Time of day and weather issues

It's come to my attention that the latest download of the time of day and weather system is busted on the store.  There's a file missing that's necessary.  I've set it unavailable for now.

So I'm going to take some time tonight and modify the zip files accordingly, then upload them again.

I'm also going to see if I can make the time of day system work with public preview while retaining compatibility with previous versions.

We'll see how that goes.
Apologies to those inconvenienced.

This week in Game-Guru 12/18/2017

Notice: Next week's issue will be delayed a day or so due to the holidays.

ENGINE UPDATE PROGRESS REPORT

No new updates for us normies.  We're still in beta-test limbo; apparently a beta update was released to the closed beta testers which was labelled as a public preview update.  This accidental update might cause you some confusion if you find yours hasn't updated.  That said given Lee's recent flurry of responses on the forums we can see that there's definitely some renewed emphasis on bugfixes and system stability (specifically with memory).

Also worth mentioning is my own find that you can reduce CPU usage by a drastic amount on most maps by updating the AI scripts to include some changes.  Specifically it appears that 'always active=off' does not actually appear to be functioning.  So you need to manually configure this via a player distance check in the script.  By doing this, you kill the overhead required for the rather intensive AI system.  Details can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219078

For now though, we're all waiting for what looks like what will be a new-years update to improve stability and performance.   I'm really hoping Lee grinds this one out over holiday though I can understand if we have to wait until February for it.

NEW PRODUCTS IN THE STORE

 

Some small, but interesting updates.

This week on the store we have a new artist (Thorus) making a solid go of some residential models and a decently good looking tractor.  These models are well priced, most going in the sub-one dollar range per model.   Moshroom has written a new script which degrades weapon quality and makes them unusable after a point.  Acid has added a ... moving target?  I couldn't really discern this one's purpose but I'm sure someone will find it useful.  Lastly mstockton, who does a solid job on his modelling, added a nice padlock and key set for a very good price on the store.
 
Lastly added to the store was an actual game:

This particular game, Savior V1, has been around a while.  It however, represents a certain threshold for quality that most 'steam game releases' I've seen fail to measure up to.  While it's well priced at .99 cents (on sale at this time for a meager .50 cents), it is worth playing from the standpoint of seeing quality game design and development in Game-Guru.  One can learn a significant amount from osmosis and this situation is no different.

That aside though what's really important about this is it highlights the store as an additional distribution channel.  While we could potentially suffer the same problems as other channels (such as the hot, shoveled garbage games that find their way to steam) it could prove a really interesting way to market your own products to a smaller, more receptive audience.  Definitely worth considering fotr the future.

FREE STUFF

 This week's update in 'Free Stuff' has brought some absolutely incredible scripts.  I mean three really big hitters that all solve a lot of major issues for Game-Guru game devs.  First up is Solar's objective script found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219081

Check out the above picture.  You can see clearly marked objectives which float under the object; this is going to be massively useful for the average FPS game.  The best part is this one is actually very straightforward to use and adapt so it will bring a lot of value to a lot of people.
 
Next up is AmenMoses, who has once again provided a crazy amount of utility those of us who want to really push the envelope in Game-Guru.  He's created a utility library that allows object rotation, connecting decals to objects, and much more.  It has to be seen to be believed, check out the videos and the downloads here at the forum link:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219096

HonkeyBoy has been working tirelessly in Game-Guru on several projects for a few years now.  These projects are pushing forward and his toolkit has really grown a lot over the past few months.  Recently he's added a survival and crafting script for people to use and abuse:

The script, along with some secondary scripts (fire making, shelter making, etc) can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219061
It's also worth mentioning he's added some new models for download that are free for use as well here:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219082

Graphix has added a few impressive glass panels to the forum which I will personally be using extensively.

My previous 'glass panels' were some really old ones I'd hackneyed together from some pretty old assets.  While they worked ok, they didn't do a spectacular job and looked cheap.  These look exceptionally high quality and use alpha channels well.  Get them here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217932?page=6#msg2592415

 THIRD PARTY TOOLS

BOTR has updated the Heightmapping to MDAT tool again with a new GUI and a fix for the Windows 10 machines that were crashing.  It's really coming into it's own.  This brings it up to a current version of 2.1a; it can be found at this location:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218876?page=3#msg2592417

I personally have used the older versions to some good effect though it takes some tinkering to find the right settings for the scaling and what not.  Overall though this is a must-have item for your toolbox if you plan on using any kind of pre-made terrain or imports from terrain building software.

RANDOM ACTS OF CREATIVITY

This week I play-tested Bugsy's Multiplayer Simulator which was fun and interesting.  It ran well, played well, and reminded me a good bit of Quake 3 Arena.  I'd love to see him push this project further and as always it's got some of Bugsy's hallmark humor added in as a dry touch:

More games need a 'middle finger' model, IMO.

Also after long last we have an update on Wolf's epic flagship game - Shavra.   If you aren't familiar, Wolf is one of the top tier developers for Game-Guru.   He's in a very small group of other talented developers and this is his baby.  The screenshots alone from 4 years ago show the Game-Guru engine stretched to it's limits.  The latest screenshots are jaw-droppingly gorgeous, as you'd expect:

There simply aren't enough Game-Guru games meeting this level of quality.  I find it really impressive and have to say I wish I could meet this level on my own work.  It looks like it should be out of Unreal or Unity.  Not something as 'plebeian' as Game-Guru.


