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 12/18/2017

Notice: Next week's issue will be delayed a day or so due to the holidays.

ENGINE UPDATE PROGRESS REPORT

No new updates for us normies.  We're still in beta-test limbo; apparently a beta update was released to the closed beta testers which was labelled as a public preview update.  This accidental update might cause you some confusion if you find yours hasn't updated.  That said given Lee's recent flurry of responses on the forums we can see that there's definitely some renewed emphasis on bugfixes and system stability (specifically with memory).

Also worth mentioning is my own find that you can reduce CPU usage by a drastic amount on most maps by updating the AI scripts to include some changes.  Specifically it appears that 'always active=off' does not actually appear to be functioning.  So you need to manually configure this via a player distance check in the script.  By doing this, you kill the overhead required for the rather intensive AI system.  Details can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219078

For now though, we're all waiting for what looks like what will be a new-years update to improve stability and performance.   I'm really hoping Lee grinds this one out over holiday though I can understand if we have to wait until February for it.

NEW PRODUCTS IN THE STORE

 

Some small, but interesting updates.

This week on the store we have a new artist (Thorus) making a solid go of some residential models and a decently good looking tractor.  These models are well priced, most going in the sub-one dollar range per model.   Moshroom has written a new script which degrades weapon quality and makes them unusable after a point.  Acid has added a ... moving target?  I couldn't really discern this one's purpose but I'm sure someone will find it useful.  Lastly mstockton, who does a solid job on his modelling, added a nice padlock and key set for a very good price on the store.
 
Lastly added to the store was an actual game:

This particular game, Savior V1, has been around a while.  It however, represents a certain threshold for quality that most 'steam game releases' I've seen fail to measure up to.  While it's well priced at .99 cents (on sale at this time for a meager .50 cents), it is worth playing from the standpoint of seeing quality game design and development in Game-Guru.  One can learn a significant amount from osmosis and this situation is no different.

That aside though what's really important about this is it highlights the store as an additional distribution channel.  While we could potentially suffer the same problems as other channels (such as the hot, shoveled garbage games that find their way to steam) it could prove a really interesting way to market your own products to a smaller, more receptive audience.  Definitely worth considering fotr the future.

FREE STUFF

 This week's update in 'Free Stuff' has brought some absolutely incredible scripts.  I mean three really big hitters that all solve a lot of major issues for Game-Guru game devs.  First up is Solar's objective script found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219081

Check out the above picture.  You can see clearly marked objectives which float under the object; this is going to be massively useful for the average FPS game.  The best part is this one is actually very straightforward to use and adapt so it will bring a lot of value to a lot of people.
 
Next up is AmenMoses, who has once again provided a crazy amount of utility those of us who want to really push the envelope in Game-Guru.  He's created a utility library that allows object rotation, connecting decals to objects, and much more.  It has to be seen to be believed, check out the videos and the downloads here at the forum link:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219096

HonkeyBoy has been working tirelessly in Game-Guru on several projects for a few years now.  These projects are pushing forward and his toolkit has really grown a lot over the past few months.  Recently he's added a survival and crafting script for people to use and abuse:

The script, along with some secondary scripts (fire making, shelter making, etc) can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219061
It's also worth mentioning he's added some new models for download that are free for use as well here:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219082

Graphix has added a few impressive glass panels to the forum which I will personally be using extensively.

My previous 'glass panels' were some really old ones I'd hackneyed together from some pretty old assets.  While they worked ok, they didn't do a spectacular job and looked cheap.  These look exceptionally high quality and use alpha channels well.  Get them here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217932?page=6#msg2592415

 THIRD PARTY TOOLS

BOTR has updated the Heightmapping to MDAT tool again with a new GUI and a fix for the Windows 10 machines that were crashing.  It's really coming into it's own.  This brings it up to a current version of 2.1a; it can be found at this location:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218876?page=3#msg2592417

I personally have used the older versions to some good effect though it takes some tinkering to find the right settings for the scaling and what not.  Overall though this is a must-have item for your toolbox if you plan on using any kind of pre-made terrain or imports from terrain building software.

RANDOM ACTS OF CREATIVITY

This week I play-tested Bugsy's Multiplayer Simulator which was fun and interesting.  It ran well, played well, and reminded me a good bit of Quake 3 Arena.  I'd love to see him push this project further and as always it's got some of Bugsy's hallmark humor added in as a dry touch:

More games need a 'middle finger' model, IMO.

Also after long last we have an update on Wolf's epic flagship game - Shavra.   If you aren't familiar, Wolf is one of the top tier developers for Game-Guru.   He's in a very small group of other talented developers and this is his baby.  The screenshots alone from 4 years ago show the Game-Guru engine stretched to it's limits.  The latest screenshots are jaw-droppingly gorgeous, as you'd expect:

There simply aren't enough Game-Guru games meeting this level of quality.  I find it really impressive and have to say I wish I could meet this level on my own work.  It looks like it should be out of Unreal or Unity.  Not something as 'plebeian' as Game-Guru.


That wraps it up for this week.   As mentioned next week will have a delay before I post any new content, I may even skip it entirely.

Keep an eye out for some interesting new work from me too, I've been hard at work developing some new tools for Game-Guru users as well as a secret project that only a few select people know about.  It'll take a good 6 months before it's ready, minimum, but once it's released it should really open a few eyes.  That's about the most I can safely say on it.  That and that it's about 8-10% complete as of this moment.  So I have a long road ahead of me.  Thanks again and see you next week!

This week in Game-Guru 12/4/2017

Welcome back to my second update.  We've seen some HUGE updates this week.

