This Week in GameGuru - 1/6/2020

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.

Happy new year everyone - I'm back!  I realize it's been an extended absence and for that, I do apologize.  I cannot be 100% sure that I will not have further absences but at this point I will do my level best to continue this project for the time being.  Unfortunately life sometimes simply gets in the way as it did the past few months for me. I've got a lot to catch up on as December was a highly productive month.

GameGuru News

TGC produced a 'december update' which was a welcome change from many years of long holidays with no communication from them.  This welcome change fixed a lot of persistent code issues including one of my own issues - that of projectile caching not working properly and causing erratic behavior with projectile systems like the ones included with my "Cybernoir Weapons Kit".

What's most encouraging is a renewed focus on attempting to improve the engine.  I'd liken this to the ~2015-2016 era when we had a number of big fixes and changes on a fairly regular basis.  It's an exciting time. Moreover they appear to be hiring freelancers to help bugfix.  If you are interested in this position, see this post here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221436

What's Good in the Store

AlexGCC's 2019 pack - this combines many decent elements into a well priced pack worth a look:  https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11169
I really love Sula's City Construction pack as well for its wide variety of PBR assets with just the right amount of 'grunge' to them: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11163
Lastly I have point at belidos isometric kit, which looks positively awesome: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11161

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

There are few people in the GameGuru community who don't know Wolf; he's a long standing member stretching back over a decade or so with tons of experience putting together many tutorials on lighting.  He's recently come back to GameGuru and found the static lightmapper is working to his liking again and as such has written an updated and fairly expansive guide on how to use it: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219206

A new version of BOTR's superb and pretty much 'must have' heightmap utility can be found here:
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221333 

Free Stuff

December is usually overwhelmed with 'free stuff' due to the infectious Christmas spirit. This December was no exception with a huge mass of free models and media available.

Firstly we have wolf's beautiful 'Sci-Fi archway': Get your copy here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221444

Belidos put up a number of cartoon-style assets for free you can retrieve here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218362?page=2

Mav3r1ck1981 made a fantastic sci-fi medical table here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221371 

Lafayette put out this awesome butcher store horror-style pack: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220474?page=3#msg2623695.

Random Acts of Creativity

This is where I saved my bandwidth, folks.  Lots of really good projects have started to creep their way into the daylight and it's definitely worth showcasing a few.

Let's start with Wolf's own project since returning.  He sent me several screenshots and elected to let me pick the best one.  I settled on this beauty:

I like the style and design; he uses a lot of the same techniques I illustrate in my book to reuse common assets intelligently as well.  Overall the lighting and contrast is a classic RGB wheel blue and yellow which works exceptionally well.


Duchenkuke's project, Dark Skies, the Nemansk incident, is another prime example of what can be done with competence and a good eye for artistic flair.  It's got a brutal, dark, gritty feel that really gives you a sense of Metro-style depth which really pops in this engine.

He's using some excellent Sepia tones and great modelling choices to help accentuate the atmosphere along with a completely custom HUD that looks fantastic!

Other big hitters have dominated the scene as well with Cybernessence posting a significant December update showing his own work with the engine and the heightmapper by BOTR:

I like the touch he has there of calling his build the 'cogwheel engine'.  Seems accurate, given the massive amount of updates and changes he's made to GameGuru essentially drives it to be it's own entity at this point.

That's not all either.  There are many dozens of project updates this month so swing on over to the forums and check them out!

In My Own Works

I got to see a cool 'present' of my own this month - someone who purchased a hardcover copy of my book!  I don't even have one of those - I'm a touch envious!  So far reviews have been positive though with the rate of change in GameGuru, I may have to write a revised copy in a year or so.

A few final notes - if you HAVEN'T received your free models and media as a purchaser of the book, contact me on discord or via the forums and I will see to it you receive it promptly.  Purchasers of the book get free demo maps, models, character creator assets, my cybernoir entities, and my cybernoir weapons pack - and much more!
Lastly - please leave a review at amazon for me.  This greatly assists in online sales of the book and will help boost my visibility to others who are looking for it.

This Week in GameGuru - 09/23/2019

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

The public preview of the beta changes arrived and the changes are about what was expected:

per https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221133
A bevvy of performance-related fixes were done including the draw-call batcher.
* F11 in Standalone no longer causes PBR debug layers to be rendered
* New DOCDOC system added to code allowing a new 'Docs\SETUP INI Description.txt' doc to be auto-created
* Improved MIXAMO FBX Importing (2-chain-finger in T-POSE), simply select 'Uber' in 'Is Character Field'
* Added Convex Hull collision shape to the physics system, use by setting COLLISIONMODE in FPE to 9
* Fixed EXPORTASSETS flag in SETUP.INI to correctly export unencrypted full entities with standalone  

Overall the results are positive but users are still reporting some errors - it's important to recall that a public preview is essentially the same as an open beta.  It is widely accessible but not an official 'stable' version.  Report your bugs!

