if the poster is supposed to be one of those bright neon type TV posters than it looks fine, if it's a poster (i.e. on paper or whatever) than i understand what you mean corno (although she's beautfiul ).

i agree that green lighting looks weird but i think that's just because lights look bad in general in GG (no shadows and such)
as for the brown and such it looks great so definitely dont agree there!

It looks to clean to be in a
Maybe wolf could explain it to me?

i see it a lot like Corno.
This tv-poster looks utterly displaced. one would expect things like that on Broadway or in Ginza, but in a place like this ? Sorry, no. If someone else had told me "that scene was designed by _our_ Wolf", I would surely not have believed him.
Who would put Something like this in an area like that in real live ?
Btw: if that area - the looks of which to mine eye is bordering on being disgusting - is a mid-class suburbia, I would really be afraid to see the corresponding lower-class region of that city.
And if we are looking at the aftermath of an EMP, how can this thing be active ?

just my 3 or 4 cents.

Getting up early is the worst thing now that I have stopped drinking coffee At least you guys provided me with some stuff to jumpstart my brain.

I always love criticism, especially when its on point like it is here.

@corno1:

I couldn't disagree more. There are thousands of ways of getting a point across and the art of conversation relies on you having enough of a vocabulary to convey your emotions. When my girlfriend prepares a meal for me that is based on pumpkin... but I loathe pumpkin, I can't just stomp in the kitchen where she has spent an hour to cook for me and say "I hate pumpkin and won't eat this." Its true but not the whole truth of what I want to convey which would be: "I'm touched that you cooked for me and it looks lovely but I really can not stand pumpkin."
....but this isn't what we are actually talking about now, is it



Thanks!



Its not brown...its...errm...ocre ?
I know what you mean. The game's color palette will be dominated by rust and concrete lit by a warm evening sun. It will however all be broken up and contrasted with colorful neon lights that reflect in puddles and windows. The latter part is simply not possible in gameguru just yet. The teal and greenish look I went for at first simply didn't work for me.

I'm aware that back when the Xbox360 was new and everyone was talking about nextgen games, a lot of game went for a brown and gunmetal grey look. Especially epic's gears of war is a posterchild of this trend that we are still seeing today. I'm aware that a lot of critics established a trend to hate on this design choice and that many players might not like that my game goes in a similar, altough different, direction but its my creative vision for this and I'lld do it. Personally I like this look and am aware that the titles of that timeperiod often chose it to obscure technical limitations and render the images more lifelike for the human eye. To me its mostly stylisation that will become more apparent when this game progresses.

All my games had specific palettes and looks to them.
Shavra - Renaissance has the pastel colours,
the old scifi shooters of mine where ...gunmetal grey, brown and green
Euthanasia was bleak and blue contrasted with feverish yellow
Psishock was very blue
(Roses, a shooter that never went far enough for me to make a thread about it was purple)
Catathrenia was sepia coloured and now

Acythian takes the look from my old FPSC SciFi shooters and gives it a more evolved and modern look.

While some movies and games handle it well, I really don't like the bleached, chromish blue look of many high-scifi movie and games.

If you don't know what I am talking about, click here



Its a projection, hence it doesn't catch dirt. I'll go more into that later in this post.



^___^ Yes, I noticed it when I placed it there. You can find that in megapack3. I hope I don't disappoint you further by telling you that its a placeholder?

All in all I am happy about your criticism and hope that you keep checking out my updates...perhaps you'll start liking the game once it progresses a little.

@smallg

Its projected on the wall, hence the mild transparency.



Thanks! I hope it will be more apparent later, as GG tends to render everything rather blurry and messy, but those textures are all rather high-res.

@yrkoon:

Places like that are in the game as well. I talk more about this specific poster below. Places like you mentioned are in the game as well. However, mostly very rundown and dirty. The projections, screens and neon lights are kept up, of course, because rampant consumerism is still alive and well in this universe. The city might be far from first world, but its still up and running.

To get a visual cue from art and other games about the direction this goes in, click here.



I've seen a lot of large ads on lower class apartment buildings in my life. (the soviets had giant propaganda posters on them as well). Its mostly because A) there is this huge space so no need to put up expensive structure to hold the poster and B ) these buildings are usually close to or seen from a highway/busy street so these adds will be seen by many people. My favorite city has a huge screen displaying adds by the stadium in a not too hot neighbourhood as well. Its seen from the mainroad and circles adds about cars, tobacco, events and the local brothel.

