This Week in GameGuru - 11/06/2019

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

If you haven't seen the newsletter, it bears repeating what was mentioned in there.  Notably TGC is in a bugfixing cycle so it's important you take any bugreports you have and post them over on the issues log on GitHub.

What's Good in The Store

This week's totally subjective analysis of the store reveals not much new.  Fredgames continues to pump out products, so check out his store here: https://www.tgcstore.net/artist/250424

Other than that though there a number of notable sales at the top of the page.  Give it a look!

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

BOTR released the final version of his autowelder FPSC to GG pipelining tool. Grab it while you can! https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221285

Similarly BOTR released his final version of his Heightmap tool! https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221100?page=1#msg2622936

Free Stuff 

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220055?page=2#msg2622953 Amenmoses put together some sound control scripts you can get for free.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219734?page=2#msg2622903 3 Sci-fi animated objects by JPH.
A video can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93CJmXtgyg

 

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Naelurec  got some more interesting updates and custom models.  I'm truly interested in seeing where this one goes.  The latest update shows a toxic-looking planetscape:

A favorite of mine, the Cogwheel Chronicles had it's creator Cybernessence dropping more hints and clues about his current work including a heightmapper tool: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=7#msg2622957

The old master of lighting, Wolf, put up some powerful looking screenshots of a yet unnamed game.

I'm pretty impressed with how far he's come even given his already somewhat legendary status in the community.

Schn33ky posted a game called Dilly Dally Derby, which is actually a complete work at this time: 
It's a betting game where you choose a horse and it randomly runs them out.  It's interesting to me because this is actually a game very similar to one I made back years ago in school. I used monster trucks myself, but I can appreciate the work that went into this.

The biggest news is that Duchenkuke revealed a secret project he's been working on that is now available for public consumption.

Note the custom interface, impressive lighting, use of a powerful vignette and just overall professional feel of the work.

A perhaps better example is this gem:

The atmosphere is intense and palpable. He put a lot of work into the sound design and environments, it features a variety of enemies and is available to be wishlisted on steam (Which I personally recommend doing!) - https://store.steampowered.com/app/657480/Dark_Skies_The_Nemansk_Incident/?beta=0

In My Own Works

This past week was a flurry of getting people their free products as book purchasers.  If I missed you, please contact me on discord, send me a ticket on tgcstore, or send me a message on the forums if all else fails. 

This Week in GameGuru - 10/27/2019

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.

Another week, another belated TWIGG report.
Unfortunately this is turning into the norm for me as I am consistently overwhelmed by real world factors that hopefully will slow down come early next year.
In the interim I will crank these out as often and as on time as I can manage.

GameGuru News

 

This week we've seen a significant amount of activity on 'project V3' on github.  Some of what I'm seeing there is very exciting!

https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/commits/ProjectV3

Notable elements include an update to Character Creator, load time tweaks, GUI updates and more.
Very exciting stuff!

The SUPERB enhanced weapon pack is on sale this week as well for as low as you will likely ever see it - definitely pick it up now if you are ever going to pick it up!

What's Good in the Store

Finally got my Cyberpunk Noir guns up

If you are a book purchaser and haven't gotten a redemption code for them, please let me know!

Book sales have obviously tapered off; like games they have a really big front end and a longer back end.  If you haven't purchased a copy, try using this code to save 20%:  AITGG230
Use it at this link here:
https://www.crcpress.com/An-Introduction-to-GameGuru/Messina/p/book/9781138612631

You can also find the additional book resources there for free under 'additional resources'.

This week also had several great packs show up:

Gtox added a prehistoric critter pack (GameGuru Ark clone, anyone?)

And Fredgames77 continues rapidly cranking out high quality models, this time in the form of a building tool pack!

Free Stuff

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221251 Mipastu put in a pretty clever fix for AI getting stuck on walls and corners by making an 'AI wall' which essentially allows you to keep them from getting to problem areas.  Definitely worth the download.

