I,m not saying that GG should not have these effects for those people that like them, but in my opinion
these are the most unnatural effects in video games, and I personally hate them and always turn them off.
My question here is why is Mr Bamber concentrating on these things now instead of giving what we
really want ?.
We are getting on for nearly two and a half years of development and we still do not have proper
lights, water, save load, etc,...the very basics we need to make a game, surely the basics should
take priority ? , not the "bells and whistles", they can come later.
I love what TGC is trying to do here, to make the easiest game creator, and after many years
of working in other more complicated game engines , GG is a "breath of fresh air", but how
much longer do we have to wait for the basics ?.
Yes I know that TGC is only a small team and they are working flat out, and on a personal level
Mr Vanner has gone out of his way to help me and I appreciate that very much, but I just can't
help thinking how much longer do we have to wait to finally make a game ?.
I,m sure I can't be the only one thinking this way, especially for us early adopters.

A lot of feature development which is nice and its all things we want but I have bumped into countless bugs in the most recent version of GG.

Motion blur and depth of field....errrr not exactly what I call priority. I stil think the engine needs a lot of basic stuff too many to list here but some examples 1) fix bugs 2) more improvements to the editor; allow the user to select their own textures for terrain; add more features e.g. group selection on entities for moving/copying/pasting etc; better search facility on entities (when the list is too large for you to find anything easily 3) Improvements to both Import editor and Character Editor and so on.
For me personally, you should be able to do everything within GG without relying on 3rd party software. This is just my opinion of course.

I too thought this when I read Lee's blog. Off all the post process effects there could have been, these are the least helpful. The motion blur effect has been done to death in Crysis, and the DOF effect, whilst great for screen shots, is not that practical to actually play a game with. I am told that there is a list of things that the community has requested and that gets implemented, I just wish I knew where this list was, as features seem to come out of nowhere.

Totally agree with this. Whilst playing around with GG this week, I needed a raft of 3rd party software to import models. GG really needs support for OBJ, DAE and FBX formats.

I can understand the frustration as i felt kinda the same way when things like steam support and character creator popped up but at the end it worked out and not just that
gameguru got better because it went steam.

Regarding the PostFx Discussion, to be honest am for one happy to see some love for PostProcessing, i wished since months to see some progress in that area and finally it is coming. There are reasons why that stuff is getting implemented now and n1 being to bring gamegurus visuals to a reasonable level - another selling point and that is a good thing for us as well, more customers = more developers = better/quicker results

And yes of course we lack essential things and am not even going to bother repeating that, i dont really feel frustration
as i know that am still some months away from actually being able to assemble my game and am sure am not the only one.

As long as all these new things don't hit on performance and FPS to much, of course the old question of multi-core support will rear up again, oops there it is will there be multi-core support any time soon, hope so.

Depth of field will be great for using scoped weapons and bow and arrows, crossbows etc.

Haven't had much of a chance to play around with GameGuru for a while though, have depth of field and motion blur been implemented in the latest build yet..? Or is that stuff on its way in the not-too-distant future..?

Should be very soon snowdog even more things to play with in GG

I agree with you 100% Shadow man. I have not myself plan to make much of a wip game with guru because of all the things that are missing. guru is not even on the basic level with fpsc. I still find it a bit hard to bring custom characters in guru and the lightmap is nowhere near on the same level with fpsc for inside levels. plus it don't help the fact it got broken from the last update. I too don't like the fact of the motion blur and is only another performance drain. the multi-core support does need to be the next step with some other basic things.

Unfortunately true at the moment. Since I was backing the idea for the entire project back when we were left with two options. Improve FPSCx9 or start from scratch. Community voted start from scratch. My expectations were we would get everything from FPSCx9 and more. The development of the character creator and multiplayer came even before the functions that FPSCx9 has that GG still does not.

Here is a list TGC has made under the Features section of the website - of things to come:

Construction Kit
Improved AI & gaming techniques
Enhanced explosions and particle effects inc fire/smoke
Under water swimming and effects
Lazer weapons for Sci-Fi games, Spells for Fantasy games
HUD systems; compass tool, map, inventory
Melee attack & other combat & interaction game choices
Extra characters and game assets

So I'm not sure where the priority list can be found as its not on the website. The list above is more closely related to the actual list of things people have been requesting.

multicose support does really need to be the next step fro GG since performace now are very poor even compared to fpsc .

i'm doing a tiny jungle level and my fps are about 7..

not possible...really bad,,,

same leel into unity o leadwerks have about 45-60 fps...

Kinda agree here. Post processing doesn't help me one iota in development and I think it's fair to say that most of us are stymied from getting too serious about developing while some of the core fundamentals remain incomplete. I'm personally idling and just mucking around with GG because I don't want to be wasting effort on what may well change. From my perspective, scene development is reasonably safe but core code changes can kill/ make redundant anything I develop.

Granted, our personal priorities make any specific part of GG development either important or vastly unimportant but a consensus seems pretty clear here.

I have to agree while its cool to see these effects, I think it all needs to stop today, and a plan is made to get main features working. kind of stupid to make these special fx only for another main feature to possibly break it.
I also spent hundreds of hours into attempting to make a game with multiple user's on this forum. Kind of disappointed tbh, I was around to watch the engine start, and to see it only a few feet ahead is kind of annoying, I know a few user's left the engine entirely and some where bought back, but looking back I do not seem much difference than what was started 2 years ago, besides a bit more supports, and some gadgets. I tried to make a serious game with the engine, I even worked with professional people, but with the engine lacking so much the project was put on hold, due to the wide amount of issues the engine had, it has been at least 6-9 months since we last worked on the project, and it looks like out of all the issues we ran into only one was fixed (I think). We even took all data to another engine (wont say which) and the dev's worked close with me and added features we requested in less than a month (Thats a huge step seeing as I just came to there engine) while a year later I see a bunch of gadget's that will be of no use to me on gg, but may be of use to someone making a non-professional game. Which no disrespect as I know most of the mods on here and devs. the engine to me seems like something i will not ever be able to make a professional game with. I spent hundreds of hours, and the team I had spent even longer. Sucks but thats how I feel at this point. Just my honest opinion is all, not trying to stir anything up. Just dont want to keep wasting time so what I can say is i wish something would be given out to user's, I mean seriously why was a feature vote system made if it was not followed, give us a dang timeline we can see, to show us what features will be worked on and when. I still never understood why this was not done from the start, as there would be way less people complaining. Make a timeline and follow it. So hopefully I can come back 4 years from now and see a completed engine.
Sorry for any typos.