Of course: What you see on those screenshots would never be put in that place in our day and age and I doubt I leave it there.



Thats intended. The lower class regions look mostly like a subterranean detroit mixed with a bad neighbourhood in a somalian city.
They are beneath the towers and enclaves that house the upper class citizens and mostly left to their fate. Seeing how we don't have proper lightmapping there was no reason to map anything like that just yet.



I explain all that in the following 2 segments, if you like to read:

THE EMP

If you look at the early screenshots in this thread you will notice that colours and style tend to shift from teal to ocre. This is because I am now working on a different game with a different lore. The first game was supposed to be a simple shooter but its direction simply didn't work for me.
I wrote in the EMP because it was supposed to be high scifi rather than what it is now: Cyberpunk.
It would be highly illogical for a lone gunman to even think about surviving against any form of futuristic military. There would be automated weapons and surveillance systems to spot and eliminate him instantly...everything else is (and I know other shooters ignore this) just plain silly to me, concidering the tech our armies have right now. The only way I had to make it somewhat believable was to deactivate all these ...hence the EMP
The EMP is, however, no longer part of what acythian is now. A different game that goes more into adventure territory than being a pure shooter.

I have not yet updated the first post to address this simply because I don't have any media fleshed out enough to represent this in the first post.

THE POSTER

I was thinking about what you said about that poster and what impression it made on you so... I might want to change it.
Its still fitting well in the lore of this game, and the lack of background buildings which will also have adds on them (I just haven't gotten the necessary models up and running just yet. A lot of work goes into this). In my mind the poster would be perfectly visible from aircraft and was indeed a nod to similar adds I have seen. Projections like this are also simply....very cyberpunkish...and allow me to break up the mood and palette.
Technology to project that would have been placed during a time where this area was more classy and would be cheap in the time this takes place. Just think about how quick flatscreen TV's went from utopic to mundane and affordable

I might replace it though, simply because I see that it would throw you guys off and break ambiance and because I think it would indeed diminish the effects of later areas that have a lot of neon adds and holographic posters.

Let me know if I missed a question.



-狼

Well, thank you for your Long reply, Wolf.
Let me first state that - among the astonshing high number of skilful modellers producing Gameguru assets -
you together with Rolfy (each of you in his own realm ) to me are THE ARTISTS, here.

That said, when I saw those pics, I felt my reaction on them, but said to myself
"Man, this is made by Wolf, so it MUST be 'me, myself and I' who are having a bad day, (and all three of us at the same time)."

But that Feeling wouldn't go away over time, and I finally disbelieved myself, but me decided to Keep silent about it.

Then I saw Corno's posting, so, I thought, I can't be that wrong.

Now, IF you had visibly put a Monorail or something in the scenery - even if it were partly broken down-, I'd not have had much of a Problem with that Scene, because then the Placement makes sense: addressing lots of People passing by; of course, there are constellations like that in Berlin, Düsseldorf and even much lesser cities. So, we're in accordance in that respect.

For the rest: If I utter my views on someone else's work, I always make sure that I just give my Impression, and very very rarely TELL People that they have to Change something, because I respect their work, and one can hardly know what they were thinking when they did it.
So, I don't say: take the Thing out, and I regret not having made a constructive remark like "put a Railway line in front of it", like i usually try to do.
But I say: The whole thing is somehow rubbing me the wrong way, so, I'll probably Keep out of this thread for quite some time.

Nevertheless, Keep up your otherwise generally very good work.
BR
yrkoon

Too much brown,..er sorry,.. ochre ?. Well yes, at first glance, that was my thought too, for me the
rocks and buildings seem exactly the same colour, I think there should be a slight variation between
them, but other than that, brown,..er sorry,...ochre is good, I like it.
As for the " tv poster " I like that too, is it animated ?, if not it should be, that would look cool, and give
it a kind of " Blade Runner " feel, but with your own interpretation of that to make it look unique and
not the same,...that would be very nice.
All in all, I like it a lot,.....go with the flow Mr Wolf.

my opinion is it is as it should be. i think the green is a bit mis placed but with reason. remember the human eye likes conformity and everything in place. so anything out of place gives us a sense of chaos or non conformity, so the green is a rebellion on the senses and in this world it may be the exact aim, not sure. if you think to films of the modern day, they have a lot of subtle digital grading, which helps bring it all into a form of 1. like sometimes a colour photo with added bits may look very disjointed, yet if you throw it to the b/w or sepia monster it all works. hence the conforming to neat and tidy and blended as one. so this maybe wolfs middle finger to conformity.

on another level. i think wolf actually brings this world together really nicely, and i think it destroys my worldly efforts, but that is my opinion.

but like anyone i do like constructive criticism, so i can say with a bit of constructive advice keep going fella and eat that pumpkin pie!

