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.