,Shawn

I'd hate to wait that long just for it to be completed from the core. But I have already made that wait with FPSCx9 and FPSCx10 a decade ago. For now I see GG as more of a hobby; poking around with the software rather than putting any type of serious thought into creating anything with it that would be publicized. I already lost my entire production team earlier this year. Though this was due to just their impressions of what I had prototyped with GG.

I love the work Lee has been doing ,I just feel the priority timeline isn't making sense compared to what issues people are bringing up in the forums. The exact moment GG came out of Early Access on Steam, it came out with with brand new bugs and lacked the same core features. I think GG should remain in Early Access until its completely stable.

Hi,

Lots of concerns and comments here.

I should point out that the voting system only really applied to FPSC Reloaded as once we moved over to GameGuru the nature of user requests changed and post processing effects came fairly high on that list. They also open doors to other areas of development which may not be apparent to the end user, so sometimes features appear to be added out of step so to speak.

We are 100% aware of the importance of such features as improved AI, save and load, swimming, lasers, huds etc, and all of these will go into GameGuru as promised.

SC

Hi SC. Is there a voting page we can see anywhere, how are user requests collated?

Hi,

We don't currently have a voting system in place, but have been collecting data from various sources, including thread, feature requests and emails.

We will be offering users a change to ask Lee Bamber some question regarding feature, and we will answer the top 15 of these (i.e. the most asked),

I'll post details of how you can ask these questions and when they will be answered in the next couple of days.

SC

Thanks for the feedback, and happy to be roasted in view of your extreme patience and support over the years! Since moving to Steam we have been totally bombarded with reviews that suggest the graphics quality of Game Guru is below par, sub-standard, belong in 2003, total poop, and pretty much every other description you care to level at the engine. I take one look at the gallery and the amazing levels being created and I don't see it, but I go with the weight of community postings, and this subject reached melting point. Having had a quick chat with the team about which two features we felt would lift the visuals without taking a pipeline re-write and Motion Blue + DOF gave the biggest bang for the buck (as it also allows more effects at a small additional cost such as SSAO, distortions, camera lens effects and anything else that requires depth data). HDR was rejected as it would take a few weeks to prototype, and deferred rendering or an DX upgrade would take months so rejected on the same grounds.

The good news is that these post process features are now in, they work great, look great, enhance the visuals, smooths out games at lower frame rates which is a nice bonus and amazingly it has not hit performance as much as I suspected it should (some GPU magic happening in there). This week we are aiming to continue fixing bugs and ensuring a stable release hopefully for this week.

Based on your thoughts, and having discussed it with the team, I have decided to stall further work on SSAO, etc and switch immediately to a burst of performance work once the next build is tested and stable. My aim is to get an extra 10%-20% gain on one of the busy default levels, and use some profiling tools to find the best candidate to target this speed work on. Performance scored as the highest request from the community so far, and so this is the one I shall commit to. If you disagree, feel free to comment.

I am also concerned to learn some of you have had a game project in 'stall mode' waiting for more game features. I am curious (a) what the game is, and (b) what critical features are missing to prevent the game being finished. It could be that a few clever LUA commands might unblock the pipe and allow you to continue a pace while I tick off features elsewhere. Naturally if your game was about underwater bases, swimming, driving vehicles, flying into space or battling ten thousand Zombies then I can probably figure out what the road-block was. If you have a specific game and a specific feature in mind that's entirely missing from Game Guru, I need to know what it is so I can make sure it's on our list and can be sorted for priority.

@JC LEON : AWESOME news that you've produced the same level in Game Guru, Unity and Leadwerks!! I have been pretty eager to have a side by side comparison using the same assets against these tools as it really gives me a very clear basis for comparison and use my engineers eye to see what is happening in each render. Could you be a star and email me these three demos as executable's so I can see the comparison for myself? A performance figure of 7 fps compared to 60 fps is pretty obscene and as I am very close to working on performance, it would be a great benchmark while I work on speed increases. Also if you can send me the original FPM of the level, I can use it in my performance tests, as it would be totally sick to report a new frame rate of 70 fps in Game Guru, beating both Unity and Leadwerks with the same level

Hi Lee

An option in the properties panel to alter collision mode to box and NOT polygon would be nice, saves having to edit the fpe file. More dynamic lights, Multi-core support, 64bit native support, and the ability to alter flashlight power. Just published a new video on youtube, in my lost in time WIP thread. Hope the framerate can be improved, but all in all GG is great to work with so far. Thanks.

Mine specifically Lee has been skybox transitions (via script obviously) and dynamic light so I can run full environmental effects. I've got a project based on survival with an underpinnning "mission" based story, set in Australia. Believable environment is a critical factor. I can mimic somewhat with cloud skyboxes, take some scenes inside and induce "sleep", but "heat" is a survival imperative and a blazing sun at 3am just doesn't look right

Unity was fired up but I took a detour to GG to see what the fuss was about. I like it's simplicity but I can't hope to use GG for the project without skybox changes. I have raised the issue a couple of times seeking whether it is ruled in or out. My statis is due to not knowing - rather than waiting for features.

There's plenty to do while I wait, but impossible to do if it's never going to be included.