It makes my heart sing to see such amazing scenes with some of my media in them. You must let me in on your secrets for creating such "lightmapped" looking scenery without any real shadows. I'm struggling to produce anything worth looking at!

The detail king.... or maybe guru of guru Love this thread!

Sigh! I really wanted to reply with a whopping update up my sleeves but unfortunately work got in the way, then family... then laziness and debauchery. Err... lets just say I can't deliver just yet but I also don't want to leave you guys hanging after all the awesome feedback.

@yrkoon



Thanks for reading it!



That is the biggest compliment I ever got for any of my work. ...and I'm pretty sure that rolfy is a wizard. Just thought I'd mention that...


You know...if people would have had that point of view back in my early 20's I'd not have been fired all the time Haha! I am joking of course. No one ever fired me... except for that one time Oh yes, my point: If you think something is wrong, please post! It allows me to iron out mistakes I missed and believe me, there are a lot of things I do that go wrong, I usually don't post screenshots of them though.



Yes! Trier and Saarbrücken are where I saw advertisments like that myself.



Thanks! And I will! I am aware that while I work on these little games, the industry is just racing by releasing titles lightyears more advanced leaving my crummy attempts to do visually appealing levels far behind but... I remember games like "Unterwegs in Düsterburg" being very well received and that title is made in Rpg Maker. Stuff like that and the community here just keeps me motivated.

@Shadow Man



There is! Its just that the ambient setting colors everything in that direction to blend it. I try to dance around the atrocious shadowing we have in guru so far. This might however look very similar in the final release because that sunset-like look is what I am going for. Just know that not all of my textures use the same colour palette.



that one isn't. But I'll have some that are. Others will flicker or have a scrolling shader. There has to be some movment in them but its a finishing touch I will mostly work on towards the end. I like Blade Runner!! But even though its a similar setting I don't take all too many elements from that. There are some here and there but it'll go in a different direction for the most part. I hope you'll like it.

@Science Boy

About the green: There are some green light bulbs on one of the strut. Its just that one corner so I doubt the player will take too much notice of that while playing through that level.



Oh yes! The eye can detect anything out of place very easily and can be trained. I'm not a big fan of how most mid-quality movies and thrillers color their images...it makes most movies look the same and some go to an extreme that they seem almost black and white. ...and don't get me started on the orange and blue trend recently But you understood my intends with the visuals very well. The game has a dominant set of colours that will stick with it through the levels while being "perverted" by bright neon colors throughout.



Nah!! Twin Worlds is coming along great! My efforts are just as "worldly" as yours I appreciate the compliment though.





@Bugsy:
Its very useful!! ...and any more you could donate would help me greatly



I place some dynamic lights, but mostly just for the screenshots. Like you, I am waiting for a working system. The rest are my textures, trying to work as much as possible with the skylight and ambience settings as well as amping up the specular mapping slider. Its all we can do for now

@Defy

Ha! Thanks But I think Lee would mind me having that title I hope you'll keep an eye on my thread from time to time. There should be an update around the corner somewhat soon. Relatively speaking....



-Wolf

^ i also used this "thing" before and i thought the same *giggling* ("Glied hi hi hi")

the pictures are amazing, i am impressed!!

@Wolf.
Hey hey.. good call And yeah I am watching closely Keep up the great work, talk soon.

I, of course, wanted this update to be rather large and show a lot of progress simply because of how long it has been since I updated anything on here but I must disappoint once again.
Getting my media up and running is seemingly a herculian task but I will also not opt for unpolished, shaderless relics of the past.

To add to my uncertainty as to what working on next rather than importing new media is the state of game guru itself which is kind of hanging in the air at the moment.