That wraps it up for this week.   As mentioned next week will have a delay before I post any new content, I may even skip it entirely.

Keep an eye out for some interesting new work from me too, I've been hard at work developing some new tools for Game-Guru users as well as a secret project that only a few select people know about.  It'll take a good 6 months before it's ready, minimum, but once it's released it should really open a few eyes.  That's about the most I can safely say on it.  That and that it's about 8-10% complete as of this moment.  So I have a long road ahead of me.  Thanks again and see you next week!

This week in Game-Guru 12/11/2017

ENGINE UPDATE PROGRESS REPORT

So we've all had a week or so to chew on the new Public Preview aka Open Beta of the PBR-enabled, DX11 configured Game Guru and.... it's buggy.  I mean it's good in a lot of ways, but it's seriously buggy.  I myself have encountered numerous problems with existing media's implementation (mostly based around the old shaders having lack of compatibility with DX11).  This is going to break a lot of people's old media which may not be a bad thing.  I personally am starting to wonder why Lee didn't just split this off into a separate project.  Doing it this late in the game seems ... a lot riskier now that it's actually reached beta phase.

With respect to my own works I tested my Lighting Kit and Weather System.  The Lighting system works fine.  The Weather system requires some adjustment.

Primarily you have to:

• Open your GG folder.  Mine is in c:\program files(x86)\steam\steamapps\common\game-guru
• Open the files subfolder, then the effectbank subfolder, then the reloaded subfolder.
• Edit settings.fx in notepad.  Find this line: // #define ADDSKYBOXFOG 
• Remove the // from the front.  Save the file.
• Edit the setup or settings (i can't recall and will update this later), find forceloadtestgameshaders=0, change it to a 1, save it.
• Restart game-guru.

That takes care of the fog issue not affecting the sky.
To update the  weather so it works (I will update my system after public preview becomes an official release so if you don't want to do this part, just wait):

• Find the bagweather decal folder in your game-guru entitybank/purchased/bag folder.  
• Edit the FPE file(s) for each weather decal.  Change effect_animate64.fx to decal_animate64.fx

Done!





I'm hoping Preben and Lee get this stuff sorted and these bugs sifted for a good release post-new years.

NEW PRODUCTS IN THE STORE

Unfortunately people are clearly winding down for the holidays so not much activity going on the store at the moment.

Lots and lots of sales though.

One new thing on the store is Tazman's bloody snowmen.  If you want that kind of thing, it's there for you.

FREE STUFF

In the world of free scripts and objects we have some really excellent stuff this week.
Amenmoses has produced a script which does some pretty impressive things with balls and physics.  Specifically it drops/spawns balls from the air which actually respond to physics after spawning.  Impressive stuff.  Check it out here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219068

Graphix has provided some really nice PBR-enabled free barrels!
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217932?page=5#msg2591866

Bod has given us more goodies this week - primarily a hay bale, pitchfork, and this neat laptop:

But this week everyone got eclipsed by LOTGD's release of several character for free use.  They are of exceptionally high quality.  I for one am humbled by this offering as it's really the kind of thing you'd expect to pay 5+ dollars on the store for.   You can find that here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219057?page=1#msg2591614

There's also this nifty scorpion he made on the same thread here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219057?page=1#msg2591822

THIRD PARTY TOOLS

Looks like Bored Of The Rings (BOTR) released the newest version of his heightmap to GG tool.  This tool now has a functional GUI and some better tuned settings.  Definitely check it out!
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218876?page=2#msg2591885

RANDOM ACTS OF CREATIVITY

In the randomly creative arena we've got some real winners this week but I think this one takes the cake:

I mean wow, this literally makes my week. SCHNEEKY has also made a Christmas-time Yule log, which was pretty cleanly done.

And in the realm of actually 'Holy crap this should get released' works of creativity:
Duchenkuke has done some really amazing things with his "Cold Contract" game.  Looks absolutely awesome, the lighting is great!

Keep a real close eye on this one.  This is going to be a real show-stopper once it's released.

This week in Game-Guru 12/4/2017

Welcome back to my second update.  We've seen some HUGE updates this week.

ENGINE UPDATE PROGRESS REPORT

First and foremost, the public preview was released this week.  The 'beta' is now a public beta.   Get in there and test!  I ran into a problem installing mine that required me to update certain elements of my Windows 7 OS to fix a D3DDIRECT_47.dll not found error.   Other than that though, it works great.  I've had a few assets with problems and am yet to test my own products but as soon as I can verify their function I'll note that here.

More info is available here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219024

PBR Assets look great!

Beware though; this is a test version.  It's not all there yet and so it's best to make a backup before you continue.  I personally copied my 50+GB of assets and GG to a backup folder.  If you can't afford that kind of space, then I'd recommend either getting another drive or putting a copy on drive.google.com (you get like 15GB free there).

NEW PRODUCTS IN THE STORE

The store this week has some interesting December sales which are worth looking at.  Artists range from "The Wizard of Id", "that model guy" and "grobyken" all having several models or packs up to individual packs like Teabone's new warning sign set.

