge gamers, you need to present them a challenge.

That's part of what I want to do.  I also need to get some 3D modelling under my belt so I can offer custom models as opposed to just more store bought stuff.

I got some new assets too, since Voodoo updated his stuff.  It gave me an idea for a later area but I need to let that stew for now.  Next stop for me is building the medlab and engineering/bridge sections.

I've got a few of my custom characters from the charactermaker done but most of them are throwaways.  Only 2-3 are worth keeping (such as the cyberknight, who came out AWESOME).

The level flow is coming together.