This week in Game-Guru - 3/26/2018 (Released 27th)

Official Game-Guru News:

This past week marks the latest release of the public preview updates, specifically bringing us to a 3rd major update with PP.  The full list of commits are available here:

https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/commits/master

There's a lot of good stuff in there ranging from updates to scripts to making sky a scriptable change via Lua.  Most importantly of course work continues on updating fixes for broken default items.

I personally noticed my rain system and some other weather effect systems I have available on my Advanced Time of Day and Weather system aren't functioning normally.  I'll have an update for that as soon as I can but unfortunately am bombarded with my day job's work right now.

For now play around with the newest update and make sure you are submitting problems via the issue tracker here: https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/issues

It appears the Fantasy Pack is including more character creation gear, notably headgear for male/female models.  This is a welcome improvement over a system that has a lot of underused potential.

New Products on the Store:

Nothing really new here.   Some minor scripting items, a swing set, and some music.  At this point though, nothing to really write home about unless you need some of this stuff.  Expect more of an uptick during the summer months, especially after PP goes live.

Free Stuff:

Graphix continues exercising his increased prowess with 3D models.  There's some miscellaneous free items here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217932?page=9

Lafayette II put up a free tree here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219495

Third Party Tools:

Looks like BOTR has finally started to settle back into regular daily life after having his first little one and has begun working on his suite of third party programs.  Notably work has been done on his DBO/.X data importer.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219495

Random Acts of Creativity:

*crickets*.

No real updates here to write home about.  More next week, maybe.  I guess people are prepping for Easter or winding down from a long winter.

In My Own Works:

My book has slowed down; I'm at 50,000 words or so but having to rewrite a segment which I was borrowing too heavily from my blog cost me about a weeks worth of writing.  I am re-writing it from the ground up and that's unfortunately a costly affair.  Overall I'm on track for being in 1st-2nd draft territory by September (which is my personal goal).  Onwards and upwards!

Weekly report delayed until tomorrow

Apologies but there's a lot going on which is preventing me from dealing with putting up a rather lengthy post about what's new in the Game-Guru world this week.  I will have one for you all tomorrow though! 
Lots of new changes that need discussed so definitely make sure you check in!

This Week in Game-Guru - 3/19/2018

Welcome to another weekly wrap-up on all things Game-Guru.  Things continue to shape up post-public preview v2 and we're seeing most of the artists develop a workflow around PBR assets which really add a level of depth and dimension pretty far beyond what Game-Guru has been known to do.

Official Game-Guru News:

Game-Guru now has a donation link for 3rd party development.  It's about time!  Remember, these monies won't go towards Lee & Company.  It will actually go for people who are doing contracted work outside of TheGameCreators to fix up long-standing issues in Game-Guru.  I've already put a few bucks towards it and encourage you to do the same to help reward those who are really getting this project moving again!

In other news, the Easter DLC is also free so grab it while it lasts!
It's also got some new models added so existing owners of it who bought it last year should have that in their inventory as well.

Beyond that, work continues on the pending 'regular' release of Game-Guru.  Bear in mind beyond public preview editions, we have seen NO real updates to Game-Guru since May of last year.  That's quite a long time to wait.  So I think a lot of us are really hoping to see something magical though I think it's fair to expect we'll run into some snags as well.  Hopefully Lee and team are agile after the fact and fix whatever whack-a-mole bugs pop up.


New Products on the Store:

This week we're starting to see the current crop of PBR related assets coming forward as more and more artists get used to working with the new medium.  Some of this stuff looks really great!

Most, if not all of these are PBR enabled.

I noticed Mad Lobster Workshop's Mad Scientist Lair now has a second 'kit' to it which is an 'essentials/lite' pack.

I love this brain in a jar, Mad Lobster!

This is a good idea to corral the ever-expanding inventory and help break it out though I still would have made pack 1, 2, 3 instead of his method.  To each their own though. 

Graphix's work on a playground set is really turning out nice, about time for us to get an updated one.  I have been using an older one for years and it's about time to update.

Finally there's this way, way, way overpriced toilet from newcomer HomeWreckers Studio.  I mean I get it, everyone needs a good quality toilet for their games.  For the price though he's going to find it a struggle to sell this piece.  Probably.  My recommendation would be to offer it significantly reduced by itself (say $3.50) or include it much reduced as part of a pack.