These high quality clutter objects cost only 70 cents.. TOTAL!  For the whole pack!

Teabone's done a fantastic job of creating high quality assets that are extremely affordable but possibly more importantly - they are very useful!  I have several signs from older packs that just don't measure up.  They look chunky and out of date.  These signs are clear, easy to read, are well lit but yet still have just the right amount of grunge to keep them from looking out of place.

Also on the store I noticed this gem from an artist I've only seen the occasional piece from: AlexGCC.  I took a look and noticed two separate products which appear relatively new that are of pretty excellent quality:

The Arcade will go well with EAI's set and the playground will go well with dagored's Carnival.

They're both reasonably priced so definitely give these and his other interesting products a look!

FREE STUFF

As always, there's a veritable bevy of free stuff available on the Game-Guru forums.  This week we have a nice freebie from Wolf, a set electrical boxes which he's also put up on the store as well.  I have several of his 'junction box' sets and I've noticed a clear trend upwards in terms of quality and technical skill.  Of note are the illuminated lights on the boxes.

The perfect touch for all your cyberpunk set dressing needs.

Also on the forums it appears Bod's been at it again.  Now if you don't know Bod, you should.  He's made a titanic mass of free stuff over the past few years.  While his art style and approach might limit other assets you can use with it, it does definitely fill a role and niche.  Very often he's got things you simply can't find anywhere else.  Or things that you'd pay a fair penny for on the store.

In this case he's been working on a ton of railroad assets.  This week he's added a switching booth which looks great.  It's probably one of his best physical models for buildings that I've seen so far.

His texturing is really going places.

At some point I'm going to take all my free assets and open up a google drive with them so people can access them freely in the future.  It'd be a shame if this stuff just fell off into oblivion from lack of upkeep or if the forums went away.

The interior on this building is top notch.  I love the way it turned out.

One final one to look at is this thread: https://forum.game-guru.com/board/25 which has a repository of all of "tarkus1971"s hard work.  He's got some interesting things there but most notably he has been adding lots of great music for free use in your games.

THIRD PARTY TOOLS

In the world of third party tools, it looks like BOTR's 'HeightMap to Game-Guru' tool is getting a new user interface which will really help with it's function.  On top of that he's added a preview mode which should REALLY shave time off pulling maps from http://terrain.party and importing them into Game-Guru. Granted I'm really thankful for a free tool like this but I have to admit it's always nice when it becomes truly functional.

This is going to massively help level development for Game-Guru!

Also of note is that OldPMan's "normalizator" tool has apparently reached a new stage of development and will be offered shortly on the store.  Per OldPMan himself:

"Hello everybody!
I'm happy to report that I finally recovered the lost source code "NORMALIZATOR". So I added a height channel and several auxiliary functions, this is copying the image from layer to layer, cropping the image and copying / pasting the selected part of the image. Fixed several bugs.
Now I will have all my time in touch and any questions will not be left without attention.
Concerning people who donated to the development of the application, I sent everyone emails with the keys for NORMALIZATOR in the tgcstore store. I noticed that not all of the keys I sent were activated, if for some reason you did not receive a letter with a key from me, write me a PM and I will give you instructions for obtaining a key in the tgcstore store.
The new version will soon be available at the tgcstore store, now in the status of approval.
For those who expect STEAM version, now you can get access to the closed beta test of the application, just write me a PM and I'll send you the key for access via STEAM client."

RANDOM ACTS OF CREATIVITY

So there's a lot of activity going into the holidays with projects.  I have a lot to cover here.

Let's start from the top!

First up we have MrEaKing(YT)'s 'Santa's Workshop(1 week challenge)'.  What can I say?  He's retextured assets and modified some of the soldiers to provide a shall we say a truly 'unique' experience.

Beyond that we have Dark Harbour; Honkeyboy's newest attempt at making a Skyrim Style game which will undoubtedly push the boundaries of how many assets Game-Guru can run without crashing.  He's got some interesting crafting scripts in there that he's working on and it's definitely got some work behind it.

Of particular note here is AmenMoses's 'asteroids-ish thingy'.  AmenMoses is the maker of the quaternion library for Game Guru and he uses it for rotation in very impressive fashion.

I'll have to play with it later but should run great, knowing AmenMoses.

Beyond that we have some updates to the Cogwheel Chronicles 1 and LenTheMan's Cowboy shooter.  Lots of good stuff in the pipeline.

Personally I have my own projects as well that are stalled out but will revive after the new year.  Lots of things to work on and do.  I'd like to get some stuff done for Christmas but it's really going to be tight at this rate.

Must have tool for editing pictures in paint.net

Just a neat find for today - an 'alpha blur'.  Basically blurs the picture from the edges inward from color to alpha.
https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/11619-tanels-photo-and-color-plugins-2012-03-05/

This week in Game-Guru 11/28/2017

So I've decided to start updating *MORE REGULARLY* than I did previously.  There's a lot of things coming for Game-Guru and it's worth reviewing in one place.  So I'm going to begin to try to encapsulate that as often as I can in digest format.

ENGINE UPDATE PROGRESS REPORT:

First of all, progress on the Game-Guru update to PBR/DX11 & bugfixes are coming along nicely.  Recent updates can be found here:

Most recent engine update progress

Lee has basically indicated he's in the bugfixing phase and he's squashing them in pretty rapid fashion.  I'd list them all here but he's put in over 40 items in the changelog this week alone.

