Last time someone asked about this they got rather savaged by Wolf so I ask very tentatively...

Is there an estimate as to when the upgrade to DirectX 11 will be fully integrated? Also, once it's done will the construction kit be next on the hit list?

Lee has already been working on the DX11 .
Integration starts after the holidays ( Monday I assume ) and will continue throughout January until implemented.

from what I understand ...Save & Load Progress and Bots to navigate stairs / heights will be the next features added ...
These were the top features when the C++ conversion was finished and preparation was made for these ...

That's all I know right now

OK. Thanks. I haven't checked the voting results for a while. The construction kit must have slipped down from no.1.

Yay

2nd the yay

Save and Load is important, and bots too, but maybe we should follow the Vote where Easy Building Editor is first. So that they can be sure, the bots can also go in building up and down. I see it coming, that we get a building editor and the AI is stuck in it... Just my thoughts.

So no yay from me

https://www.game-guru.com/feature-vote/results

I think save/load is important and also bots navigating upstairs (indeed if you watch one of Ravey's earliest Twitch broadcasts you'll see that I have been requesting this for some time). However, there are videos on Youtube dating back over a year showing some early ideas for the construction kit and they have whetted many an appetite. As stated above, if the bots are to navigate on different vertical levels then we need something to create those levels. Remember, this is the "easy game maker". Not everyone is good at modelling stairs and multi-storey complexes or structures with high platforms. There are 'construction packs' available in the store but I view them as supplementary rather than substitutary and in some cases as placeholders for the ConKit.

The problem is, the vote list is constantly changing, save&load were probably at the top of the list when he started the work, there's no point stopping what he's already started because the votes change after he started

Maybe the vote results should and are being used as a rough guide to the community's priorities. Other factors need to be considered, I guess. To follow the order of voted-for features too rigidly might be inefficient and possibly destructive. I'm sure the team are applying common sense while taking into account the recorded priorities of the backers.

I don't want the bot AI to be tied down to the easy building constructor (if that's still being planned).

The AI navigation for FPSC worked ok because of the segment system but it was very basic and we need a much more advanced system for GG which can handle ladders, stairs, lifts and lots of different building styles.

I would use Resident Evil 4 AI as a good template for GG (with guns of course!). Enemies were able to break through windows and climb or jump down from multiple heights. You could also slow them by knocking down ladders or blocking entrances which they would eventually break through.

it is a rough guide and as far as i am aware and as lee spoke once it is a sort of survey to see what is most needed or wanted, but he was goping to follow the votes loosely so as to make things work more fluidly as in no point having building creator if you have no physics system as an example??? so i am over the vote system. i see hundreds upon hundreds of buildings on the store. as for the way it is i buy scripts and 3d stuff. i personally think building maker is less needed than a thousnd other things. it is an add on. but i think character creator needs continuing and finished first before a new creator which will be half done. the creator for character is half finished. so why start building creator before that?

Your not really to far off there .. As I stated above .... These were the top features when the C++ conversion was finished and preparation was made for these ...

However ... Many of the smaller easy features on the board may also be added whilst this is being done and there is also a chance that it could be unavoidable that to integrate one voted feature another may have to go in as well ... But this isn't bad news ..

Its certainly going to be a good year that's for sure

I've been catching up on the forum posts and there does seem to be a lot of 'leftover' items and bugs that are probably best dealt with before we start anything new. As tempting as it is to start something fresh, I think it's more important to ensure what we have now works as advertised (as expected). No harm in bouncing ideas though about what the EBE might become, and I like the modular style of the Resident Evil 4 buildings. Simple doors, windows, multiple layers, ladders and outside gantries which can be navigable by the player and also the enemies/allies. A good easy system should allow anyone to construct large impressive structures quickly that look good and work 'out of the box' without specialist art or coding skills. Keep the ideas (and inspiring video footage) coming!

Nomad Soul, did you just shoot a woman in the bottom!?!

I hope the DX11 update will include antialiasing, that would be great!

The difference with RE games, is that what you are calling AI isn't really AI at all, where you see them doing things like climbing ladders and breaking windows etc is really scripted cut scenes running behind the gameplay, the AI didn't decide to climb a ladder, it was pre-decided they would do that and the scene was recorded and played back during gameplay.

