This Week in GameGuru - 11/06/2019

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

If you haven't seen the newsletter, it bears repeating what was mentioned in there.  Notably TGC is in a bugfixing cycle so it's important you take any bugreports you have and post them over on the issues log on GitHub.

What's Good in The Store

This week's totally subjective analysis of the store reveals not much new.  Fredgames continues to pump out products, so check out his store here: https://www.tgcstore.net/artist/250424

Other than that though there a number of notable sales at the top of the page.  Give it a look!

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

BOTR released the final version of his autowelder FPSC to GG pipelining tool. Grab it while you can! https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221285

Similarly BOTR released his final version of his Heightmap tool! https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221100?page=1#msg2622936

Free Stuff 

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/220055?page=2#msg2622953 Amenmoses put together some sound control scripts you can get for free.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219734?page=2#msg2622903 3 Sci-fi animated objects by JPH.
A video can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F93CJmXtgyg

 

Random Acts of Creativity (WIPs)

Naelurec  got some more interesting updates and custom models.  I'm truly interested in seeing where this one goes.  The latest update shows a toxic-looking planetscape:

A favorite of mine, the Cogwheel Chronicles had it's creator Cybernessence dropping more hints and clues about his current work including a heightmapper tool: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213870?page=7#msg2622957

The old master of lighting, Wolf, put up some powerful looking screenshots of a yet unnamed game.

I'm pretty impressed with how far he's come even given his already somewhat legendary status in the community.

Schn33ky posted a game called Dilly Dally Derby, which is actually a complete work at this time: 
It's a betting game where you choose a horse and it randomly runs them out.  It's interesting to me because this is actually a game very similar to one I made back years ago in school. I used monster trucks myself, but I can appreciate the work that went into this.

The biggest news is that Duchenkuke revealed a secret project he's been working on that is now available for public consumption.

Note the custom interface, impressive lighting, use of a powerful vignette and just overall professional feel of the work.

A perhaps better example is this gem:

The atmosphere is intense and palpable. He put a lot of work into the sound design and environments, it features a variety of enemies and is available to be wishlisted on steam (Which I personally recommend doing!) - https://store.steampowered.com/app/657480/Dark_Skies_The_Nemansk_Incident/?beta=0

In My Own Works

This past week was a flurry of getting people their free products as book purchasers.  If I missed you, please contact me on discord, send me a ticket on tgcstore, or send me a message on the forums if all else fails. 

This Week in GameGuru - 10/27/2019

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.

Another week, another belated TWIGG report.
Unfortunately this is turning into the norm for me as I am consistently overwhelmed by real world factors that hopefully will slow down come early next year.
In the interim I will crank these out as often and as on time as I can manage.

GameGuru News

 

This week we've seen a significant amount of activity on 'project V3' on github.  Some of what I'm seeing there is very exciting!

https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/commits/ProjectV3

Notable elements include an update to Character Creator, load time tweaks, GUI updates and more.
Very exciting stuff!

The SUPERB enhanced weapon pack is on sale this week as well for as low as you will likely ever see it - definitely pick it up now if you are ever going to pick it up!

What's Good in the Store

Finally got my Cyberpunk Noir guns up

If you are a book purchaser and haven't gotten a redemption code for them, please let me know!

Book sales have obviously tapered off; like games they have a really big front end and a longer back end.  If you haven't purchased a copy, try using this code to save 20%:  AITGG230
Use it at this link here:
https://www.crcpress.com/An-Introduction-to-GameGuru/Messina/p/book/9781138612631

You can also find the additional book resources there for free under 'additional resources'.

This week also had several great packs show up:

Gtox added a prehistoric critter pack (GameGuru Ark clone, anyone?)

And Fredgames77 continues rapidly cranking out high quality models, this time in the form of a building tool pack!

Free Stuff

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221251 Mipastu put in a pretty clever fix for AI getting stuck on walls and corners by making an 'AI wall' which essentially allows you to keep them from getting to problem areas.  Definitely worth the download.