What's Good in the Store

Erart made a somewhat bizarre but kind of cool 'magical hand' weapon.  You have to see it to understand what I mean here:

https://youtu.be/Cg8_jFwhSOc

You can get yours from: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/33493

Tools and Tutorials

This week the GameGuru youtube official channel posted more tutorials.  Some of these are better than others but I think for most advanced users the useful ones would be the ones on blender and fbx imports.

Free Stuff

Smallg's transition from coder to modeller is still going strong - get your free models here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221130

Fumar built a beautiful house you can download to add to your collection:

Get your copy here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221118?page=1#msg2621303  

He also built a bench: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221118?page=1#msg2621110

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

This week we've got a lot of works in progress.  Let's start with this one by C4ever08, a project titled called "Dietara" that we've covered before with lots of updates on it:

I admire the scope and personal touch of the landscape.

Full details are available here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220994#msg2621235

Cybernessence updated/refreshed his art for the hero characters in his Cogwheel Chronicles epic:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=7#msg2621264

He also has additional updates on his work on modifying the drawcall optimizer for his own purposes: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=7#msg2621068

Solar has lots of updates on his Resist: Revolution game here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218343?page=3

Lastly, one of my favorite store authors, OldFlak, started work on a new project in the Sci-Fi vein that looks fantastic by my estimation:

Get the full scoop (and plenty of great looking screenshots) here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221152

In My Own Works

I'm really happy to see the response my book on GameGuru has gotten.  I haven't gotten any kind of official figures but I can honestly say that this thing was a labor of love.  I'll never break even on the time I invested or the money outlaid for things.  I'm *STILL* dealing with some minor cleanup of items before they go on the store, though I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be up this week.

In the meantime if you have purchased my book I'd really personally appreciate it if you'd stop by the listing on Amazon and write up a quick review of it.  You can do that here: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-GameGuru-Michael-Matthew-Messina/dp/1138612634

I guess we'll see!

This Week in GameGuru - 09/16/2019

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

It's a big week in GameGuru with some huge moves in store for the engine.  Just take a look at some of the commits over at GitHub for an idea of what's going on:

Time to unpack this for the less technical.  This last week a beta update was released for closed beta testers.  The primary focus on this was the addition of Preben's draw call optimizer. 

Now draw calls, straight up, are sort of the end-all be-all for performance with respect to rendering. Sure, there's other variables but if your draw calls are too high, then your renderer is working too hard and it will cause bad performance. 

From my book An Introduction to GameGuru: Chapter 21 "Optimization" -
Draw calls represent at least one, possibly more, of every object being ‘drawn’ on the screen.  This is a highly important bit of info, likely the most important performance information statistic next to the raw FPS count.  Draw calls should be around 250 with a top end of around 500.  Once they go beyond those numbers, it will start to seriously drain performance on even top end systems.  The trick here is to run through your level and if you see a place where it spikes, try to determine which objects can either be replaced or removed to kill the performance bottleneck.  Please note that officially draw calls are actually each material of an object, so PBR objects significantly increase draw calls and can easily overwhelm a scene if you don’t take careful steps to optimize object quantities and positions.

What Preben has done is create a draw call batcher that groups together draw calls for similar entities to avoid calling the same thing many times.  This reduces the total number of draw calls considering that most entities are not only used one time in a level but a great many times. In fact, he even expands on my above explanation by detailing that every 'draw call' reported in GG is actually to be multiplied by 10.  This multiplicative effect means that the difference between 500 and 1000 is much more pronounced and can have a massive performance drain.

He explains it very well here in a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EDVD2I6OdY

Initially the beta had some serious issues that were rapidly remedied and so far the results have been excellent with often 30 FPS added to a single scene WITH NO OTHER OPTIMIZATIONS.

Moreover this now has trickled into a Public Preview (open beta) build which will help hammer out the next big release.  I'm really proud of how TGC and company have stepped up after nearly half a year of no updates - if the keep rolling on this we may yet see this engine become vastly more capable yet.

Also a reminder that the contest is still ongoing with a huge amount of prizes available.  I am still considering if I want to give a copy of the book away but I think I might, just to help kickstart this thing.  What do you all think?

What's Good in The Store

While not *TECHNICALLY* on the store it bears mentioning that a new pack was released by TGC. As usual, their quality is generally a cut above most store content and so it's a great value if you are looking to supplement the basic 'modern warfare' assets that come with GameGuru.

This is, in my opinion, a clear winner for TGC.  It supplements a model base that comes with every instance of GameGuru but gives it much more to work with.