Really appreciate your input and that of the team. It's one of the reasons I use GG and don't want to go elsewhere.

mines is pretty simple, fix the static lights for lightmap so inside levels can use the correct type of lighting and shadows like it was in fpsc. finish or update the game builder so we can have at least a game over when the player does not have no lives left. also there are still some basic things missing from the character creator like be able to change the hair color and the color of the mask. also it would nice to change from cameo mask to a color plain mask. I would like to put out a demo using guru but at this point even the demo will feel incomplete. also the lightmap static light should not depend on the shadow shader but work like the way it did in fpsc as well as the weapon shader should work from the static lights. I am going to show some pics on what I mean about the static lights lightmapping effects.

[img][/img]

[img][/img]

[img][/img]

as you can see the lightmap pulls the light from static lights in fpsc. the weapon and hand depend on the static lights and not on some type of surface level light like guru. the attach file has the image of what lightmap looks like in guru. the static light depend on the shadow shader to be on for the light to show and gives this weird shadow on the walls.

Here are a few basic things that need to be fixed/added right away for people to really make some full games.

1. NPCs that can navigate inside buildings and on multiple levels
2. Control over AI so that we can have friendly AI controlled teammates that can target enemy AI. Right now it's hard coded so that characters are always an enemy and they fire on the player only. If you could create a LUA command that identified a character as an enemy or ally then that would be great. It would allow allies to fire on enemy targets instead of just the player. They may have to have some additional modes so they don't just run amok and kill everything in sight.
3. True positional 3D sound. I wrote this into my Omega Core plugin, but then it only works on sounds played through that plugin and not with default sounds attached to entities.
4. A true particle system with a nice editor for making custom effects.

I could go on, but those are some pretty big features that would really change the landscape of GG in my opinion. Along with some of the other things already mentioned.

EDIT: I just have to add that I can't even understand just how you can have a 3D engine with sound that doesn't have true 3D sounds. I mean, just how does that happen?

Theres a lot that needs to be fixed but Im glad to see more shaders going into GG. Ive been wanting more shaders since reloaded. What I really am waiting for is easy custom animated character importing. That and a visual coder or a quest gen. Oh and before you say anything like well you have only been waiting for blah blah, your wrong..... My account got messed up when we got steam support. I am Jackal and joined in 2008. Im a gold backer.

P.S Normal maps look way better in FPS creator classic. They look weak in GG

Hi Lee,

You are asking what keep us in 'stall mode'?

Here is a short list:
- missing save/load option in game
- carry over basic player values from level 1 to 2 (health, ammo, weapons)
- fix that grass bug please
- performance
- mirror effects
- video textures...
- visual scripting would be nice (see multimedia fusion event editor)
- custom ground textures
- more terrain editing tools (caves)

The first 3 points keep my game more or less in 'stall mode'.

Btw. Good work so far

Hi Lee, and thanks for stopping by the forums. It is good to know that the devs do read these posts and listen.

I think at the moment GG sits between two camps. There are those who came from the FPSC background, have experience, probably pledged, and were expecting to realise commercial games in GG. Then, we have a comparative new user base of those who came via Steam and know nothing of FPSC. I think GG is trying to serve two very different audiences. I think in its current state though, we will not be seeing any commercial releases of games created with GG. It has just been so long in development that it already feels outdated and in need of a major overhaul (sorry).

Here are the reasons I won't commit to GG for commercial releases.

Visual Quality
Gamers expect high visual quality in their games, and GG just cannot compete at the moment. GG visuals feel very dated. I know that DOF and motion blur effects would have helped a little, but what I really needed was AA and AF. Yes, I can do these on my card, but I couldn't produce a game and expect my users to have to do that too. Also, it would be good if the default textures could get a make over. Yes, I can produce my own textures, but GG is the easy game maker, and a HQ texture pack shipped with the product would straight away lift the visual quality. https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/212105

Improved Import Routines
The importer is very weak at the moment and seems pretty choosy about what will import, even amongst the only two formats it supports. There is no progress indicator for larger models, and very often a error will mean a visit to the task manager and a restart. It would be good if GG had robust support for FBX, DAE and OBJ.

Improved Editor
Simple does not always equate to easy, and the GG user and world modelling interface is a case in point. So many more options and controls need to be put in place here for world creation. One of the things I hear so often about GG is how easy it is compared to the likes of Unity and UE4, but easy does not necessarily mean faster work flow. Yes, things take longer to master in other engines, but in the end, time wise, it all balances out. It may take only a minute to work out the controls in GG, but it will take so much longer to realise the art direction and creative vision that you require.

Water
An obvious one, but the engine needs to handle water better rather than just killing/damaging the player.

I guess that is it for my must haves.... but.... here are things I would consider icing on the cake and my fantasy wish list

Terrain Import
Awesome Shaders (pretty generic I know, but look at some of the shaders CryEngine 3 ships with "out of the box")
Day Night Cycle
Weather System
Improved Character Creation (just look at the character creation screen of any RPG or MMO)
Improved Scripting Support (notepad is nice and all, but I would rather much use a system like MonoDevelop)
Improved Third Person (the existing camera just feels so wrong)
Support For Top Down Games (given that third person exists, it would be great to support this genre. "Elf needs food")
Creation Of Fully Realised Random Terrains (at the touch of a button, ala GEOVOX)
Scripting Prefabs (RPG, Inventory system etc.)
Shader Creator (take the mystery out of creating shaders for users and integrate something like Dark Shader)

Anyways, thanks for listening

hi Lee, and thanks to spend your time on the forums and listen our feels...I dont have leadwerks and unity project on my pc yet since i deleted them (I would only to try the comparisio of of the editor) but honestly I must say that my unity scene was even more strong and rich tan GG with many other effects( ssao, motion blur, AA an so on) and fps was about 60-70

I can send you my fpm file of gg level, so you can do your performnce tests, but I noicd that GG performacnes in my level decreased drastically when I placed a littlem ore animated trees in my map and some critters for scenic appearance..

btw when we place some AI into level the performance became very bad...

