I'm wondering how you're able to lightmap this level without your computer crashing! it must take 8 hours every time at least!

Hey everyone!

@Bolt Action Gaming:

Thank you!! I really appreciate your comment. I'm working on a restauration and upload of my first release on the TGC Forums. Still missing a few DLL's to get it to run but I think it will really sow how much has happened and how far I have come since its also a cyberpunk-scifi style game.

I believe there is a lot more I can do with game guru and this project, but I'd rather get the core gameplay functional first before I get knee deep into designing things



Thanks! This means a lot. Dimoxinil has always been a few notches above me talent wise. It just always saddens me when he disappears after showing us a very interesting work in progress.
And yes! It does take a long time. Not as long as I'd sometimes expect it to though but still ages.
I always time it with household chores or work I have to do. When I come back, I can play my map



Thats good to know! It should still hit the store this summer If there is a specific kind of object that you'd need and that is within my power to model I'd add it to the list too.
If you gather a bunch of rust and plaster textures from textures.com and overlay them over your default textures, it goes a long way already.
Add some highpass and maybe a bit lowkey and you are there. Its what I did with the Scifi DLC from TGC which has pretty good and modable texture work.



I am?? Which technique is that? Also looking forward to your tutorial.



No. I'm still not running the best rig and don't want to add framerate drowning stuff just yet. I'll play around with that and others like it once I get my better hardware back up and running...some day Then I'll also show some videos of my levels.

@DVader:

Thank you! I don't actually. I'm floating around 29 to 30 frames on the indoor levels currently as I run an ageing laptop. (I'll replace it soon though as this one will go into my office next year and serve as my professional rig...so no more game guru...maybe a little modeling when I'm on break )
I'm just happy I can freely add this much detail which I couldn't with FPSCreator However, while its rather packed, most objects I use are lowpoly and don't have a huge texture resolution. Working with FPSC for years makes you really mindful of that

@Honkeyboy:

Thats a great compliment. I really like that film visually.

@Bugsy:

Haha! Nah, not 8 hours but 3 to 4 occasionally.



-Wolf

Hey everyone!

I had my eyes on an excellent deal for a brand new rig with terrific specs, sadly, the seller didn't go through with it. Oh well!! I'll be able to wangle something sooner or later...mayber around christmas. Hard to believe how close the holidays are already

Working on Acythian keeps being somewhere in between genuine fun and worry. Getting things to work and look somewhat good is a lot of fun, especially experiencing the haunting atmosphere in the world I just crafted but I can also clearly feel the low framerate and see the substandart rendering. Everything could be so much better and all I have is faith that someday soon, this engine will be improved. I mean I certainly ain't switching. Game guru falls, so would Uncle Wolfs game design career. I just hope this does not happen.

Getting gameplay to run in Game Guru is just so easy. I have a simple script set up that spawns a "communication established" screen on a monitor, with an animated hologram of a talking woman. Then it'll play a sound.(currently just a song as I dont have any dialogue recorded at this point) It was all so simple to set up... you just don't get this in any other game maker.

I've been able to work on the levels, just nothing major at this point. I'll likely take a step back from directly working on this and finish a few packs until the engine gets better. Oh well! More dlc for you guys, right?





Got a golden oldie to work! Jakes G36C! This is an already lit section of a pretty maze like level by the way.
Most levels in Acythian can be labyrinthian. I do my best to add some kind of narrative or logic to where you are supposed to head though.



I first had the idea to let the player only save at such a drinking machine or a snack machine. Not fond of that idea though as these things would quickly get repetitive and there would be no reason for them to be present in later levels. Instead I'm playing with the thought of having the player only be able to save at a coffee machine! ... not sure how to implement that though.



The hologram mentioned above.



He looks already pretty frightening. If we'd only get the shader to react to the actual lightsource, it would look good in motion too. At this point he's always a bit off. "Sticks out".



Same as above, no distracting gun. Again, the gold and emerald color scheme will be very present in the game.



Entrances to the reactor room.



Very high room! I like to add some monolithic massiveness to a lot of later levels. Due to the sense of scale it creates, it adds a lot to the atmosphere.



All in all, I made some progress with this and am satisfied with how everything looks, not really with how it plays so far but where getting there...I hope!
Whenever I work on this there is this ambivalence with generally enjoying myself and being skeptical about what GG will be in the future. Maybe I'll get this game out and be proud of it, maybe I'm wasting a lot of time. Time will tell!!