He's also giving us a test level to work with that will take an older demo map and show off the fully upgraded engine's capabilities.

NEW PRODUCTS IN THE STORE:

There's a whole host of new products on the store.  Notably very capable artists such as Wolf, Mad Lobster's Workshop, Bugsy and others are adding some really great things.

BSP's newest rifle looks phenomenal!

Don't forget to grab your free 'thank you sky' from my store here: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/30955 

Just one picture of one of my best skies ever, free for you all :)

One thing of note is that Ken "AKA Grobyken"  has made some pretty stunning progress in his work.  He attributes it to using some new tools for development.  I personally can't say I'd have the same success if I had better tools.

I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye or three on his upcoming works.

FREE STUFF

Of note this week is Bod (of Bod's Mods fame) has made a very impressive free train set.  It includes Three steamers, a rail model, a coal car, a dining car with functioning doors, and a caboose.  The art is his signature style with clean and simple graphics.

It's something I'm surprised isn't selling on the store for a few dollars, but honestly I'm happy for the free stuff, as usual.

THIRD PARTY TOOLS

Obviously my Light Kit is now available on the store, which does in a sense count as third party tools, however the big news here is that it appears that BOTR's  'terrain heightmap importer', 'autowelder', and 'entity welder' are all getting updates.

The one of primary interest to me will be the terrain heightmap importer, which has fit a crucial slot in Game-Guru development by providing us a simple and clean way to import heightmaps directly into the engine.


"for version 1.2, I quickly added a progress bar and will get a fully functional GUI implemented so you don't have to keep editing/saving the .INI file. added .tga format also."

For those who are using it, my personal recommendation is to use terrainxscale = 1, terrainyscale = 6.5 or 7.5 (10-32 if you want especially dramatic elevation changes), and a water level of about 450.  This should give you the best results.

RANDOM ACTS OF CREATIVITY

This is where I plan to put anything in the realm of game demos or videos which are of special consideration for any reason I deem fit :)

First off, we have a really impressive demo of the now updated Cogwheel Chronicles.  It features airship to airship combat done in Game-Guru and is striking to me as a Lua coder at the sheer volume of work that went into making this work.

And lastly there's this great Holiday video done by often quiet forum member shn33ky.  He's done a really good job of recreating a beer commercial from years gone by.

Oh.. and somehow I got user of the month for the first time in four years.  What the heck?  Well, ok then :)  Glad someone's appreciating the work I put into this stuff.

Latest tidbits

So lately I've been exceptionally busy preparing for my house to be sold.
That said I've found time to complete my lightkit, place it on the store and begin selling it.
I also made a tutorial video.

Warning: I'm a terrible video editor.

The item on the store is located here:  https://www.tgcstore.net/product/30936

Also I've gone through the trouble of collating important information on Game-Guru (as I've found it) into a reference list.  I used to keep this as a sort of 'private page' but now I'm opening it up to everyone else.  It can be found on the sidebar but here's a direct link in case you can't find it:
http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com/p/reference-list-for-gameguru.html

I've also added 'sparckman.com' as a site in my sidebar list as well.  He's been around a while and has some good scripts as well as tutorial videos on youtube.  Definitely check him out!

Beyond that there's some interesting stuff coming but we are all waiting with baited breath for the latest GG update.

New project in the works

With respect to projects, I don't know why I choose to do more hard work when I am already busting my buns trying to prep my house for sale.  However, I have some really great stuff in the pipeline.  Primarily I'm working on a toolkit (in the prototyping phase) which will allow pretty heavy duty control of dynamic lights in Game Guru.

We're talking script-based controls of lights which will allow very functional utility for the average game-maker.  It will also be competitively priced, by that I mean very affordable :)  Right now I'm looking at putting it up for around 3.50 or so.

That's what's going on.  I'll post a video here once I finish a few more lighting systems for demoing.

So far I have about half of the following:

• A steady strobing effect
• A random strobing effect
• A 'campfire' effect
• A light up on trigger zone
• Several  lights simultaneously
• Several lights sequentially
• A single light moving in a pattern
• Several strobes at once
• Several strobes in sequence

This should provide some really excellent controls for new and existing users to work with dynamic lights.  As the updates come I'll add further functionality too, for free, to purchasers.

Keep your eyes peeled!

Something's wonky with blogger.

I'm getting 3x the pageviews with unlabelled posts vs ones that have meta tags for easy searching.

Weird.

Repricing a few items on the store

I noticed a few of my terrain items were way overpriced for what they were.  I've lowered them by 30-50% depending on the item.

Primary offenders - 1024px HQ Roads, 1024px HQ SCIFI terrain.

The terrain pack was also slightly reduced to reflect these changes.

A little micro-addendum

I always liked totalbiscuit; his style and prose are very good to me.  

This gem relates to the maze discussion I had a few days previous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q6UQ2QlRH0

Real solid stuff here, totally worth watching.

Also, this is worth looking at:
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218797?page=2

It appears that BOTR has made a functioning bmp to terrain generator for GG!

Technique Discussion: Modern games and Mazes

Recently I was following the progress of this gem:

Space Losers, by Dimoxinil

Dimoxinil is not only a hard to spell username, but also one of the premier Game-Guru creators.

