This Week in GameGuru - 07/22/2019

GameGuru News

Well.. I'm not even sure how to broach this one but apparently we were potentially going to get Preben for a bit to work on dynamic shadows but instead that offer's been rescinded.   Officially Lee is saying it's not off the table entirely but they are going to focus on bugfixes first and then refocus on features such as that.  It's a shame as we would have probably made some serious progression.  For now, you can read about the entire thing here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220917.

In the future, I'd caution everyone against being too hyper critical.  I realize that there are strong emotions on all sides but the reality is that for this system to progress it really doesn't benefit anyone to scare away developers by blindly shooting around corners (so to speak). Cooler heads, generally speaking, prevail.

Github continues to show forward progress - https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/commits/master with Lee persisting in his momentum towards fixing outstanding bugs.

What's Good in the Store

This week in the store we have not one, but THREE new packs from relative newcomer 'sounDesign'.  These three packs are all very interesting in their own right but are all part of a larger whole, it seems:

As you can see, they all relate to a downtown building set.  The signage is fairly expansive and the door framings aren't bad either.  The entire building set is fairly well priced and can potentially fill a lot of voids in people's collections for city environments.

The building set: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11135
The fittings set: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11136
The signage set (My favorite): https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11137

Free Stuff

This week had a HUGE update in free stuff by Lafette with this monster kit:

With his 50 object marina set!

Also he added a PBR enabled character called "The Executor" you can obtain from here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220474?page=3#msg2618322

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

BOTR updated several threads on his various works: It appears he's packed it up and gone home.  Here again, cooler heads generally prevail.  Not sure what happened, but we'll seriously miss your hard work man.

A reminder that vishnu packer is free and available here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220726

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Cybernessence posted a pretty interesting pic of...

A dragon.  He modified the particle system to provide a pretty impressive breath effect.

PCS posted a project he calls Blue Dream.  While it has some rough edges, the general shape is pretty good.

The overall idea is a crash landing on an alien planet and trying to survive hunger, fatigue, and the like there.

Honkeyboy continues his new egyptian themed project with some pretty good results:

Should be one to keep an eye on.  

Lastly, Duchenkuke put up a pretty impressive demo reel called 'night ops'.  You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBPSlRuNe5w

In My Own Works

Lastly, if you haven't heard, the book is finally ready to make it to the printing press!  It will be available in hardcover, softcover, and e-book via Taylor and Francis (CRCPress) Publishing.  It'll be available at or after August 9th so stay tuned to this space for more details.

The book will include a great many, if not all of my current work as well as many demo levels, tutorials, and extras. 

This Week in GameGuru - 07/15/2019

This week we finally received the public launch of the updated engine.  

GameGuru News

 

Lots of mini-updates to the big update done.  Looks like Lee is continuing his active involvement on github via the code tracking here: https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/commit/8d6552fb6d1b0bb759e20bb6e84e1f8bf0ee361c

Notably there's a bit in there about making Makehuman characters more easily importable.  While I like the integration and simplicity of the Character Creator, I think this is also a worthy effort to help further define GameGuru's place in the grand scheme of things. 

What's Good in the Store

 

Sula did a whole village for sale.

Ironically I was *JUST* considering making a wheat vegetation object.

He's rapidly becoming one of the most prolific PBR modellers on the store. Beyond that, not much else is going on on the store this week.

Free Stuff

 

I wasn't able to find anything free this week.  Better luck next time guys!

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

Lots of great tutorials this week.  Notably Dvader (who previously made some really interesting work in GameGuru) has returned with a very simple 'lunar launch' tutorial.

Amenmoses wrote up a good tutorial on sound usage in GameGuru: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220877

Graphix has opened up his asset manager for GG for testing: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220822?page=4

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

This week Honkeyboy posted an interesting EBE build on one of his projects:

Complete with hidden burial chambers!

More info can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220833/newest

And this week we got a return from old-timer 'scienceboy' with his mega-epic 'Twin Worlds':

Full info on the latest can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/208185?page=10#msg2617651

Cybernessence of course continues to amaze with a huge update.  He's recently done some interesting work with the terrain shader:

Looking better and bettter!

There's a lot of additional info but one thing of note is he created an interior environment zone that allows localized cubemaps based on your zone.  This is a massive improvement over the stock system and I would push to have this change added immediately for the sake of more serious creators: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=6#msg2617883

In My Own Works

Time has been hard to find, mostly just upkeep on nearly constant book questions by the publisher and typesetting company. Beyond that looking at trying to get some works done for the sidecar materials for the book.  This includes some last minute procurement and speccing up demo levels for people to learn from.

