This Week in Game-Guru - 10/29/2018

What a crazy week.  Life at home has been absolutely nuts and this week we've got a fairly jam-packed series of updates that I need to unpack here.  So I'm going to blitz through this as quick as I can and hopefully haven't missed anything critical.

Official Game-Guru News:

So this week they updated the Fantasy pack again with more PBR assets but also added an 'ally' knight character.  I'll have to take a look at that code, should be fun.

https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-fantasy-pack-updated

Of particular note was this tidbit:
"Back in the main engine, we working on multiple fronts, including our forthcoming GLTF support, improved AI and improvements to FBX importing, which will allow up to 170 bone character models, making extra room for detailed finger and facial animations."

Now that's exciting!

Third Party Tools and Tutorials:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220102 - SegAutoWelder free.  This program, by "BoredOfTheRings" does the following: 'it takes FPSC segments / levels and converts them fully textured and saves directly to Game-Guru without the user needing to do anything'.  Sounds great for old users looking to update their assets to Game-Guru!
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220100 - Another "BoredOfTheRings" creation - a Free DBO to X converter.  Not bad!
https://www.moddb.com/tutorials/lighting-in-game-environments-the-hows-and-whys Someone linked this fantastic demi-chapter from a book on lighting and I have to say having read it it's totally worth the 20-40 minutes reading on it.  

What's Good on The Store 

This week on the store, I want to mention first off I've updated the normal mapping for MANY of my terrains (really the only one that hasn't been is the tropic terrain due to some errors in the DDS files).  This improved normal mapping is only noticeable on the 'highest' setting for terrain but fixes some long standing issues I've had with my work's performance on those settings.  The biggest offender was my '1024px HQ Roads' terrain.  Current owners should re-download them in Game-Guru by choosing 'download from store'.

This week has a lot of great stuff.  Teabone has continued to update his value priced Crime Scene Pack and now has an 'all scripts' pack which I believe is a fantastic value for some really great utility scripts.

BSP's put out some excellent PBR animated trees.  Personally I'd prefer static trees but if you want the highest quality available, accept no substitutes!

And lastly I have to say I really love MStockton's 'crystal terrain and model pack'.  I've been playing a lot of ARK: Aberration the past few months and this is just the ticket to create something similar!

Random Acts Of Creativity (WIPs):

I'm adding the (WIPs) tag just so new users know what this section is.
Graphix has some really nice new model updates - https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220156#msg2607189
Granada posted a pretty awesome cowboy WIP up:

Very impressive, for a meager 6400 polys!

Here's a screenshot from a WIP called 'The Acolytes' by VincentHendriks:

Some work to be done but an interesting first go, reminds me of Quake 1 for color palette.

And... a lot of videos..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U1gy1Lq4Ng&feature=youtu.be - AI and Particles
https://youtu.be/ugsHu2-0650 - Bonesy's SCI-FI Shooter is coming along nicely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEgcRdMpWVQ - MaiaCombra put out this interesting build using stock assets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-MuBNOkz6o - Synchromesh released a video of something he calls 'SmileFPS'.  Interesting stuff.
 =VX=Doggy has a pretty sweet video he posted I felt needed some love about a morning jog:

Now that, I have to say, caught my attention. Really looks smooth and the art, while a little over-saturated on purple for my tastes (you need to throw in some complementary colors like yellow!), is damned impressive.  

 

Free Stuff: 

Nothing here.  Unless you count the 3rd party stuff listed above.

In My Own Works:

I've updated the normals as mentioned above for my terrain(s).  I also got a HUGE amount of book related work done with a whopping 11,000 words or so written this week. I'm now sitting just shy of 90,000 words which puts me nearly back on track with where I need to be!

Well, I think I got everything.  If I missed you, feel free to shoot me a comment or a message.  I'll be sure to add you in for next week!

This Week in Game-Guru - 09/10/2018

This week, I've really been through quite a lot of components to help put this weeks report together.
Thankfully there's a surplus of really great stuff that I can't wait to show you.

Official Game-Guru News

As Game-Guru continues it's march towards modernization, there's a continual series of updates that address two separate facets of Game-Guru production.  First, there's the constant GitHub updates, which resulted in things such as the 'monster update' of 7/30/2018.  Secondly there are the asset updates, which are numerous and significant.

