This Week in GameGuru - 02/10/2020

This article represents solely the opinion of the author and does not reflect the opinions or views of r The Game Creators, it's employees, or subordinates.  It likewise does not reflect the views or opinions of www.tgcstore.net and it's staff.  The author receives no compensation for this work and it is done solely as a service for the GameGuru community at large.

GameGuru News

The huge news this week was the announcement of GameGuru MAX, which is coming along at a preorder price of $25, with an announced 'release price' of $50.
There's an excellent Q&A thread here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221517?page=1#msg2625799

Lee & TGC have gone above and beyond trying to be ahead of this in a very forthcoming way with their communication going as far as releasing teaser videos, doing 2 hour Q&A's on discord and this forum thread.  It's a really positive improvement that I'm hoping to see continue as a trend.

There's a pretty big featureset being added here aside from already in-progress work.  Announcement of a new renderer being investigated, possible 64-bit upgrades, etc really wet the palette for users like me and I can honestly say $25 is an extremely accessible price for what looks like a more advanced iteration of GameGuru.

What's Good in the Store

This week I'm really limited in how far I can deep dive. Near as I can tell there's some interesting packs getting added but honestly I'm going to withhold judgement until a later time due to limited time resources on my part. 

Free Stuff

Mav3r1ck put out a free 'pulley crane'.  Get your copy here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221550

Lafette put together a HUGE medieval pack you absolutely should grab:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220474?page=3#msg2626215

Make sure you thank the guy for all his hard work!

OldPMan put out a beautiful Sci-Fi computer/set piece model:

Get your copy here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221548#msg2626328

JPH-Games has been busy producing lots of free models of pretty reasonably good quality for quite a while now:
An electrical panel with buttons: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219734?page=2#msg2625729

Some nice looking old boxes: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219734?page=2#msg2625984

Definitely check out his work.

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

BOTR has announced he'll continue work on his heightmapper for GameGuru Classic.  No word yet on whether it'll be ported to GG MAX.

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Lots of excellent projects are blossoming out of the woodwork.  Take a gander:

Mav3r1ck's project posted some tantalizing screenshots:

He's also finally posted a title ("Heathen: The Paganacht")  and some information in a thread on the forums for those interested in more: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221486

Trollbae continues his impressive work with the EBE:

Amenmoses made a dart tossing game:

I know someone made the models for him, but I forgot to write their name down.  Whoever you were - thanks!

Teabone has been working on a really excellent water-system graphics refresh which uses water droplets, color matching, and DOF to simulate underwater distortion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75yrK0lybv8&feature=youtu.be

There's plenty more too!  Check out wolf's latest work here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/209529?page=3#msg2625148

Honestly there's too much to cover in one go. I highly recommend you peruse the forums yourself!  There's a lot of really exciting work being done right now.  I'm happy to see the community running with the latest updates to GG.

In My Own Works

In my own works, I'm actually due for my first royalty check from the publisher in Feb.  So.. that's sort of exciting, though honestly I will *NEVER* earn the money worth the time I spent in the book.  It's mostly done as a service to you all at this point, with the little bit of money from the publisher as a means to continue funding my hobby.

Speaking of funding my hobby, last week I got a large enough store payout to upgrade some of my tools and have been diligently working on new space skies (4k of course).  Here's some teasers:

This was a test to see if I could simulate an asteroid surface.

This is a 'white hole' in the middle of a globular cluster.

This is a planetary surface with an aurora, star prominently figured with a nebula behind it.

I *DID* run into some issues with shearing on my skyboxes so I'm trying to sort that out.  In the meantime, expect a new run of 4k skies on the store within a few weeks here.

I may also do a low res version for those who are more economically minded.

This Week in GameGuru - 04/15/2019

GameGuru News 

Nothing currently.  I've put out feelers with Deb and the team @ TGC for more details but so far there's nothing to report.  Github shows no forward momentum at this time either aside from a single ambient occlusion error listed on the issues tracker.  Details available here:

https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/commit/786ab7246e0b6d64f008ff30d81b0bef7fc518ac

So assuming we're hitting a phase of community development in the future I can offer one bit of hope for those still using GameGuru or new to it - Cybernessence.  His work in progress, 'The Cogwheel Chronicles' has a lot of custom code to it which will eventually find it's way (per his words on the forum) into the engine itself.  That said, I think many of us would truly appreciate some forward motion from the core team at TGC so here's to hoping their silence is indicative of that work!

What's Good in The Store

This week I added my pack freebie "Lonely Ice" to two different packs - owners of the 4K HD Space Skies pack will get it - as will the many Bonus Sampler Pack owners out there!  If you're looking for a low-priced way to check out one of the new 4K Skies, this is definitely the best option.  The Bonus Sampler's normal price is $1.50!

Beyond that we've got some other excellent work on the store this week:

BSP appears to have taken up the gauntlet I threw down with my skies and put together some good looking earth-based skies in high res (2k by 2k) -  https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11099

Dagored put together some awesome exploding bridges.  I can see some serious potential with these.  Take a look at them here: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11100

Long-time artist "Northern" put up what looks like the beginnings of a picnic kit.  There's no pack to speak of yet though the models are of moderate quality and would be suitable as elements in most GG quality games.

