Now Game Guru is officially released as a full product what do you all think of it?

For me, I think it is a fairly good update. I've been working on a silly little game on and off since April. I added 3rd person control into it, expecting issues. On the whole it worked fine, all my scripts worked great and worked exactly the same as in FPS mode. I would say that I noticed flaws, for one the standard gate refused to work at all. Very odd, considering the Lua code is fairly similar to my own scripts. So the only real bug I could see was with the official TGC stuff.

I'm sure everyone baulked at the lack of up down control with 3rd person and also with the lack of zoom in out with the middle mouse button. Still I see it as a good start and although I am surprised at the lack of up/down support, think it will soon be added. I think it is perhaps just a lack of gaming experience from Lee (too busy coding to play games). Considering the Matrix game suffered from a similar issue I think we can forgive him (They really messed that one up).

The character creator is pretty good. Fair enough the options are a little random. I can have a Centurion Helmet but no outfit for instance... It is very basic at the moment. However, as any toon I make works great with my new modern AI scripts I am a happy bunny. I can make civilians fairly easy now. We just need more options with it. I was a little disappointed to see no animation options, I hope they will be added in future updates.

The DLC is perhaps a little disappointing. As a Gold pledger I own much of the media in most of the packs. Many are from FPSC Classic, which I already own and have got updated models since, with the Media 400 pack I got ages ago, as a Gold pledger. All the packs have new stuff, they are just sprinkled with all the old stuff. As I have limited (very) hard drive space I find this fairly annoying, I don't want duplicate models all over the place. As such I have chosen the media based on the new stuff I can see and avoided obvious old media where I can. I'm happy enough, but couldn't help feeling we are being pushed the same stuff as a bonus all over again. The new stuff is great. I recommend Wizard of Id's pack Death Valley highly, it has plenty of great new buildings in it. I ended up getting the Fantasy pack, Buildings pack and Mega Pack 2 as well, as they seemed best value regarding new items. Obviously this only concerns long term Gold pledger's. Otherwise these packs are great for anyone. I was tempted to get the pack with all the cool Blade Runner decals, but the fact I owned virtually everything else in it already put me off. I hope they will be available separately

All in all a good update. I was impressed (and surprised) my game worked with no bugs other than the default gate issue. It is fairly involved for a GG game. Call it fun work to help me work on my survival scripts. I'll add a screenshot and allow you to guess what sort of game it is .

There are still mainly areas the AI scripts for the enemies could be improved. However the engine does "work" and I haven't experienced any crashes or anything like that in quite sometime. So its safe to say its working. But it needs a lot of work still in many areas. Its nice we are adding features but hopefully we can go back and look at other areas that need work. For instance billboard LOD's need to be in place for trees. Its a must... trees are the biggest FPS drainers.




I have noticed that i own 3 copies of quite a number of the packs. Because I started converting all the ones I purchased for FPSC-Classic. I then received the Legacy Pack... then the "new" DLCs this week. So in total I have 3 sets of the same pack which equals out to being I think over 1000 duplicates. Though I have nobody to blame but myself as I selected the DLC's before there was any information as to what was inside them. The little additions are nice however that are included in each. Bit surprised I got the Winged Demons twice as I never owned those before. Its all good, since they were free for me I can't complain too much about that.

Performance updates are, as you say, much needed. Hopefully we will see some soon. It seems we are the only 2 people on the forums at present I really should go to bed now, it's 5:49 AM here lol. Performance is a big factor, I don't mention it as it was not part of this update. I too want fairly big improvements to game speed, as I suspect do many if not everyone. I'm happy to let this pass with this update though, hopefully we will see some speed improvements over the next weeks (according to Lee's blog).

this new GG version (V1.01) that i downloaded has caused my machine system to completely crash down for several times in one evening. something is not really stable. this never happened before! a lot of graphic programs make game guru crash when running in background. sometimes when i started GG i just got a black or a blue screen, sometimes GG started and crashed right after the start. something is strange here

i really like the new DLCs, there are only a few objects that i already have. the death valley pack is amazing.

i don't like the 3rd person. i think it's not looking good yet and it's nothing i would like to play or create. but i think it needs a little more developing then it might become better like more characters to choose, more weapons and more detailed movement. you can say it's not good, i wouldn't have made it but also that it's the first try and the first try is never the final one. so let's see. no matter how much i like or dislike this feature i wouldn't make a 3rd person view game so my opinion is generally negative towards making 3rd person

i don't really know what i should think of the character creator. actually i think it's good but it's still a little limited. i guess in the future it will be better. but a good idea i guess. i will use it in the future.

i don't know why it's not early access anymore. i think it's too early. GG still has a major problem with resource management / performance, this should be the #1 on the to do list in my opinion.
i think this is the biggest problem GG has. and i think it's the only real problem i would like to have fixed asap.