Anyone in the same boat? What do you think of my progress so far and other thoughts are, as always, welcome and encouraged!



-Wolf

Stunned as always, mixed with a huge pack of envy. At least I know quite exactly HOW you did it in each single spot, my mind shows me the likely position of your lights and their properties pretty clearly when I look at those screens

My biggest fear for this one is that the enemy behaviour will tear down the illusion of an AAA game (and it has this illusion partially, indeed!) unless you don't plan a total rewrite of the AI luas.

Wolf, Wolf, Wolf................tut tut!

You have been naughty sir! Very naughty indeed! What did we talk about? All this being great a game design is making the rest of look rubbish. We have been through this already. Stop being so good! haha.

As always buddy, great looking levels. I love the idea of having a coffee machine as a save point, very cool.

Love the size and scale of everything you have done, although, you have always been good at that (as well as Rolfy).

I have a few models that I can donate to this game, if you are interested? Not much, but, with a few texture tweaks, they should find a nice home in a few of your levels. I will mail them over later.

Cheers

Jay.

same here
your stuff is really awesome. i stop trying to reach your level of awesomeness in a game.

Kinda lost for words ... those screen shots are stunning, fantastic, beautiful, inspiring ... there I found some



Definitely afloat in the same boat - I've got several thousand hours into this product and game creation and the more hours I put in the harder it feels to leave it ... but I think I'm going to have to. As much as I like it, understand it (to a point) and enjoy the community spirit I just can't see that it's going to evolve at a fast enough pace to sort out the performance and put in the other features I need (I do get its a community led feature list which is sort of OK but not directly helpful to me given the pace of releases). The constant retesting on every release and finding broken levels, scenes, features that were working perfectly before is also a fact of life but very draining ... and some I can't rectify at all so then have to abandon key/core development. Going to have to have a long hard think

But I really hope it all comes good and you get to complete this brilliant world you're evolving here to your satisfaction .

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the late reply.

@Ertlov:

Says the guy with the big games on steam.



Whoops!! Looks like I have to up my game then!



Yes! At this point this is definately the case. I'm still hoping for updates on this or at least ways to conveniently script encounters in some manner.



I really don't know. I'm not at that stage of development by a long shot and hope that guru will undergo many updates until I am

Thanks for your feedback! I always appreciate your opinion.

@Unfamillia: Haha!! Thanks buddy!



Cool! I just wasn't sure how people would react to that.



Of course!! I always need more stuff for more diversity. But I hope that does not mean that your project is halted??

@nuncio:

Nah! I've seen your style progress...I'm sure you can make levels just as good as I can.

@Cybernescence::

Ooooh you! Thank you



Oh Certainly not a fan of you leaving! ...but I can very well understand. Are you planning on migrating your project to another engine?
I understand your worries. Personally I'm giving Gurus development speed and functionality until 2017 the benefit of the doubt. If we don't have
any significant updates by then I'll halt my projects as well and switch to making 3D models.



Drop me line on what your conclusion is, will ya? I'd love to hear.



Oh thank you! I'd be statisfied if it only ends up being somewhat okay



-Wolf

I'm kinda new here but it appears that this "Wolf" character is the God of GameGuru.

10/10, other than the lack of anti-aliasing/ray-tracing (engine limitation) and the generic 1st party hand (which isn't important at this stage in your projects development) texture this genuinely looks like a sequel or successor to System Shock 2. The scene with the holographic woman looks AAA.

All I can say is wow ! Truly inspiring work.

@shoveler



You've got that right, Our lord and saviour Uncle wolf is a bit of Guru himself, Always leading the way with his creations

@wolf In all seriousness man, fantastic Job, attention to detail is superb and the lighting is really the game changer in all of your projects, I can never light mine even half as good as that.

AWESOME!
Wolf you this is Great work!

Yes, but rather the sort of god with horns

An endless source of visual artestry, lightmapping inspiration and kick-ass motivation to make your own games better and better.

Thanks gang! It really means a lot to me

@Shoveler: If I am, then GG has a Pantheon and I'm just one of many gods. You can see a lot of truly creative work on here.



Errm...you think? Its a retextured version with blue camouflage, and a lore related emblem...I actually wanted to stick with that.



Thats a huge compliment! Altough there is no way I can do anything even remotely as complex.