I think that for gg increase performance the only way is to add multicore support and 64bit support and not little fixes as palliative

and anothe thing I really need is a SCENE BROWSER since with many entities on screen is impossible to find the correct one and even when we find it it0s a plague try to select it if behind/above there are other elements that interrefres with the selection...

sorry for my bad english

All the above.
And some sort of "AssociatePlayer" command, I want (lifts, platforms, boats, etc).

Save as standalone feature need some improves, please see the Link bellow:
https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/211776

Be able to make tunnel thru the montains, and use different terrain textures in the same map.

In general more script commands are needed.

And thanks a lot for take in count our wishes.

3com

the improvement i want to see right now, is de physics system and collision.
If you make characters or critters that are small the collision get weird and the critters bounce up and down with anim change.
Larger ones like the dog have that not, but smaller and things go weird.
if you set collision off for characters(critters) they don't follow the terrain anymore.

Harry

1. Occlusion !!!
2. Multicore

if those 2 are present.. definite performance boost.

Everything else is a (nice to have) feature at this time.

1. Performance.
2. More Lua commands, especially:
2.1 Scriptable Camera!!!!
3. Better editor interface: entity tree, ability to edit more properties (position, rotation, scale ...) etc. etc.

Thanks for reading this thread Lee ...

I am glad that performance is back on the agenda, it was promised awhile back after all; then just seemed to be pushed aside for other things. Lets face it performance is king and really the main thing most people find out quite quickly, is that any game that has more than a very small amount objects in it will start to slow down rather quickly. Every project I have played with, every game idea I have tested, all fall down due to speed. Yes, I can carry on regardless and hope it will improve, but that to me is not a good way to progress. So I have gone so far, then end up putting it on hold until I see more speed. Which I haven't seen for quite some time.

These new effects are well and good, but anyone with experience of GG and doesn't own a supercomputer (even those struggle in time) knows that they will end up having to turn them off anyway as soon as their game begins to take shape. It is inevitable.

So speed and more speed. 10-20% will just not cut it really (although obviously better than nothing). The main issue we have is when you are at the edge of a map looking in to a full scene. GG is rendering far too much at once and crawls. This is where improvements need to be made. Also, AI slows things enormously. Multi-core support is needed for any serious speed improvements and of course some form of occlusion to stop GG trying to render everything in line of sight even when hidden.

I am uninterested in any of the other features at present. Third person is okay in a very clunky way; It needs aiming of the firebolt for one. Being able to only shoot straight ahead seems well a bit 90's, why can't you aim as any other game would? Also the animation on mine of the wizard is ridiculously fast and looks very, very bad. The omission of making character creator models ready to go for 3rd person is also a little disappointing. It seems to be possible as I saw a thread on it, but really it should work out of the box.

Without enough power, any game you try to make will end up failing due to speed issues.

If you adjust the animation speed in the fpe from 250 to about 100 it actually looks far more impressive ....
Not sure why that was set so high ?

I have tried adjusting the anim speed, but I haven't seen any difference here at all. This is since the last update, the initial one I seem to remember working better. I'll try again in case there was some other issue causing it when I tested a few days ago. It is also still a bit picky on opening gates and such still, especially if they are a little lower than you.

Characters that can navigate inside buildings and on multiple levels.
this is a big problem for me...
speed should be increase always.
third person should be improved ( wizard animation is very fast , the shoot is very strange, characters must use other weapons.
motion blur, etc is nice but not for now...

Well as it's a 'pile on' ...

(1) Performance - for the reasons DVader said
(2) Save/Load - I know I'll have to code some of this, but a core engine save and resume is a must for any non trivial commercial game
(3) Lua commands - two are critical for me (but please throw as many out as you can ... I like working out what they do):
(a) could the ShowImage command be changed to show more than one image at a time (ie not automatically hide the previous image, so HideImage explicitly needs to be called to hide numbered image). Possibly to be backwards compatible this would need to be an option now (I know, I know, granny .. eggs, I'll shut up). Is this difficult to do? I think it would unlock a lot of custom/bespoke HUDS and other features that could be augmented with the already implemented text commands.
(b) could we have a GetTerrainHeight(x,z) command? This would enable non character movement of planes, trains and automobiles (with player/cam onboard) and also procedural placement of assets.
(4) Characters able to function at elevated height above terrain. They do a little now, but I have to drop them in (SetPosition) then they run off back to lowland terrain
(5) Improve visual quality


Thanks for popping in to see us.

Cheers.

@Tarkus1971 : Did you know that if you space out your dynamic lights, they will blend between themselves based on distance. You can use static lights to provide the main lighting and shadows for your scene, and use dynamic lights for spot areas within your game. What game scene did you have in mind, and how many dynamic lights did you calculate you would need?

@nullptr : You can create your own skybox folder and edit the skyspec.txt file SunStrength field to zero to switch off the sun. For day/night progress through your game story, each level have a different sky box and you can use the WinZone to move between levels. The feature you 'really' want is day/night cycles and this has been penciled in, but the community have put higher priority in other areas so might be a short while before it appears as a slider control.

@MXS : Do you mean allow all static lights to light dynamic entities? Of course all static lights will light baked geometry just like Classic, but I suspect you want the 'averaging light system' to collect all static lights and apply the averaged color to the dynamic entities. Is this what you are after?

@tomjscott : We have been looking at characters inside buildings, especially dealing with adding them to multi-level structures. Would you say this was your number one missing feature that is preventing you from finishing a game? Also, Game Guru does use 3D positional sound for entities (using DirectSound), is there something specifically wrong you have noticed that makes you think there are no 3D sounds?

@JackalHead : For character importing, what 3D modelling package are you using and what preferred format are you voting for. Can you with Collada? Also, for better normal mapping, drop the ambient intensity to zero and increase the surface intensity as this will give more strength to directional light (and don't forget to set the entity shader level to HIGHEST).