I generally don't run anything else in the background when using GG as I can hear my fan in my computer in overdrive. Just to be safe.



I really wish i had picked up that pack as it seems to contain a lot of things that I don't already own. May purchase it sometime down the road.

I downloaded my entitled packs as a Gold Pledger and then brought the rest. I'm a happy bunny. I love the new content packs as DLC, they are good value and provide you with lots of assets.

The character creator is good and easy to use.. it's defiantly a nice touch.

A few pointers though, firstly third person with the "Wizard" character is a bit strange, you can't really look up and down, have no aiming reticule and when you hold down the left mouse button he seems to enter a spasm, occasionally launching fireballs.

While I'm very happy with this release, I can help but think more could be added to round the product off better. Still we have reassurance from the team that they will be adding and updating on a regular basis and look forward to extra things.

For the moment I'll be sticking with GameGuru, I have tried Unreal, Unity, CryEngine... but still come back to GameGuru.. simply because it is nice and easy to use and the other software I have real issues with learning due to their complexity. Out of the box GameGuru gives you everything you need to create a game and for that I recommend it to people.

I agree with Nuncio, I think it's too soon to come out of early access although GG is usable there are certainly a lot of issues to resolve and features that require adding. 3rd person is too restricting at the moment, can't look up or down etc, you should be able to use any character for 3rd person. Character is ok but obviously needs more flexibility/functionality eg. adding animations (using ANIMER for animations), but not a bad start.

ok guys.....

I like game guru ...... I always liked ( I started with fpscreator ) .... but , let's be honest .

Game guru a full working product???????????????????????
to be honest ..... it is still too early to say that. There are still too many problems and so many things still to be implemented .
for example.....the characters do not walk inside buildings or any other object ...... walkways, bridges ... etc.etc ...... so you can not create a level indoor only.

the terrain editor is still limited .
( voxel sculpint or trilinear terrain sculpting would be ideal ) . Waterplane ???? where are the waterplane ?? AI characters is still very limited . Where are the particles effect ? .... Ok ok .... for now we are the decal ...... but the decals are not good to make fire , smoke or other effects which is best done in 3D .
Terrain painting is too limited.....the user must be able to choose your own textures to paint the terrain


I will stop here ..... but there are so many .... many .... functions to add and problems to solve


I think it will be many years before we can talk about full working product

forgive my english

well the way I heard it, and weather this is true or not I don't know but..
lee is backing away and not putting so much time into the software apparently.. not that I know about this 1st hand but its something I heard so makes me wonder if its being rushed out the door for that reason.. will it go the way of x10 is the next question on my mind tbh and fair..

I only just noticed that GG was out of early access! I reinstalled it on my system yesterday to look at the new features, and there was nothing that made me want to keep it on my system. There are still noticeable bugs from previous versions, and a lack of visual refinement to the engine. There is still no AA of any sort ( I am beginning to wonder of this is because of performance issues. This late in the development cycle a game engine should have some AA ).

The third person controls, whilst a nice addition, just don't feel complete enough. At present only one character is really supported "out of the box" and the camera view for third person feels really unnatural and clunky. The character creator too needs a lot of refinement if this is going to be a feature of the product. It is nice, but I would have rather the time been spent on FBX importers for my existing character models, or a pipeline to something like Fuse.

As a gold pledger, GG is very far from what I thought FPSCR would be. It almost feels that since this product became GG and available on Steam, the product scope of GG becomes wider and wider. The problem is, there are still so many issues with the core product that need addressing for this to be a game engine that I could produce a production quality game with.

I am sorry to say, but it steel feels like an early access title and I think should have stayed that way.

I don't think it is a game engine, and I have noticed along time ago sadly that even lee and tgc stopped calling it that...
its now gameguru and the branding says "game maker" not "engine"... fact sadly that put me off tbh.
also I haven't used this software in along time now but imo. though it has come along fairly well in some areas its still lacking the fundamentals of an engine. the top down only view is gone thankfully which helps a lot but it feels rushed out the door..

