This Week in Game-Guru - 09/24/2018

Syndication Notice: I'm adding this just to alleviate some confusion for a few out there.  This blog is hosted at http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com - it is syndicated through several different platforms.

This week is a pretty heavy duty report, so get ready!

Official Game-Guru News:

https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-construction-site-dlc-updated-2
As with all of the recent 'updates' to the graphical end of things for these packs we also get a tidbit about what's going on with new developments. In this case it appears AI is getting an overhaul and from what I hear on discord from the betas it's actually a big improvement.  Looks like I'll be editing/revising my chapter on AI soon.  With all the updates pushing through github I'd say we're probably looking at a major update dropping in the next 1-3 months.  Keep your eyes peeled.

What's Good in the Store:

Not anything new that I saw that really caught my eye and said 'buy me now'.  As such if you missed it I'll simply give last week's recommendation: Teabone's Crime Scene Pack
As it's getting more new things to it and is still a meager 80 cents.  I mean that's in the realm of 'I dropped my change in the couch cushion' territory of cost.

Free Stuff:

An Ice Cave  by Lafette II -  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220072
Free download link on the first post, it's a nice little ice cave you can drop wherever you like.  Obviously this is a static asset so you can't modify how it is shaped but it is definitely among the nicer cave systems I've seen and it's free to boot.

Third Party Tools and Tuturials:

I've made a sort of condensed list because there's so many to go over here.


https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220053 DannyD put a great 'cubemap to skymap' tutorial up.
https://youtu.be/bpIdErVJwtM  This little video goes over some of the AI simming and memory slimming Defy is getting into for his panther AI module.
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220065 Belidos's PBR Tutorial in PDF format. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxAjmicdeiU&list=PLRDhcp_8c7uAPQfE6WMBo7PCNlkQIOLdO So while this video series is not about Game-Guru 'per se' it is definitely a worthwhile watch.  Bugsy suggested this one in discord and I have to say it's right on the money.  Mirrors a lot of my own experiences but also provides valuable 'time saving skips' if you don't want to get caught in the same loops which simply waste your time.

Random Acts of Creativity:

This week we have a beautiful pool by Duchenkuke (sorry Wolf, I can't put yours on here because it's not family/work safe!):

Wow.. I love the use of color and shape on this one.  Though I'd love to see some more detail pieces in there to help round out the image.  Still, very nice for such a simple scene.

Amenmoses has been super-busy on some very interesting code pieces this week.  Firstly he made a piano that has to be seen to be believed:  https://vimeo.com/290376738
At this point I thought wow, amazing.. etc.  Then he kept going!
He added working steam gauges (Art by Graphix) -

The needle's movement is impressively detailed.

Then he did an old-style alarm clock: https://vimeo.com/291164472

Good lord man, do you sleep? 

We've also got a few other updates of 'similar games taking different approaches' - dry dusty westerns. One is Slaur3n's rapidly evolving work which is coming along great:

Notice the simple art style which while simple is completely unique to his game and thus keeps you from thinking 'great... another asset flip'.

There's also this interesting piece which is coming along well:

The above is by VincentHendricks - he seems to be taking a slightly different tact but I still really like where it's going.  Set design is decent with obvious barriers and clutter object usage is where it needs to be.  He's still working on tweaking visuals so hopefully he'll get some traction there.

In My Own Works:

About a week ago I got a problem ticket from a user for my Advanced Time of Day and Weather system for Game-Guru.  Turns out the monster update broke things I didn't see in my testing because I have several settings turned off in my build (as I don't normally use them).

A ticket was opened:
https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/issues/379

And in the process of this we corrected an issue with the FPE file but also discovered a code issue with SSAO.  So for now, get the updated version of the system from the download store items button in Game-Guru and make sure SSAO is disabled if you are getting black lines on your weather boxes.

With respect to writing, I'm coming along. Good to be back in full gear, despite the very crazy schedule I have currently.