It's one of the reasons I really don't like the later RE games, and the later Tomb Raider games, I get that there is a script to follow to complete the game and experience the story, but the way they've been made lately kind of really restricts you into a narrow line to follow, it's one step behind being a game on rails, which I hate, I like to have a bit of an explore while i'm playing a game.

not always, if you watch the video you clearly see them climbing out the window and they can still be killed etc so it's not just a cutscene.

I didn't mean a cutscene like a video, I meant they're preprogrammed to go that way, it's not the AI that makes them do it, you'll notice in multiple play through that the same characters always take the same routes.

ah like a scripted event, yh that would make sense (not played the RE4) but they do make use of it in the other RE games too.
it's not a bad approach though if you're capable, it's much quicker than trying to get an AI that can do everything.
with a combination of the 2 you can get a very smart seeming AI - look at alien isolation for a great example of scripted events to make the alien appear at specific times combined with a smart and relentless logic that can find you hiding in a locker (of which there are many)... but yes it does lean heavily towards the "narrow" or "linear" style of game.

i shouldnt worry though because GG's AI doesnt really have the luxury of that style 'out of the box' because by it's very nature 'scripted events' are very specific to 1 game and wouldn't fit the way GG works at all

@lordjulian - Not me guv, I'm much better than this guy!

@Belidos / smallg - I think I understand what your saying but if you've played RE4 mercenaries mode (available after completing the story campaign) you just run around a selection of maps in a time attack mode and the AI can still climb stairs, ladders and enter doors / windows trying to get the player and its all in real time i.e. not part of a scripted scene. I get what you mean that some of its scripted though. It would still be great for GG I think.

definitely.
i think AI should be able to navigate stairs, swim, open(/close) doors, climb ladders and even climb out open windows (i.e. realistic windows without obstacles if the door is locked) as a standard feature at least.
(when AI is actually fully functional of course)

@smallg

While climbing stairs should pose no problem climbing out of windows or climbing ladders for example would be a problem, as I don't think the current AI has any sort of animation frames to deal with climbing out of windows for example.

I found this for reloaded from long ago ...so I'm guessing they still have the animations on hand ?

I wonder ?

[edited]

The climbing animation is in GameGuru and works.



LOL! I had the video posted above playing in the background and bandicam recorded the sound from it, and the commentary was almost perfectly synced with my animations in my video lol

It is not just animation that is needed. The physics character controller that the AI uses
would need to modified to move up ladders. Also it would need a path finding algorithm
that can handle multi level geometry. Game Guru uses the Bullet Physics Library so it should
be easy to implement.

are thee any topics on the forum that stay on track?

I'm hoping the DX11 upgrade is no more than a couple of weeks away considering its the most pointless upgrade on the entire list.

People seem to think that many things are tied to DX11, when in reality very few DX11 features are useful outside of internal optimisations, and even then much of the optimisation needs to be done on the game itself rather than being solved by DX.

Given the high quality of freely available open source software that can be added to commercial software i'm surprised that gameguru is still a gimped ginger inbred 3rd cousin relative of FPS Creator after 2 years of development.

rendering engines, physics, AI, path-finding, customisable UI/UX systems all freely available, some of which are superior to even some of the more popular game engines, and all free, FREEE!!!! :p

anyway sidetracked a little, but i was going to simply point out that recast has all the features people are talking about, up stairs/slopes even jumping up and catching ledges, the base system for getting over obstacles could be simply modified to climb in and out of windows, probably even smash closed windows before doing so (something iirc RE4 doesnt do)

Well I think the OP's questions were answered in the second post .....
I think its more evolved than gone off track

Bloodknight if you are right about that then i really too think it's odd that they haven't used any of these! Especially when they're only 2 programmers so it would make it posible to make features much faster!