His previous works (though uncompleted) really set the bar rather high for what's capable with this handy little engine we all like to dick around in from time to time.

This newest game is a really well thought out piece of work and we got a little off topic discussing level design principles;  specifically this particular image:

And also it was noted that there should be some differentiation in the shapes being used by Dimoxinil on this image:

It's really hard to believe quality like this can come out of Game-Guru.

So this got me thinking and I had to expand on some of my own thoughts posted there by way of a highly verbose piece written here :)

So I really have no complaints myself about this particular image. It's a little washed out, maybe, but the shapes used are really pretty good at providing a maze-like feel.  If that's what you're going for, that is.  If you are trying to provide a clearly navigable experience, however, you get lost in it.

I personally don't really like the trend of modern games going the route of "This is my linear movie level.  It's highly detailed, but not mentally stimulating in the least."

An oldie, but a goodie!

The above picture really illustrates once again that no matter how you dress up a simple linear FPS game, it's really just that - a Linear FPS game.

When I read "Masters of Doom", which I consider a must-read by any serious FPS game dev, I saw that John Romero had gotten his start in 3d level design making mazes.  Now this is an important differentiation between modern game design and 'old school' game design. 

Because of the lack of horsepower, gamedevs were FORCED to use more inventive methods to stimulate the player's interest.  This included mental stimulation on the level of insidious puzzles and secrets. This wasn't even a new concept.  The further back you went, the more obvious the mazes were (primarily because of the limitations involved with graphics,storage, and processing hardware).

One of the first mazes I recall from my youth showing on my TV screen.

In fact, if you look at video gaming history, it's rife with mazes.  At least, until, hardware improved.

Then we found ourselves in a place where the streets were long and flat but the window dressing was really good.  I noticed a correlation with this in the early 2k's.  Games were getting prettier .. and easier.  Tutorials, controls, everything started slowly getting simplified. 

Maybe our games are making us dumber?  The lack of mazes means lack of higher order thought; people can't process their environments anymore.  It's difficult to really figure your way around a maze with no clear start or end.. with no walls to guide you.  That however can bring it's own enjoyment.  There are, however, certain tricks you can use to make sure your players aren't getting lost (at least, until you intend for them to be!).

Now it's not hard for you to figure out I live in Pennsylvania.  I've lived here my whole life.  I have spent many, MANY hours as a boy meandering around the forests.  It's real easy to get lost because so much of it is just .. so ... SIMILAR.  As I got older my interest in Survivalism and Hiking helped me get a solid sense of navigational techniques.  These same techniques can be used to help guide a player.  Some games virtually beat you over the head with modern methods such as the 'use a light to guide the player' technique:

I absolutely enjoyed Doom 2016 but the hell maps were a case study in 'follow the green light to move on'

 

While I respect and appreciate some of the things modern level designers have done (the aforementioned Doom, for instance, had superbly designed secrets), I really feel like we've over-simplified some of the bits that made gaming fun for those of us who cut our teeth on the Atari, Nintendo, and 286/386/486 PCs.

Rule One: Try to provide a significant landmark to guide players.

That big rock gives you a clear sense of where you are.

When you're out navigating the woods, when you find a major landmark you latch onto it.  It is your anchor, your safety net.  Landmark-based navigation is among the oldest and most easily used methods of finding your way through difficult terrain.  In the above picture, you have two great landmarks.  You have the big rock but ALSO a winding river.  Now if they diverge into separate paths, most people will automatically use that to triangulate where they are.  It's sort of a built in function of the human brain.  Giving people a clock tower, obelisk, large river, mountain, or building can easily change a level from a faceless, winding maze to something where you never truly feel lost.  After all, you're always still anchored to that rock in the distance.

Rule Two:  Light is a landmark, but don't overdo it.

Another time-honored tradition in the real world for navigation is using the position of the sun, moon, or stars to determine where you are.  It's natural for humans to seek light as a source of navigation; cave exits, campfires, houses, all are denoted by lights.   When you get to the point of literally cutting almost every single light out to give people a deliberate trail though of 'green lights' then you are at that point going a little too far, in my humble opinion.

The light is a precious resource; something you don't realize until you are lost in the forest, alone.

Consider this; you are walking through a forest, on a path without a compass.  The path is winding with many forks and the trail is faint.  The trees are like walls, blocking out any landmarks.  You have a watch and know it's 8am.  Suddenly, you get a glimmer of light from the sun; you realize it's to your right and because of that you know that the sun rose in the east - making your direction currently north.  That's opposite the way you wanted to go! You return to your previous fork and try a different path, carefully keeping the position of the sun in line with the direction you wish to go.

These are real world usages of this.  I've been lost in the forest myself before.  I was literally standing on a path wondering where the hell I was.  I knew the path had diverged before.  Obviously I was *SOMEWHERE*.  Until I caught a glimpse of the sun though, I really had no idea which direction I was headed. 

Rule Three: Paths are guidelines, not rules.

Sure, you can keep following the path, but what happens when you go off the trail?

