This Week in GameGuru - 02/10/2020

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.

GameGuru News

The huge news this week was the announcement of GameGuru MAX, which is coming along at a preorder price of $25, with an announced 'release price' of $50.
There's an excellent Q&A thread here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221517?page=1#msg2625799

Lee & TGC have gone above and beyond trying to be ahead of this in a very forthcoming way with their communication going as far as releasing teaser videos, doing 2 hour Q&A's on discord and this forum thread.  It's a really positive improvement that I'm hoping to see continue as a trend.

There's a pretty big featureset being added here aside from already in-progress work.  Announcement of a new renderer being investigated, possible 64-bit upgrades, etc really wet the palette for users like me and I can honestly say $25 is an extremely accessible price for what looks like a more advanced iteration of GameGuru.

What's Good in the Store

This week I'm really limited in how far I can deep dive. Near as I can tell there's some interesting packs getting added but honestly I'm going to withhold judgement until a later time due to limited time resources on my part. 

Free Stuff

Mav3r1ck put out a free 'pulley crane'.  Get your copy here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221550

Lafette put together a HUGE medieval pack you absolutely should grab:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220474?page=3#msg2626215

Make sure you thank the guy for all his hard work!

OldPMan put out a beautiful Sci-Fi computer/set piece model:

Get your copy here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221548#msg2626328

JPH-Games has been busy producing lots of free models of pretty reasonably good quality for quite a while now:
An electrical panel with buttons: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219734?page=2#msg2625729

Some nice looking old boxes: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219734?page=2#msg2625984

Definitely check out his work.

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

BOTR has announced he'll continue work on his heightmapper for GameGuru Classic.  No word yet on whether it'll be ported to GG MAX.

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Lots of excellent projects are blossoming out of the woodwork.  Take a gander:

Mav3r1ck's project posted some tantalizing screenshots:

He's also finally posted a title ("Heathen: The Paganacht")  and some information in a thread on the forums for those interested in more: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221486

Trollbae continues his impressive work with the EBE:

Amenmoses made a dart tossing game:

I know someone made the models for him, but I forgot to write their name down.  Whoever you were - thanks!

Teabone has been working on a really excellent water-system graphics refresh which uses water droplets, color matching, and DOF to simulate underwater distortion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75yrK0lybv8&feature=youtu.be

There's plenty more too!  Check out wolf's latest work here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/209529?page=3#msg2625148

Honestly there's too much to cover in one go. I highly recommend you peruse the forums yourself!  There's a lot of really exciting work being done right now.  I'm happy to see the community running with the latest updates to GG.

In My Own Works

In my own works, I'm actually due for my first royalty check from the publisher in Feb.  So.. that's sort of exciting, though honestly I will *NEVER* earn the money worth the time I spent in the book.  It's mostly done as a service to you all at this point, with the little bit of money from the publisher as a means to continue funding my hobby.

Speaking of funding my hobby, last week I got a large enough store payout to upgrade some of my tools and have been diligently working on new space skies (4k of course).  Here's some teasers:

This was a test to see if I could simulate an asteroid surface.

This is a 'white hole' in the middle of a globular cluster.

This is a planetary surface with an aurora, star prominently figured with a nebula behind it.

I *DID* run into some issues with shearing on my skyboxes so I'm trying to sort that out.  In the meantime, expect a new run of 4k skies on the store within a few weeks here.

I may also do a low res version for those who are more economically minded.

This Week in GameGuru - 10/21/2019

GameGuru News

Some of the secret squirrel sleuths found this gem buried in GitHub - make of it what you will:
https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/pull/631/commits/c570fedd8cd8ccac8e5652f8bfd4b293a775d458

What's Good in The Store

There's a lot of good one off products this week:

Corrosion's Survival Scripts are in a pack.  https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11155

Fredgames77 made some highly detailed zombie garden gnomes. https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11154

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

<This space for rent>

Sorry guys, nothing new here :(

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Galaxy Hauler (By Honkeyboy) had a video put up that is fairly enticing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-GaQHaQZ4A

Zelick's project "Neir" had some updates here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220415?page=1#msg2622300

Naelurec by Old Flak has put up some more great screenshots:

I love seeing a project with custom modelling. This kind of thing is what this community needs - more homebrew stuff with consistent art direction and quality design.  It should really stand out once it's completed.