Open source license often requires that inclusion and use means that your own software using it is also kept open source and free. That is why commercial companies wont use it in their own as it tends to interfere and negate their own license, since TGC wish to offer a license for users to make games without restrictions this would be a good enough reason to avoid further complicating things with inclusion of another license by using open source.
This is a very simplified explanation for those who are always going on about using free open source software in this product, it is likely more complicated than that but it should be understood on a basic level that it could further down the line mean you couldn't sell your game commercially. You need to read the full license of the open source to see if it would or wouldn't affect this or if you have to include credits and or payment for commercial use ( this would include all users and not only TGC ) and I reckon TGC feel it is best to simply not get into it rather than complicate things for their end users, you cant just randomly suggest they include it without researching yourself or it stirs things up for no good reason.

This also goes for paid for systems in TGC's case as every end user creating and selling their games are using the code and therefore may be individually liable to payment for use. You may not think it matters but legally it can get really complicated and best avoid it and do it yourself when your a business who is offering a license of your own and you don't want to be adding a dozen other licenses to your product.

I wont be getting into any further discussion about this, you either get it or you don't

i already covered that with this...


given that nobody in this community seems to know that there are usable licences is evidenced by the no usable licences in the free models threads of the forum here, meaning (mostly) the downloads are pretty much unusable in any form of commercial product, and by that i mean that "No licence is virtually legally indistinguishable to copyrighted items"

MIT license allows you to put any code or portions of code into any product period.
GPL to which you refer to your one sided post is poison and should be pretty much ignored where possible

as far as assets are concerned CC0 and CC-BY (which is what the artists should be using instead of no proper licence) are the common usages, you can even add CC-BY-SA if you want to ensure nobody profits from altering models especially free ones.

I know licenses are a compl;ete mystery to some people, but blindy asserting that open source licences are restrictive does not help anything.

OGRE is MIT licenced, as a rendering engine this could be used in closed source commercial engines like gameguru, recast also MIT, same conditions, thats rendering and pathfinding, theres at least 2-3 GUI options that allow custom creation of UIs instead of being forced to use the same UI for every game, Bullet physics which the game already uses.... thats 3/4 of a working game engine right there.

perhaps you should do some research instead of making FUD type comments about stuff you dont actually seem to understand.

Lets make an agreement here......lets avoid each other

I have to agree with rolfy here, your well on your way to alienate the entire gameguru community, good job !

[edited my own post]

Lets all calm down a bit, Please.

It has been determined thru the higher ups of TGC that the use of open source programs to add functionality to this program was not going to happen. Everything that is, and will be added to the engine will be developed by the 2 programmers that are working on Game Guru. (Lee and Ravey).

It was determined that using these open source programs was not going to be in the best interest of TGC and the plans they have for Game Guru. At this present time.

I know waiting for features or what people consider the basics of what a game engine should be, are not what everyone wants to do. People have plans to get there game finished by a certain time frame on their schedule, which is not the current schedule of added features and requests from TGC.

We all want certain features and some have been waiting a very long time for them. But everything will get it turn in the addition to this engine. We all just need to be patient and rely on the voting feature results.

Thank you.

Please explain what ive said specifically to alienate community members, other than critiquing the product thats worse than being personally attacked by rolfy and the "user of the month" i assume you get that reward for fanboiing new users who dare to ask questions!

@myke i dont question who has made choices, i do however question why they made those choices, which i think is perfectly legitamate unless of course you think dictatorship and totalitarianism are the correct way to run things. Considering at this point the democratisation of the development process which i guess i'm not allowed to comment on lest i get fanboi attacked yet again by "user of the month" and told i dont belong.

All i do is ask why, and just to point out that there seems to be no real official announcement channel of any kind for this product with the exception of the steam page maybe (and no a personal rambling blog from one developer is not an official product development channel), Official comments cone at the very least from 3rd party ears it seems, 3x i have asked for links to official posts and only one of which was given, a link to a 3 year old post on a different forum. It leaves this forum as the only place to get information, yet officials and experienced as so called 'respectable' members like "user of the month" are allowed to make personal attacks on individuals which i'm pretty sure is a violation of the AUP.

I'm sorry if this isnt calming things down, but i refuse to let somebody effectively telling me to GTFO be the last word.