@MooKai : Yes I agree save/load and level persistence is a critical (and missing) feature. It's on one of my higher lists that one, but there are two ways to implement it. Quickly or comprehensively. I have the graphics for the buttons now, just need to find the best time to do it properly as it needs to record 'a lot' of stuff Classic did not have to deal with, such as the entire LUA state engine. I could hack something in, but I've been down that road and it does not end well. Rest assured this feature has a bulls-eye on it!

@Polaraul : I think your observation about the tug of war between 'production quality tool' and 'quick & simple game making' is very apt and does give the impression of Game Guru serving two masters and failing to excel in either camp. The general feeling internally has been to aim for 'easy game making' and away from 'professional game making' which of course means demoting the importance of producing a game that might compete with triple A games of the day, and by extension avoid competition with certain larger and much more established development suites. Given the size of our team (two full-time programmers and several ancillary team members), do you feel we should be aiming to compete against the might of Unity and UE4, supporting the same features and level of depth as they already provide? Given the answer might be no, would you feel adding 'AA, AF, 2K textures, FBX support and professional level GUI for world editing' are the things user who are new to game creation might need to make their own game? Would you say we have the 'basic game making elements' covered for these types of users, as opposed to the more seasoned game developer who are looking for more depth? Happy to open these questions to all!

@JC LEON : Any chance you could resurrect the Unity vs Leadwerks vs Game Guru experiment for my performance comparison work? Maybe using a very simple level and identical assets. The Game Guru standalone should only take about 2 minutes to create a simple level, and I am guessing Unity and Leadweks are equally capable of quickly producing a standalone executable. Maybe just the Unity level you spoke of with the SSAO, Motion Blur, AA running at 60 fps with the same assets as the GG standalone?

@3com : Is there anything from your list that is preventing you from making some of the games you want to make? Naturally you would need 'AssociatePlayer' to have a lift in your game, but is there something core missing that prevents you from making any game at all? Thanks for the link to the standalone issues, I would be very happy if this was the only request on my list but it probably makes sense to address the 'missing parts' of the engine before focusing on saving the result out.

@HarryWever : Are you referring to custom characters and entities? I have a few custom models on my workbench I am combining with work to fix some of the silly issues with the default creatures from the DLC so should be making progress here soon. Generally, do you feel the stock media works fine (and presently sufficient for new users) and that I should focus on supporting custom content?

@Anubis : Well spotted. Occlusion is a big performance subject right now in the team, and we will be looking aggressively at this as part of the performance tuning work next week.

@kehagiat : Would you like to suggest a few LUA commands you would like to see that overrides the game camera? Happy to take some ideas before I add to the list with some details.

@DVader : I think we are on the same page! Speed, speed and more speed. I am setting myself a 20% gain as a little bit of moral building. I don't want to set a goal of 500% and never be happy again. Naturally the best goal is all our levels running at over 60 fps on decent eight year old PCs.

@0Alemar0 : Another top vote for NPC's inside buildings and climbing stairs, and probably a great first step in continuing the work on the AI system which is pretty basic (and sometimes amazingly dumb) at times. Once Ravey is off the character creator and multiplayer tweak work, I plan on giving him the 'A.I Mission' which will include a number of boosts to the intelligence of enemies and script-ability of behaviors.

Thanks all for your feedback. I know it seems like a decade in the making (and between us, it is going to be), but I am very pleased you're sticking around and keeping things real for us. We WILL get there, this is my only project and I have no plans to think of much else until it's the easiest game making experience on Steam.

Good to hear.


No, I need all of the things I mentioned, not just that one and they are all on about the same level of priority since I need them all. As well as some of the other things mentioned.



Well, when was this added? Because it never worked properly before and I still see threads popping up all over the place about this issue. There are even hack scripts out there to try to get sounds to fade in and out when you approach or retreat from them. If this got added recently then I can test again and see if it is working. But back when I added 3D sound to Omega Core, it was a major, major improvement over what was in Reloaded at the time.

EDIT: Thinking about the 3D sound issue. Unless you've added control where someone can specify the minimum and maximum ranges for a 3D sound then it can't possibly work correctly. If you have something at all then it must be hard-coded values and how are you determining those values?

This is quite easy. I am quoting from the Unity manual (Unity the DarkBasic plugin, not Unity3d the game engine):

PositionCam ( camera number, x#, y#, z# )
RotateCam ( camera number, ax#, ay#, az# )
MoveCam(speed# )
PointCam ( camera number, x#, y#, z# )

While we are at it: the above are first priority and refer to the Third Person camera. If I can mention a second priority, this would be to Lua-control the player, using commands such as

PositionPlayer (target x#, target y#, target z# )
RotatePlayer(angle x#, angle y#, angle z# )
MovePlayer(speed# )
PointPlayer(target x#, target y#, target z# )

Keeping my fingers crossed ...

Thanks Lee. I've done my own RT day/night so that's no issue here. My need for skybox was to trans dawn/day/dusk/night to shift with the RT script. Map switching is an option but obviously not ideal... and turning the sun "off" in Australia is not an option either

Currently I'm working around placeholder effects but knowing a D/N cycle is a possibility (see what I did thar?) is good news - as long as the cycle core is accessible(?) I'm good with it. No issue on "when" for me either, so much other stuff to do anyway - for all of us

@ LeeBamber

Games parked
1- The Quest. My adventure game (Tomb Raider style) With Cambodian temples. dungeons, puzzles, etc.
The player has to reach the opposite side, through the lava. (Platform needed)
The player has to enter a temple through the water, cross passages, to find the entrance, the air should obviously exhausted and recharged if the player comes to the surface, otherwise it dies. (remember Classic ? So, this lack)

2- A horror game (Alone in the Dark style), I worked in some houses of terror, fortunately Teamhalo has saved me from having to do all the houses, buildings, which I use (I only have to adapt). But I want houses with different levels, and the zombies working perfectly on any level.

