This Week in GameGuru - 09/09/2019

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 

This week in GameGuru, TeaBone made a contest for the discord which has since been cross-posted on the forums.  I had intended to run my own contest but it makes zero sense to run two separate contests.  As such, I am going to have to hold off on my book contest until this one runs its course.  Otherwise things will be, flatly put, a mess.   I am still considering whether to add my book to the literal PILE of prizes available to the contestants.  If you are a GameGuru creator, it really behooves you to check this out!
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221084

Things have slowed down from the record pace on GitHub but I can confirm some behind the scenes action continues so keep your eyes peeled for further improvements and additions to the engine in the coming months.

The usual spate of fixes tends to be batched in february, may, august, and november.  We're a little off from that pace but I'd expect a big drop around Oct-November.

What's Good in the Store

Valentin321 has added to his excellent Carousel on the store by making a whole pack for an abandoned playground.  These are great looking models and if you are looking for a moody, abandoned park feel it will fit right in!

Free Stuff

Lafette provided a bonus for owners of his mystical dark age pack.

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

The official GG channel continues pumping out videos (good for them, with an engine like this it's helpful info for most people who don't want to wade through thousands of hours of livestreams like certain blog writers did for a book they recently wrote). The new 20 minute vignette format works much better for the average user, I suspect.  Though if you want to get into the meat and bones, I do highly recommend watching some of those multi-hour streams.  Some really good info can be found in them.

The patcher DannyD is working on has gotten additional love too as seen by this interesting screenshot:

 Of particular note is the 'Asset Manager' being worked on by Graphix.
 I cannot stress how absurdly impressive and necessary this tool is.  It does everything the former 'styleguru' did, only better and much more of it.  You can manage your menus, your graphics, you can control your 3d asset library, and more.  It's really an incredible tool spearheaded by someone who is doing a fantastic job of putting together a third party supplemental component.

I can't even cover all the pieces this thing has.  It's a huge boon to the community and we should all be enormously thankful and appreciative of Graphix's hard work on it.

Check it out here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220932

A video demo can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkU5dUNIEQ0

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Duchenkuke put together this clever intro for a game he's working on.  Cutscenes are always interesting to dissect, see if you can figure out all the little methods he used! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5zpdAtG1u8

Amenmoses put together a pretty impressive bit of physics in a nice video clip for us.  I'm reminded of a certain game that shall not be named - really impressive stuff.  https://vimeo.com/345560130

In My Own Works

I've been fielding question after question with relation to my book.  I've received dozens of private messages, discord chats, personal messages on the forums and the like.  I'm super happy everyone has purchased it seems to be enjoying it.  It's been quite a ride and I'm happy that people are already extracting value from it.

Life's not been kind to me but for the moment I have an artist cleaning up some of the original cybernoir assets I had made up so that I feel comfortable with their release.

An example is here:

This flying car has been updated to PBR and yet still retains much of the original artistic style.  I'm really looking forward to getting this stuff out the door!

Once I get that all ready to go I'll post the final version on the store for everyone to give a whirl.  As usual, book purchasers will receive it for free, non purchasers will need to buy it on the store.

Thanks again and see you next week!
Mike

This Week in GameGuru - 04/01/2019

Happy April Fool's Day!  In this version of the GameGuruReport, I'll be covering the new Cry-Real-Ity engine, a fusion of the top three engines that is sure to deliver the best performance at the most complexity possible!

Or not.

On with the report!

GameGuru News

This week, we have the return of Lee.  I have it on fairly good authority that he's working hard on the engine, so hopefully we'll see some traction there.

On Github there's been an encryption issue recently resolved in the 'march fixer'.
Two new branches were added to GitHub - 'Alphasite and AlphasiteXR'.

What's Good in the Store

This week's totally subjective view of the store is rather favorable.  Wolf's started making models again.  I always do enjoy the style of his models.  He makes the most of the DNIS texture style.

Dagored put out a new sea creature, check it out here:

I really am digging the new 'snow falling windows' by 3com.  Very interesting work!

And lastly, a new user "fredgames77" has started putting up some interesting things, notably this scarecrow.

Free Stuff

Lafette II got out of the hospital and made a model of a volcano!

Get your copy here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220474?page=2#msg2613848

Nothing else really came across my desk this week.

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

Nothing new this week, though the creator of Vishnu Packer is apparently looking at adding in GameGuru support.  

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs) 

Tarkus1971 continues work on his Urban Histories game.