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

Looks like BOTR is integrating his heightmap importer INTO GameGuru's github code as a branch.  This is very exciting to me and I'm really hoping we see that additional functionality implemented sooner rather than later! Additional details can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221100#msg2622732

Random Acts of Creativity(WIPs)

Synchromesh has added some new music to his excellent Protascope game (by DuchenKuke): https://youtu.be/9qDAmpCIb-4

Cybernessence put up a new screenshot for his epic GameGuru work "The CogWheel Chronicles":

And this blurb about the latest changes he's made:

"I've re-written the player swimming to use the physics capsule, it's much better now - though it did need a new lua command to fine tune it (SetWorldGravity) - which will come in handy for the barsoom levels too.

I also updated the in-game terrain loading to load associated entities (it was only loading terrain and grass before from the fpm and positioning anywhere in the world) and added the DCO to it, to keep silky smooth play. The memory seems to be paging in and out properly, so if I load one terrain/level part then delete and load another the memory is smoothing out. Still got a lot of testing to do to make sure this holds up with 16 different fpm's loaded on the fly, and I did hit a 'random' crash bug that took me days and days to find (this was in my added mods not GG stock code) ."

He's done incredible work which I hope to see integrated by middle of next year at the latest.  Time will tell though!

Naelurec has some updates with details and technical information but also these great new menu screenshots:

Really simple, clever, and clean.  I like it a lot.  You can get more info here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221152?page=1#msg2622551

In My Own Works

I've recently begun putting together another HQ space skies set, but run into some snags.  Expect a few freebies of my throwaways along with a new pack on the store in the near future!

This Week in GameGuru - 05/29/2019

A word of warning before we begin - my wife is due to deliver our 3rd any day now.  If and when I go in to the hospital for our newest (a girl) to arrive, there's very likely to be a lapse in this newsletter for two to three weeks. For now, I will continue to provide my articles as long as I am able.
 

GameGuru News

The natives are getting very restless.  Six months of bugfixes were promised and many are anxiously awaiting what is mostly anticipated as a very large update.  TheGameCreators have been extremely tight lipped about their current workings so it's lead to a significant amount of speculation from the community with respect to worry about a lackluster or nonexistent release.

I personally have heard musings from those close to TGC but it's all hearsay at this point.  I do have a good idea that we'll see a big update including multiplayer due to official releases from Lee on the forums but for the moment we're all sitting and waiting.

This anxiety has culminated in a master thread here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220783

If you have been following my newsletters you will notice that I've been focused significantly on the works from third parties such as AmenMoses, Cybernessence, BOTR, Preben, and others.  This information is significantly more useful to me than speculation on what Lee is doing. I think a lot of the community hasn't really caught on to the fact that once code is released to GitHub, it's no longer a one man show. I myself have gone into the code many times to find an answer I'd never find elsewhere. While I appreciate any core updates being done by Lee, at the same time I know at this point community development will give us much more bang for the buck.
 

What's Good in the Store

Nothing that I saw really piqued my interest.  Of note though are the new seller rules for the sales section so make sure you scroll through the sales at the top.  Sellers are restricted to 60 sales in a 6 month period.  That means essentially 10 per month. These can only run for a maximum of 7 days.

The sales are also randomly shuffled on site reload so the order will change every time you view the main page.  Bottom line is there are a lot of sales up right now.  Notably Graphix has a significant amount of high quality PBR assets available for a good price.

BSP has 3 weapon packs on sale.

Sula's wild west pack is on sale.

Wizard of id is selling two major packs.

Free Stuff

https://elgatongames.com/detail/38/?fbclid=IwAR3_7UOKqSlKtWq915tWKuvJJ5Vse1gVre-Srbnu4o0yn13FFeD-RigpRZE Maiacombra made a South American City skybox.  Very interesting work and definitely could have solid in-game use for many.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220750 Graphix provided a free new explosion to replace the default media. 
 

Third Party Tools and Tutorials 

Game Launcher Creator is on sale but also added some features this week.

BOTR has been working on creating FPSC to GG pipeline tools to help people get assets and levels from FPSC into GG.  This, in my opinion, is huge.  FPSC provides a massive toolset from a level building standpoint and could really open things up for level design. 

