This Week in Game-Guru - 10/01/2018

I notice (@LeeBamber) that I'm still not showing on the news section.  Not that it's any skin off my back.  I do this for fun, but I wouldn't mind a followup so I'm not twisting in the wind (nudge nudge).

Official Game-Guru News:

This week we got a PBR update to some assets in the Sci-Fi pack and also a new 'ally' AI delivered via a drone.  I'll be interested to dig into that one to see what's different as the current AI is a bit of a slush pile that can be difficult to interpret.

You can find the official news release here: https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-scifi-pack-dlc-update-released-2

On the note of AI, it appears that's Lee's primary focus right now and so far I hear the results are promising.  Those results can be found in detail here but essentially there's a demo level out there with a lot of cover objects.  The AI *SEEMS* to be productive and functional, but time will tell.  That said if the vast majority of users are claiming it's improved then I think that's a fair litmus.  I watched the demo video and I noticed a few good changes, notably that it won't shoot through walls and will path far better than it used to.

What I'd like to see:

• A system for enemy accuracy; right now they still hit 99% of the time and that's just absurd.
• Better synching of the movement to animation, which often times is a configuration setting but should be the default.  
• A system for enemies running away when injured/hiding/etc.
• A module in the AI itself that allows us to 'hook in' as modders, as it is it's more of a black box with a few function calls outside of it.

Forum AI link:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220075 (AI)
Now for those of you who are using the EAI Weapon Pack, which is phenomenal mind you, you may have noticed some errors or bugs with assigning said weapons to enemies or NPCs.  This apparently is going to be resolved in a future release after verification by EAI himself. 
Forum link for EAI Info:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219912

What's good in the store:

You know I was going to say there was nothing going on and just move on, but this week has been a big drop of lots of really great assets.  Of course as the quality goes up you may notice the price increasing but some of these are ... top shelf stuff.  I don't know any other way to put it.  Stuff you'd see in a AAA game.

Let's go over a few.
First of all, Gtox is really into fish... Well, that's true but apparently he's also into porpoises as well.

If you're making a sea-world game, this is probably right up your alley.

What's really intriguing to me is that Teabone, Robert Fitzy and Gamepoly (A new challenger appears!) all created fantastic high quality models this week.  I mean just look at this:

I really like GamePoly's work, this is a new level of quality that is desperately needed in Game-Guru's overly-asset flipped environment.  You can also see some new models by Mad Lobster and Pasquill at the bottom (the exacavator). 

Not bad for a single week!  Make sure you swing by http://en.tgcstore.net and check out the latest for yourself!

Third Party Applications and Tutorials

This week I was poking around on a project I can't discuss at this moment (wait till next week!) but I did end up at this wonderful tool - https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/
This is a free heightmapper that I found worked a bit better than the one for terrain.party.  Definitely give it a look, the values on it are fantastic for use with the game-guru 'Heightmap to MDAT' tool.

Also in the forums, Wolf showed an older tool that I wish I'd have had in the past for my own imports - an import scaler tool to help adjust the scale on your FPE files: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218348

And lastly there was a pretty nice video posted by Bugsy in the discord chat discussing how Mirror's Edge used lighting:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0sM7ZU0Nwo

Free Stuff

Nothing free that I could find this week.  Sorry guys!

Random Acts of Creativity

So in the WIP section we have some things from VincentHendriks who continues his use of the stock assets in the only way they could ever potentially be used - as a desert combat game.  It's looking ... well, like a reasonably good desert combat game!

Reminds me of the photos my buddies would send me from Iraq.

It's coming along well, I'd say.


There's also a new asset flip for us to look at on Steam.  Now I will say while the game itself was a fairly bland and boring flip, the demo video for it was interesting - the guy took live video with some basic video modding to provide a little more oomph to a Game-Guru game than I'm used to.  That said, it's not worth the price asked for and apparently is a buggy mess.
See it here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/798710/Voltage/

Also another new user showed up, this time with an odd cyber-punk style game where I guess you're on a rooftop?  He took some of the advice I offered him but it needs a lot more polish.  Regardless though it's getting there and at least it doesn't look like the same old same old.  I can respect the effort.

In My Own Works

This week I've been working on a special project, which but it's allowed me to focus on getting another segment for the book done - specifically a 'how to do a forest in Game-Guru'.  This is a difficult topic that I think most will benefit from a little personal understanding on.

That said though I'm still behind the curve here.  I need to bang out like 20,000 words this month to stay on track and that's no easy feat.

I also aggregated all the new Lua commands since 5/12/2017 for you here:
http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com/2018/09/new-lua-commands-since-5122017.html

See you next week!

Errant AI's Arcade Set

This is a long overdue review.

When I spoke with Errant AI (A.K.A. "EAI") about his vendor machine set Errant AI's TGC Store Products review , we discussed our mutual love coin-operated equipment.  At that point in time (probably a year and a half ago) he mentioned he'd do an arcade set, which I was jazzed for.  I grew up in arcades and spent more than my share of allowance money there.

It was a great time and brought back fond memories.  He soon released the kit and... I didn't have any money.  NONE.  I was flat broke.  It sucked.  So for months and months bigger priorities would come up and I'd look at the store and see the really impressive looking set for the arcade objects that EAI built.

Recently I've managed to get my finances squared away and could spend some money on new objects for my upcoming sci-fi shooter.

It was at this point... I looked again at the priciest of EAI's growing collections (4, as of this writing) - the Retro Arcade Pack.  The Retro Arcade Pack clocks in at 15 USD.  It's by no means a cheap purchase.  But I'm a believer that if you want to have a quality looking game, you need quality looking assets.  This pack delivers - in spades.

 The full kit contents.  It's like my youth, reborn!

As you can see, the pack comes with a significant bevy of 30 items, which come in about 50 cents per object, depending on if any sales are occurring.

Most of these items are doubles - in many cases they are a blank version which can likely be modified to present your own possibilities.  Very cool!

In this case, the billchanger comes in both token and cash money varieties.

Now you may look at these and think "Yeah, that's cute - but how good is it, really?"  - what really sold me were the perfectly done animated screens which of course can only be watched in the form of a movie.

The above should show you the sheer and frankly unparalleled level of quality EAI brought to the table.  Even his previous offerings are overshadowed but how absolutely perfect these are.  While I realize it's not an asset for every game, you'd be surprised how you can work them in.  The biggest difficulty in using assets like this is that they tend to make your other assets LOOK WORSE.  It's a bit like taking your ugly friend to the bar to make you look better.  It doesn't help their case to have you standing there, that's for sure.  So if you are planning on using assets like this, prepare to have other assets - LIKE THIS.  It doesn't hurt that I have the snack attack pack and some other really high quality stuff that I've gotten through the community.  I meticulously filter and comb my assets to ensure that the quality is at bare minimum, consistent.


What's interesting is I was discussing 2-D "mode" for Game-Guru with Synchromesh - a forum user.

After some experimentation, he had discovered a way to fake a 2-D mode for Game-Guru.  He shared the secrets with me and filled in the blank spots in my own testing.  So the plan is to make a virtual arcade and then have it warp you off to another level when you use the machine - the level will be a two dimensional simplified mockup of one of these games!  I intend to do a walkthrough later after I've made a functional version of a few.  The driving one should be simple enough.

The bottom line:  The simple version is are you going to need this for all your projects?  No.  It's far more specialized than other packs he offers.  Is it one of the highest quality assets on the store? Absolutely.  If you can manage it, then by all means - find a way to work it in.  I for one, will be using it.

The Retro Arcade Pack can be found here: https://en.tgcstore.net/pack/10474