I wouldn't worry too much about the product leaving early access. All that really means is that the desired v1 functionality is now in place at a basic level. The product is now entering what will basically be perpetual beta for the next however-many years as these features are refined and polished and new ones are added. Updates will continue to roll out the same as during the EA stage.

In my mind, it was too early to call 1.0. There is so much core stuff missing to be able to consider this anywhere near a game development engine "maker" or otherwise. I see a push on asset procuration and less emphasis on the actual workings - a financial imperative perhaps?

Had it remained an EA I would be less inclined to be critical but given what's missing..... it's a concern for me. Painting a wall with a pretty colour does not rid the wall of termites.

For Lee to state we needn't be concerned it's RC suggests he knew what we'd think. Some serious love needs to be attributed now it's "official". I just can't help wondering why it needed to come out of EA so early when (imho) it's a long way from cooked.

Assurances we may have but that doesn't fill me with any kind of gushing loyalty. I've staked time and money here. Yep. We all have. That doesn't alleviate MY concerns.

I think the engine is OK, not unity or UE4 but, it is workable and reasonably quick.... we do need improvements in dynamic lights casting shadows properly and water at different heights, soft water edges. and the ability to tunnel into the terrain.

How optimised is the engine.... ? the ability to alter the test game and standalone screen rez would help to, instead of auto detecting desktop rez.

The AI needs a big overhaul, AI needs to be able to walk in buildings and climb stairs etc. navmesh?

proper 3d sound too, with entities assigned with sound can fade in and out when player is near or far, lua can do it, but it should be hard coded.

Spotlights, better flashlight, particles overhaul.

I could go on but I think we all want GG to be great and I'm sure it can be....

I've no idea where this information came from, but it's completely untrue. The entire team is 100% committed to continuing to develop and improve GameGuru for years to come. In fact you can expect the next update very soon.

SC

Welcome back, almightyhood!

I recently made a post about this:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/212007

I really like working in the engine but something I do not like Is That You 're always limited to what the developers actualizen and I Always Have to stop in my game , I want to be free to use programming to continue and not be limited each upgrade

update the list of lua script please!

I haven't checked yet, but is there an actual completed manual for this release? Reasons given in the past for not having an up to date manual was that it was early access. Now that it's not early access, we should have a comprehensive manual now. If not, I would like to suggest that someone from TGC considers putting one together.

As I understand it, GameGuru is still in beta, which is why the version is 1.01 and not 1.1, so there's still a long way to go before it's officially finished, and even once it's reached the lofty heights of v1.1, improvements will continue to be made.

Improvements will always be made. no matter what version it is.

it really depends what the goal before release was, the basic engine works now and it's just the "features" we need and lots of them - nearly everything is basic but it is there in some form (or the core is there enough for it to be added)

i can't see TGC releasing the product on steam after all this work and then turning around and saying sorry guys but that's all now.... i don't think they'd get many future customers.... however i can see why Lee "might" be able to finally let more people help out or not feel so under pressure - it's much easier to let someone work on implementing features than it is to try explain how to finish parts of the actual engine.



this is how i feel from my personal experience, the engine is pretty solid now with no major crashes (for me at least, i'm sure there will always be some, that's normal for computers)
the engine is not AA quality (and it never will be) but i see no reason it wont deliver on the "easy" game making tool it has been branded.

i'd like to see performance tackled again
mainly the terrain using far too much,
LODs or some way to reduce the huge drain from lots of objects (most notably small stuff like scenery, trees, plants etc... they just dont work as individual objects as they currently are and should be handled more like the grass,
effects like smoke and such causing huge fps drain - just let a few AI shoot at you and that's enough to drop the fps to the floor (i posted this as a bug already but no answer yet)

and yes of course; features, features & features... keep em coming, there's plenty more to add, we all like the new toys

Tgc needs more time to launch a more or less complete version, so in meantime they giving us a demo to play.
Somebody want more performance and better resource management.
Others want new features to play.

If tgc is devoted exclusively to work to improve the performance and management of resources, then the people who want new features that obviously claimed those features, and vice versa also is the same.

First I want to clarify that I agree 100 with all of them, I also want all that.