I have done nothing but express my opinion on the product, share some hints and tips based on my knowledge and experience (see note below), and ask questions, if thats not allowed then please let me know.

note: since i have previously declared my hatred of licensing doublespeak i have spent vast numbers of hours over the past decade researching what each and every part of most software and digital licenses generally represent. So after posting details of certain things to be all but practically told what i said was BS followed by a passage of what can only possibly be described as FUD to put fear into the minds of people who dont have experience of dealing with licences, something i personally consider pretty dangerous considering that bad information on the internet is almost impossible to erase and counteract.

The upshot is that up to this moment i have not said anything with the intention of offending or even annoying anybody in particular, even if i am critical of gameguru on occasion.

I can not speak for the programming team or who makes the decisions as to why the chose the way they did. They have the business plan.

I am a volunteer who relays information back and fourth from the development team to the users and the users to the development team. Fixing issues as I can and directing people to the information needed if it is attainable.

You can email lee@thegamecreators.com at any time to ask such questions.

But this thread does need to calm down a bit.

Thank you.

Hi, can you sent me a link to this engines? I searched a lot in google and did not found a single one which fits my needs. Most of them are directx9/opengl or 2d.

Thanks in advance

I do not think DirectX 11 is needed or will be practical because, most users of GG do not even have
a graphics card that can run GG properly with DirectX 9.0c. A lot of new games still run in DirectX 9.0c
and produce good results if you have a good GPU. For example "Just Cause 3" is DirectX 9.0c and has great
visual results if you have a GPU that can handle it. I doubt very much that a DirectX 11 upgrade of GG is a few weeks
away or even a few months away. I am assuming that most users of GG do not realize the amount of time it takes to
implement a new feature in a game engine. As for open source libraries it is not as simple as drag an drop them into a
game engine there is some hard programming that takes time to implement and most open source libraries are unfinished
or full of bugs that need to be fixed just to get it working. I know this from experience since I developed the rag doll physics for GG(check the credits). I am only suggesting that GG needs better funding if more is to be added to make GG a great game engine. Maybe they could have a subscription plan that would fund new features for those that subscribe. It is not fair to TGC who have been more than fair to the community.

need? or want? openGL has been faster and more advanced than DX for quite a while now, now i'm not a huge fan of tesselation (its a cover for bad artwork in some instances, and when used badly it creates even worse artefacts and performance decreases) but OpenGL had it first by a long time.

Also i'm not going to list other engines in here, but searching mit licence and game engine in combination should very quickly point you to a number of open source engines you dont even have to give a passing mention of credit for, to such an extent that you can take an MIT licensed product, rename it, re-badge it and actually sell it as your own game engine. Of course the dev community is too savvy to let that go without comment, but its still possible :p

The only reason i even brought it up in the first instance is that there's a lot of buzz about AI and pathfinding being missing or needing work (i'm nopt eve sure theres an A* algorithm at play here, AI seems to stand static if theres an object between it and you) and recast has been used on a fair number of quite big games as well as more than one game engine, and does more than any other pathfinding product on the market and is still being constantly worked on, reinventing the wheel is never a smart play when free wheels are available, a decade or go there was no options, maybe even 5 years ago, but now? you can build a custom game engine in 6 months for your own games if you have that level of experience and know how.

As for potential parts of game engines, for pathfinding you have recast as mentioned.

Rendering: Ogre, bgfx, allegro, SDL2 (i know the last 2 not strictly rendering engines, but as a relatively simple interface to DX/GL dey is close :p )

Model Importer: Assimp (which will probably be needed anyway since .x has been deprecated for years; gosh, even .dbo is more common than .x lol)

Physics: Bullet (OMG gameguru already uses this, which makes sense given all the previous comments about how OSS is evil and cant be used..) ODE, Newton there is also Tomahawk, very old but functional :p

There are also lots of other generic tiny libraries that you can use if you are building your own engine/game LibCg , zLib, LibRocket, SQLite, stb just a few ive come across, so BSD, Zlib MIT all the nice goody licences keep a look out for those.

GPL is pure poison, avoid, seriosly if you see a GPL zealot, cross the road, do not engage in any form of conversation.

LGPL, is a lesser evil, yet in some ways, this is the backstabbing friend of the in your face GPL, can be used if you have a lawyer brain, or better still, a lawyer friend.