I can't start working on media that require a shader different from the default entitie or char one because I don't know what shaders we will get later.
I can't work on the levels yet because the ...whatever segment thing we are gonna get... is not included in the package yet so I'd have to stick to cyberpunk city areas that, again, look rather brown and washed out in the current rendering engine.
Working on the more advanced gameplay would be unwise because I can not tell what will be added by default soon that might be far superior to my own attempts at implementing them.
I have a lot of custom media for this game, yes, but none set up for these reasons. Well, almost none. In an experiment I was getting some very ancient lowpoly stuff up and running and imported old DarkMatter and Modelpack 5 meshes. Some of these look good enough to be in the background of the black market gun stores or even on a third person viewed character!



So far I am willing to make this a TPS, not just because of the gorgeous mesh I have from EAI but also because I have released about 5 FPS games already and worked on many more that didn't get as far. It would be new.

Now I'd have to wait on a better implementation and more TPS features from TGC and see what can be done with that, but it will take a while until we reach anything like that. Then there is of course the possibility that EAI will sometime in the future release guns so good that I have to use them and drop the TPS concept.

Here is how I envision TPS view...at least for the shooting:



TPS Shooting Concept



OTS Shooting Concept

I wonder if we ever get that kind of freedom to set this up as seen above without breaking a leg but I guess we have to be patient and see.
What do you think? Any of the above mentioned hindering your development? If not, how do you cope with it?

If you want to see a thread that will likely get more updates the coming months and includes stuff you can buy, please visit my 3D thread. It includes plenty of Acythian related models.



-Wolf

Yes, all of the above, and more, is hindering my development, to the extent that I have not even started
to make anything serious yet,........we all feel your pain Mr Wolf,.........we are all in the same boat,........
my question is,.......are we all going to sail on to the "promised land" or are we all going to end up in
the "Bermuda triangle".?

I,m trying not to think of "Flight 19" right now. lol.

Anyway,..nice work so far sir,..so keep going, and we will all get there in the end.

Agreed Wolf. I've put a project on hold until we get a more robust and versatile game creation tool. It's just a matter of time.

I agree with you guys...but sometimes its not game guru...sometimes I am simply incompetent

Game guru does many things right but so far most games have looked blurry, hazy and muddy simply because they where lit horrendously bad. Kind of like the first FPSC games where grey and desaturated everything about my game guru games looked off... almost everyone else had the same problems and someone even released survival horror games on steam without proper lighting effects (using game guru). I suppose not everyone has to care
I digress... my point is that I have been messing about with game gurus lighting system and after a lot of trial and error and a few funny bugs I got the lightmapping system not only to work but also found out that, while its still in a rough state, its exactly the kind of lightmapping system that I always wanted to have in FPSC.
I can have fully shaded objects that don't look off, correctly displayed transparent objects and I don't have the memorycap rendering anything larger impossible.
I owe Lee an apology and will later make a thread about this.



Note that plenty of these have been scaled etc. and none glitch out like in previous GG versions.
This certainly brings back a lot of enthusiasm, have a happy dancing star:



-Wolf

Nice weapon cache' I was wondering where that shipment ended up.

Now that screen has made my night, I knew it was possible. Everything blends so smooth.. well done !! 5 stars

Love your TP character mesh - what does she look like front facing? Wish GG was a bit more advanced for TP - I've been trying to twist it to make it work better for me but have given up for now.

So have I cybernescence.

But yes, you can see her from the front in this picture.

Bugsy mentioned that his work-in-progress looks really good and that I should post it on the thread. Who am I to question his judgment:





-Wolf

loving it. so much inspiration. sadly work and a mortgage time is kinda stopping my creative flow a bit but when i marvel at what is being achieved makes grown men weep this is what we want. keep it coming. i love it

An elevated road/track ... awesome. You're giving me too much inspiration ... stop it

Thank you for the cyberpunk/goth character screenshot too. I'm pleased you didn't skirt around that request

Hey guys!


No worries! Take care of that and once you return, we'll all be here waiting



Oho! I doubt it'll have that effect! But I wouldn't mind though!



I'm pretty busy myself but I am doing my best to get stuff done



No I won't And thanks a lot!!



Never!



-Wolf

Very nice arrangements and level design

Hey!

Well... I have locked this because the project grew way over my head. This third person cyberpunk thriller I had in mind was just not feasible for a lone developer like me so I have locked this until I...well: lets be honest. Until I dumbed it down sufficiently to be able to finish it.

I could just not let all the work I poured into this go to waste so I have been cutting a lot of corners and this project is now closer to its original idea.

I was planning to release a short demo but haven't managed to finish it on time. Since I will be on a trip for a little while starting tomorrow it will likely be mid august until the demo hits your harddrive but hey! Its still in the very foreseeable future.
So yes! We are back to shooter, grime and eeriee scifi levels.