Robert Hindle (Bod) and AmenMoses's latest work on a flyable spitfire looks great, as one could reasonably expect! https://vimeo.com/367610915

Free Stuff

If you didn't get Granada's excellent free shotgun last week, get it this week! https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221213

https://www.tgcstore.net/product/33551 AlexGCC made a free 'Russian Sign'!

In My Own Works

Life is still hectic with the basement remodel, work issues, new baby, etc.  However I've been slowly nicking away at getting minor things taken care of as well as outstanding issues.  I've recently begun making new skies for space settings again - but none of the newest batch has been up to par.  I'll probably release the failures as freebies once again.

Lastly, my Cyberpunk Noir weapons kit is FINALLY fixed and on the store.  If you are a book owner, ask me for a free key so you can get a copy of these for free.

This Week in GameGuru - 10/14/2019

My apologies for the late updates.  It's been an absolute nightmare dealing with some of my recent work changes so this has unfortunately dropped massively in priority.

GameGuru News

The Monthly newsletter discussed my book being available. Thanks TGC - I appreciate it greatly.
There's also a free version of GG now, though it's a test version with a limited time of access.  Should help entice new users.
There were some minor fixes to the PP edition, which is essentially using the latest, most up to date version. Notably there was a load/save Game Stats fix which should help games that make it into production.

What's Good in The Store

Lots of new things are available!  One of which is of course some of the Cyberpunk Noir assets from my book materials!

If you are NOT a purchaser of the book but want some of the static assets (weapons are on the way, once I untangle a few things with free time I don't have currently) then feel free to puchase these! If you do own the book - hit me up on discord for a free code to download it.
 

Valentin321 put together this great looking motorboat:

 

There were also some scripts by corrosion, check his store page here: https://www.tgcstore.net/artist/221852

Teabone made some really well priced scripts as well: https://www.tgcstore.net/artist/45855
Sula made some great looking PBR trucks - https://www.tgcstore.net/artist/157895
Fredgames77 has put up some excellent cemetery models: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11153
Pasquill put up a really superb armored vehicle - https://www.tgcstore.net/product/33517
AlexGCC put a number of great models up but I really like his apocalypse truck: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/33532
Northern put out a very nice VIP model with a decent array of scripts and animations making it a good value: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/33528

And for 'most interesting/innovative' item on the store in the past month or so, we have Erart's impressively weird ghost mirror. You have to watch the video to see what I mean:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFqdz1ZKZtQ

How cool is that?  Anyways, you can get your copy here: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/33521

Free Stuff

Granada made this fantastic free shotgun!

 https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221213  - get your copy at that link.
Tarkus 1971 made some pretty excellent music available for free:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213190/last
Some great scripts found their way onto the net as well such as
smallg's 'racing script' https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/207801?page=25#msg2622028
And Amenmoses's 'cold breath' script: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221215#msg2622148

Notably for me though is the Airplane script he posted to discord.  There's a video in the 'random acts of creativity' section of it.  It's really good stuff!

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

This week there's some interesting Russian Language videos (I love auto-translate) on youtube for GameGuru: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3QE9rGxKVw

And also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErNFM-AoKhE

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Amenmoses is working with Bod on making GG into a flight sim.  This has to be seen to be believed at this link:  https://vimeo.com/366328897
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zgarg-algM - Bonesy's Cyberfi updates look good but the colors are still painful to me.  I realize it's the style, of course, it's just hard for me to watch. That said, it has potential so hopefully he'll keep refining it
I'm happy to see Honkeyboy has revived his galaxy-hopping game. While it lacks polish the core components look really great and I'm looking forward to seeing his future work on this! 

