I'm a Linux Systems Engineer, amateur sci-fi author, and gamer who's dabbled with gamedev since I was about 12 years old. Author of several mods as Mechwarrior 4's Siege Mode and the CoopBot for Quake1. This blog is my sounding board on Game-Guru, gamedev, and tech topics in general. Currently authoring a start to finish guide on Game-Guru for Taylor and Francis publishing, should be on shelves around June 2019.
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It's been a while since I've been compelled to do a review. I generally have little free time and these reviews receive very little looks or comments so in general I don't feel like it's very useful.
As such I'm not going to do my usual spate of pictures/etc. I am going to keep this clean and succinct.
The Mad Lobster is a relatively new artist in the Game Guru world. New artists are always a mixed bag. They either are an old pro who is intimately familiar with model making or a new guy just looking to release his poorly textured objects for some attention. I understand and can appreciate both positions. Often the old pro runs into the issue of not knowing the limitations of the engine (20k polys, for instance) or can't get the textures to look good. It's a fine tuning act in most cases where they begin their forays and you can SEE the raw talent but it's just ... not quite built around Game-Guru's limitations yet.
This is a rare exception here; The Mad Lobster is obviously an experienced modeller. The poly counts are good, the textures are excellent and properly positioned and there's clearly some good normal mapping. It's the best first go I've seen done in Game-Guru in a long time (probably a year and a half, really).
The first foray was a whole kit called the 'Mad Scientist's Lab and Lair' - it's a huge array of beautiful objects with tons of work put into them. Moreover it's really got just about everything you could ask for. Tesla coils, panels with buttons on them, big robot arms, ominous looking walls, the works. It's really impressive on a level I wasn't prepared for.
All told you get *43* exceptionally high quality objects that look fantastic in Game Guru for a very reasonable price (18 dollars). I'd reckon this kit is easily in the top 10 of all available products on the store and is easily on peer with Wizard of Id or Rolfy's products.
So if you're still hanging around here for the odd periodic review, here you go :) The best new product of 2017, IMO.
So this has been coming since the middle of July. I apologize for both the delay and the scraped pictures. I'd rather have done them myself but my life is incredibly busy as of current with the new baby and job stuff.
So it's about time to do some review stuff.
I recently purchased the Wizard of Id's (WID) Underground Pack. It's an underground maze-system which has a great sewer or bunker-building quality to it.
This system contrasts against OldPman's underground kit which is similar but very, very different.
One of the more interesting things about WID's kits is that they are usually built with an uncanny level of detail; it's something very few artists pursue. Each one has their own skillset but clearly WID's is his near obsessive level of focus on individual pieces.
Like this small sampling of the lights included.
This is a versatile kit which I think is well positioned as a competent middle ground for people looking for a very generic 'brick and tile bunker maze' system. It's definitely reminiscent of a subway station or maintenance tunnel.
The first thing you'll notice about WID's kits is while they typically are not extravagantly modeled with ridiculous amounts of polygons... they have exceptionally good texture quality.
Speaking from experience, this is on medium. Putting it on higher levels makes this really stand out.
WID's bump mapping is second to none, at least in the Game-Guru community.
He's got that down to a very enviable science. He also tests his levels extensively using actual test levels he builds and with static lighting as well. The results are clearly something which are
very mature in palette, texture, and shape.
The above is not too far off from what to expect from your own work.
It's a lot like going to a concert, really. Sometimes you listen to a musician's audio track and think "I like this song. I'll bet it's great in concert."... yet it ends up being an utterly flat dud. Other times you think "This sounds as good or better than it does on the cd!" ... WID's work is a lot like that.
The pricing for his individual pieces is high. I never buy his stuff individually. His packs, however, are reasonably priced for art that's on peer in terms of quality with Errant AI's stuff (which I hold in extremely high esteem).
One thing worth mentioning... these pieces are HUGE. I mean I was really flatly shocked after working extensively with other vendors like oldpman at how monstrous these levels could become. It's not a bad thing, but you should know so you can plan accordingly. Don't think you're going to create a tiny maze here on the edge of your map.