On the store itself there's a huge amount of fantastic work available for great prices.

Notably this week:
Pasquill posted a beautiful Russian utility truck:

Gtox posted this great giant ant (ala 'it came from the desert'):

He also made a pretty wicked scorpion:

Teabone made a very detailed orange, focusing on his strong point of easy, simple set pieces:

There's this really cool retro music pack for sale: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11152

And Team Wolf posted an 'all my models (152 in total)' pack for 12 dollars!  This is a fantastic deal and I'm actually buying it after I finish writing this post up. 

This is a mere 10% of the high quality models you receive for $12

Really good quality stuff for a very reasonable price - I urge you to give it a look here: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11151

It also bears noting that there are two very superb artists putting up some great deals on their own works, notably BSP and Rolfy - definitely check out their store pages!

Free Stuff

This week a number of freebies went up.

SmallG apparently has gone from scripting to model design in an apparent departure and has gifted the community with a few new pieces to work with:
A low poly witch
A robot
and A simple low-poly car

Newcomer Fumar posted a gorgeous model of a Church: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221118

And belidos gifted us with a low-poly style tower: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218362#msg2620561

Thanks so much to all the creators who give to the community!

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

First of all is this really great FPE file editor with model viewer.  This is a pretty interesting tool I'd love to see integrated into the editor itself.

Apparently bored of the rings is still giving out his old tools via private message if you are interested.


Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Cybernessence dropped in and gave a huge amount of info on his project here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=7#msg2620877

Apparently he's been using the drawcall optimizer to great effect!

In My Own Works

Nothing I can discuss currently but more details to come so keep an eye on this space.
Once again, thank you to everyone who has purchased my book or helped with it's production. I really appreciate all the kind words and encouragement!

This Week in GameGuru - 08/12/2019

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.

As you can see, this week I've included a disclaimer as I've received feedback that the way this blog is syndicated on www.game-guru.com, www.thegamecreators.com, blogarama, and gamedev.net can lead to some confusion as to the nature of these news releases. I will be including this disclaimer going forward to help clarify for those who are not familiar with my work.

While I realize that some people may disagree with my methodologies, at the same time you are free to do so.  I do reside and live in the United States of America and our rights of free speech are important to me.  I make every effort to ensure that I do not denigrate or diminish anyone's work.  If you take issue with the way I portray YOUR PERSONAL PRODUCTS then please contact me.

Thanks for your time, everyone - I now consider that issue at an end.  Also, a special note at the end so make sure you read all the way through - big news about my book! :)

GameGuru News

Per GitHub the latest information is that there is a trial version being added to GameGuru where you can use it for around 7 days before having to purchase it.  This will likely add a number of new potential buyers to the product so keep a close eye out for those new guys and gals!

Also it appears there is a relatively minor change that will allow standalones to be exported without encryption so as to allow entity sharing?  I'm not sure what that one is for but I'm sure it'll make sense eventually.

I can also soft confirm that ... other interesting things are going on with GG.  That's the most I'll say for the moment!

What's Good in The Store

FredGames77 continues to pump out high quality assets at a record pace.  While we've all likely got a huge stash of boxes, the quality on his recent submission is definitely worth a look:

You get 10 'pack cases' (boxes) for $10 (currently on sale for $5!) - a very reasonable offer.  These are high quality to boot with low poly count and excellent PBR texturing.  Get yours here: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11145

There's also this interesting grub enemy creature by Gtox:

Get yours here: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/33376

Free Stuff

Honkeyboy added some horns to Character Creator: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220945

Not bad work.  I will admit my book's materials ALSO include some donated Character Creator attachments so keep an eye out for that as well. He's got additional ones here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220945#msg2618825
They include a rice farmer's hat, knight's templar's helm, skeleton warrior, and another set of demon horns.

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

 

This week I caught wind of a pretty interesting blog tutorial on the best mods for Blender 2.8 (which recently dropped).  If you use Blender actively check it out here:   https://cgcookie.com/articles/the-top-10-modeling-addons-for-blender-2-8

The latest official GameGuru tutorial video was posted online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMqPsVpy2Ag

There were actually a number of non-english tutorials being posted.  Some work reasonably well enough with youtube's auto-translate function if you're interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYebtk_SETs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEova6DMa5Q

Work continues on the '3d Asset Manager' program for GG - it has come such a long way in such a short period.  The latest info can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220822?page=5#msg2618874

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Bod this week made a really serious Taxicab..which turned into a police car... which turned into this awesome street racer with neon lights and alpha-planed headlights.  https://youtu.be/dw8mi4z7isg

Bonesy also made more forward momentum through steady refinement of his cyber-fi game:

One of the more interesting bits is a new user named "Trollbae" posted one of his friends creations from amateur work in the EBE and it's an impressive manor house:

I have to admit this is quality work for someone who is just trying out the EBE and GameGuru.  It shows a pretty clear ease for new users and I proves a bit to some of us older hats that maybe the EBE is worth using from time to time after all!