 https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221222

Dietara got some video updates.  This blog post is already really saturated though so I can't post much more safely - so here's a link to where you can find some more:     https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220994?page=1#msg2621936

In My Own Works

I want nothing more than to work on GameGuru projects I have outstanding but between the end stages of a basement remodel, a new baby, work woes, and the myriad other things clutching me I simply can't spare the time.  On my list of things I want to get done by the end of the year:
   - Some new script releases for the store
   - Get those @#$% weapons posted to the store
   - Make some new space skies
   - Work on my own game project

Lastly, thanks to everyone who has supported me by purchasing my book.  I'm going through some hard times right now and it's good to know that the year  of time it took me to make that is seeing some use by more people than I expected.

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 - 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. 

This Week in GameGuru - 07/15/2019

This week we finally received the public launch of the updated engine.  

GameGuru News

 

Lots of mini-updates to the big update done.  Looks like Lee is continuing his active involvement on github via the code tracking here: https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/commit/8d6552fb6d1b0bb759e20bb6e84e1f8bf0ee361c

Notably there's a bit in there about making Makehuman characters more easily importable.  While I like the integration and simplicity of the Character Creator, I think this is also a worthy effort to help further define GameGuru's place in the grand scheme of things. 

What's Good in the Store

 

Sula did a whole village for sale.

Ironically I was *JUST* considering making a wheat vegetation object.

He's rapidly becoming one of the most prolific PBR modellers on the store. Beyond that, not much else is going on on the store this week.

Free Stuff

 

I wasn't able to find anything free this week.  Better luck next time guys!

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

Lots of great tutorials this week.  Notably Dvader (who previously made some really interesting work in GameGuru) has returned with a very simple 'lunar launch' tutorial.

Amenmoses wrote up a good tutorial on sound usage in GameGuru: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220877

Graphix has opened up his asset manager for GG for testing: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220822?page=4

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

This week Honkeyboy posted an interesting EBE build on one of his projects:

Complete with hidden burial chambers!

More info can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220833/newest

And this week we got a return from old-timer 'scienceboy' with his mega-epic 'Twin Worlds':

Full info on the latest can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/208185?page=10#msg2617651

Cybernessence of course continues to amaze with a huge update.  He's recently done some interesting work with the terrain shader:

Looking better and bettter!

There's a lot of additional info but one thing of note is he created an interior environment zone that allows localized cubemaps based on your zone.  This is a massive improvement over the stock system and I would push to have this change added immediately for the sake of more serious creators: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=6#msg2617883

In My Own Works

Time has been hard to find, mostly just upkeep on nearly constant book questions by the publisher and typesetting company. Beyond that looking at trying to get some works done for the sidecar materials for the book.  This includes some last minute procurement and speccing up demo levels for people to learn from.

This Week in GameGuru - 07/08/2019

Well, I'm back, finally.  My life is still absolute chaos from the baby's arrival but I've been able to shore up enough time to put together a GameGuru report for everyone. Deepest apologies for missing anything, but there's a tremendous backlog to work through.

GameGuru News

Obviously the biggest news here is that the big patch dropped.  By the time you see this, the newest patch will likely have trickled from the public preview (a sort of open beta) to the main branch.  This huge, expansive update has a significant number of major bugfixes from numerous community members such as T-Bone, BoredOfTheRings, Defy, Preben and others.  It also has some back end work from Lee.  It purports to provide:

• 41 Major fixes. 
• Lots of water fixes
• Z Depth issues,
• Glass casting shadows
• And many other fixes for long time issues. More info can be found here: https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-publicpreview-released

I am really looking forward to having a chance to test this myself. Of note are the apparently now functional lightmapping system, which has been a MAJOR thorn in the side of the DX11 builds along with some serious memory work.

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

I made a nearly complete guide to the projectile system here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220802

A third party asset management tool is in the works, which I find particularly exciting: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220822

The GameGuru youtube official channel has posted a number of recent updates for usage tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1q1e3Q9IKMk4nDlAGb_5Jg/videos

What's Good in the Store

Mad Lobster put up a really excellent film pack of PBR assets.