3- A scifi game, have modeled some assets, including spacial platform release, but this tower needs a lift, to climb at all levels. Fortunately Smallg came to the rescue as usual.


Totally agree, in fact I always prefer improve permance and speed, (never get up to 16, never may fully/empty map)
I know my Intel card (see my sig) is not the most appropriate for game maker, but 7,9,16....

Anyway if you get Save as Standalone feature, so you hope at least save as Standalone, but in right mode.

There is almost nothing that prevent me to make a standard game, but finnished it.

I had said a lot of time how I love GG, and I know all will comes , so this my thought.

3com

okay Lee I am going to say yes to that but there is also a bug with the lightmap static lights for inside levels. I have upload again some more pics so you can see that the shadows on the wall are not suppose to be there. the other thing is the static lights are not working independently under the lightmap mode. in the other pic you can see when I turn off surface level the weapon and hand has no effect from the static itself. the other pic shows shadow off and surface level off. there is no static showing up because the light depends on the shadow to be on. if you look at my fpsc pic from my last post you can see in fpsc the static lights are fully in control of any object that is under it. the other shows the static cabinet with no shadow around it at all. because guru is not using the static light in the correct way like fpsc does and yes the shadow is on. I believe the lightmap does not depend on the static light system like it did in fpsc instead guru lightmap depends on the surface level light and the terrain system for shadows on the ground. but when it comes to floors and non terrain surface the shadows don't appear all. it does not matter what the object is, static or dynamic the static lights have no real effect on them. I have been patiently waiting for guru lightmap to work for inside levels like it did in fpsc since reload. as well for the game builder to have a {game over} in it. I have gave on putting custom characters in guru since the new updates have made that even more harder to do. at one time they work in reload but now it is just crazy how they work. maybe because they don't have ragdoll but on top of that the death animation went back to not working. so for right now can live with that but the lightmap and static lights needs some work. for right now I will continue my projects with fpsc and wait until guru is more stable and a game builder that has more features like {game over} and can turn off the option mode so the player can't choose the level of detail.

HI lee,
thank you for your time.


Yes i am, maybe you know i already made some other critters and animals.
smaller creatures are hard to keep on the ground, they seem to go up and down with anim changes.
The solution now is to have only one animation.(spider),(snake)
I send you the chicken with that same problem



Yes i think the stock media animations works fine and is sufficient for new users.
(hopefully soon also on the second floor)


Maybe a bit more focus on custom content, so i can create more critters and animals.

But offcourse speed fps rate is more important

Thank you
Harry

I use blender for rigging and animating. As it exports in direct x. I would love to see support for custom animated 3ds or Collada. My biggest problem is getting my own animated models into GG. My second is I cant script for crap or have time to learn it. thats why Im hoping for either visual coding, a quest gen or lots of scripts to chose from. Oh and also what happened to ambient occlusion? It use to work and looked great.

Thanks

The Editor

Widget

One of my personal biggest issues has mainly been fixed by using a different sized monitor. I couldn't see the widget before but can now. I still would prefer to have some short-cut keys for each function that's in the widget. This is because when I work on things in any software i tend to do it very quickly as I also multitask. For instance moving the mouse to the left go grab an entity from the list - at the exact same time that I delete a currently highlighted object on the map. It would be nice if the delete key would delete a highlighted entity so i dont have to find the widget tab each time. Thank you so much for adding the delete shortcut key!

Free Flight Mode

For some reason I'm constantly trying to access a highlighted entities properties by right clicking it. However this just activates free flight mode. Also I'm compelled to use right click when in terrain editing mode to lower the terrain but it activates free flight mode. I'm not sure why I can't seem to get used to the right mouse button doing this. Perhaps I just need more time using GameGuru and less time jumping between other software which requires the right mouse for a lot of functions like this. I personally would have preferred an icon for Free Flight Mode that toggles between itself and Top Down View. That way we could just click that with the mouse to switch the views. Just my opinion.

Scale Tool

The scale tool was a great addition to the editor but I think there needs to be some type of way to reset an entity's scale to default. Not a must, but it would be useful. I have at times mistakenly scaled something without knowing and then gone on to other tasks, eliminating my ability to undo my action. Then when i test my game realize the entity has been scaled. I try to manually fix it but since we can't actually type an exact scale number - it never ends up on the right pixel height it originally was set to. I often have to delete an entity that has been scaled incorrectly and bring in a new one to replace it. I also have much difficulty using the scale tool while in free flight mode and things go crazy if im too close to the entity in this mode.

Spray Mode

Spray Mode: If you click on an entity and then press I and place it on the map it just places on entity at a random location. I understand that you now have to hold shift at the same time, however the entity doesn't turn yellow like before, to indicate to the user that he/she is about to spray that entity all over the place (or not).

Custom Terrain / More Terrain

One thing that I have noticed brought up many times in the forums and its actually a feature I was hoping for when GG had its first release (as Reloaded) - is the ability to add custom terrain or additional terrain to the same map. I know how to create a new custom terrain set but I find we are quite limited to just 4 types per map. I'd love the ability to have a lot more terrains to paint with on the same map. Nothing drastically important but it would be nice in the future.

Game Play Experience

The (single player) games you can make with Game Guru don't have the same quality of game play that most general 3D games provide. While we can spend lots of time on visuals and making all kinds of wonderful looking models and visual appealing things the actual game play factor lacks heavily and its not entirely all due to level design.

Water

With the engine starting you off with the ability to expose water its usually the first thing people tend to do when they open up Game Guru. Unfortunately you end up finding out very quickly that the functionality for water isn't yet worked on. So the player cannot swim or interact with the water. This makes for some very unrealistic maps as the player dies when he steps into it. I understand that this feature will be coming sometime down the line - but i really do think its an essential, considering its the first thing people tend to play around with when building a map and its the first problem they tend to discover. Visually having water in your map looks great in screenshots but has no gameplay value to it what so ever.