But I think TGC is working between two rivers, trying to please everyone, which is not easy, since no one will get everything that is waiting, only a small part of it.

When you want to build a house, you discuss possible changes and modifications in the field, and then you build the house based on the agreement.

Tgc only has presented the plans for the house, now we are discussing all possible changes / modifications / addictions, and on this basis TGC will build the house, in which the not too distant day, we'll live all happy and eat partridges.
At least I hope so.
Just my thoughts.

3com

these are two fold, to introduce new features that are requested and get feed back from them, and two, to allow these features to be widely tested on the greatest variety of machines, for functionality.

The more i look at this the more it seems was ripped off as a gold pledger of reloaded. not only not got what was expecting
when i made the pledge. But have any reloaded pledgers looked to see if there name is in the credits.
or was that changed like everything else.

I know after this i will not be backing anything else

Hi Blackbear ..

How does the current build differ from what you expected from reloaded ...You may have some good suggestions
Almost everything so far has been community requested .

Oh maybe i am missing something maybe alot of the posts are wrong
so all the model packs i got with reloaded work in gameguru if not what is the point of the packs
if i cant use them. unless they just convert over also what about the horror pack was meant to get all i can see is zombies

The horror pack entities are mixed in with other entities, they don't have a folder of their own.

Well for me it's simple... I definitely can't model, I can code basic stuff in Lua( but Smallg has taught me so much with his scripts so I thank him!!) so GG is just what I need to make the games that I want. It does exactly what it says!! I'm more than happy with the DLC's I've picked and the 3rd person addition is what I've been waiting for. I'm totally happy with all TGC have done so far and I'll be more than happy with what ever they add in the future!!

Hi Gtox
I dont know what you class as a horror pack but to me a few grave stones & graves isn`t
take a look at the model packs from fpscreator and see what you class as horror.
i Know i didn`t pay 62 Quid and wait two years for this

http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2001&page=ModelPacks

As a gold pledger, I don't feel ripped off, but I am disappointed about the direction this product has taken, and is now heading in. I had hoped that FPSCR would build upon and improve FPSC, but at present, I just see GG just locked in a perpetual beta phase of trying to become an all singing, all dancing game engine.

There are still major features missing which should be sorted out before this went out of Early Access:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/212004

They should have taken fpsc classic + X10 updateed them give them better decal system etc
least you had working water you could swim in . not water where you go in and die like you fell of a cliff.
Fps = First person shooter if people want TPS = third person shooter they should have gone with dark basic
I can see this going like X10 . if it makes it till this time next year i will be surprised

I won't really say this is going down the same path as X10. There seems to be a lot more promise for GG's future. Trust me though I was one of those that had doubt. Every 2 months or so GG usually implements at least one of the fixes to a concern of mine or adds a "feature" that I've been personally waiting for. I won't lie though; I was close to leaving GG when i felt I was being ignored and consistently told various things will not happen or not be focused on. However those vary things were brought up by larger majorities and thnn suddenly... they became priority.

The improvements that have made me stay:

The snapping tool improvements
Free Flight Mode (I was asking for this since day one but was told it would never happen)
Zombies
Iron Sight and Zoom (can use iron sight and zoom when out of ammo as well - excellent)
Improved Terrain Editing Tools
FOV Slider

There are few things that make using Game Guru very frustrating to me though I hope they will be improved or added at some point.

What needs improvements:

Performance - is one of the biggest problems currently with Game Guru. For an engine that drops you into a vast terrain it is unfortunately you cannot fill it up and expect solid game play. There are very little optimizing features (apart from quality dropping) and again the distant trees are not using billboard LODs, which they should be. I have discovered that games like Fallout and Skyrim build a huge single LOD of all static trees and rocks that takes hours to build from the map in the editor and that was the secret behind how they were able to get away with massive worlds and great performance. They also use something called cells for limitless outdoor maps. But I think all that GG really needs is billboard LOD's for the trees and more culling options.

Swimming - I expected the ability to swim since the first thing you find out when using Game Guru... is there is water. I hear its coming so I won't complain too much about it not being here yet. I understand a lot of animations will be needed for this.

Widget Display - I have a VERY hard time using the entity widget. It is very small and hard for me to see. I don't have the best eyesight and I have found no possible way of making it easier for me to use it. Its slightly transparent on top of being quite small. Because the widget is an actual 3D object in space there are other issues presented with it when moving around in the editor with it open. I can't suggest a better solution. All I know is its very difficult for me to use and I think I'm the only person dealing with the struggle.