This is approximately the width of a skyscraper from the TGC City pack.
The bottom line: That said there's a lot of variety, quality, and depth to WID's work and this one is no exception. If you are looking for a top shelf set that merely needs some clutter items, triggers, and enemies - look no further. This will handle the bill in spades.
So it might seem a little unfair to some, but I'm going to be reviewing another of Oldpman's products. He produces a lot on a consistent basis and much of it isn't stuff that's really up my alley but is of frequently very good quality.
I noticed he hit an abandoned amusement park pack and before it was even complete as a kit, I already hit buy. I was pleased to notice between the time of that purchase and now I've been gifted with a few extras. So there's a lot here to review on what is a very well priced kit.
Now I'll admit as I've said in the past vending machines, arcade machines, and amusement parks all capture my fancy. I personally live near a major east coast USA park (Hershey Park) and spent much of my youth there so I have many fond memories. There's also a few abandoned ones in the area.
Almost immediately the pictures he had up reminded me of another park. Specifically the infamous Pripyat park, in Chernobyl.
Looking at some pictures and comparing against what he'd posted, it was a pretty close match.
I see similar looking yellow bumper cars. I see the strange Soviet-esque architecture.
I see the copper floor model. Yep, looks right. Definitely Pripyat.
One thing bothered me though - In many of the pictures, I saw a red cart as well. And this kit didn't come with a red cart. Well, nothing copy, paste, recolor (hooray for paint.net) of the DDS file couldn't fix.
Behold, my addition to the kit. I'll send it over to Oldpman and ask him to add it in.
Variety is the spice of life, after all, even in former Soviet Russia.
So on to the kit itself. It contains a wide variety of objects. There's walls, wall corners, a coconut shy, a full set of bumper car items, a ferris wheel, a round-a-bout carousel, two hanging chair carousels (one is animated), some flower planters, benches, etc.
Overall, it's a hell of a value for $4.50; initially when I purchased this it had about 6 items and I was playing around with trying to get regular objects to fit with them well. So it's refreshing to see him add walls and what not to help round out the kit. Let's see what we can do with it.
As you can see I've begun assembling your regular run of the mill amusement park. I decided to try to use as many free assets or stock assets as possible to help setup this park in a meaningful way. I did however use the 'Wizard of Id' Sci-Fi Wall kit, but only for an entryway because the stock entryway is a bit simple.
This is just a little bland for my tastes.
That's more like it; parks should be grandiose on entry!
So basically I found the park actually worked exceptionally well with stock assets. Here's a list of some of the preferred ones that I used:
Blue/Brown Port-a-potties
Barbed wire chain link fence
Tent (canvas) - used for creating a custom amusement, a shooting gallery:
Standard wooden boxes with wooden crate palette as an improvised countertop
Some free picnic tables I snagged a while back from Valuable Assets
Other basic assets I am failing to remember. Nothing major though. Just your usual signs, boxes, crates, etc.
So let's fix that entrance and really give it the proper treatment for a busted down amusement park.
There we go. Notice the simple signage, mountain being added as a backdrop, broken chain link fence, etc.
Continuing on, obviously it needs detail work. I want to see how this is going to look in a near finished state. Here's the 'final' version:
At this point that treeline encircles the entire 'zone' and the mountain is very detailed now, lots of ridges, chimneys, chutes, etc. Unfortunately when I went into the game the graphic settings were clearly too low. So I put on an overcast sky, added fog, tweaked lighting as I've done a hundred times before... Added my 1024px High Quality Road Set and some dried vegetation.
Here's some snaps in no particular order:
It's surprising how just a little lighting change, the right elements, and configuration can really bring a scene together, eh?
The Bottom Line: If you're in the market for a really superb kit which matches a lot of the stock pieces, has great mood and represents a good value for the price - then this is definitely a buy. I will say it's pretty contingent upon your 'need' for a kit like this. For my upcoming game there's an abandoned entertainment zone so this suits very well. Oldpman's work continues to impress.