The expression "off the beaten path" is an oft-used one but really denotes that most people tend to follow the trails as given.  Which, let's be fair here, trails exist for a reason.  They are the typically navigated path.  The problems arise when you put the player on a trail they cannot deviate from.  That's not a trail; that's a railroad.  Providing a player a rewarding experience is more than simply giving them a huge art budget and professionally written story.  It's about making the game fun too; exploration is an oft-underutilized component of modern gameplay.  Worse still are examples (I'm looking at you, World of Warcraft) that literally turn exploration into a clinical exercise in boredom. 

Rule Four:  If you really want to get a player lost, take away their frames of reference.

Variety is the spice of life. While it's wonderful to give players a thoughtfully done level that is intuitive to navigate, yet challenging in it's complexity, it's often good to sometimes pull the rug out from under them.

Photo by Alex Wise.

When you dump your player into an area with no clear beginning or end and everything looks the same... they're going to feel a type of helplessness that really can't be described in words.  This type of change of pace can often be enough to really help break apart the monotony of longer games.  Putting in a hedge-style maze that's got a ceiling on it, a teleportation maze where every room is almost the same, or just a great big forest with a whole lot of trees can really change the tempo of a game and give you a real hand in the player's fate. 

In conclusion:

I think Wolf really said it best on the original forum post in question:

"I think divisions like this are toxic in a medium that should be about freedom of art and expression. Multiplayer legends like "killbox" or "facing worlds" wouldn't make me an expert?
A lot of very simplistic multiplayer levels are well loved. This also feeds into the culture of bearded, flannel wearing people with a mild depression that tend to overthink and navel gaze game development. This statement is personal, neither objective, nor fair, nor grounded in anything but my own petty dislike for some happenings in the indie scene lately though."

Or if you really want to simplify it, take Bugsy's sage advice:

"remember kids: if your map doesn't have a rotunda, you're not an expert level designer"

Sage advice, indeed.  I'll settle for just telling anyone reading this to maybe think about maybe adding more intellectually stimulating mazes, if only for my own gaming pleasure.

Advanced Time of Day and Weather Control, Mk3

It's been a few months since I made any major updates to the Advanced Time of Day (TOD) and Weather Control System I made and put on the store earlier this year.  The second iteration added lightning storms, sound effects for lightning, and specularity changes as well as some color tuning.

Well version 3 is out and it's on sale (9.98, 27% savings!) 

It's added the following:

• Better documentation
• Better sunset and daytime transitions
• Bugfixes for the brightness issue
• A time of day clock usable by NPCs and scripts
• A 12 hour conversion system to provide time of day to players in AM/PM format.
• Lots of little small updates such as better variable names and cleaner code!

All of this marks a pretty good spot for this.  There are currently no bugs known and it's running flawlessly on my system.  Grab your update if you have one and get to work :)

Latest news from Game Guru

Looks like Lee's reading my blog, his update had a very similar format.

https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-progress-update

Right now there's also a pretty interesting set of discussions on the webforums on two topics that are near and dear to my heart with #gamedev:

First off, there's a good discussion going on Terrain Generation and modification externally:
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218797

In that thread we have actual source code on how the file for m.dat is output (m.dat is the map data found inside of the fpm file, which is really just a zip file using the password 'mypassword'). 
Apparently it's just a 1024x1024 array of floats, with a 00004000 metadata tag at the beginning.  There's a lot that can be done here.  Apparently game-guru does a lot of the actual interpolation/etc so it *SHOULD* smooth a significant amount of it between each floating point value. 

Then you have several AI related discussions:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218792
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218816
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218810

Mostly centered around AI performance.  The big  issue is people are making 'hordes' of zombies and it's pooping out game-guru. Big surprise there.  Most AI is written as a singular entity and eats a lot of cycles.  Writing mob-based AI is completely different.  I might have to step in on this one though I'm really tremendously rusty on AI writing.  It'll be a lot of work.  But basically if I recall you kind of give each 'mob' zombie a sort of thin-client style AI where there's one main process and a bunch of minor processes.  The main process then controls the subprocesses.  You need functions for computing things such as the centroid (a fancy way of saying a central point they can all reach).  It's a big project, something that would eat a lot of cycles I don't have.

In other news, I got a request from a customer to add a timer or minute/time tracker.  It should effectively be easy enough to implement. I may actually go do that myself if given the time.

Some good stuff out there on the forums, which have generally died down due to a lack of interest from lack of obvious development - but definitely keep your eyes peeled.

Excited for new GG updates.

I realize I've been silent here for a while but I wanted to just say I've been off and on in communication with Lee Bamber with respect to the upcoming release of Game-Guru.  It's slated to be available by Christmas.

So a few important tidbits here and I'm going to list in no particular order, but they are all MASSIVE improvements over the existing system.

• DirectX11 - Huge huge visual/processing overhaul. 
• PBR (Physically based rendering).  This will drastically change the way lighting is done.
• Unlimited dynamic lights.  Assuming this applies to PBR it's going to be a very cool addon.
• Static lighting fix (removing sun baking into the final static lighting) which has been ruining indoor scenes since forever; maybe now I can actually finish my sci-fi game!
• Drastically reduced load times, especially the outright evil AI pathing system.

Now let's go through some of these differences one at a time.
DirectX11 - The current version of DX is 9 as used by Game-Guru at this time.  11 provides a more up to date graphical experience as well as better hyperthreading and utilization of graphics hardware.  In laymen terms X9 is more CPU dependent, X11 is more GPU dependent.