@Johno15:

Haha! Thanks! Reading this out loud makes it sound a lot like a dangerous backcountry cult though!



Its way harder to do than in most engines (especially nowadays) and the results are not always desirable to be honest. The current baking is also allergic to any normalmap that is not absolutely perfect and conventional. Add to that the fact that the dynamic objects, chars and weapons don't react to baked light and shadow and you can imagine that the game looks "odd" when you see it in motion. Not a killer for an indie game, but also not what I would want to put out. Oh! And if you want to know anything specific about lightmapping and how I do it, just drop me a PM.



This kind of comment is always the most motivating to me!! Thanks guys!



-Wolf

Hey!

I've had time getting a pretty large level to work. Among the largest indoor levels I have done so far.
I'm currently messing around with a few simple LUA mods and have a pretty solid plan to stretch gameplay in this section, getting some decent playtime out of it while maintaining a fast pace.

I have designed the level to have many large columns and server rigs where I can spawn enemie waves behind, the level also leads the player through hallways and small rooms, getting him out of the combat zone so I can spawn reinforcments for when he comes back. I try to make this as believable as possible and so far I'm pretty happy with what I've got.

Not a lot of progress with the engine itself but I'm still having fun with it for what it is
I've taken a few screenshots, let me know what you think if you're here.





Bugsy rigged and animated my most recent gun model for me! Actually pretty happy with how it turned out... way better than the one I made for the first Kshatriya. Treat yourself to his animations, here!!





Computers, server rigs...its a hacktivist collective, by the way! I also feel like I nailed a pretty solid cyberpunk vibe with these.


















This is my favorite area in this map! There are 2 ways to enter it and take on the hostiles.

You'll notice slightly varying colour settings because I have not yet settled on which one I'll use. Gonna do that once the gameplay is in place and I'll polish the level.

I know that this is irrelevant compared to modern standarts, but I'm happy that I can bake and play this game. couldn't even fit a third of this stuff into FPSC, especially with the shaders (as goofy as they may look) and high-res shadows.

So yes!! Thanks for checking out my work!



-Wolf

Wow !!
This is looking special

On my phone at the moment,will have to look on my comp to do justice.They look great though (again)you have got GG nailed I think.

Dave

I have to say this game looks beautiful with it's awesome level design. who need EBE when your levels can look this good without it. I know this is hard work but where is the fun in that if it was too easy to create levels that look this good.

OK that's it, i'm giving up on my game, i can't compete with this, you've ruined me Wolf!

shameless self plug/you should have embedded a video wherein these animations can be seen

Envy gots slowly accompanied with hate .

Just kidding, keep it going and provide more inspiration

Stunning screenshots sir!

You say that's a fairly large level, judging by the screenshots there's also a good amount of details in the levels. Do you notice quite an FPS drop?

Hey everyone!! I greatly value all of your feedback!

@Synchromesh: Thanks!! I know its a genre heavily present in the shooter scene but I try to give everything my own spin. At least a little bit.

@granada: Still looks better in lower resolution due to current lack of filtering in GG. Once that is sorted I'm sure this will feel a lot more polished.

@MXS: Ha! My point exactly. I know a lot of people will disagree and say that its supposed to be "the easy game maker"...but its never easy and I think GG is already as easy as it gets. The EBE will appeal to my laziness though as these fully modeled levels, even with store content, require a lot more planning now than they did in FPSC.

@Belidos: Don't you dare!! This is the last effect I want to have on the people that follow my project.

@Bugsy: I linked to it above. The reason I didn't embed it was so that people don't think your testmap was an actual level from the game. I'm glad that a lot of people here read my posts, but I do also know that a lot just browse the pics and vids.

@Ertlov: C'me on! You know you could do this too!

@Landman: There is definately an FPS Drop when you play the outlined level with only the rooms in place and when you launch it full realized and baked with all the entities in it. However, I can recover a lot of frames by turning off the terrain and water, and by having the camera distance pretty low.
You can further boost performance by tweaking several settings in built game without the game loosing too much visual quality.



Inspired by what Bugsy has been up to lately, I have started to work on the harbourside level for this game. I've only outlined the scale and general architecture of it yet and have just started to add detail but the fellow mods have told me that it looks good so I feel comfortable showing it here. Its a work in progress thread after all.