This Week in GameGuru - 07/08/2019

Well, I'm back, finally.  My life is still absolute chaos from the baby's arrival but I've been able to shore up enough time to put together a GameGuru report for everyone. Deepest apologies for missing anything, but there's a tremendous backlog to work through.

GameGuru News

Obviously the biggest news here is that the big patch dropped.  By the time you see this, the newest patch will likely have trickled from the public preview (a sort of open beta) to the main branch.  This huge, expansive update has a significant number of major bugfixes from numerous community members such as T-Bone, BoredOfTheRings, Defy, Preben and others.  It also has some back end work from Lee.  It purports to provide:

• 41 Major fixes. 
• Lots of water fixes
• Z Depth issues,
• Glass casting shadows
• And many other fixes for long time issues. More info can be found here: https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-publicpreview-released

I am really looking forward to having a chance to test this myself. Of note are the apparently now functional lightmapping system, which has been a MAJOR thorn in the side of the DX11 builds along with some serious memory work.

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

I made a nearly complete guide to the projectile system here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220802

A third party asset management tool is in the works, which I find particularly exciting: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220822

The GameGuru youtube official channel has posted a number of recent updates for usage tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1q1e3Q9IKMk4nDlAGb_5Jg/videos

What's Good in the Store

Mad Lobster put up a really excellent film pack of PBR assets.

This is an exceptionally high quality pack and is definitely a must-buy if you use these types of materials.

Sula finally got around to making his cars into a pack, it's pricey but definitely worth the cost if you need a large number of European vehicles that are PBR enabled.

FredGames has put together an interesting Sci-Fi snap-together kit.

Beyond that T-Bone has put together several interesting script and clutter pieces, check his artist page here: https://www.tgcstore.net/artist/45855

Tarkus1971 has been hard at work at music assets, which are generally speaking great quality for the price: https://www.tgcstore.net/artist/219730

And lastly Graphix has been hard at work on many of his own assets such as fences, graveyards and the more.

Free Stuff

A great number of free assets were released recently.  Wolf, in particular, posted a massive megathread of all of his free stuff.

This is a definite must-visit for anyone who hasn't obtained his high quality DNIS assets.

Tarkus1971 put up a new music track called a retro volca?  I'm not familiar with it but his work up to this point has been really decent.  Get your copy here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213190?page=5#msg2617272

MaiaCombra put together a decayed burlap decal

This should have good utility in a war torn of post apocalyptic environment.

And also several other items such as a mobile interface and a retexture of HarryWever's crane.

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

This section will likely not be as updated as it should be because simply there's too much to pour over.  I will attempt to capture some of the more interesting things I've seen recently.

Far and away I absolutely loved T-bone (Teabone)'s 'garbage cleanup simulator' found at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRo_vt1tY60



Duchenkuke posted a kitschy project that might have some potential. It gave me a few laughs, at least, the video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItHmZyKs1rU

Amenmoses has been doing wonderful things with particles: https://vimeo.com/345087887

Solar's project Resist: Revolution is still looking like it's making good forward progress: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218343/newest

Honkeyboy is back with some interesting work.  While it may need some polish, be aware he does some pretty interesting work with his Lua code so keep an eye on it for that reason if no other strikes your fancy: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220833

Newcomer "J-Dup" put some interesting work into a project called "The Last Dweller". 

More info and a video can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220872

Cybernessence has continued his phenomenal work on GameGuru and his project:

The above picture illustrates in the author's words: "Just updated the terrain shader to use combined textures, diffuse with specular in alpha and normal with ao in alpha channel.

This saves texture memory and the results for terrain really pop (the ao really make a big difference), it's now looking a lot like how the basic unity PBR terrain does ..."

A host of new and updated works really flooded my research here and I apologize for those I missed.  Keep writing your updates so I can see the latest and greatest screenshots to help plug your projects with!

In My Own Works

One of the harder tasks I've had over the past few weeks is balancing a demanding publisher's schedule while dealing with a new baby.  I've had numerous revisions, requests, and the like to fix up  my book or change various bits about it.  It's been difficult to find time but I've found a way to stay on schedule, even if that means making the updates at 3AM while holding a screaming infant.

Also of note I made a private Discord server with many of the heavy hitters of GameGuru, specifically to help facilitate changes faster in our community.  That went into play shortly before my daughter's arrival so I'd like to think it helped a bit with getting this latest update out into the world.