Free Stuff:

This week there's not a lot going on.  I will say though Bod has been working on updating his assets for PBR and they look phenomenal.

Though word in the winds is that a fix is coming to PP that will render a lot of his updates unnecessary.

Beyond that we see some new stuff from Graphix (notably a cabinet) and  some free music from the probably very-hard to pronounce "eluukkanen".

Third Party Tools:

This week we got to see a glimpse of something REALLY cool.  A third party tool called "Game Launcher Creator".  This program really allows some impressive things such as live updates, notifications, a WYSIWYG editor, and more.   You can find info on it here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219455 ... lots of potential in this one.

Someone found a new PBR tool: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219467


Random Acts of Creativity:

This week Bugsy put up some new screenies of 'Direct Action 2' and it looks great.
He's really getting a handle on GG's lighting and it shows:

Great use of a dynamic (RED) light with lots of soft blue static lights.

Also it's nice to see 'Len the Man' still working on his cowboy shooter game.

In my own works:

Sort of a lazy week for me.  I have a lot of life stuff going on.  Lately I've been playing Galaxy on Fire 3 on iphone, World of Tanks Blitz (iphone) and also Tera had an event for Male Brawler classes this weekend .. and I've been a founder in that since the dawn of time.  So not much going on.  Pounded out a few thousand words on the book.  Books are a process of constantly grinding out more material.  I did obtain licensure for a few more assets so that's coming along nicely.  I now have some custom models worth noting and am looking forward to revealing them as time goes on!

Eventually the book will come with:
A full set of level-building supplies (buildings, clutter objects)
A custom character (enemy/npc)
Custom Character Creator assets
Custom weapons and more!

I'm still looking for qualified artists.  Let me know if you have an interest in having some of your work included!

Game-Guru and Female Gamers

My wife is a hardcore female gamer.  She maintains a fairly popular YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/Mmogurl).  While I cannot speak for her directly, I will note some observations about her experiences with gaming, being a woman, and gamedev.

You see, she's been a long time horror fan.  I mean long time; as long or longer than I've known her.
She loves Silent Hill; she maintained a pretty high traffic website back in the early 2000's on it.  It crushed her to see Silent Hills (she's not a Koijima fangirl).  It reduced her to rubble when she saw him quit, destroy all existing progress on it, and essentially cause a hard reset for the franchise.  The look in her eyes when I told her it'd be 4 more years from that point before she'd see another SH game was difficult indeed.

So in her mind, she wants to make her OWN horror game.  To her credit (reasons like this are why I married the woman) she put her money where her mouth was and started learning Unity and Unreal.  She's made some impressive stuff for someone with no training in any formal capacity and no real background in GameDev.

She however sees my work in Game-Guru and is interested.  Unfortunately there are literally almost no female models to work with on the store.  She knows I'm writing a book on Game-Guru and have tons of experience with the system - but there's simply nothing there to pull her in for her own projects.

So .. just a little suggestion for developers reading this - please add some female-friendly stuff to the store - it might help attract at least one new buyer I can think of!

This Week in Game-Guru: 03/12/2018

I'm going to condense my weekly report this week significantly as there's not a lot going on currently. I'm also renaming "Engine Update Progress Report" to "Official Game-Guru News"

Official Game-Guru News:

Do the survey for a chance to win $100 from thegamecreators: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSczMURUbCOYDaRxMpxmQjq2RpSAz09LMkQEwSuepq8nXb1N9g/viewform

New products in the store:

More trees  from M2design... interestingly they are PBR assets.
More clutter items (batteries) from Teabone
A completely modular house kit of.. very similar looking houses from a new guy named 'homewrecker studios'.  Anyone else see the irony of him selling houses on the store?
More PBR assets from Mad Lobster
A pretty clever Ricochet script kit from Mstockton

Free Stuff:

Graphix put together a nice punching bag: here
Nothing else going on, seriously.

Third Party Tools:

There's a inventory system here that I missed last week: here
Looks like a solid WIP.

Random Acts of Creativity:

The bizarre but intriguing title "Visit to Murmia" is getting some new updates.  I'm curious about this one but without a plot (by the creators own admission) it's going to be a hard sell as a completed work.

