This Week in GameGuru - 11/26/2018

Well, the American holiday of Thanksgiving has come and gone.  I do love it, not just for the food but the lessons it brings us.  If you're ever interested, take a look at the notes of the Pilgrims from that time.  There's a lot of lessons to be learned there, for sure.

Moving ahead, GameGuru has a lot of ground to cover this week. Let's get started...

Official GameGuru News

 

So it looks like we got a big release and they just updated the main news page with it.

https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-november-update-released
This information is nothing new, if you've been following my blog.  All of these were covered in the PP release, which is now just following the natural effect of being deployed as a 'stable' version.  Time will tell but I expect some followup patching as it shakes out over a larger audience.

This overshadowed another update as well from earlier last week which was that the construction pack DLC got updated with more PBR textures.

Full details can be found here: https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-construction-site-dlc-updated-3

What's Good in the Store

This week in the store we have a smattering of new items.  First we've got some interesting pulleys from Mad Lobster's Workshop: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/32169

I have to say I love the work he does on texturing.  I think this product marks a good departure from his more niche products to a more general line that can be used by a broader audience.  I for one welcome the move.

Reliquia's beautiful Toonland Car now is available in a well priced pack: https://www.tgcstore.net/pack/11060

Teabone continues his work both in modelling (this time on ingots) and on scripting (a mine arming/disarming script).

And lastly we have a Christmas Pack from Colosso who pretty much covers the ENTIRE Christmas spread with gifts, a tree, a snowman, a sled, an igloo and more!

Get the Christmas Pack here!

Third Party Tutorials and Tools

I didn't see any this week, but if I missed one let me know and I'll add it.

Free Stuff

Maiacombra provided some free textures that could easily be added to a terrain setup.
 

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

VincentHendriks went with a totally different tactic this week, moving to a hitman-style spy shooter with a villa that you assault.  It's a solid first run through though it needs polish and testing.  So far though the results are promising.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjC9k1A0OOU

Note the clever use of an EBE building.

So far, so good. Good foliage, good coloration.  The building is a nice departure from the usual fare with in the bounds of EBE's limitations. 
 
Openload continues his work on 'Memory of Hedolan' (I covered it a few weeks ago here) with some new screenshots.  This is a really solid piece that looks like it's got some serious effort going into it.

The lighting is fairly on point and it looks like a solid effort, which I can always appreciate.

Additional screenshots and details can be found in this thread: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220223#msg2608734

So in a not-so-rare case of me tooting my own horn, I helped Len the Man with some advice on his cowboy shooter. I gave him a really rough copy of my subchapter on how to make deserts and he's really taken and run with it.  Check out this before and after comparison:

What an ENORMOUS difference.  There's still work to do, obviously - I'd add bigger and wider vegetation, maybe some rocks and foreground elements like small shrubs but overall this is miles better and significantly more immersive.  Nicely done Len!

In My Own Works

Well for starters, I updated the cover graphic for the twilight sky freebie I did a while back.  I am not sure how, but the graphic got all screwed up and made the demo picture look awful.  You can get that freebie here: https://www.tgcstore.net/product/30955

I also have a lighting tutorial I wrote up nearly a year ago that I cleaned up and will be releasing very shortly (like, later today!) ... and lastly I'm up to 126k words on my book.  I just finished covering how to make cutscenes in game and will be moving on to 'Advanced Engine Usage' which mostly will cover setup.ini configurations and tricks.  I'll admit I'm wearing out a bit on the heavier duty stuff I'm having to cover but it's getting there by god!

Thanks again for everyone's support and I look forward to a final release of this book which I believe will truly help you all bring your projects to fruition!

This Week in Game-Guru - 10/01/2018

I notice (@LeeBamber) that I'm still not showing on the news section.  Not that it's any skin off my back.  I do this for fun, but I wouldn't mind a followup so I'm not twisting in the wind (nudge nudge).

Official Game-Guru News:

This week we got a PBR update to some assets in the Sci-Fi pack and also a new 'ally' AI delivered via a drone.  I'll be interested to dig into that one to see what's different as the current AI is a bit of a slush pile that can be difficult to interpret.

