This Week in GameGuru - 03/25/2019

GameGuru News

I'm going to change the title of this from 'official' GameGuru news to GameGuru news.  This is for several reasons.  One, I am not an official news source of GameGuru.  Everything I do, I do without compensation as a service to the community at large.

Second, my blog/report is not here to parrot what is already out there officially from TheGameCreators.  As such, expect editorial-style analysis and things out of the box of the usual - along with a nod towards whatever actual news is out there. I do, however, appreciate their good graces of putting my blog/report on their site through blog syndication.

So with respect to 'official news' - There isn't any. Nothing new has been posted.

Unoffically?

It appears that a recent update broke encryption in standalone games.

This is only affecting the Feb 28th+, PP, and Beta builds.

This is a massive bug that has been marked as urgent on github.  Unfortunately the fixer of things, Lee, has not yet commented on this issue. What this means for you, as an end user, is if you make a game with custom assets or the like - when you make a standalone using the newest client it will make your _e file that is encrypted... except it isn't. Assets can be stolen/ripped from your standalones.  The solution is to either not make a standalone at all, or to use a previous version until the issue is rectified.

What's Good in the Store

The store hasn't changed much this week.  Mad lobster continued to add to his studio kit, as he frequently does.  As a result, you can expect even more high quality assets to trickle their way into this very well made set.

Third party tools and tutorials

Big apology to Corno_1 whom last week I accidentally missed an update with respect to his 'EBE Editor 2.0'.  You can use the editor to make new shapes for the EBE, to allow for some fairly interesting variations on the usual fare inside of GameGuru's editor.

You can obtain your copy of this free utility here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220618

Someone recently pointed me at a new site called 'www.scriptguru.net' - I cannot comment much on it other than it's nice to see a new resource in the community.  They do have some interesting tutorial videos, however, so it may be worth a trip there to check those out.

Free Stuff

Graphix made a grappling hook.  Looks great though I honestly have no idea what I'd use this for.
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217932?page=14#msg2613556

Gtox made a hilariously weird dog with a man's head that's available for free: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220642#msg2613678

Grobyken made a massive tome of all of his free works in one location.  Get them all here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217711?page=5#msg2613666

Side note... people with a name that starts with G apparently are (G)enerous :) 

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

A new challenger appears!  This user built a relatively rare isometric shooter.  While I love these types of games for GameGuru, I know the limitations are going to seriously box him in.  I do wish him the best of luck though!  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220643

Cogwheel Chronicles is just.. man.  This guy is something else.  I'm really impressed at your level of work Cybernessence.

In My Own Works

So having wrapped up my book it's so hard to not go back and try to feature creep it.  I want to consistently go back and edit things, but alas, that's in the hands of the publisher until we do a revised version.  I'm sure I missed things.  I KNOW I missed things.

One interesting tidbit I'd love to have included was a user (Defy) recently posted this beautiful screenshot illustrating some problems with GG's memory usage.

Make sure you look at the full size image.  This in a nutshell captures the problems with memory usage and GameGuru.  When I put my book together, fully 1/10th of the book was on testing, troubleshooting, and optimization.  That's a minimum of 14,000 words on those subjects.  Serious work needs done to get GameGuru cleaned up and I hope that work like this will spur fixes in the right direction.

In my own works, I'm still putting together a nice 'freebie' sky to go with the pack.  Thank you everyone who purchased it while it was on sale.  Maybe it will find it's way into another sale in the future.  Enjoy the skies and make sure you leave a comment!

This Week in GameGuru - 03/18/2019

Official GameGuru News:

This week there was an impromptu free weekend for GameGuru.  Unfortunately by the time you read this it'll have been closed. This infusion of fresh blood will likely give us a great deal more new users. 
Work continues on updating older packs to PBR.  I've seen some of the newer results and it's looking pretty good thus far!

Lastly on Github there are a significant amount of changes in motion.  It appears some multiplayer codefixes and menu changes are in the works among other things. We'll know more as we approach release.

What's Good in the Store: 

This week in the store we have some really excellent weapons by Mstockton - it's refreshing to see a modeller make the foray into weapons as they are such a tricky element to implement in GameGuru.