Segment Entities - with the construction kit not in place, we are left with the snapping tools. The snapping tools have been improving quite nicely as time goes on but there is just one thing i find very difficult when compared to the ease of use with FPSC-Classic. When you select say a ground title in GG and then place it on the ground in snapping mode... the entity will appear on the ground but disappear from your stamp (cursor). This means you have to move your mouse back to the entity list window and select the same object again each time. It can be very tedious when you are building a large space. In FPSC-Classic the entity stamping mode allows you to easily draw segments on the ground. GG could have this ability too. Also it be nice if pressing the delete key deleted an entity. Since I struggle with using the widget menu.

Better AI - I know the AI has come along way since last year so I won't criticize too much. But I think we all know there is much to improve.

Multiple Custom Terrains - It would be great if we could have more types of terrain sets on the same map.

Particles - Much like what we had in FPSC-Classic would be nice. Where we could turn any decal into a particle system.

More LUA Commands - I won't list them all here. But there is a lot more commands that have been requested by several community members that have a vast knowledge of LUA scripting. It would also be nice to be able to configure the flashlight functionality via LUA as well.

I made a little video in 2013 uploaded in Jan of 2014 of the features I was hoping Game Guru would have by now...



I'm not asking for much.... but that's pretty much the few left over pieces that I feel Game Guru is missing that to me says its not a complete engine without. But that's just my fair opinion.

@Teabone

If you hold 'shift' when placing an object then it remains on the cursor - you don't need to select the entity every time.

Heres another quim i have
I think all model packs should have been updated to work with gameguru before it was released.
Gameguru should have been a fully working product before Third person and multiplayer and that
Third person and multiplayer should have been plugins that you could install if wanted.

@ blackbear the Asylum building is part of the horror pack. It is kinda all over the place, would have been better as say horror pack

I can see people have some strong opinions on GG at the moment. Hopefully our concerns will be addressed. I don't think GG will ever be an Unreal killer or even that close, but it sure can be a lot better than it is at the moment

For those who have seen it some of what we were going to get two years ago might give you idea
as to how long you are going to have to wait
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=28DYXaI2of0
and check news letters from issue 177
http://www.thegamecreators.com/?gf=newsletter
where are the now

@Blackbear, You seem to be trying to hammer some point relentlessly, redirecting people to other engines, and always talking about what we did not get.

I think you will see the pace of development has quicken quite a bit in the last 6 months, and the programming team has done a great job in rewriting this engine module by module. providing us with outdoor terrain capability, Multi player that functions, Third person view, new characters, new media, new shaders, Free flight editing in the editor and in test game.

They have come along way for the very small team they are.

You act as thou there are 100 programmers in this company, and an art department of 100 also. Not really seeing where your coming from.

The pace of the development is way faster then it has ever been since I joined May 31 2010.

And developing a program on the wants of 5000 people or better seems to be working, as only a small percentage of users are complaining on what they think they don't have as of yet.

Sure there are things that need to be finished, and there are things that need to be started. But every day constantly bashing or saying check out Unity or which ever program I find not useful at all and seems to be childish games to me.

Lee posts his email everywhere, got a beef, email him and discuss it with him. this program has had 31 updates since launch on steam adding multiple new feature, so still dont know what your trying to accomplish, except mayhem.

GG is amazing for a small team, I love it, and the devs are very helpful.. spending days trying to help with problems. I will stick with GG for as long as it is being supported, and I see that happening for a long time.

So Lee, Myke, SC, and anyone I forgot a big thank you

I am having issues with snap with the Cave sections in Mega Pack 02. Also, the artwork leaves a lot to be desired - there are plenty of visible seams. In doing a test level with just one of each of the new characters from the DLC's(I have all except the Buildings Pack) I had a couple of bridges, buildings and about 8 decals along with one tree and the frame rate was terrible. Has anyone else noticed these issues?

Note: I also owned a lot of this media already.