Will need a bunch of tricks to keep this map playable on older rigs, but I think I'll manage. Please stay tuned for more, and as always: Please share your thoughts.



-Wolf

My thought?

I am going to fire up GG right now, tryign to get as close to this awesomeness as possible.

Except for one: The surface light seems a little bit too saturated on the upper of those screens.

that sure is scenic but I think there's a few too many stock buildings there. I like your media much better.



this was the draw anim for your pistol that gameguru couldn't handle.

@Ertlov:

Fire a screenshot of that my way once you are done I'd like to take a look.



I think you are right. I try to go for an overblown look with this, but I guess that level needs some toning down. I invested two hours in that level recently, then the editor crashed and I didn't save... I haven't touched it since

@Bugsy


Glad to hear that!! I do however also think that those brick buildings really fit a harbour area. Oh well! Nothing is final! I'm certainly going to replace them if I find/make better meshes.



Really cool! Next time we're in skype you gotta drop that on me!! I need to give it a try, maybe I'll find the fly in the ointment.



-Wolf

Looks great,i would love to have a walk around (sure a lot of other people would to )Nice work Wolf.

Dave

This is amazing Wolf. Been watching this for a while, great lighting and atmosphere. Very, very impressive. Exquisite work.

Thanks guys! I know I seem to be taking my sweet time with this but I do find very little actual time to work on this with any consistency lately.
I keep getting a few minutes to unwind, browse messages and the forums and then something new requires my attention and I can't do anything productive about the game.
A good example of this is that I'm weeks behind with car retextures for Bugsy. (sorry buddy!!)

However! There is an interesting thread by Bolt Action Gaming here where I also discuss things directly related to this game. So feel free to have a read if you got the time.

I still fully intend to deliver something playable, no matter how small, this year.



-Wolf

I decided to go the cheap way and cheat on that by ripping out the entire GG postprocess and replacing it.

I am a bastard and I know it.

Your turn

Hey! Any dirt on how you went about this? Are these brand new shaders or did you somehow put in the old FPSC postprocessing shaders?

Colour me impressed... I hate that I have missed this post before



I have not posted in quite some time because I originally wanted to surprise you all with this.
I have taken a few gameplay and design elements from the larger "Acythian" whole and am pretty far into making a small 2 level game akin to the original far cry.
My motivation is that I really want to release a game this year! Seeing how fast I am making progress I'd say that I can ship this either late november or early december.
You'll slip in the shoes of a cybernetic agent infiltrating a secret compound on a remote tropical island! I don't have a title yet.

What I find particularly enjoable about this game is that it looks and feels almost identical on the lowest settings as it does on highest. Meaning that all of you should be able to play this at an acceptable frame rate

Onwards to some screenshots:





























Sorry about posting so many screenshots at once but this is already pretty far in development and these turned out better than I expected which made me happy.

Please let me know what you think about it and I'll also be happy to answer any questions!



-Wolf

just one word Wolf, WOW. This looks very very impressive, great stuff.

Jesus christ. Bet I will spend this weekend in GG trying to crawel close again...

Looks like you use very high bloom settings Wolf, am I right there? A lot of light sources too

Thanks guys! I appreciate it.



Awesome! Competition keeps it fun.



Fewer light sources than I'd like. I'm still traumatized by FPSC and try not to waste any memory where not needed.
Bloom is high in the indoor level to keep this foggy, dream like look. Would you like to see comparison shots without the postprocessing?



-Wolf

Be cool to see without the post processing yes. thanks wolf.

Wonderful work Wolf! Wish there was a way for the website to spotlight work like this more easily. Not sure how i missed it!

Stunning stuff sir! Did you try the FXAA post process shader? Might add too much edge blur to your crisp visuals I guess.

Cheers.

Hey!

@Tarkus: I just recalled that I wanted to add some Bloom free images and have attached them to this post. Sorry for the delay. I think DOF is still on though (used to be all linked to bloom in the past. So if you switched off bloom you switched off everything but apparently not anymore)

@Teabone: Thanks buddy! I thought you never browsed the w.i.p section, hence you missed it. I agree that if GG will keep being developed, they should add good projects to the news (not necessarily mine of course, just in general) rather than those atrocious click bait youtube vids they had there in the past.

@Cybernescence: Thank you! 90% chance that I'll use it but I always tweak these kinda things towards the end of development (which is really soon) Didn't make November, but December it is for sure.