PBR - See this link for more detailed information on what's going on here, but basically a PBR map is applied to the object and then the renderer applies lighting to that more realistically.  It's something I'm not super familiar with but the results are very good thus far.

Unlimited Dynamic Lights -  This is an important side effect of better lighting overall.  Currently Game-Guru works with  only two Dynamic Lights at a time.  Dynamic lights can light all objects including Dynamic objects such as AI driven creatures, collectable items, doors, etc.  It's very important if we want to get a functional system for lighting that we get more than two available at a time. Unlimited would be absolutely fantastic in terms of levelbuilding. 

Static Lighting Fix -  As reported on this thread I was able to find and duplicate the issue.  Once I analyzed the issue in detail I was able to report the actual problem being that the sun was baking in without any respect towards the level's sun settings and as such causing overlap and excessive shadows in baked mode.  This has been a major issue for a long time which has caused a lot of oddities and irregularities in Game-Guru's lighting system. 

Reduced Load Times - If you've ever made a level and exported it in Game-Guru you faced the biggest obstacle towards developing an actual commercial product - the incredibly long load times.  I'm not joking here but my old 'Silent Hill Game Guru' map that my son and I made for my wife's birthday had *15 MINUTE LONG LOAD TIMES OR HIGHER*.  Most of this was from the computation of AI paths.  There's literally no way you could sell a game in that environment.  It's simply not possible to explain to a user that they should go take a shower and come back and the level might be loaded by then.  Lee is claiming much improved load times, specifically in the realm of AI pathing (per an email I had with him).  So as a result we should see some really functional export capabilities.

In conclusion - I'm really looking forward to playing around with the newest iteration of GG though it might take a little while for it to show up given the massive amount of work being done.  I'll probably write some new lighting guides, tutorials, or a review on the engine itself.  I'm sure there will be some bugs to iron out, thing always slip past QA even in large scale corps these days.  So a one man show like Lee runs it's veritably guaranteed.  But still, these changes should really propel Game Guru to be a more mainstream capable engine.  Perhaps not AAA, but at least not bottom shelf.

Lessons learned from: What remains of Edith Finch

Boy.

I didn't think I'd do one of these anytime soon.  I mean I think the last time I did one was with my reviews on the 90's version of Doom.  Click here to see those reviews.

My wife recently introduced me to a game which apparently was impressively reviewed.  It was called simply:

"What remains of Edith Finch."

I remember her coming in and telling me to check out the video she took with some funny scenes.  I was impressed by the creativity of it on it's face.  Then, rather quickly I might add, she stopped talking about it.

This caught my attention.

She finished the game quickly enough, approximately 3-4 hours play time.  She came in, tears streaking her face and I thought - uh-oh.  This must have had a pretty heavy story.  She says to me simply: "You have to play this."

Ok.

So I took the bait and sat to play on her computer.    I won't give away the plot or gush over it.  I willy simply say for my review that there are a few games in your life you *MUST* play.  

This is one of them.   There's no wiggling around it.  You have to play it if you want to see some of not only the most creative storytelling around but a bevy of impressive game design techniques which are keenly honed and exceptionally executed.

Warning - what comes next might qualify as a spoiler.  I am assuming you play the game first, then return to this.

Ok, let's begin.  The first thing that struck me was how obviously it was an Unreal Engine game.  If you know what you're looking for it's fairly easy to tell.  This initially gave me mediocre hopes for the game; I mean UE4 puzzle-style games are a dime a dozen.

The floating world text is usually a good indicator it's from UE4.

There's a lot of little things you notice right in a UE4 title.  For instance, the aforementioned floating text.  There's generally sweeping terrain that's quite striking with an obvious linear path.  This is often the way with these types of titles.  Nothing here is particularly original though you may notice your first tinges of feeling like something is different when you view the bizarre house's architecture.  You realize that something so magnificent and well detailed is probably a prelude of things to come.

Speaking of details..

The game play up through the first bit is fairly straightforward and normal.  In years gone by, they derided this type of game as a 'walking simulator'.  It really isn't though, as you'll soon see.   Throughout this part though you will be almost completely overwhelmed by the insane attention to detail.  Every nook, cranny, and edifice has some sort of eye-catching detail.  Clutter objects are on the by and large extremely unique.  Normally you get a lot of similarity as it's a situation where you feel as a developer a little rushed to finish smaller component pieces.  However this game is an excellent study in the concept of both exterior and interior design architecture.  The lighting and design draw you in the path you'd expect but the environment itself begs for you to scour.  I probably spent fifteen full minutes in each area just looking at the wide array of high quality clutter.

Detailed clutter like this literally fill the game from top to bottom.

I'm a big fan of well used clutter;  I feel like it provides a sense of reality to an otherwise boring or drab game.   This game at first comes at you with an overwhelming amount of clutter.  However soon you realize this game is meant to be viewed from a series of frames or slides in a sense.  It sort of underscores how utterly important it is to not only have a good artist to design such perfect clutter pieces but to also have a good eye for how to put it together like a director for a movie.