This is an import of the Metro Theater Level.

Granted, it's a weird pipeline building in FPSC and importing into GG, but this sort of cross pollination helps break the limits we're dealing with.  More info here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219806?page=4#msg2615725

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Cybernessence has apparently, based on something I said *shocked look* decided to add multiple grass types to his branch of GameGuru.

You can see three different vegetation types here.

I'm seriously excited about seeing this change in the live branch. Here's to hoping he merges what changes he has soon so we can at least get current with his work. Details can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=6



Defy's been posting some interesting videos of his experiments with the save-load system, AI, and other core functions in GG.

In My Own Works

I've been working at length with the projectile system in GameGuru, I will do a write-up in the near future when that's done.  At this point though I have a good handle on the system and feel very comfortable creating everything from rapid-fire plasma guns to flamethrowers. 
Here's some examples of this (please note the sound is out of sync due to the program I use being a poor choice for video):

• Dynamite for Len the Man's cowboy game
• A plasma gun for my book's assets
• A simple flamethrower test (needs an updated projectile model)

So there's been a lot of good progress there. I still have miles to go, but once I'm done rest assured it will find it's way onto the forums as a tutorial post.

The publisher has been bouncing cover art and design notes at me.

Chapter 1 on the left, cover art on the right.

 
The above shows some of what I'm working on.  The cover art is mosaic tiled to ensure I don't break any confidentiality clauses.

This Week in GameGuru - 5/20/2019

GameGuru News

There's lots of ripples in the water, but nothing breaking the surface yet.  So far, a fairly tame week for news.  Nothing on github.  Nothing on steam.  Nothing on the forums.  Officially, at least.  I'll hold off on rumor-mongering until something more concrete forms.

What's Good in the Store

This week the store was flooded by new products and packs.

Fredgames77 has put out a new 'Pack Modular School' and a 'Futuristic street bike'. While the school is a fairly completely set of models, it's also extremely expensive when compared against the baseline for similar products on the store.  I guess we'll see if that baseline goes up or his price comes down.

Sula continues to add a tremendous amount of old European cars to his portfolio.

Corrosion added several "HD" modeled soldiers if you feel you need more masked gunmen for you game(s): https://www.tgcstore.net/artist/221852

The most exciting stuff this week came from Belidos and Pasquill, respectively. Belidos finally released his very impressive isometric dungeon kit:

Which includes seven sub-packs with a huge pile of items in each one.  The best deal, of course, is to buy the main kit which for $9.99 as a sale price gets you access to the entire kit and caboodle. This pack is well worth the buy price if you're looking for a great entry into the 3D isometric genre.

Next up is one of my perennial favorites - Pasquil.  Pasquil has put out a clutter kit of high quality, well mapped PBR assets that are also low poly.

The price is very reasonable at a scant 7 dollars for what is essentially a full library of great outdoor clutter components.

Free Stuff

Tarkus1971 provided a free music track: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213190?page=5#msg2615615

Harrywever (AKA Dagored) provided two new free skyscrapers:

You can get your version here - https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/210761?page=6#msg2615542

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

BOTR added some more dev notes, he is apparently working on an HM2GG 4.0 - https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219806?page=4#msg2615685

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Cybernessence posted some new pictures of his water shader.  I truly hope his changes get integrated into the GG core ASAP.  It's great seeing some fresh development, even if it's not by TGC directly.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=6#msg2615674

In My Own Works

This week I released my final batch of edits to the publisher (due 5/20) along with some minor changes to art and wording.  This however, marks the final bit of changes I can do easily without 'major costs' before the Aug 19th print date.
I also got a picture of my book cover. Looks good. The cover art is what I discussed with my publisher and the format looks good.  Mostly minor issues.

For those interested in the custom assets, I'm currently working on a flamethrower, which is 90% functional using the particle system.  It's fun to use :) 

I've also been on the hunt for some issues with my projectile weapons and other weapons I intend to release with the book. One turned out to be my own personal install - a complete reinstall resolved it. So one down, many to go.  I'm really looking forward to release some of these excellent assets!

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.