While it's heavily reliant on the Borderlands-esque cartoon shader, it has a solid look to it.  With polish, it will likely be a decent title.   I like the idea of an urban-exploration game, however, so this could be very interesting if the gameplay bears out.

Wolf showcased some new screenshots of some entities he's got as characters that seem fairly well put together though most of this is by his own words a retrofit on older media:

Still, custom media beats stock media by miles, so even a rework of older stuff is often better than the out of the box assets.  Details and further screenshots can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/211124?page=7#msg2613860

In My Own Works

Well, finally got my production information from the publisher - it is going to be published on August 19, 2019.  So get your wallets ready :)

That all said, I have assets being made for this along with other interesting bits that are to go with this as a bonus. The weapons are coming along nicely and all should be in a nice line by the time the book goes on sale in August.  I'll be holding a promotion for a free copy as well, along with coupons, discounts and more!

This Week in GameGuru - 12/31/2018

Well I hope you all enjoyed your Holidays. Here in Pennsylvania my family had a great Christmas together.  It was nice to see family I'd not seen in a while.

With that, I skipped last week for the Holiday and am back to provide you with your regularly scheduled updates on GameGuru!

Official GameGuru News

The most recent update was here: https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-buildings-pack-dlc-updated

Specifically this update fixes some geometry issues with the buildings pack, which many of us received as compensation for our earlier donations to the FPSC:Reloaded project. This is the first release of fixes done by Graphix and it looks pretty dang good.  Like we're finally going to see some forward progress on some very old models that brings them up to a more reasonable standard. 

It sounds like they'll be dialing back on the regular DLC updates for now as it seemed the general consensus was that it was getting out of hand.

What's Good in the Store

A note to store sellers - recently stricter guidelines have been implemented for large media images. You can get the full details here: https://seller.tgcstore.net/doc/marketing-advice

Teabone has been... really busy over his holiday.  Color me impressed.

Some of these are some fantastic scripts, notably the dynamic water droplets and weapon hud wheel.  These are good bits of code and I'm totally in for buying access to them... once I pay off the Christmas gift bills.  That said, he does sell his scripts as a pack for a low price: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11056

Also on the store this week Gtox put up a model that initially looked so-so but having watched the video I have to say the attack animation is great.  It happens akin to a jump scare so it's a fairly unique entity.

You can get a copy or watch the video here: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/32267

A seller named simply 'ThatModelGuy' put together a pretty nice looking fast-food style booth.  I have several of these but I have to say this one is a nice build with a very good looking model that fits cleanly.

It's on sale for a dollar here: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/32266

A new composer has placed his works on the store and there are a substantial amount to look at.  Take a look at his artist page here: https://www.tgcstore.net/artist/87213

Free Stuff

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217932?page=12#msg2610108 - Graphix put together a great road barrier with an animation for those interested, he also created a full download of every model he's ever done in one easy link here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217932?page=13#msg2610187

Honkeyboy made a map massively larger than the basic map and there's some interesting stuff in this thread about how to make it function properly.  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220345

Bod made a pretty sweet radio for download: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/215012?page=18#msg2609928

JPH-Games made several building packs for christmas, however there's no zip link so... I guess we'll circle back on this one.

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

How to use Graphix's explosions: https://youtu.be/ngkAqtBN_mM

Tarkus1971 put up his own site with media: https://forum.game-guru.com/outbound?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexigentsounds.co.uk%2F

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

 

De-tachment by "SuperMasGamer" looks promising but lacks any gameplay videos, only has a few cutscenes and promo reels cut.  Check out the pretty well put together cutscene here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fMPyHGv_Yg

In My Own Works

The book is in the fun phase, the point where I send it to proofreaders and my personal editor to clean up and revise.  I also get to re-read all 135k words and fix any glaringly obvious mistakes, reorganize, and the like.  The content, however, is essentially done.  I also got good news from someone with respect to building weapons so I'm hoping I can have those added in time for the game itself to be included with it by June. From a content standpoint though, I'm essentially done!  I did a huge amount of research over the past few weeks for how to use the model importer, learned quite a lot about it.  Surprising how much power is actually under the hood when you take the time to learn about it. 

This Week in GameGuru - 12/17/2018

This week has a lot of updates to cover.  Let's get started! First a quick reminder that I am not an employee of TheGameCreators (TGC) and as such this opinion piece does not reflect their views. This is entirely a piece based on my own findings. 