I'm particularly fond of how good the bottles look.

So far he's made a melee-based series of a broken bottle (reskinned into four variants) and a night-stick baton (also with 4 different weapon skins).  The animations are decent and for the price ($3 USD!), you can't go wrong. 

This is just a fraction of the assets you receive!

Also Mad Lobster is working on his first new pack in a long time, his film and photo pack continues his impressive use of PBR and modelling. It's well priced for the quality level you receive, and if his other pack is any indication it will easily be a top shelf item that will receive consistent updates and additions.

Tarkus added a new music pack with that 'abandoned city vibe' - https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11098

If you ever want to build an aquarium, now's the time.

Gtox added a boatload (pun intended) more fish - Tropical Reef Pack

And lastly, I'm sure you had to guess if you know me - my first new works in nearly two years have been added to the store.  I've gone and gotten fairly proficient with my new tools.  Being bottled up creatively while writing a book for 10 months meant I had to run out and create something powerful - and I think I've done a fair job of that!  I wanted to create the definitively highest quality space skies available for GameGuru.

What do you think ... did I hit the mark?  I'll be putting the pack on sale by the time this post goes live for This week only. After that it'll go back up to it's normal price.
Also, I am yet to include the 'pack exclusive sky'.  That should be added later this week so people who already purchased it - you'll see that in your inventory soon!


You can pick up your copy of the 4k HD Space Skies pack here!

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

Weapon and segment autowelder received some updates here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219806

Please note there are a lot of good links just past that for BOTR's 3rd party utils - make sure you grab them while you can!

Free Stuff

I gave out a handful of my 'throwaway' 4k space skies.  This is specifically for the ones I didn't feel met the level of quality I felt were worth selling.  They still far exceed much of what's out there, in my opinion.  Get your free copies here:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220603

Lafette updated his free trees:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220474?page=2#msg2613161

Grobyken added a 'simple rusty ladder': https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217711?page=5#msg2613343

And sadly it's official - Bod's mods are no longer available.  Thanks again Bod for all the hard work and good luck in your future endeavors!

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

So right out - Wolf is continuing his work on his latest project and I have to say I'm optimistic to see it possibly reach it's conclusion in the future.  What's shocking is finding out he's only using a DNIS workflow for these screenshots!

Bonesy is working on his shooter some more.  I've gotten additional screenshots but the reality is I'm limited on size so I'm running out of runway on this blog post. Likewise maiacombra has also started some work on a sci-fi Robinson Crusoe style game.

Lastly Tarkus is working on a great looking game called 'Urban Histories' which has a real interesting feel to it.   Looks like he's widely using readily available models with good placement and the cartoon shader to give it a good look and feel.

In My Own Works

So you may not have heard but the book is officially in the hands of the publisher, woo freaking hoo! I cannot tell you how weird it feels not having that as an ever-present companion to my work-week.  I'm happy it's on it's way.

I picked out the cover art this weekend and worked on some other various side aspects of it such as the back cover text for the publisher.

I have 3-6 months to prep all of the game-specific assets that will go with it and I want to thank everyone who helped me with it.  It's been a long ride and I'm really looking forward to seeing this thing in print!

This Week in GameGuru - 03/11/2019

Official GameGuru News

Nothing big at the moment, just a new PP version for testing from the upstream beta build.  This does however mean that we can expect a live version very shortly.  Looking forward to testing it, myself.  Anyone interested in how to use the PP version can find details here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220548?page=1#msg2612465

What's Good in The Store

Moving on - there's a lot of great stuff this week.  We've got a fantastic 'Space Derelict' pack by Kasseyus,

a full 18-piece foundry kit from Lafette,

a functional stationary gun emplacement by GraphiX,

a 'porta-cabin' kit by Graphix,

and a really interesting 'imp' monster by lotgd.

Not bad for a single week!

Free Stuff

A bit of sad news this week.  Bod has finally pulled the plug on his free works.  He's no longer offering any of it for free.  Pardon my interjection here but it seems like a phenomenal waste of effort in this case.  Bod, if you are reading this my recommendation is to offer the works on the store for a price you feel would be acceptable.  I'm sure there'd be a surplus of people (myself included) who'd pony up the appropriate amount for it.