ENGINE UPDATE PROGRESS REPORT

First and foremost, the public preview was released this week.  The 'beta' is now a public beta.   Get in there and test!  I ran into a problem installing mine that required me to update certain elements of my Windows 7 OS to fix a D3DDIRECT_47.dll not found error.   Other than that though, it works great.  I've had a few assets with problems and am yet to test my own products but as soon as I can verify their function I'll note that here.

More info is available here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219024

PBR Assets look great!

Beware though; this is a test version.  It's not all there yet and so it's best to make a backup before you continue.  I personally copied my 50+GB of assets and GG to a backup folder.  If you can't afford that kind of space, then I'd recommend either getting another drive or putting a copy on drive.google.com (you get like 15GB free there).

NEW PRODUCTS IN THE STORE

The store this week has some interesting December sales which are worth looking at.  Artists range from "The Wizard of Id", "that model guy" and "grobyken" all having several models or packs up to individual packs like Teabone's new warning sign set.

These high quality clutter objects cost only 70 cents.. TOTAL!  For the whole pack!

Teabone's done a fantastic job of creating high quality assets that are extremely affordable but possibly more importantly - they are very useful!  I have several signs from older packs that just don't measure up.  They look chunky and out of date.  These signs are clear, easy to read, are well lit but yet still have just the right amount of grunge to keep them from looking out of place.

Also on the store I noticed this gem from an artist I've only seen the occasional piece from: AlexGCC.  I took a look and noticed two separate products which appear relatively new that are of pretty excellent quality:

The Arcade will go well with EAI's set and the playground will go well with dagored's Carnival.

They're both reasonably priced so definitely give these and his other interesting products a look!

FREE STUFF

As always, there's a veritable bevy of free stuff available on the Game-Guru forums.  This week we have a nice freebie from Wolf, a set electrical boxes which he's also put up on the store as well.  I have several of his 'junction box' sets and I've noticed a clear trend upwards in terms of quality and technical skill.  Of note are the illuminated lights on the boxes.

The perfect touch for all your cyberpunk set dressing needs.

Also on the forums it appears Bod's been at it again.  Now if you don't know Bod, you should.  He's made a titanic mass of free stuff over the past few years.  While his art style and approach might limit other assets you can use with it, it does definitely fill a role and niche.  Very often he's got things you simply can't find anywhere else.  Or things that you'd pay a fair penny for on the store.

In this case he's been working on a ton of railroad assets.  This week he's added a switching booth which looks great.  It's probably one of his best physical models for buildings that I've seen so far.

His texturing is really going places.

At some point I'm going to take all my free assets and open up a google drive with them so people can access them freely in the future.  It'd be a shame if this stuff just fell off into oblivion from lack of upkeep or if the forums went away.

The interior on this building is top notch.  I love the way it turned out.

One final one to look at is this thread: https://forum.game-guru.com/board/25 which has a repository of all of "tarkus1971"s hard work.  He's got some interesting things there but most notably he has been adding lots of great music for free use in your games.

THIRD PARTY TOOLS

In the world of third party tools, it looks like BOTR's 'HeightMap to Game-Guru' tool is getting a new user interface which will really help with it's function.  On top of that he's added a preview mode which should REALLY shave time off pulling maps from http://terrain.party and importing them into Game-Guru. Granted I'm really thankful for a free tool like this but I have to admit it's always nice when it becomes truly functional.

This is going to massively help level development for Game-Guru!

Also of note is that OldPMan's "normalizator" tool has apparently reached a new stage of development and will be offered shortly on the store.  Per OldPMan himself:

"Hello everybody!
I'm happy to report that I finally recovered the lost source code "NORMALIZATOR". So I added a height channel and several auxiliary functions, this is copying the image from layer to layer, cropping the image and copying / pasting the selected part of the image. Fixed several bugs.
Now I will have all my time in touch and any questions will not be left without attention.
Concerning people who donated to the development of the application, I sent everyone emails with the keys for NORMALIZATOR in the tgcstore store. I noticed that not all of the keys I sent were activated, if for some reason you did not receive a letter with a key from me, write me a PM and I will give you instructions for obtaining a key in the tgcstore store.
The new version will soon be available at the tgcstore store, now in the status of approval.
For those who expect STEAM version, now you can get access to the closed beta test of the application, just write me a PM and I'll send you the key for access via STEAM client."

RANDOM ACTS OF CREATIVITY

So there's a lot of activity going into the holidays with projects.  I have a lot to cover here.

Let's start from the top!

First up we have MrEaKing(YT)'s 'Santa's Workshop(1 week challenge)'.  What can I say?  He's retextured assets and modified some of the soldiers to provide a shall we say a truly 'unique' experience.

Beyond that we have Dark Harbour; Honkeyboy's newest attempt at making a Skyrim Style game which will undoubtedly push the boundaries of how many assets Game-Guru can run without crashing.  He's got some interesting crafting scripts in there that he's working on and it's definitely got some work behind it.

Of particular note here is AmenMoses's 'asteroids-ish thingy'.  AmenMoses is the maker of the quaternion library for Game Guru and he uses it for rotation in very impressive fashion.

I'll have to play with it later but should run great, knowing AmenMoses.

Beyond that we have some updates to the Cogwheel Chronicles 1 and LenTheMan's Cowboy shooter.  Lots of good stuff in the pipeline.

Personally I have my own projects as well that are stalled out but will revive after the new year.  Lots of things to work on and do.  I'd like to get some stuff done for Christmas but it's really going to be tight at this rate.