Most recently, the 'Death Valley Pack', which many of us old-timers received for free with Game-Guru's release as a thank you, had a significant number of assets updated to PBR.

Now these PBR updates are welcome and interesting, but seem to be a mixed bag, in my experience.  As you may not be aware, the DLCs are generally the work of an artist commissioned by TGC for a product they then resell.  I don't know the specific terms of the arrangement.

As such, artistic skills vary.  Personally I found a few were of 'mediocre' quality with the PBR update.  Yes, the additional detail brought an improvement in some but not enough to measure.  For what it's worth - the Death Valley Pack is one of the better ones.  Still not the best, I'll reserve that for the updates done to the Sci-Fi pack, but very good nonetheless - especially for people who already own it.

Third Party Utilities and Tutorials

This week we have several updates, mostly from my own personal backlog of getting the past month caught up.  Of note, Flatlander has generously picked up where my original project left off and added all the new functions to the Notepad++ Lua API I originally built.  This is a very welcome weight off my shoulders and I just wanted to really thank him for that.  You can get the update here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219215#msg2605239

Also there was a fairly lively discussion on discord the other day regarding the creation of local cube mapping for mirror effects.  This is primarily because cube mapping won't take into account a specific room so we discussed a way of dealing with this.  Graphix came up with a solid method of that worth looking at including a custom tool on his site. 

There's also more here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220031

Next we have a very interesting update to Game-Guru loader which *MAY* make it's way into Game-Guru (this is Preben's work, after all).  It is essentially a dynamic light setup with castable shadows! This would be an enormous change to Game-Guru.  Just check it out:

This kind of lighting effect would really modernize the engine!

That's impressive quality for dynamic lights, especially out of Game-Guru using stock assets.

There's also a few other interesting things I found.  It appears Cybernescence (The creator of the Cogwheel Chronicles) has been doing some really crazy things with shaders.  Notably this:

That's... really good looking.  It still doesn't modify the existing water, but it does a huge amount of work towards getting the ocean to be a living, interesting creature.  His ocean shader isn't for sale yet but should be soon, from the sound of it.

There's also this gem, also by Cybernescence, a PBR heightmap shader.  All I can say is WOW.  I mean this is an enormously powerful shader that will totally destroy lesser CPUs, but yeah.  If you are trying to make something that is on peer with modern high end engines, this is a hell of a start!

There's more info at the link, but this will be a huge boost to certain scenes!

This shader was released for free and obviously is far from complete but is definitely worth tooling around with!  You can find the info on the original link above, along with installation instructions.

What's Good in the Store

Not a lot of new things in the store lately.  Things ebb and flow there.  Right now we're definitely in an 'ebbing' phase.

That said, Gtox's new creation - a creepy mutant - did catch my eye.  His animations are getting a lot better, that used to be my only real complaint about his products.  I obviously own a few, in spite of my minor complaints because they're generally pretty good and often downright creepy, like this new guy:

I imagine this reminds people of their mothers-in-law!

The animation was real good on it too.  You can pick it up here: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/31908

Random Acts of Creativity

Some really good stuff this week.  Dvader/Retrogamebloke (on youtube) created a spy-hunter style minigame in Game-Guru.  I'm currently trying to get the juicy details but on the face it's got a randomizer for terrain and vehicles and a scrolling isometric view that infinitely loops.  Really cool stuff. I should mention Spy Hunter was legitimately my favorite game when I was 8 years old so this was pretty cool to see!

Spy hunter Game-Guru- spy hunter


Next, Slaur3n used a pretty awesome 'retro style' shader to give his current project a very unique look.  This one is another YT video you can find here:  https://youtu.be/JyWnDqMoIx0

One more major update was DuchenKuke's 'post apocalyptic game' is out for testing.  Definitely check it out and see if you can't learn a few things in the process!

He says he's going for a Metro: Last light look - I'd say he found it!

Check out the really professional quality here.  There's mirroring in the wet terrain below, superb use of lighting and clutter.. I mean this is excellent work worth learning from.

In My Own Works

Writing is a disciplined activity.  If you don't discipline yourself, you stop writing.  It's why I write this blog, to help assist in that.  It's also important to take time, every day, to write.  I really can't stress this enough.  Even a paragraph of work on a book you're working on keeps the mind active and prevents you from falling into stasis.  In my case, I'm focusing on getting 5000 words a week out.  That's a hefty amount of work, thankfully there's plenty to do so I can always find something to write about.