Melee Enemies / Zombies

One of my biggest issues with the melee AI with zombies and other characters is the damage that is inflicted to the player seems to drain your health rather than have a single delivery. This makes it impossible for a player to survival even being near a melee character for more than 5 seconds. There is no actual battles you can create for your players to engage in due to this flaw. I always reference FPSCx9 but however the zombies and alike from it functioned very well when engaging in a melee fight with the player. It was simply fun and in GG it is not.

This brings me to another issue I have with the melee AI. A lot of enemies are able to hit you at a great distance. Sometimes through walls and fences. A good way to see how far they can hit you from, is to test in 3rd person and watch how far a zombie can hit you from. Its not realistic and makes the gameplay far too challenging. When dealing with a swarm of zombies you expect your player to have some ability to navigate through them, but its impossible if they can hit you from quite a distance away and drain your life instantly. So the attack AI needs to be greatly improved for melee characters.

Enemies With Guns

The enemies that use weapons don't seem to ever back step. They just love getting up in your face like an annoying mosquito. This becomes a problem when the player and the enemy collide physically. Most games today don't allow for enemies to shoot at such close range. They tend to try to get out of melee radius of the player so it can then shoot him/her. You can tell a bad game when an enemy runs right up to your face and shoots you. An example of a good game would be Fallout for example: the enemies are programmed to get within a specific radius of the player depending on what type of weapon it has equipped. It also has a limit of how close it should be to the player. For instance you will never see an enemy with a rocket launcher or a shotgun shoot at close range. You may see this in multiplayer games among players but it just doesn't commonly happen in single player top-notch games, as its not realistic and its more annoying than anything.

An example of how the AI should be designed in the LUA:

Enemy with Melee Weapon = aware radius 650 | attack radius 90 | step back radius 80
Enemy with Handgun Weapon = aware radius 650 | attack radius 500 | step back radius 100
Enemy with Shotgun Weapon = aware radius 650 | attack radius 450 | step back radius 150
Enemy with Grenade Weapon = aware radius 650 + attack radius 500 | step back radius 400
Enemy with RPG Weapon = aware radius 1250 | attack radius 1000 | step back radius 400
Enemy with Sniper Weapon = aware radius 1500 | attack radius 1200 | step back radius 200

Aware Radius would tell the enemy to get in attack range (radius) of the player. Step Back radius would tell the enemy its too close and has to move back to attack radius before it can use its weapon, if player remains within melee range for too long it will use a melee attack on the player (switch weapon or kick). The numbers i'm using don't reflect the true distance within GG, they are just examples.

* For whatever reason the enemies' running animations don't look as smooth as they used to. They seem a bit jittery.
* Enemy muzzle flashes don't seem to be working anymore.

Sound

It doesn't seem like the sounds during gameplay are occurring in 3D space. I could be wrong, but it seems like if a sound emits from a great distance from the player... the player can still hear it as if it was close by. I noticed this at times with the zombie growls. It almost sounded like they were right beside me yet they were barely in view. 3D sound isn't just some time of way of making things sound nice. Its actually a device players use to indicate the proximity of events, enemies and alike.

Randomized Sound Effects

Some more sound variety would be nice as after a while the game feels very static. Reminds me a bit of some old Playstation 1 games. I believe there are some randomized sounds going on in GG already - like the player step sounds seem to cycle through at least 3 different sound files. There needs to be more of this. For instance the male player death sound is only loading one wav file, yet there is a "finalmoan2.wav" file present in GG that I don't think I've ever heard during gameplay. I think the death sequence should randomize between the two. Also when explosions occur its quite important to have a variety of sounds in the event that multiple explosions happen to close together - it sounds quite artificial if only one sound effect. Fallout uses at least 5 it plays randomly from. Makes the game feel a lot more dynamic and real, audibly. The quality of sound is so much better where there is a variety to it.

Performance

I don't really have a solution for this but I noticed the trees tend to be the biggest FPS drain. My only suggestion would be to have the trees use billboard LODs when extremely far from the player.

That's about all the things I felt were incredibly lacking with GameGuru at the moment and why I can't treat it with any commercial use. Here are some of the features I'd love to see worked on after the core stuff is touched on.

Feature Wish List

Post Processing

I really love the work that is currently being done with the post-processing and I'd love to see all the ones we had in FPSCx9 added / reinvented as well. Like the night-vision one was one of the coolest.

Weather

Volumetric rain and snow that moves depending on if the player is moving forward or backwards or left to right. Some post-processing shaders could come in handy here to for effects like wet lens and such.

Inventory Menu

Lee, you had some really interesting prototypes going way back. Would love to see them make their way to GG in some form. With all the work that Dvader has been doing with his scripting skills making those RPG demos - really makes me wish we had something more visual. For buying, selling, trading. This could lead to a dialogue system to. Rather than just the one liners on the screen.

Day and Night Cycle

I'm assuming this will be possible in the future and I can't wait to see how it turns out. The mock up version we had previously wasnt too bad. Just needed some more touches. As we will need it to modify the atmosphere lighting depending on the time of day... and also modify the lightray depending on the time of day. Also the colour of lighting surface, fog etc. So a lot of work would be required for this but its one of those features that you kind of expect when your generating a big open world. Should be worth the wait when it comes around.

Hi Lee, and thank you for taking the time to answer.

I think your answer to my post does illustrate the disparity between those who backed the project as FPSCR and those who purchased GG via steam. Was I expecting FPSCR to be a Unity killer? Absolutely not. I use Unity and do not enjoy it. Unity however, is competent enough to get the job done, and is a tool I can rely on. As an original pledger though, and one who enjoyed FPSC, I guess I was hoping for a half way house. Certainly something more capable than GG at present.