And hey...I'm not the only one with 2 running projects on the w.i.p board.

Allow me to present you some impressions from the demo:


I am very happy with GG's lightmapping. If only the shaders would react to it more But hey! We are getting there.


First level impressions.

sixth (second demo) level impressions.


You'll be heavily armed in this game. Never had as much fun with EAI's weaponry than in the large worlds I can create wit GG

Please leave a comment. Always interested in your thoughts.



-Wolf

it JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER
and I keep getting more amazed. I love seeing my models in your screenshots!!

for an instant i was thinking i was on unreal engine 4 forum..

but no. this is old good gameguru...

wel done Wolf

@Bugsy: And I love using your models! lotta good stuff.
Glad you like it.

@JC LEON: Ha!! I hope more people will have this impression. Thanks.



-Wolf

Wolf, seriously your work is always brilliant. Loving these screenshots!!

The ONLY thing, this isn't your fault, is the complete lack of anti-aliasing in GG is really a killer. Within the site these screenshots look crisp but then make them the normal size and I see lego blocks. Cyberscience had a FXAA shader that seemed to work well, I wonder if he'd allow you to use it. If so, you'd really be taking GG into new realms of visual quality.

Thank you Landman! I really appreciate it.
Hey! Btw, where are your current projects at? Care to share a link?

The lack of AA filtering is very present. Yes. While this does not bother me personally I can definately see how that can be a problem.
I'm still waiting for Lee to add it in, if this does not happen before I have the demo done, I'll hit up cybernescence and ask if he either sells or gives me the improved postprocessing shader



-Wolf

Are you putting static light sources above the sewer grates? If so, bravo. Looks awesome.

Your use of rock and clutter is fantastic. I'm really blown away by what you've done here.

this looks like an "AAA" game. wow. impressing. i still have to learn a lot

Hey folks!!

@Bolt Action Gaming: Thank you! I appreciate it. Yes, there are lights above the grates.

@nuncio: Thank you, man!! I really hope more people will see it that way. It plays pretty well too, controls are lot smoother than scenes like this did back in FPSC. Also note that all interior scenes are from the same map which I couldn't do in similar, older projects (like Psishock)



New stuff!! I had some time to put into this and mostly tweaked the weaponry and worked on the demo level. Some additional experimentation with light and mood. The indoor levels run pretty smooth, even on a weaker system, which is kinda neat and due to my attempts to blend the textures, they even look good on the lowest settings.



I find that I managed to create a very eerie vibe in this part of the level. The story behind this'll be that these people where awoken from cryogenic sleep after the base went into lockdown. However, the AI has kept all doors shut and they wheren't able to leave.
The mangled corpses are models from rolfy that I repurposed.

I'm feeling kinda guilty for using the scifi DLC for such a sinister design. I mean, its such a happy pack clearly geared towards science and exploration games and I do this bleak game with it.



This isn't the skybox I'll go with, as its from the 3D bazaar thread to showcase that Satcom relay in the distance (on the left). But as this is a work in progress thread and I really like this shot, its in here anway





EAI's weaponry really shines in guru. I can't wait to see how all this looks once Lee overhauls the rendering engine.
I have also taken the time to have relevant displays for a cryo-sleep chamber.









Not a fan of these office and maintenance sections yet. Feels like something I'd do in Fpscreator. I tink these need some overhauling before the demo goes live.



That concludes whats new with this project, I hope to read your opinions on here soon and the next thing I'll tackle will likely be some more models.



-Wolf

This is definitely one of the most promising projects on the forums. I can't wait to try the demo out. Can I ask what kind of performance you're getting on the outdoor levels?

Hey darimc! Thanks man!

The performance is decent but could be better, but I am also trying to keep my levels optimized. (most rocks use the same texture for instance.)
However, weaker systems that can still run the indoor levels above 30 fps will experience lag in the outdoor scenes.
The alpha demo will show how it fares on more diverse systems.



-Wolf

HELL YEAH!!! Now that's what I'm talking about!!!!! Holy wow!! If this wasn't a family friendly thread I'd include some crude words.

Wolf, I'll PM you some work I'm doing on a game in the Unity engine, it's possibly the closest thing I've done which could be considered AAA. Unfortunately I would have used GG but for my game I need to be able to calculate how much light is being refracted off of objects.... In order to do something similar in GG I'd have to use a kind of a zone.