Third Party Tools and Tutorials

Looks like BOTR is integrating his heightmap importer INTO GameGuru's github code as a branch.  This is very exciting to me and I'm really hoping we see that additional functionality implemented sooner rather than later! Additional details can be found here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221100#msg2622732

Random Acts of Creativity(WIPs)

Synchromesh has added some new music to his excellent Protascope game (by DuchenKuke): https://youtu.be/9qDAmpCIb-4

Cybernessence put up a new screenshot for his epic GameGuru work "The CogWheel Chronicles":

And this blurb about the latest changes he's made:

"I've re-written the player swimming to use the physics capsule, it's much better now - though it did need a new lua command to fine tune it (SetWorldGravity) - which will come in handy for the barsoom levels too.

I also updated the in-game terrain loading to load associated entities (it was only loading terrain and grass before from the fpm and positioning anywhere in the world) and added the DCO to it, to keep silky smooth play. The memory seems to be paging in and out properly, so if I load one terrain/level part then delete and load another the memory is smoothing out. Still got a lot of testing to do to make sure this holds up with 16 different fpm's loaded on the fly, and I did hit a 'random' crash bug that took me days and days to find (this was in my added mods not GG stock code) ."

He's done incredible work which I hope to see integrated by middle of next year at the latest.  Time will tell though!

Naelurec has some updates with details and technical information but also these great new menu screenshots:

Really simple, clever, and clean.  I like it a lot.  You can get more info here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/221152?page=1#msg2622551

In My Own Works

I've recently begun putting together another HQ space skies set, but run into some snags.  Expect a few freebies of my throwaways along with a new pack on the store in the near future!

OldFlak's Deep Space Skies Set

Given my Sci-Fi game, I was in the market for some purpose-built skyboxes that looked good and were reasonably priced.  I searched about a bit and eventually settled on the 'deep space package' found here https://en.tgcstore.net/pack/10689 and made by the artist "OldFlak".

Normal pack price is 5 dollars for 4 skies (normally 2 USD per sky) at a savings of 38%.

There's not much out there about the artist himself; he's much like myself though in that he doesn't appear to have been a lifer evolving from older iterations of The Game Creators products (like the original FPS Creator).

His initial offerings are several series of skies which fit different genres.  I agonized for a while over which sets of skies to buy from the various producers and eventually chose his because of their overall utility and ingenuity.

Now a few notes here.  First, when I purchased this I had some issues which I reported on here: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/213912 ... these issues to the best of my knowledge were not the fault of the author and should be fixed at this time.  If they are not, my repair process is listed on that link.  It bears mentioning that when I complained about the issues OldFlak threw in a free sky, which was unnecessary but very welcome :)

The four various skies all showcase different types of skies and while I have some complaints I will say I find it's been an excellent value.

First in my game I've been using the appropriately named "Amethyst Nebula".  Here's a video of what it looks like (from OldFlak's youtube channel):

One thing you'll notice here is the white ringed sphere, which initially I didn't like but I found if I put one of DevCore's free fog decals over where it hangs in space it looks pretty good.  The same follows for the 'vapour moon' which has a static vapor image that looks cool at first but needs a little oomph to keep it from getting stale.  Thankfully the Devcore fog is free and works well (See my freebies post here: http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-comprehensive-must-have-free-stuff.html)

There's also a really nice one called the Sear Nebula - which is found here:

This is one of the better skyboxes in the kit, IMO.

Now, the Sear Nebula looks great; it's got nice colors and those yellow wisps look better in game than they do on the store.  Included with this pack though is also an intriguing design called the 'Sear Nebula Outpost'.   This one is the same but with a static image of a dome-structure and floor built in.  

It's the only one of the four skies with a ground plane.

At a glance it looks flawless but there's some shears in the texturing that at first seem out of place but when actually put into an appropriate map it seems to work well. Also if you look straight up there's a nice circular connector for the 6 supporting rods of the dome.   I will likely be using this for one of my final maps.

The bottom line:  All in all I know these maps look great, not just from my own words but EVERY SINGLE PERSON who has playtested my game's first level has remarked on the awesome outside sky when they first go looking out the windows.  I make sure to showcase the outdoors in my levels time and again, even in secondary scenes.  One can only do that if the quality of the skybox is up to par.

The appearance of depth is huge in games like these; to give people a sense of awe and make them realize that the world is bigger than the small level they've been assigned.  While these textures aren't perfect, they're really well done and more importantly - ambitious.  I appreciate what's been done here and if I had to would spend the money again.