This is an exceptionally high quality pack and is definitely a must-buy if you use these types of materials.

Sula finally got around to making his cars into a pack, it's pricey but definitely worth the cost if you need a large number of European vehicles that are PBR enabled.

FredGames has put together an interesting Sci-Fi snap-together kit.

Beyond that T-Bone has put together several interesting script and clutter pieces, check his artist page here: https://www.tgcstore.net/artist/45855

Tarkus1971 has been hard at work at music assets, which are generally speaking great quality for the price: https://www.tgcstore.net/artist/219730

And lastly Graphix has been hard at work on many of his own assets such as fences, graveyards and the more.

Free Stuff

A great number of free assets were released recently.  Wolf, in particular, posted a massive megathread of all of his free stuff.

This is a definite must-visit for anyone who hasn't obtained his high quality DNIS assets.

Tarkus1971 put up a new music track called a retro volca?  I'm not familiar with it but his work up to this point has been really decent.  Get your copy here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213190?page=5#msg2617272

MaiaCombra put together a decayed burlap decal

This should have good utility in a war torn of post apocalyptic environment.

And also several other items such as a mobile interface and a retexture of HarryWever's crane.

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

This section will likely not be as updated as it should be because simply there's too much to pour over.  I will attempt to capture some of the more interesting things I've seen recently.

Far and away I absolutely loved T-bone (Teabone)'s 'garbage cleanup simulator' found at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRo_vt1tY60



Duchenkuke posted a kitschy project that might have some potential. It gave me a few laughs, at least, the video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItHmZyKs1rU

Amenmoses has been doing wonderful things with particles: https://vimeo.com/345087887

Solar's project Resist: Revolution is still looking like it's making good forward progress: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218343/newest

Honkeyboy is back with some interesting work.  While it may need some polish, be aware he does some pretty interesting work with his Lua code so keep an eye on it for that reason if no other strikes your fancy: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220833

Newcomer "J-Dup" put some interesting work into a project called "The Last Dweller". 

More info and a video can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220872

Cybernessence has continued his phenomenal work on GameGuru and his project:

The above picture illustrates in the author's words: "Just updated the terrain shader to use combined textures, diffuse with specular in alpha and normal with ao in alpha channel.

This saves texture memory and the results for terrain really pop (the ao really make a big difference), it's now looking a lot like how the basic unity PBR terrain does ..."

A host of new and updated works really flooded my research here and I apologize for those I missed.  Keep writing your updates so I can see the latest and greatest screenshots to help plug your projects with!

In My Own Works

One of the harder tasks I've had over the past few weeks is balancing a demanding publisher's schedule while dealing with a new baby.  I've had numerous revisions, requests, and the like to fix up  my book or change various bits about it.  It's been difficult to find time but I've found a way to stay on schedule, even if that means making the updates at 3AM while holding a screaming infant.

Also of note I made a private Discord server with many of the heavy hitters of GameGuru, specifically to help facilitate changes faster in our community.  That went into play shortly before my daughter's arrival so I'd like to think it helped a bit with getting this latest update out into the world.

This Week in GameGuru - 06/03/2019

This will likely be my last update for 2-3 weeks.  This is due to the imminent delivery of my third child.

GameGuru News 

This week we had an info-drop on github with an update from Lee.  You can see the full details of it here but the latest essentially confirms that he's got a heavy focus on multiplayer and VR:
 https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/commit/243fbd39d2085a9265a67810a232c481150c69ed

While this is disappointing from a bug-fixing standpoint, it is at least some form of development so I'm curious to see when this thing is planned on going live. 