Of particular note this week we have Gtox's 'Scarecrow' which features some really slick animation and fits the horror theme well. 

I highly recommend picking this up if you're making a high quality horror game in GameGuru, you can find it here: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/32636

Third-party Tools and Tutorials

This week Defy posted what I'd call one of the most important threads for GameGuru in 5 years - a very detailed breakdown memory consumption by the map size and some tips on how to keep that size down.  If you're an advanced user, you need to read this: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220706

I will be keeping it in my reference list on my blog (http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com) as well.

Also this week MaiaCombra put together a fairly basic tutorial that is worth the 20 minutes if you're a new user on how to make a horror-style game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9V5ZJJTONs


This week we also found out Vishnu Packer has added GameGuru Support:

This should help distribution of GameGuru Games for the layperson. 

Bored of the Rings is adding a fix to autowelder soon - details here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219806?page=2#msg2614590

Free Stuff

Lafette made a building for everyone: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220474?page=2#msg2614566

JPH made some PBR trees: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219734?page=2#msg2614521

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

This week saw some notable projects add to their portfolios as well as a few new ones.


LentheMan continues his work on his train scene for the cowboy shooter:

You can see the lighting start to really come together here.

Tarkus1971's 'Urban Histories' game had a video posted ... see it here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220589?page=1#msg2614408

Maiacombra is putting together an outdoor military-style shooter: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220701

Scienceboy came back to his long-refined project "Twin Worlds" and posted some interesting teaser screenshots:

You can see more here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/208185?page=9#msg2614553 

And as mentioned in the news section, Cybernessence has some interesting work he's been doing.  Lately it appears that he's working with light probes to create a flashlight shadow from the dynamic flashlight light source.  Remember, he's mentioned these changes will get merged into GG when he's completed so this bodes well for the rest of us.

He provided a demo picture that is 'highly exaggerated' to give some sense of what he's doing.  Granted it doesn't look pretty but remember this picture is more of a technical demo than anything else:

Per Cybernessence: "Hugely exaggerated picture for illustration. There are no lights other than the sun in this scene. The sky and floor are being treated as ambient light sources (the probe fired as I approached) - notice the red from the floor on the wooden boards around the top of the building."

More details here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=5#msg2614527

In My Own Works

This week I got my first batch of verifications from the publisher.  I also got wind of the pricing and asked about that - it appears the pricing is going to range from around $50 USD to $69USD.  That's a touch higher than expected.  I'm waiting for some words back on that as I know that's a bit much.  In other news, weapons development for the sidecar materials going with the book is coming along well.  I am pleased at what I've gotten thus far and look forward to revealing the full breadth of materials once the book is released.  Purchasers of the book will receive a copy of them for free, along with many of my other products including the Advanced Weather and Time of Day system.

This Week in GameGuru - 04/08/2019

GameGuru News

The attic pack is on sale.
Also, apparently (from the monthly newsletter):

"In the background, we have also received a new version of the GLTF importer code from a freelancer who helped create it, and although it only does static textured models at this stage, we are considering adding this new file format to the Model Importer in a future update.

We are also looking closely at a new multiplayer technology too, which will finally allow non-Steam non-owners of GameGuru to play multiplayer sessions with their friends, so watch out for official news on that in the next few months."

That's kind of neat, I guess?  I'm still anxious to hear about the bugfixes purportedly in the pipeline though.

Free Stuff

Grobyken put together a really good looking war-torn building model:

Get yours here - https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217711?page=5#msg2614215

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

Some interesting info here in this AI thread: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220670

A user named 'Nevin' has been making several video tutorials on GameGuru including some basic scripting topics. You can find them here:

• Hunger in Games
• Color Video Text
• Object Rotation via Script
• Triggers Tutorial

What's Good in the Store

This week there's been a lot of updates.  Lots of subjectively good things.

Dagored's got a great looking Apache chopper, Wolf's made some interesting Sci-Fi containers, Mad Lobster continues his film/photo set work, and Graphix put together some excellent looking PBR assets.

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Wolf's been working more on Acythian and fine-tuning his scenery:

A new project called "Sereos" (Serious?) made it's rounds with some decent looking screenshots:

Synchromesh added some new pieces to protascope and I have to say I'm super excited to see more work being done on this:

And I'm happy to report that Len the Man has been continuing his cowboy shooter, fine tuning his lighting and level design to produce some really nice looking results:

Keep doing the good work everyone! So far, it seems to be a very productive year for the community.

In My Own Works

The book's secondary materials are grinding along. I've also got edits to make on a very strict timeline to make the August 19th production deadline.

I've finally settled on my 'pack freebie' space sky for the new 4k kit. Owners of the 'Bonus Sampler' will get this included, as well as those who own the 4k HD Space Skies set will also receive this.
A teaser is included below and this should be added within the week!

Have a great week, everyone!

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!