We need AA! I want to fully appreciate your work but the jagged lines kill me. You're really skilled man! Wow!

Thanks Landman! I always value your input.



Please do!!



Sounds oddly specific? Is this for a stealth type of game or something entirely different?



thank you! I think I can push this a little further on my end but it will always suffer somewhat from the lack of filtering and odd normalmapping. Nothing I can really do about that rather than wait for improvements on guru.



-Wolf

After a long break I looked at your thread again and amazing how it develops. Your graphic screenshots are amazing and I would not say my critics again! I would not test it at the moment, because I play rainbow six siege on a high level and everything is about fast paced action. So the weapon system works completely different form GG and this is my biggest problem at the moment with GG games. I can not controll my character how I want it without setting my dpi to 2000.

So graphic is nice, more I can´t tell you about your game
I hope for the demo and I would like to give a review about it

Impressive!
Is the SciFi Base / Room a textured overhaul of the SciFi DLC pack?

@Corno:
Yeah!! I take a break from all of this too once I've gotten at least 2 levels of this somewhat playable. Feel like putting that time in some paintings again.


Thank you! I don't feel like I'm "there" yet but I think I'm on the right track with the graphics. But please do criticize, I'm always interested in other devs perspective.



Sure! Just keep in mind that it will be an "alpha demo". I'd be delighted to read that.

@Ertlov: Thank you!



You bet! Barely changed anything though. Just high-pass filtering and added rust/wear and tear.



-Wolf

I've been adding some basic details to the second level, expanded upon it and some frustrations aside, all is working. Coming up next will be some basic AI that I hope won't make it anywhere near the final release but I am happy having something playable out, be it with very basic shooter mechanics.
There is really not too much interesting to tell but feel free to ask if you have any questions. Here is what I added to level 2 recently.



A storage area. You'll have to find and reactivate a power relay in here.



Power relay.
Pretty happy with how it looks. You might think that a lot of these look "same'ish" but that is mostly because these are all taken in roughly the same area.



Old corpses tell that the facility has been seized since 20 or more years.





I have been designing scifi shooters in old industrial areas for years. However, i never had them reach the scale they now have in game guru. I only hope that I will be able to add some dynamic elements to them in the near future.











Plenty of assets had to be fixed and multiple normalmaps adjusted (to not look like molten plastic) but I think I somewhat nailed half of what I was going for. This'll all be in the demo too. Next step will be adding some interactivity that looks coherent in the baked scene. We'll see how that works out. Then I'll go ahead mapping the rooms where some basic shooting will happen.

As always: Please let me know what you think, especially what you don't like.



-Wolf

Looking very impressive .... The lighting is amazing

how do you do this? i recognize the models but it looks like it's done with another engine. why do you have such amazing lights and stuff? somewhen you must tell me your secret

yeah it's call gameguru lol.

anyways I love what you did here wolf. I think this time this game can come alive and will be playable. unlike fpsc you have a bigger memory cap better shader system. plus no segment system to keep you limited in a box room.lol I love how you make it you own. same type thinking from fpsc but with a little more WOW to it with gameguru. you are someone who knows how to use a limited engine to it's best. Your skills has grown and with this engine that allow you to focus more on game design we all maybe in for something special here.

Actually I'm curious as well ...the more I look the more stunning those pics are ..
How did you manage that ?

Jeez, you never fail to amaze! Beautiful use of clutter an lighting, as expected at this point. I can't wait to get my hands on this demo.

Hey gang!

Thanks for all the positive feedback.

@Synchromesh and Nuncio:

You increase lightmappingquality to 1000 and lightmappingsizeentity as well (or higher) in the setup.ini. Now you place your lights either according to realism or colorscheme. I have written a lot on that in the past, lets just say here that basic leveldesign rules apply. (This is important because Gurus lightmapper is a bit wonky and so is the postprocessing which means that bad choices stick out way more than in something like the UE4.)
Then you just place a bunch of lights and bake the whole thing (F3 is sufficient. I never use the F4 mode).
You then adjust ambient and surface level colour settings. Having a low ambience and high surface level usually works.
Make sure to have a huge box around your indoor levels to block out the sunlight. Work with everything you have too. Get that bloom and DoF to work! Add some fog if you feel like it.
This mild volumetric'ish effect I have on these is because I let a hint of lightrays bleed in.
And thats the whole secret. Post here, shoot me a PM or hit me up in Skype if anything is unclear.