Beyond that we have:

Lafette put out a perfect complement to the sci-fi pack here!

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

A rigging tutorial here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220592

A good thread on how to fix the cel shader for GameGuru: https://steamcommunity.com/app/266310/discussions/0/1837937637895481938/

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Bonesy keeps on cracking, good job man.  Just keep chipping away at it it.  I like the inclusion of objectives to help keep your players on task (see below screenshot).

I'm also very happy to announce that Wolf posted some work in progress pics.  Damn fine stuff sir!

Also I thought I'd drop a screenshot of some of my own stuff.  I'm working with some new tools on my first new skies set in years.  Here's one of my favorites:

Believe it or not, there's more impressive ones than that.  I'm really excited to bring these out for everyone.

In My Own Works

As mentioned previously, I'm working on a pack of new space skies for consumption.  Expect the older skies to get price reduced and the newer skies to come out shortly as a pack. I'll then give it a few months then add the new skies to the 'All skies and weather' a few months after that.  I have plans for the weather system as well including a minor overhaul to include some better use of commands as well as to improve it's function.

Now for the big news:

The book is officially in the hands of my publisher!  I'm very happy to finally get to this point after nearly a year of solid work.  For those interested this will be published under CRC Press via Taylor and Francis publishing.  It *WILL* be available for international distribution.  It's designed as a start to finish guide with GameGuru through a game's whole lifecycle.  It will have over 450 pages of printed text, 130+ pictures, a full seventeen thousand word appendix (Lua, Error codes, Gunspec, FPE, etc), and a whole host of custom models and media you will only be able to get with the book!

My acknowledgements section was pretty long and rightfully so! Thanks again to everyone who helped get me this far.

This Week in GameGuru - 03/04/2019

This week's update will be exceptionally short.  I simply can't invest the time with this being crunch week.  My book is going to the publisher on Weds/Thurs.

Official GameGuru News

** Unofficially I have it on good authority the changes to the mega pack 3 are about a month or so out.

Officially - while I haven't seen anything direct I can honestly say it looks like we're going to receive a very large update in the next few weeks.  Time will tell. Code merges on github look promising though.

What's Good in the Store

This week has several great objects by Mad Lobster for a photo booth

 M Stockton's cookout collection is a great price for some awesome assets

Lotgd really awesome low poly cockroach with very good movement patterns.

So all in all, a pretty good set of objects to pick up!

Free Stuff

Lafette did some beautiful beer bottles https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220474?page=1#msg2612553

Lafette is giving away three animated workers https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220474?page=1#msg2612691

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

Several good tutorials by Wolf:
Creating many corpses / dead bodies for your horror game in little time without modeling knowledge 
Getting models with multiple textures into reloaded
Necessary Edits to get EAI's weaponry into GG 

Along with one from PirateMyke:
Graphix Explosion Particle Instructions  

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Bonesy made a pretty excellent supercut of his work in progress (Cyberfi)

HellreaperX's "Death House of Barker Creek" showed a tantalizing pic of a new monster:

This post  by cybernessence: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=5#msg2612636 is a must read if you're a hardcore user.  Wow, just wow man.

In My Own Works

Welp, we're here. 140,000 words, 23 chapters, an appendix with a full Lua, FPE, gunspec, error code and other references.  130+ high res grayscale pictures.  11 months of work, probably about 800 hours of time spent... and it's almost ready to go the publisher.  It leaves the train this week.  Barring any unforeseen circumstances we're talking about a 4-6 month time before it becomes paper in print. I'll be doing giveaways and coupon codes as we approach.

Beyond that I want to throw a big thank you to everyone that's helped.  If you want your name in the acknowledgements section, shoot me a message on my blog (gamegurureport.blogspot.com) or via discord.  Many of you likely already are listed. 

On a side note, I've been working on a whole new set of space skies with some new tools.  4k texture resolution and they're absolutely gorgeous.  Give those a few weeks for fine tuning.