Just in time for Christmas, as promised! My comprehensive free stuff list :)
Please note - there are a massive amount of free items out there. It's to the point where I couldn't even HOPE to put them all in one place. This is just a list for you to get started with.
As I've stated before, Game-Guru is not an exceptionally powerful engine. It's primary strengths are really in three or four main areas:
Community - the community is tight knit and not full of knobs. Very nice people helping each other really is a refreshing change of pace.
Dev team - despite their size and at times inexperience, they remain dedicated and are constantly improving the product.
Shaders - this is the cheapest price point to get a shader-capable game engine shy of working in unreal/etc. But those professional engines have something this one lacks:
Assets. Assets galore. Granted, I'd say maybe 20% are AAA rated, most slot into the serviceable category and a few are in the 'backdrop only' area. But still - for the price of a single 'component' for Unity you can buy an entire artist's 600 piece collection in Game-Guru.
Exceptionally good tools at unity, but the price orients that towards a professional studio.
On the note of 600 piece artist collections, here are the three I had in mind:
As stated, there's tons more out there. Use the forums, the tgcstore, google, whatever you can to get the free stuff. Support the authors when you can- most of these guys do this for fun and I go out of my way to purchase some of their pay items as way of a thank you for their hard work.
When I spoke with Errant AI (A.K.A. "EAI") about his vendor machine set Errant AI's TGC Store Products review , we discussed our mutual love coin-operated equipment. At that point in time (probably a year and a half ago) he mentioned he'd do an arcade set, which I was jazzed for. I grew up in arcades and spent more than my share of allowance money there.
It was a great time and brought back fond memories. He soon released the kit and... I didn't have any money. NONE. I was flat broke. It sucked. So for months and months bigger priorities would come up and I'd look at the store and see the really impressive looking set for the arcade objects that EAI built.
Recently I've managed to get my finances squared away and could spend some money on new objects for my upcoming sci-fi shooter.
It was at this point... I looked again at the priciest of EAI's growing collections (4, as of this writing) - the Retro Arcade Pack. The Retro Arcade Pack clocks in at 15 USD. It's by no means a cheap purchase. But I'm a believer that if you want to have a quality looking game, you need quality looking assets. This pack delivers - in spades.
The full kit contents. It's like my youth, reborn!
As you can see, the pack comes with a significant bevy of 30 items, which come in about 50 cents per object, depending on if any sales are occurring.
Most of these items are doubles - in many cases they are a blank version which can likely be modified to present your own possibilities. Very cool!
In this case, the billchanger comes in both token and cash money varieties.
Now you may look at these and think "Yeah, that's cute - but how good is it, really?" - what really sold me were the perfectly done animated screens which of course can only be watched in the form of a movie.
The above should show you the sheer and frankly unparalleled level of quality EAI brought to the table. Even his previous offerings are overshadowed but how absolutely perfect these are. While I realize it's not an asset for every game, you'd be surprised how you can work them in. The biggest difficulty in using assets like this is that they tend to make your other assets LOOK WORSE. It's a bit like taking your ugly friend to the bar to make you look better. It doesn't help their case to have you standing there, that's for sure. So if you are planning on using assets like this, prepare to have other assets - LIKE THIS. It doesn't hurt that I have the snack attack pack and some other really high quality stuff that I've gotten through the community. I meticulously filter and comb my assets to ensure that the quality is at bare minimum, consistent.
What's interesting is I was discussing 2-D "mode" for Game-Guru with Synchromesh - a forum user.
After some experimentation, he had discovered a way to fake a 2-D mode for Game-Guru. He shared the secrets with me and filled in the blank spots in my own testing. So the plan is to make a virtual arcade and then have it warp you off to another level when you use the machine - the level will be a two dimensional simplified mockup of one of these games! I intend to do a walkthrough later after I've made a functional version of a few. The driving one should be simple enough.
The bottom line: The simple version is are you going to need this for all your projects? No. It's far more specialized than other packs he offers. Is it one of the highest quality assets on the store? Absolutely. If you can manage it, then by all means - find a way to work it in. I for one, will be using it.