Lastly if you haven't taken a look at the thread on the forums about the lack of official word (I don't count, sorry!) then check here:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220783?page=2

What's Good in the Store

Nothing new this week, sorry guys.  My camerakit is still on sale at half off, so pick it up now before it falls off sale!

https://www.tgcstore.net/product/31048

Free Stuff 

Graphix made a free cubemap skybox of a winter forest: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217932?page=14#msg2615957

JPH made a six-pack of free PBR skyscrapers.  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219734?page=2#msg2615961

Third party Tools and Tutorials 

BOTR continues his impressive work on an FPSC to GG importer.  This pipeline could really save some of the level creation of GG, considering the terrain engine is the biggest slowdown for the system.  TGC would do well to leverage projects like this.  

Defy is looking at putting together a dev log, but continues some important off the books work on saving and loading.  He may have a solution to some very serious problems with the current setup.  Time will tell!

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

This week we saw a great demo of Slaur3n's cowboy survival game. 

The video shows a fairly high level of refinement for a GameGuru Game and I recommend all GG developers watch this for a good idea of some interesting new gameplay considerations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7ZfYsLA_dA&feature=youtu.be

Meanwhile, Bod has been plugging away at getting functional vehicles more functional by adding a working speedometer!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHf6EjWIGxE

My 'Silent Hill GG-Style' Game is available for download after having been updated to DX11: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/216959#msg2615894
Be gentle, it reflects my game design from 3 years ago and I did little to actually change it beyond making it work in DX11.

DenZelik updated his game Neir:

While the asset use is fairly tame, I do like seeing that he's worked on custom inventory and HUDs so keep an eye on this one!

In My Own Works

This week I got sick of the stumbling blocks I kept hitting with the projectile system.  Between talking to EAI, Preben, and others I came to the conclusion I would need to dig into GG's root source code to figure out what was happening. My goal was to create a tennis-ball like weapon that would do no damage but interact from a physics standpoint with the game engine.  So in short, a very similar weapon to what's in Unreal.

https://youtu.be/6N2OSD-COt4 Thankfully I was able to find the problem and will make sure that my tutorial (to be posted soon) will have this information in it! 

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 - 5/13/2019

GameGuru News

A wild Lee Bamber appeared in the forums and made a few quotes:

"Looks like the cat escaped the bag, but yes, I have been putting much time and coding into a non-Steam multiplayer system that improves on what you have right now. I am using Photon which means you can set up your own free server for your games, and then as your user base grows you can subscribe to Photon paid tiers if you need more than 100CCU (https://www.photonengine.com/en/server/pricing).

It should also support host migration and rejoins, so you could effectively keep your game running on your PC and users can come and go from your level as you please (not quite MMORPG but a nice start to a possible persistent world). Naturally, the non-Steam option was to allow you to save out multiplayer games and allow friends to play your multiplayer games without needing GameGuru, but all these details will come in time.

Just posted quickly here to assure you that no donations for this feature are required, it's happening as part of our primary feature development We are also planning to put an expert freelancer on the case with the issues board too so watch this space for an assault on your bug reports as we finally put your donations to good use."

This can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220661?page=1#msg2615407


He also made some comments with respect to MegaPack3's changes you can find here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220751

Lastly, I don't know how long this has been in play, but there's been a change where you can put bug reports in on steam. If you're tracking the issues log on Github, here's another point of interest for you: https://steamcommunity.com/app/266310/discussions/1/

What's Good in the Store

This week I added my 4K Space Skies to the All skies and Time of Day system pack, along with increasing it's price significantly to reflect the addition.  Current owners will be able to find the new 4k skies upon checking for store downloads.

Beyond that we have some excellent work from Valentin321 who has put together several packs this week:

He's added a Fire equipment pack, an electrical measuring equipment pack, and a village pack.  Most are well priced and include reasonably good assets for the price point.

Nomis3d has a huge repository of mid-priced, higher tier assets that he's putting a kit together for an exceptionally low price - 9.95 (on sale).  I highly recommend you grab this kit if you're into military or soviet gear.

Looks like Sula continues to put PBR cars up at $2 a piece, however I'd really like to see these fine automobiles made into a pack for extra value.  That and pressing purchase 30 times in a row isn't fun for anyone.

Pasquil has thirteen traffic objects bundled into a single download pack that look well worth the investment as well if you are building a city scene.