-Wolf

stop posting pre-alpha screens of the original far cry and crysis it's getting annoying




no but in all seriousness, when comparing your work to the work of dozens of people with a lot larger time frame and more competent tools, it's clear you're going places!!! I really need to play this game, it has me super excited. there's a certain cinematography of your games that keep you immersed so well that I can just tell that i'm really going to love playing this or at very least watching some gameplay. Speaking of which, can we see some gameplay??

Looking forward to this,very nice work again Wolf.

Dave

@Bugsy: The resemblance is uncanny, but I swear I didn't look these games up as reference


Those who only rely on tools are tools



I've been asking Synchromesh to record some for my youtube channel. He has the far better rig and will get the beta once I got it up and running.
Shortly after, this will be released on the forums.

@Granada: Thank you! Shouldn't be too long until release.

****************

Hey gang!

Most design work and the basic gameplay of this project are now finished. This means that I am currently held up with the advanced gameplay, soundscaping, bug fixing and of course: Good ol' details. I'm also lacking plenty of scripts from my fpsc collection that I took for granted.

Icons for guns, glitches, fixes....things just keep piling up and none of it is fun.

However, I compiled some screens of random places from the (almost) finished maps of this game. The title will be: [ R E D A C T E D] - Hired Gun -
Been hitting up community members for thoughts and criticism and will apply those in a second do over. Then: RELEASE! zOMG!

Keep in mind that this is a test game first and foremost. I dont want to do anything brave, involved or particulary original. This game is what will decide wether or not I keep making games in GG.
News about terrible bugs after building a game come in from all around the boards after all.
Despite all of GG's flaws...I WAS making this game in significantly short time and it was relatively easy to do.



















































Thank you for your patience...I know these are many screenshots that had to be loaded

Please drop me your comments and criticisms...these are always appreciated.



-Wolf

Beautiful work, Wolf. If something like this ended up on Steam Greenlight it might change people's perceptions of GG.

Thank you Gtox. I'm not sure if its such a good idea. This is just a test game after all. Only 2 levels long.

Looks good, i want to look around.I play most games on easy,if i manage to kill everything i like to walk around looking at how it was built.

Dave

Well, what can I say. Awesome. I don't know how that would run on my system, but it looks amazing. No idea how you manage to get GG looking so good.

I Like the look of this ,inside and out getting some great ideas from the pics to.Thanks Wolf .

Dave

Do not worry about it, most have cable internet and thus sufficient speed to load them within a few seconds.

It looks absolutely fantastic and I'm very curious how it will run but with v1.33 it should be quite decent in my opinion.
I agree with Gtox, your work is a breath of fresh air compared to what is currently being reviewed and would certainly change the perception about GM.

Hey everyone!

I'm nearly done with this game. What remains is recording the narration, the interfaces and the beta testing.

@granada: Always great when something I did gives people ideas! Please fire me screenshot of what you made some day.
As for walking around: There are a few hidden items in the game you might find then

@DVader: Hey thanks!!

Part of why I want to get this out there!! Finding out how these games run on different hardware.



It should run fine. Keep in mind that the game looks almost identical on low settings and runs twice as fast!



I use the same kind of approach and "craftsmanship" as I used in FPSC. Its just that GG gives me way more freedom (and some additional grief) here and there. I don't use reshade or any special exterior postprocessing in the W.I.P here (but will likely add it to the final build as the stock postprocessing eats too much performance).
Texture work and lightmapping is something else that I find absolutely essential that is rarely used in many games on here :S
Lemme know how you liked it once it hits the interwebs!

@Earthling45: I remember the days in the old forums where threads with many pictures had to have a "modem user warning" in the title...maybe I'm getting old



Thank you! And sigh! so very true. Steam Greenlight garbage really tainted our reputation. Why I often mentioned that GG should have started with one or 2 really good showcases akin to rolfys Galaxy Seed
Its clear that the cashgrabbers and incompetent are having their games done way faster than those on here who put a lot of work and effort into it.

Oh well!

I decided to give this an IndieDB presence!

INDIE DB LINK

>>>>>>>>>>>>>> [ R E D A C T E D ] - Hired Gun <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Please vote and follow it also helps more people to see this!! Who doesnt like a free FPS?



-Wolf

Oh boy this is looking something really special ...... And your giving it away ?
Are you nuts !!