@MXS:

Thank you! Oh yes, FPSCreator killed a good few of my ideas back in the day
I had a few releases, sure, but the ones I liked the most just never made it. I even had games that I managed to finish but just would not build
Its my hope that this will all be way different with game guru, but we will see. FPSC really crumbled under its own weight, with ever increasing shader effeccts and higher poly models thrown in later. There are some neat games that came out the last 2 or 3 games though. Some even on Steam, but these people must be masochists to get it that far Jupp!! Good old FPSC and the 4 rooms and a hallway memorycap.



Ha! Thanks a lot! Yeah, I don't want people to look at my game and say "oh look! Game Guru!" at first glance.



Thanks a lot, Michael!! Altough I can only partially agree, because I still blow things way out of proportions (see that 3rd person action game I wanted to do here first) so there is no way I could do them on my own. Acythian as it is now may not be particulary unique or different to things that came before....but at least its a game I can finish with my limited time and resources.

I hope you'll have time to play this once its out

@darimc:

Thank you! Clutter can really be a pain. It took me ages to get my old collection into game guru and bring it up to new standarts. Even so if you look closely, you still find objects that are not set up properly and don't react to lights.
I aim to get that Demo out sometime in october or early november. Don't quote me on this though, because things that I have to deal with tend to magically appear whenever I think I have a day to myself.
Oh! By the way! You can spot a lot of your really old models in this. They have different textures but still




I've had some time to flash out the area of the level where you will have your first contact with enemy forces. Its more labyrinthian than you can tell from the screenshots here though.
I'll have to rethink some design choices and need to do some modeling too, but that will happen once the gameplay is in.
Most models I make for this will also be part of a large store pack that I'll dub "Cyberpunk Pack²: Protogenetic Subculture"

Bare in mind that this won't all be industrial/storage corridors...there will be more diverse areas in this game too, unlike the older "Shavra" Science Fiction Shooters.



I originally wanted these halls to be server rooms, where enemies would be in between computer terminals, but for that I'd have to:
Have the computer terminals be dynamic and destroy or at least damagable (its lame otherwise...2016 gamers are spoiled )
Large amount of dynamic objects like that don't work with current baking, so this level will happen later in the game
Better AI to somewhat navigate all these pillar like structures. Old attempt at that.
Wouldn't make sense to have something as vital as a server room behind a chaotic storage area
So now its just more storage, boxes and containers Works too.



You'll get some more machinery. Some is quite improvised out of multiple other models. I think it works visually and provides more cover for and areas to spawn enemies from.



Not all of the game will be gold and emerald in its lighting...a lot will be purple, blue or even drenched in muddy brown colouring.



Oh! Did I mention that this game will finally use/recycle all the soundtracks I composed for the Scifi-FPSC-Shavra games? It will!! It really makes the mood!

Thats all for now! Please let me know what you think, what I have to add, what you would like to see me try in the future and so on.



-Wolf

So let me just say this to me, is what a proper game should look like. It looks exactly as it should. Lighting is on point. Clutter objects are purposefully and intelligently built.

Level design is clear and follows usual rules of level design for a AAA style game.

I can only say your lightmapping must take a long, LONG time to do. I know when I've attempted this many lights on largish maps it tends to choke pretty badly on my PC (3ghz quad core amd). It looks exceptional though. You've done a great job here and I'm impressed. I'd put your work on peer with other 'great works' of Game-Guru, specifically 'My little Apocalypse World'.

I'm anxiously waiting for the cyberpunk kit, as you can imagine since that's basically the vein of what I'm working on myself (albeit with a space-based theme).

I don't mind saying your 'high pass filtering and rust' method seems spot on - it looks great and I wish they were the standard texture for sci-fi kit objects. I've been playing with retexturing myself and had ... mixed success. I'm just not a phenomenal artist, unfortunately.

Anyways, I love it. I'm in the process of doing a detailed write up on more advanced lighting stuff (Per something interesting I learned from Lee) but I can see you're already using the technique.



Are you running the reshade filters at all? I have those pretty much optimized myself and they make a huge difference on game guru's output quality.

Looks awesome and really shows GG off! I imagine you must have a decent PC setup to get this running well, it looks jam packed with stuff. Very cool.

I Agree with DVader looks really sweet Wolf kinda reminds me in places of Blade Runner, really really cool scenery