In my own works:

Still grinding out this book.  I'm about 1/3rd through the first rough draft and not quite to the territory where it's a slog.  Life is hitting me hard right now though so I'm having trouble putting words to paper when I'm dealing with the constant difficulty of living in my own head.  Soon enough though the fog will clear and I'll move forward again with my usual aplomb.  For now, I'm sitting just over 40,000 words of a projected 120,000.

Some forward progress worth reporting!

Just a quick little update post:
I've got a source for my Legal, Marketing and Distribution catch-all chapter that's been very forthcoming.  He's one of the premier artists and creators in the Game-Guru community who has actually had good success so it's important to me to get his details on how he was able to achieve that.

I also contacted a former artist in the Game Guru community who has been kind enough to provide me with my first batch of art for my book.  This custom art is something he had already created but since he's done with Game-Guru he'll allow me to distribute it with the book freely :).   So thanks Mio!

I am still looking for more artists and providers.  I don't have a lot to offer at this point so if you're interested in helping out (and a place in the acknowledgements section) let me know!

This week in Game-Guru - 03/05/2018

Just a reminder that I spend a few hours on this site every week and new subs are appreciated greatly.  I don't make a cent on it and just want to keep interest in Game-Guru alive so spread the word and use the subscribe link on the right for more expert analysis and weekly reports :)

ENGINE UPDATE PROGRESS REPORT

I think it's fair to say we've been waiting a while for a real update.
Public Preview 2 is out and we've had some time to evaluate it.  It's not as bad as the first public preview, in my opinion, but it still has miles to go as evidenced by the github repo issues log: https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/issues

This is disturbing because I think when we started down this road to DX11 we never expected we'd be sitting on the same FUNCTIONAL stable version of Game-Guru for nearly a year.  We're going on 10 months now since the last real update to Game-Guru.  I cannot understand why the decision was made to not at least offer simple proven bugfixes to the base DX9 edition.  I cannot also understand why the DX11 edition wasn't spun off into a separate purchase option but that's just me being my usual Capitalist pig self.

NEW PRODUCTS IN THE STORE

My LightKit is on sale this week for $2 USD: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/30936
This week can be boiled down to two distinct updates of new content:

First - we have a whole western themed town, which is a fantastic addition to the store and really fits a pretty empty niche.

This is just a fraction of the immense asset list.

 
On top of that, it has a significant degree of quality that makes it worth the $19.99 pack price being asked.  The kit includes around 80 models in varying levels of quality from 100 to 6000 polys with one outlier in the 9000+ range.  Some of the models have an extremely simple design but the texturing is expertly done.  For this guy, that's hugely important.
The artist Sula has the pack available on the store here: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11009

Second we have a sort of 'dueling tree competition' between m2design and honkeyboy.

I'm not sure why, but both of them have submitted trees to the store for your perusal.  There's already a lot of trees on the store but hey, what's a few more right?

FREE STUFF

 - GraphiX continues his free weapon parade with this awesome drill-bit shooting gun: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219394
I'm always in favor of new free weapons, as they are time consuming to make and usually cost a fair amount on the store.  So anytime someone is generous enough to provide even something halfway decent, it's a boon for the rest of us.  This however is a really nice piece with excellent texturing.  Not wild about the colors but the actual textures look great!

 - Dvader came out of the woodwork to provide some interesting water wave code with the new PP water lua functionality: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219404

THIRD PARTY TOOLS

Just a reminder I haven't updated my Notepad++ API yet for the newest PP commands.  I'll get to it soon enough :)

RANDOM ACTS OF CREATIVITY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l39r6rnaFo - A new developer put together a solid looking ' lush forest ' in Game-Guru.  Good stuff.
Dimoxinil updated again with respect to his PBR work.  Still looks phenomenal.

Wolf's change to Acythian - He updated saying he's renaming the project listed as Acythian to... something else.  He's going to start a new project for Acythian that he feels is better suited for it.
'Guns of Solo' - Not a bad first try for a project, in fact a pretty good one.  Levels look well designed, use of custom assets is decent enough.  I have to say it's a pretty good attempt and I hope he takes the time to finish it.

IN MY OWN WORKS

 - added several thousand words to book, almost finishing one of the final chapters on selling, legal information and dealing with hostile customers.
- current word count sits at 37,000+ out of a projected 120,000+.

Getting there :)