I think Lee there are two things here, but to answer your question first, no I do believe though, that the original pledgers do not fall into this camp, they are probably not new to game creation. Also, for those even new to games creation, what happens when they get good at their art? Will they too have to move on from GG.

If I am honest, the elements are there, but the nuts and bolts to make a finished game are not.

I think this post by Teabone sums it up pretty well for me.

@nullptr : Think of some LUA commands that you would like that could allow you to finish your day night cycle. I already have the 'internal' ability to load TWO skies and transition between them, perhaps some controls for this?

@3com : So a few LUA commands to control platforms/lifts, air supply value for player and characters on multi-layers. Would these be your top three?

@MXS : Send me your lightmapped sample FPM level with the settings you thing will show you static lights and static shadows, and I will take a look. You may have found a bug!

@HarryWever : Thanks for the models, just what I needed, this has now been fixed and will be available in the next build (V1.01.002).

@JackalHead : Across the pond in AGK land Paul has been working on a COLLADA importer. Send me your animating 3D model exported as a COLLADA file and I will see if I cannot create a bridge and nick some juicy code. Thanks!

@Teabone : I've taken your core suggestions and copied them into our database. There will be some duplication to what is already there, but I liked some of your ideas so we have it on a list now. As a hint, I will probably be picking those features which will satisfy both new users and more experienced users alike, so everyone gets a little of what they want.

@Polaraul : I think we agree that the more advanced feature requests come from the expectation that Game Guru should share half-DNA with something akin to Unity or UE4, and that the end result is not a fun game creating experience but a finished product you can go out and sell, and for that game product to be taken seriously as a modern title. I also think we both agree that this is an ambitious goal and is not something that can be done overnight. It took almost two years to drag FPSC Classic into the outside world, and by expanding the universe we created a larger body of work for ourselves. Even re-creating half of what Unity/UE4 can do would require a sizable team (TGC has two guys) so as much as we are going in this direction, it will still take some considerable time, and even as we sneak up to these massive products, they are still developing and will doubtless continue to evolve their tool-set. In regards to actual nuts & bolts (and teabones post), I am looking for specific 'show stoppers' that prevent a game being 'finished':

The feedback from TeaBone is good and I have copied it to our task lists, but do they constitute reasons not to finish a game? The EDITOR feedback is more about 'better/faster editing' but does not prevent anything being created, it would just take longer with some frustrations.

As to game play, if we can agree Game Guru cannot create EVERY GAME IMAGINABLE right now, but could 'finish' certain games, then we could be brutal with the suggestions below. We all agree driving, flying, crafting and tetris are not possible right now, but other games can be 'finished' surely? Below are some workarounds in pursuit of a 'finished' game:

Water = Create games with no water bodies or seas that define the edge of the game world

Melee Enemies / Zombies = Scrap the pre-build Zombie scripts and refine them to suit your specific game play needs. A single damage shot instead of a range can be achieved with a new variable array and a few extra lines of LUA.

Enemies With Guns = Again you can amend the scripts to keep enemies at a distance, or use AI_COVER.LUA to keep them on the spot

Sound = The 3D sound issue has been reported, we just need a good step by step and we can fix this bug quickly

Randomized Sound Effects = Would lack of sound variety prevent a game from being finished? What about using different SOUNDSET values through the different levels, would that not allow enough variety to complete the sound for a finished game?

Performance = Raising the minimum specification would allow you to guarantee a specific frame rate for your users. Would cost you users, but would also resolve the issue of low frame rates being experienced

Post Processing = Currently good for a finished game

Weather = Do not support weather cycles in the first version of your finished game

Inventory Menu = You can use LUA scripting and the HUD graphic commands to create your own basic inventory system

Day and Night Cycle = Someone is working on a day/night cycle and with a few extra LUA commands, we can see this working soon! For right now, your game can be set in the day on level one and night on level two no problems.

I know the above feedback is a little brutal, restrictive, a little tongue in cheek and very much a corner cutting exercise, and of course we will be dealing with each of these features properly and adding rich details to each, but in terms of be able to 'finish a game', are we missing anything truly fundamental or are we straying into the murkier waters of 'good to have'? I think we all agree that we should implement 'core needs' before 'nice to haves', we just need to be brutal, identify them and put them into an order most of us would agree on.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm actually jumping into LUA right now to see if i can fix most of the problems I've been facing with the stock scripts.

When I started this thread it was not my intention to "ruffle any feathers", I was just curious as to why
things were being done in the order that they are, and a simple explanation of that would have been
ok with me.
Like many of you I have a bit of a passion for what TGC are trying to do here, and I have done my best
to support them by making the best screen shots, the best single player map, and the best
multiplayer map that I could do in the time I had, and I also made a lot of the new content
for the new DLC packs.
On reflection, I think we should cut Mr Bamber a bit of slack here, I,m starting to feel a bit sorry for the
poor lad,....but not too much, because now that he is on Steam, he will be well on his way to finally
getting his first million.
I guess the old saying is true,...."patience is a virtue",....carry on TGC.

Being realist, I know there is not many time for you guys, the day just have 24 hrs, so there is not accurate to demand many things, so lets say these are my top 3 right now.

My "save as standalone bug", prevent me to finished game; but this does not worry me now, since I'm working in another áreas in meantime, I can wait for best time.

I know you team working hard and under pressure, so I'll never want to increase it.

As aside note, I had discovered another funny applies you can do with GG, and all them nothing to do with games, as example, I am working now in my Art galery, with my own artwork inside, and it can be useful for me, for present my art to others. Occasionally painted oil paintings on canvas.

You can expose a idea to your clients.
You can file a product.
You can have a previous idea, as will be seen that sofa you want to put in the living room, even before you buy it.

Even you can create a fantasy world and enter in.

And of course you can make a standard game in few minutes.

For all this I'm happy with my investment, not claim here, and all the support you need.

3com