Next up, the narration.  A lot of story-based games (such as the Parable of Stanley) use some form of narrator.  However a great many low-level indy titles use fairly poor narration.  As a sometimes Sci-Fi writer of literally zero acclaim, I feel that totally qualifies me to provide some on-the-spot judgement here.  Right? Right.  So I have to say I really felt the narration here was absolutely fantastic and further underscored having some experience in creative writing.  If you haven't taken a creative writing course at your local college (often offered at very low rates) you really have no idea what you are missing.  This critical element of storytelling is often overlooked in the name of fancier graphics or big ideals.  

Of course, stories are about the stories.  This game clearly had an experienced writer working on it; the narration reads like a really familiar book.  You get a good sense of each individual character's state of mind and they truly come to life with every word in front of you.

It helps to have your text boxes be more dynamic and interactive as well.

One interesting element 'WREF' provided was highly interactive text bubbles.   Very often the text was portrayed in new and unique ways that were actually quite fun to mess with.  Sometimes they exploded, spun, or were wiggled off.  In one case a kite is used to spin them.  In another you shake them loose like dandelion seeds.  It's really quite interesting and is almost always relevant to the story.

The use of lighting in this game was particularly impressive.

If you've read my previous blog posts on game design or game development (specifically for Game-Guru) you already know that I am a huge fan of intelligent lighting principles.  This game really took the things I already knew were capable and pressed them to their limit.   Some of the area lighting is .. well just beyond impressive.  Especially considering how there's virtually no power available in the game's 'house'.

The lighting provides a clear sense of both ambience and direction without beating you over the head with it.

There's skylights that let in just the right amount of moonlight, blacklights, blinking buoys in the distance... dim candlelight, bright studio lighting... I didn't feel as much like the developer was trying to impress me with a bag of tricks so much as just use every sound lighting principle ever conceived for a game in a purposeful and efficient fashion.

And yet - none of this really is anything particularly noteworthy.  

Don't get me wrong - it's great, shocking even - with it's lush details and environments.

But what absolutely astounded me - what blew me completely out of the water were the game mechanics.

Yeah.  If you played the game, you know - you KNOW what I'm talking about here.

This game had the potential to be a rail shooter without shooting; a simple walk and click game that told a story.  And yet, it takes the time to provide a wildly variable experience that not only gives you differentiation but also makes you feel like you're learning something.  The fish packing plant is one of the most incredible scenes I've ever seen in an indy title.  I will get back to that, however.

Shortly after you begin the game you play as a young girl.  Her story is ... intriguing to say the least. 

Yeah, that's a shark.

Time for some unvarnished truth.  My wife told me about the shark scene.  It was probably one of the funniest things I've ever seen.  It's insane, wild, and fun.  I do kind of wish she'd not ruined it, but what can you do.  During this phase of the game you evolve through various creatures.  EACH one has a different way of interacting with it's environment. 

The use of the camera on the tentacle monster was particularly interesting.

The cat can jump and run across thin ledges.  The owl flies and swoops down on it's prey.   The shark... kind of flops around until it lands in the ocean, then rushes forward to much on seals.  Each one represents it's own challenge in reverse engineering for the purposes of figuring out game development.  The one that was of particular interest was the weird tentacle octopus monster.  It took me a little bit to realize that the camera would move when it pulled itself and then simply used the tentacle as an actor on a static camera (until it pulled forward with left click).  Pretty ingenious and definitely worth playing around with to try to figure out.

Most of these were done in a simple fashion but above all they worked rather seamlessly.   I found that it was very easy to navigate, locate, and complete the objectives as stated by the narrator.  The game was structured in such a way that the scenes were mostly fairly loose; they consisted of a smaller arena that would simply loop back in on itself if you got too far off track.  This helped keep the players  from accidentally breaking out of the bounds of what amounted to a very simple minigame.

The games start simple - move the fish over, get the head cut off, throw it up.  Then they add complexity - walk through a maze while performing the fish-cut-toss minigame.  It's really quite impressive.

 

This of course changes and evolves as the game goes on.  There are several minigames ranging from snapping pictures with a camera that has a manual focus to a fish packing game where you literally play two separate minigames at once to illustrate how people can do a menial task while doing something creative.

Yep, there's a sailboat there, that the player controls!

The games evolve at times, in the case of the fish packing plant they start as a simple 2-D wireframe maze to a 3-D isometric view, culminating in a first person view.  The entire time music builds to a rousing crescendo as the 'world' develops.  It's really incredible.  All while still doing the fish minigame with your mouse hand.  I couldn't believe it and I really can't describe it - you have to experience it to really understand it and that's saying something.  I consider myself extremely verbose and this really should go to show how awestruck I was by this.  

This picture doesn't do this scene any justice.

This is more than an uncommon game.  This game is special.  I mean that.  It's something that if you play it with an open eye and open mind you will maybe pick up a fraction of the work that's been put into it and will never forget that.  It will teach you things about game design and yourself that you didn't know.    The story is brilliant too, of course.  Truly powerful stuff.  It's an experience I will likely revisit like an old movie once in a while to really refresh the memories.  This combined epic scoring, fantastic art, an incredible plot, brilliant writing and innovative gameplay all into one neat package.  I'll be hard pressed to ever make something even approaching it.


I'm sad that it's over.  Play it.  Learn from it.  Take your time and really enjoy it.  Just like life really; which is kind of the point of the game in the first place.