Official GameGuru News

So first off, there's the rather beautiful 'Cold War' pack.
A few weeks ago we were offered a preview of the asset list for this one and I have to say it looked really gorgeous.  The demo picture on the above link is also fairly compelling.  I'd say of the recent DLC releases, this one is my favorite.  That said, there's a few things I've picked up in 'chatter' from various model artist friends of mine as I've been slogging through the forums and discord.  Apparently there's some optimization that may need done on this pack and the author was notified of this.  I'm hoping we see that but in the meantime if you notice any performance issues with it, make sure you bring them to TGC support's attention.

Next up with respect to the other PBR updates that have been rolling out regularly, there have been some complaints about how they have come about on the models.  In many cases, people are finding that it's just not sufficient to add PBR to a very old model.  GraphiX demonstrated this on a forum post:

The left is the improved model while the right is the post-PBR update model. Apparently model smoothing groups needed changed, though I'll admit that's a bit above my head from a modelling standpoint. 
Regardless, even a casual user can see a substantial difference. So substantial that lee went and replied on the matter in a way that I can honestly say was very refreshing.  I'd love to see more communication and direct interaction with the community like this:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220318#msg2609579

Take some time to take a look at this post and really process it, because it means a lot.  First he acknowledges the problems and then says he's going to create a new donation bucket and dump the remaining ones to pay for Graphix's fixes.  The new donation bucket will be for updates.  Make sure you re-update your donations to help support the non-TGC members!


So there we have it.  Definitely some steps in the right direction.  I know a few people are perpetual pessimists in this community and I really can't blame them - but I will personally say I've seen more change this year than I've seen in the last five.

What's Good in The Store

Well let's start with something pretty fantastic  - a release by Slaur3n called 'Santa and the Evil Snowmen'.  It's a really impressive minigame (single level) designed completely in GameGuru.  You don't need GameGuru to purchase it, just a TGCstore account.  It's available for a reasonable price on the store ($2.50).

You can get your copy here: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/32204

Also we've got even more work by Lotgd (aka Friskon) .. I have to say this one is probably one of his better ones and it's criminally cheap - animated maggots for corpses.  This is one you need to watch the video to get the full effect.  The video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol3v6xWSYyo

Now available for 30 cents in USD: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/32211

M2Design has put together a background set of ruined buildings which are fairly efficient poly-wise but still have high end textures if you want to showcase them up close.  You can find the entire pack available for a reasonable price here: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/32210

Third Party Tutorials and Tools

Cybernessence made a modification to the core PBR shader that allows you to completely disable the sun for indoor scenes.  I tested it among many others and it seemed to work brilliantly in that regard.  Instructions on installation and usage can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220297?page=2#msg2609391

M2Design put together some really fantastic instruction on fixing his transparencies for glass which has always been a sticking point for modellers with GameGuru.  Instructions are found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220333#msg2609551

There's a pretty good discussion going on about importing MakeHuman characters into GameGuru.
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220299

Free Stuff

This week in Free Stuff we have: 

Lotgd (the maggot maker from above) made a free Christmas set.  Should be fun to play around with and hey, you don't have to pay for it so that's always nice :)   Get your copy here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220313#msg2609322

There's a glowing sphere here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220314

Graphix and Amenmoses have brought back the Piano: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217932?page=12#msg2609296

And I have to say my favorite of the Free Stuff this week was from Lafette II with his Chinese Christmas object pack.

You can get your copy here:
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220328

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Bonesy has been doing more work with his CyberFi game - I noticed one of the skies looked familiar, turns out it's one of my old HD Space Skies :)

Looks like he added a face to the HUD as well.  While the palette hurts me a bit, I have to say his dedication to plodding forward on his project is exactly how things get done.  He just keeps chipping away at it and it's coming along great. 

Duchenkuke continues to wow with his Metro-style game that I am personally very interested in seeing come to completion - keep cracking man - you're doing fantastic! Video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By13-y6bFwk


Defy put out some pretty impressive NPC behavior.  He's gotten pretty good with making the characters in GameGuru perform specific tasks and it shows:

There's a video available, of course, it appears to be related to 3rd person over the shoulder game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1NCzsUa7f4

Last up we have some screenshots from PirateMyke's work.  This latest stuff is pretty sweet looking and he is really dialing in his lighting:

I have to say, some of these projects are looking like they are really firming up.  The work going on here is fairly inspirational and I'm looking forward to be able to work on something myself (once the book is done).