Tarkus1971 posted an update to his 'Urban Histories' game that I am personally very interested in seeing - apparently he's reworking it from scratch.  More info here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220589?page=1#msg2619135

Solar is working on a side project called "Zombie Central".  It's a suburban zombie city crawl.
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220974#msg2619073

This is because his other project, Kaboom Foxie is apparently nearly complete.

In My Own Works

And lastly, in my own big news (if you even made it this far to the end of this report) ... is my book is FINALLY released!

https://www.crcpress.com/An-Introduction-to-GameGuru/Messina/p/book/9781138612631

That's right!  The first start to finish guide for making and selling a game in GameGuru is finally here! The book is 426 pages in print with a significant error index, Lua, FPI Guide, 20+ chapters on GameGuru and Game Development in general.

The assets for this (demo maps, character creator addons, custom weapons,  custom static entities, some generously donated other materials, all my scripts, skies and textures...) are all going to be uploaded TONIGHT by 12PM EST.

I will also be giving away some promotional copies for FREE in the coming week.  So keep your eyes peeled on Discord and on the Forums for more details.

For those interested, there is a special 20% off discount code I have through my publisher you can use that is valid until the END OF THE YEAR - AITGG230 

FOR THOSE NOT PURCHASING THE BOOK, THE ASSETS WILL BE POSTED TO THE STORE IN THE COMING WEEK OR SO FOR PURCHASE.  

This Week in GameGuru - 08/05/2019

Sorry for missing last week guys.  Life got in the way. Life is trying to get in the way this week as well, but I'm going to quickly blast this report out before another dumpster fire breaks out in my near periphery.

GameGuru News

One - Lee continues to make adjustments and updates.  He's improved makehuman compatibility and FBX imports are now a thing.  I'd love to see a video tutorial of these updates to better know what this all means for us, perhaps some live examples.  See the github log below:

Also Preben added a new physics shape - convex hulls to GG's github commits - https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220961

What's Good in The Store

Well, this week we have a lot of really good stuff.  Fredgames continues to impress though I'd argue his pricing is a smidge high for this market.  Or heck, maybe it isn't.  Maybe he's selling like hotcakes.

Either way, it's quality work if you're looking for decent models. Lafette's robotic's lab and steam engine are also pretty fantastic, so definitely give that a look. Gtox has gone on from fish to birds, now having a number of stork/crane/herons on the store.

Free Stuff

Sorry guys, time doesn't permit me to break this down but there's a lot of great free stuff on the forums.  Check this link to head there directly: https://forum.game-guru.com/board/25

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

If you haven't been paying attention the official youtube channel of GameGuru has been posting MANY short, easy tutorials. Some good stuff there, check them out here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1q1e3Q9IKMk4nDlAGb_5Jg/videos

The third party asset manager is still being worked on, check out the progress here:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220822/newest

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Bonesy has posted some really interesting screenshots with some community feedback and it's looking better all the time:

 

Solar has a new project (I still want to see his other one, Resist: Revolution finished though!) called 'Kaboom Foxie' - looks like a revamp of some of the cartoon and easter egg assets.  Smart use of existing components, in my opinion:

 

I'm always a fan of clever re-use of assets.  Check out the progress and videos here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220951 

Cogwheel Chronicles (By Cybernessence) has a new screenshot of the dragon from last week.

Wow, the shader updates made this monster look very impressive!

Scienceboy's epic "Twin Worlds" is coming along beautifully.  The latest screenshots are incredible and I'm really looking forward to seeing this project come to fruition.

In My Own Works

What a busy week. Aside from dealing with a newborn, a toddler, and a nine year old with some learning disabilities... it's been an absolute mess.  My book's deadline for production got pushed up to the 7th. So good news, everyone - the book will be available very soon.  However, please hold off on purchasing until next week's GameGuru report as I will have a special 20% coupon with it.

For the record, I asked for the chunky, blocky look.

I've also been putting together the book's materials at the last minute and have some screenshots to show you all.  The idea here is fast, low poly models that look good but run very well for a number of projects.  I will be including them with the book but you will (if you prefer) be able to buy them separately on the store for about 29.95 (this will include many of my existing works as well).  

The book itself will be priced rather high for the GameGuru community.  Regrettably I have no control over the final price.  However, the 20% coupon will help mitigate it and the included materials will also make it much more attractive.  I have something on the order of 30 or 40 maps included with it as demonstrations of concepts straight out of the book.

Keep your eyes open because next week I'll have all the full details!

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.