Free Stuff

A free cartoon farm was posted for download: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220746

Lafette put together an impressive robotic arm for download...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS78pd1zKng

You can get yours here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220474?page=2#msg2615507

Dagored put together some free skyscrapers: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/210761?page=6#msg2615455

Graphix made some very decent paving slabs for those interested: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217932?page=14#msg2615432

Some great stuff is going on in the realm of Lua code as well.
SmallG posted a way to swap between third and first person: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220747?page=1#msg2615389

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

Corno_1 has removed access to the EBE V2 editor. It's unlikely to return.

A significant quantity of updates were posted onto BOTR's thread of his various third party tools.  One interesting note is he did answer my question about integration of these tools into GG's source and it looks like he is going to pursue that in the future. For a full list of what's going on with his software, check here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219806?page=4#msg2615531

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Protascope is furthering it's development (via Synchromesh).  This excellent title I think will really demonstrate some out of the box thinking for other GameGuru gamedevs and should be looked at as our engine's 'portal-style' frontrunner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXz37EsJJdQ

Nice work, synchromesh!

I'm particularly impressed with his ability to build a unique environment in a challenging engine that looks engaging and fun.

The Cogwheel Chronicles, another frontrunning GG project, is coming along very well.  I spoke at length with Cybernessence about his upcoming changes that he plans on adding to GameGuru and he's very interested in implementing a dynamic lighting solution.  I'd love to see some extra focus on this as others would as well and I'm sure TheGameCreators would likely sweeten the pot with some donation funds. He's also posted some updates here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=6#msg2615288

Make no mistake - Cogwheel Chronicles is an important project to watch because it essentially will act as a techdemo for upcoming third party changes to GameGuru's github codebase.

In My Own Works

This last week I got hit with all 23 chapters of the book needing edited by the 20th.  That's a lot of work in not a lot of time.  This final push for editing is to make the August 19th deadline. I also have been working with one of the artists, specifically the man making the weapons.  We've gotten pretty far with some of the equipment, notably this SMG that is designed as a panic-fire weapon:

Please note none of this is final, but the basic concept is like 95% close to the final product.
Beyond that I'm working on trying to figure out why my projectiles system isn't working for one of the weapons, but so far everything is coming along really well.
I plan on doing a detailed write-up of everything afterwards on how to really own the custom projectiles system.

This Week in Game-Guru - 1/14/2018

This week's update will be a bit shorter than usual as I am in crunch mode for my book (which goes to the publisher in Feb).

So just a quick pass on the GameGuru stuff from this last week:

Official GameGuru News

Nothing official but it seems the issues list on Github is climbing ever higher. Maybe we'll see some of those get knocked off soon?  

What's Good in the Store

Lots of good things out there this week, notably the RPG pack by moshroom and the music packs shown below.  

However, it seems Dvader dropped a pretty unique 'lockpicking' script that brings to mind a certain game set in post apocalyptia.

I'd love a video of this, but for now, this still will have to suffice!

Free Stuff

A free top-down low poly character: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220434
Tarkus1971 put out a new track called 'the realization' - https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213190?page=5#msg2610573
Piratemyke is continuing to provide interesting free models (in a sense) made with the EBE: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220414

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

Nothing new this week.

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Karmacomposer posted a sneakpeak of his current work:

Not bad! Though with these entities I'm sure the optimization phase will be an absolute bear.  Good luck on your project, Karma. Details available here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220427

 Maha25 posted an interesting screenshot of a Jungle-based project called N.D.A. -

You can get more details here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220404

Ramiro has a new project (Psalm of Salem)on their way:

For more details, click here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220435.

In My Own Works

My 3 proofers have basically been working at getting their updates done, which I have to incorporate into the book while simultaneously doing a first draft edit.  Initial feedback is very positive. I also have my editor looking at it so he can make appropriate changes to help cram this in as quick as possible.  Next week will be me making pictures and formatting changes.  Then I *crosses fingers* will be done.

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!