Excited for new GG updates.

I realize I've been silent here for a while but I wanted to just say I've been off and on in communication with Lee Bamber with respect to the upcoming release of Game-Guru.  It's slated to be available by Christmas.

So a few important tidbits here and I'm going to list in no particular order, but they are all MASSIVE improvements over the existing system.

• DirectX11 - Huge huge visual/processing overhaul. 
• PBR (Physically based rendering).  This will drastically change the way lighting is done.
• Unlimited dynamic lights.  Assuming this applies to PBR it's going to be a very cool addon.
• Static lighting fix (removing sun baking into the final static lighting) which has been ruining indoor scenes since forever; maybe now I can actually finish my sci-fi game!
• Drastically reduced load times, especially the outright evil AI pathing system.

Now let's go through some of these differences one at a time.
DirectX11 - The current version of DX is 9 as used by Game-Guru at this time.  11 provides a more up to date graphical experience as well as better hyperthreading and utilization of graphics hardware.  In laymen terms X9 is more CPU dependent, X11 is more GPU dependent.

PBR - See this link for more detailed information on what's going on here, but basically a PBR map is applied to the object and then the renderer applies lighting to that more realistically.  It's something I'm not super familiar with but the results are very good thus far.

Unlimited Dynamic Lights -  This is an important side effect of better lighting overall.  Currently Game-Guru works with  only two Dynamic Lights at a time.  Dynamic lights can light all objects including Dynamic objects such as AI driven creatures, collectable items, doors, etc.  It's very important if we want to get a functional system for lighting that we get more than two available at a time. Unlimited would be absolutely fantastic in terms of levelbuilding. 

Static Lighting Fix -  As reported on this thread I was able to find and duplicate the issue.  Once I analyzed the issue in detail I was able to report the actual problem being that the sun was baking in without any respect towards the level's sun settings and as such causing overlap and excessive shadows in baked mode.  This has been a major issue for a long time which has caused a lot of oddities and irregularities in Game-Guru's lighting system. 

Reduced Load Times - If you've ever made a level and exported it in Game-Guru you faced the biggest obstacle towards developing an actual commercial product - the incredibly long load times.  I'm not joking here but my old 'Silent Hill Game Guru' map that my son and I made for my wife's birthday had *15 MINUTE LONG LOAD TIMES OR HIGHER*.  Most of this was from the computation of AI paths.  There's literally no way you could sell a game in that environment.  It's simply not possible to explain to a user that they should go take a shower and come back and the level might be loaded by then.  Lee is claiming much improved load times, specifically in the realm of AI pathing (per an email I had with him).  So as a result we should see some really functional export capabilities.

In conclusion - I'm really looking forward to playing around with the newest iteration of GG though it might take a little while for it to show up given the massive amount of work being done.  I'll probably write some new lighting guides, tutorials, or a review on the engine itself.  I'm sure there will be some bugs to iron out, thing always slip past QA even in large scale corps these days.  So a one man show like Lee runs it's veritably guaranteed.  But still, these changes should really propel Game Guru to be a more mainstream capable engine.  Perhaps not AAA, but at least not bottom shelf.

Weather system update info

So wow, Lee gave us a great big gift basket of stuff. (SEE: https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-20170228-released)

I'm going to implement a few extra controls based on the new Lua commands and then prepare this thing for launch.

My biggest issue right now that I am not satisfied with is I don't have a good way to deal with the weather systems.  I've monkeyed with the shaders, created a custom decal, etc, and just can't get it the way I want.

Unfortunately this is becoming a time sink and will need revisited in a future version.
Currently what I have supports:

Random weather if selected via variable
Random Time of day if selected via variable
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A set time of day (you walk into a zone and it sets it to that time of day, single use)
A set weather (you walk into a zone and weather is enabled)
All weather turning off indoors via trigger zone
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A progressive day/night cycle based on both step interval speed and delay between cycles.  Totally within the control specified by the user.  This is the on you see shown in the video.  You can add random or set weather to it as well via trigger zones or variables.

What needs added before release:
1) one final tuning run on the blue zone which I have a good fix on making how I want
2) new lua implementation of sun surface/lens flare (disabling for night specifically).
3) modified versions of algosteps decals need a last tune.  I don't like his originals that much because the decals are too thick or not transparent enough.  If anyone wants to step up and provide nicer looking visual elements for those Rain/Snow/Dust boxes I'm sure I can provide you a free of charge copy of my final product.
4) a final test run, really comprehensively.  I'm sure bugfixes will inevitably be necessary after users get their mitts on it but overall it should be a good clean setup.

Current cost for this package will be 15$ and I'm not sure I'll be doing it via the store since there are some complex elements which need to be done manually (like you pretty much need the updated sky shader if you want a good result from here:  https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/216862#msg2564866). 

Thanks for the support and interest.  Please keep an eye out as this will likely be released in the next week or so.