Personally I work in a very structured way.  I'm an 'outline writer'.  This makes things easier than I think for others, but it also comes with it's own set of complications - like seeing that outline can be rather overwhelming.  For now though, work on chapter 18 is coming along nicely.  That's my 'how to add detail' chapter, broken out piece by piece and starting with vegetation.

This Week in Game-Guru - 09/04/2018

Welcome back after a nice long month hiatus from Game-Guru Reporting.  Unfortunately life's call was pretty strong (and remains so) but at the same time I do need to make sure this report is brought up to speed on what's new and exciting in Game-Guru.

From a real world standpoint I had to do a migration of Redhat Satellite 5.6 to 5.8 for my day job for a very large company.  This was a big part of my time sink along with yearly pentesting, etc.  So again, apologies and without further wait here we go!

Official Game-Guru News

Over the past month steady progress has been made with respect to the engine and it's secondary DLC packs.  Additional PBR assets (to the chagrin of some - some feel that the engine would be better served due to memory constraints with non PBR though I disagree personally). 

There's also been a free weekend, which just ended today, to my knowledge.  Nice to see TGC taking additional steps to bring in a bigger crowd as Game-Guru becomes more feature packed.  I'd suggest a relaunch in media (magazines, online blogs, etc) at a good time, say next year when things are much more solidly done.

What's New in the Store

Teabone's "HUD Stance Script" is in the realm of 'cheap and must have'.
Pasquill did some really fantastic and extremely well priced shipping containers.

The above kind of illustrates what a deal 4 dollars can buy you (6 of these beauties!).
This is an amazing deal.  I've already covered Pasquill's stuff in the past; for this price though I honestly feel like you're shooting yourself in the foot if you choose the old-out-of date freebie containers from FPSC.  Spend the $4 and buy something professional, like these!

There's other stuff on sale, such as EAI's products which I highly recommend. Beyond that, not much new on the store that really caught my eye.  As always if you are a store content creator and want me to check out your stuff in detail with a coupon/reviewer copy, let me know. 

3rd Party Programs and Tutorials

Graphix is working on a simple web script to take 6 pictures and make a cubemap out of them.  No link yet, but he says it should be on his website soon.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219916 Bugsy put up a great little 'displaying pictures in sequence' help script thread which is a good utility script if you have nothing else like it.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220000?page=1 Argent Arts (a new user) put up a pretty nice discussion on the current lighting system.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220018 Which lead to Bugsy putting up a pretty thorough lighting test.  Looks like dynamic 'specularity' is offline again.  There's also a really good discussion on PBR here too.

Random Acts of Creativity

There is a significant body of new work to cover.  I'll do my best, but if I miss you please send me a message and I'll include yours next time!

A nice framework but needs refinement (lighting, in particular)

The above are some very VERY preliminary screenies from VincentHendriks.  Looks like a city slog, which GameGuru is surprisingly good at creating, so should turn out well.  No title that I'm aware of yet.

CodeName:Protoscope by Synchromesh

This project is a solid piece by a very old hat in the Game-Guru community.  Synchro's actually a mod over at the forums and it's got some nice interactivity pieces to it. 

And now of very important note: Acythian is coming along! 
Check out this thread for all the juicy details by one of Game-Guru's premier artists (Wolf).

Above are a few of the many gorgeous screenshots he's put together.  I mean it's totally worth a trip over to the forums, this project is masterfully done (assuming he can keep framerate above 10!)

DuchenKuke is also working on some interesting stuff - he's another 'premier' builder, IMO.  He's got a new project here:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219956

It's... unusual, right?  Reminds me of the art for Hotline: Miami or some kind of retro-new wave album.

Work continues on the 'cogwheel chronicles' but one really amazing thing showcased was this 'dissolve fade' work.  I mean .. WOW.  It's something - definitely click the link and check it out!

In My Own Works

I've been furiously writing for lost time, to get ahead of the curve on my book's publication.  I have a lot of really good stuff, I think though could probably use a proofreader or two soon.  If you are interested in assisting, contact me via the form on the right or leave a comment below!