You can find the official news release here: https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-scifi-pack-dlc-update-released-2

On the note of AI, it appears that's Lee's primary focus right now and so far I hear the results are promising.  Those results can be found in detail here but essentially there's a demo level out there with a lot of cover objects.  The AI *SEEMS* to be productive and functional, but time will tell.  That said if the vast majority of users are claiming it's improved then I think that's a fair litmus.  I watched the demo video and I noticed a few good changes, notably that it won't shoot through walls and will path far better than it used to.

What I'd like to see:

• A system for enemy accuracy; right now they still hit 99% of the time and that's just absurd.
• Better synching of the movement to animation, which often times is a configuration setting but should be the default.  
• A system for enemies running away when injured/hiding/etc.
• A module in the AI itself that allows us to 'hook in' as modders, as it is it's more of a black box with a few function calls outside of it.

Forum AI link:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220075 (AI)
Now for those of you who are using the EAI Weapon Pack, which is phenomenal mind you, you may have noticed some errors or bugs with assigning said weapons to enemies or NPCs.  This apparently is going to be resolved in a future release after verification by EAI himself. 
Forum link for EAI Info:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219912

What's good in the store:

You know I was going to say there was nothing going on and just move on, but this week has been a big drop of lots of really great assets.  Of course as the quality goes up you may notice the price increasing but some of these are ... top shelf stuff.  I don't know any other way to put it.  Stuff you'd see in a AAA game.

Let's go over a few.
First of all, Gtox is really into fish... Well, that's true but apparently he's also into porpoises as well.

If you're making a sea-world game, this is probably right up your alley.

What's really intriguing to me is that Teabone, Robert Fitzy and Gamepoly (A new challenger appears!) all created fantastic high quality models this week.  I mean just look at this:

I really like GamePoly's work, this is a new level of quality that is desperately needed in Game-Guru's overly-asset flipped environment.  You can also see some new models by Mad Lobster and Pasquill at the bottom (the exacavator). 

Not bad for a single week!  Make sure you swing by http://en.tgcstore.net and check out the latest for yourself!

Third Party Applications and Tutorials

This week I was poking around on a project I can't discuss at this moment (wait till next week!) but I did end up at this wonderful tool - https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/
This is a free heightmapper that I found worked a bit better than the one for terrain.party.  Definitely give it a look, the values on it are fantastic for use with the game-guru 'Heightmap to MDAT' tool.

Also in the forums, Wolf showed an older tool that I wish I'd have had in the past for my own imports - an import scaler tool to help adjust the scale on your FPE files: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218348

And lastly there was a pretty nice video posted by Bugsy in the discord chat discussing how Mirror's Edge used lighting:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0sM7ZU0Nwo

Free Stuff

Nothing free that I could find this week.  Sorry guys!

Random Acts of Creativity

So in the WIP section we have some things from VincentHendriks who continues his use of the stock assets in the only way they could ever potentially be used - as a desert combat game.  It's looking ... well, like a reasonably good desert combat game!

Reminds me of the photos my buddies would send me from Iraq.

It's coming along well, I'd say.


There's also a new asset flip for us to look at on Steam.  Now I will say while the game itself was a fairly bland and boring flip, the demo video for it was interesting - the guy took live video with some basic video modding to provide a little more oomph to a Game-Guru game than I'm used to.  That said, it's not worth the price asked for and apparently is a buggy mess.
See it here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/798710/Voltage/

Also another new user showed up, this time with an odd cyber-punk style game where I guess you're on a rooftop?  He took some of the advice I offered him but it needs a lot more polish.  Regardless though it's getting there and at least it doesn't look like the same old same old.  I can respect the effort.

In My Own Works

This week I've been working on a special project, which but it's allowed me to focus on getting another segment for the book done - specifically a 'how to do a forest in Game-Guru'.  This is a difficult topic that I think most will benefit from a little personal understanding on.

That said though I'm still behind the curve here.  I need to bang out like 20,000 words this month to stay on track and that's no easy feat.

I also aggregated all the new Lua commands since 5/12/2017 for you here:
http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com/2018/09/new-lua-commands-since-5122017.html

See you next week!