My specs:

Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 38 °C
Thuban 45nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 666MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
Dell Inc. 0GK1K2 (CPU 1) 34 °C
Graphics
DELL ST2420L (1920x1080@60Hz)
1024MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 5700 Series (ATI) 51 °C
Storage
931GB SAMSUNG HD103SJ SATA Disk Device (SATA) 32 °C
931GB Western Digital WD My Passport 07A8 USB Device (USB (SATA)) 29 °C
Optical Drives
Optiarc DVD+-RW AD-7250H SATA CdRom Device
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

I agree Tarkus1971 I'm loving it. my only real beef is the LM. the lights don't work well for inside levels and the reason I'm seeing is for that is because shadow shader is getting in the way. the static light need to produce the shadows and lights without the need of the shadow shader on. this needs to be the next of fixes before anything else because the light map is pretty much useless for inside levels.

as a gold member from the start I'm happy with GG. I would back this again.

also there are still some basic things missing like be able to change the the hair color and the color of the mask. also it would nice to change from cameo mask to plain mask.

yes dynamic lights need to cast realtime shadows.... but that might push the engines limits at the moment. Take a look at my Lost in Time Forum Post in the WIP section for some nice inside lit screenshots, it can work ok so far.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/211807

@ Pirate Myke
For 1 redirecting people to other engines it was 1 person and i surgested they try for what they wanted.
2 show me in one of my posts that i have named any engine apart from the above terror engine .
which has nothing to do with the game creators
3 your the only one who has said about unity i never mentioned it in any of my posts
4 maybe you don`t mind waiting 2 years for what you paid for i wonder where things would be now
if all the pledgers didn't pledg

That all i have to say and will be deleting it from my steam account

Something that 3com said made me realise that's exactly what's happening for me. I'm coming at this from a coders POV and the lack of much of the access to the engine core is where my frustration is coming from.

Totally cognisant of the dev teams intent to keep it simple but I'm still inclined to think there is some hidden magic in GG that could be unlocked without it having an impact on simplicity for those that don't want the "power" as it were. I'm only confused whether these limitations are intentional or whether it's a case of simply not implemented? Perhaps a release of "The List" might allay a lot of questions?

For mine, I can't draw a circle unless I use a compass so the GFX in GG is *my* simplicity component. Others, better at modelling, might be poor scripters and hanker for better scripting/AI. Perhaps that is where some of the angst comes from. The team is stuck between 2 "types" of developers and is trying to cater for both and remain true to the intent.

I'm pretty comfortable with where it's at and my personal want list is actually quite small.

Here's my "must have" list.
- Skybox transitions.
- Ammo count.
- Player speed.

My "want" list consists of 1 item
- More terrain brushes.

Yep. That's it. Pick me. Pick ME!!

Both, really...

On one hand, the hereto now goals have been to get basic functionalities accounted for. All that really means is that the framework is in place. That means there are a lot of things which simply aren't fleshed out or as good as they will eventually be. Basically everything is 1st or 2nd pass at this stage with many more passes to go.

On the other hand, The Devs have the very unenviable position of making good on their promise of an "easy" game making platform. To put things bluntly, a lot of things need to be idiot proof in order to achieve that. This is the reason for not having a dropdown weapon selector for characters and other (temporary) inconveniences. Advanced users want more slack in the rope so that they can run more freely but given too much rope there are basic users which will hang themselves every time.


It's like The Ark of The Covenant. Laying eyes on it would melt faces.

Nailed a good portion of my thoughts actually. Just the initial 1.0 release has highlighted the disparity between what could be possible versus what should be possible. 3rd person? That's nice. Now what about and this... and that....?

Hence my comment whether there is some intentional "nobbling" of what GG might contain. Damage limiter? The proverbial Pandora's Box has opened and more resources would be spent placating/supporting ignorant masses (I use the term ignorant literally, not figuratively) than income generated.

On the "Covenant". +1

I'm not trying to moan pointlessly but I must admit I did assume that GG would be in early access until at least the construction kit was made. After all we have a character creator now which is brilliant, but for further level design I've been waiting on the construction kit to make an appearance.

not sure if this is the right place to post or not.
but i going to be off work for a bit and what i want to know is that with all the bugs that need to be fixed.
what if i spent two weeks building a level and then there is an update to fix said bugs
what guarantees are there the update is not going to knacker the level .
or have i just wasted the two weeks

Its very unlikely this would happen and hasn't yet to my knowledge ....
The main tip is always keep backups of your maps so if one ever does fail for any reason at all you can go to a backup
If that fails as well then it could turn out to be anything but we can usually help or find the issue for you ...

I would confidently keep building without the worry of updates killing your maps