In My Own Works

So obviously I had this huge update to do, but I've also been having a blast in my weekly tabletop game campaign.  I used to update the blogger page for it but I simply ran out of time.  Regardless, the players absolutely trounced me this round but that only makes the GM (me) want to make it tougher for them :) 

Beyond that the book is coming along, despite the difficult subject matter.  Big special thanks to AmenMoses for being available for my incessant questioning.  He's been extremely helpful for me to get a solid understanding of Physics and Particles as they are implemented by GameGuru.  After this I have the unenviable task of reading through this immense tome and fixing all the minor errors, then reorganizing the book more logically.

It's going to be a massive undertaking that will probably go on through at least the first few weeks of the year.  I'm also going to need to take approximately 130 pictures for the book, which is... also fairly daunting.  Thankfully most of it is fairly straightforward stuff like GUI icons and what not. 

Still, writing a technical walk through book like this is not for the faint of heart.  I'm looking forward to it's impending completion and subsequent release!

This Week in Game-Guru - 11/12/2018

This week's update may actually make it to the Game-Guru news page, woohoo!

We'll see.  I've been in communication with TGC's marketing person and it's moving forward, albeit a bit slowly.

Official Game-Guru News

Well, it doesn't appear they have added anything new as of this writing, though typically news releases seem to be done later today or tomorrow.  In the interim I can say I found this site:
https://www.game-guru.com/news-posts?post_type=guest-authors
Which currently only has one post but hopefully yours truly will see the light of day there soon.

What's Good in the Store

This week we've got two entries.  One is a timely turkey, as it were, just in time for the grand American holiday of Thanksgiving were we gorge ourselves on copious amounts of food and then fall into a comatose state.

A little small, by 'murican standards.

Campana productions put this one together and you can find it here: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/32155

Next we have a really nicely done pack of snow-themed assets.

It's got everything from buildings to vehicles.  I'm also happy to see he included a few free models for you to trial as well.  It's well priced at $8.00 which is a bargain by any standards.

You can get your copy here: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11058

Free Stuff

In the realm of free stuff we're getting into the giving time of year and it shows!
Lafette, as mentioned, has a few free things on that pack you should grab.  He also made a train station too though.

You can get your copy of the 'Free old German train station' here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220209

It appears GraphiX is making headway on his new kit, though I'm not sure if it will be free (though he keeps posting updates to the free forum so.. maybe?).  You can watch a video on this interesting sci-fi pack here: https://youtu.be/CToyFLW70d0

Mstockton released some free music over at his site.  Definitely head on over and make sure to like the page for him! https://michaelstockton.net/cartoon-casual-game-tracks-volume-1

Honkeyboy released some Lua code for Game-Guru that allows you to setup chatting NPCs relatively easily.  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220225#msg2608076
It's mostly to control the animations though so you'll still need to manage all the other elements such as sound and text. 

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

I found this ENORMOUS tutorial playlist on Game-Guru related topics on youtube over the weekend while doing book research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjSBCevTnYI&list=PLot9BTdhKKd4KV91P7WkIKVsybktHu1Za

Random Acts of Creativity(WIPs)

This has been an absolutely crazy week for updates so if I missed you, apologies.  I *THINK* I got them all.  So in no particular order....

Schneeky has a fairly well done Medieval project put together.  I'm curious how this will bear out.  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220228

Honkeyboy started a new project.  Not so sure about this one, but if he polishes it, maybe it'll take roots for him.  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220201#msg2607752

A new user "OPENLOAD" made an italian title that looks very promising "Il mio primo lavoro "Memory of the Hedolan": https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220223

Of particular note is DVader, who crawled out of the woodwork to deliver a holiday-themed project.  Why this is noteworthy is DVader is actually a fairly competent coder so you can expect some interesting work from a technical standpoint in this project.  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220214

Ertlov released a slice of his game 'Into the Ice' for testing - check it out here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/206985?page=3#msg2608009

Bonesy continues to update Cyberfi and it's actually starting to look like a real game.  This is a great example of what happens when you focus, buckle down and actually WORK on your projects!

Granada's been working on some guns in Game-Guru and I have to say I love the exaggerated look!

In My Own Works

I'm drawing closer and closer to completing my book, now within striking range of my target for completion.  I'm at 110,000 words and counting.  Once I pass 120k I'll probably keep going to 125/130k and then remove about 3-5k for editing.

This week was all about advanced AI control, sales, marketing, and piracy.  Very preliminary editing work began with chapter reorgs and other things.

Further this week will be mostly Lua oriented as I wrap up the 'intro' chapter to Lua, then do a complete Lua command reference for Game-Guru, and if I have time work on the Advanced Lua chapter (which I will admit I am somewhat dreading).

See you next week!