Also theres a another thing i meant to mention regarding rulfys earlier comment, even the evil GPL library only has certain limitations, for example, products of a GPL licensed software are not GPL licensed, otherwise every blend file and blender model would be unusable and useless

@Stab in the dark
I can see why the want for DX11, i just think that the minor gains do not warrant the time and effort, especially when you consider that just getting DX11 ready does not magically implement the features. All the advanced parts have to be coded in the engine, and at the same time, some kind of fallback also has to be coded in the engine, (alphabet)XAA (pick one), SSAO, etc etc

As for physics... well, thats always a ball buster, not a lot to choose between bullet and Physx, the annoyances of physx are offset by insane levels of documentation, while bullet is still not quite complete in some areas. Either way, each and every part of phyics has to be implemented in the engine, again just adding them doesnt magically include all the features.

For anybody whos interested, grab the source code of any game engine that implements physics and see how the tendrils of the physics engine spread

well not in response to anyone and this is a heated thread, by jove!
if people who love to delve into engines, thats great why not make your own if you need a good challenge? if not be patient i am sure there will be lots to tinker with at some point.

why open source or add to YOUR engine you crafted? i am not sure everyones views but i am on the fence with it all. if it improves the engine with no change to anything and you want to then great, but if i made an engine i would want it to be mine and no one elses. i would also not let anyone tinker with all my hard work i would say make your own if you are that clever! but i aint and happy with the simple engine end product. also this is not a dig at the mad professors here, this is a view i would take had i made the engine myself. i would also not complicate things and not add someones product as things change with licenses and can suddenly shaft you. look what microsoft have been trying with w10. they are sneaky and on updates put disabling program to make my w7 not work and have been trying pressure to move me to w10. i am on w7 still. i will not be pushed i will come to 10 when i choose. (rant over)

anyway i am happy tgc have their plan, and i am happy if they give programmers extra open bits. as long as i am not restricted by it. also same with full engine parts. but to be fully honest . i prefer it to be a more single malt engine. fine and pure and the best. it will get there. so in response to all the clever guys who contribute thank you especially small g, who i think should get an award for all his effort and work. which as i say he does not have to give out but he puts a bit of humanity back in the forums and always tries to help so thank you to him. i always have free models if ever you want them small g. i will also from many like harry w, small g, rolfy and wolf and devcore and the others who give without asking in return . i will start a free model thread myself. to help put back into the community. to show good faith. i wish people were more like some of the mentioned guys


last bit. dx11 will add a lot more if you actually delve into its benefits vs dx9, speed ups streamline and better running, a ferrari in the 60s was superb, and i am sure a ferrari of now would not have too much change ( cars are not my strong point but you hopefully get the idea) but under the hood the engine will be so much more advanced, roads have speed limits so cant really push the engine, but on a racetrack you race the 2 1 will be faster and better at handling safer and more comfortable, etc etc. so x11 does pack a lot under the hood, but i am happy for anyone to get the full correct pros and cons
happy days all and lets chill a bit guys

I think that was somewhere in my rant about what direct x actually is as well... however, as you notice, said rant has been understood as being "savaged by Wolf" ...and I did it with love.

Thank you, Science Boy and yes:


I'm delighted to hear that it will be implemented at all. To be honest, I'd never have expected that Some people will also get a chance to see that it won't make their games look better on its own which is an educating experience. It can and likely will however improve basic rendering.
I am particulary (still) looking forward to a more matured lightmappingsystem and proper postprocessing.



-Wolf

Honestly I have to say while dx11 offers some really nice features, I don't see why it would be necessary to implement other portions like dynamic lighting/etc. All of that to me seems like it should be well within the featureset offered by dx9.

It sounds like a case of getting tunnel vision on something that sounds like a golden goose but really isn't. Instead it ends up being a massive endeavor that puts you back further than you were. All those additional features that dx11 brings aren't cheap either; they require extensive GPU/Graphics Memory. And while some of us are sitting on 960GTX's with 2gb of ram, not everyone is. As a result, it's going to end up excluding a lot of the lower end makers in this crowd, of which I suspect there's a great many. This alone can be evidenced by the sheer volume of freebies they were getting hit by in web traffic.

I realize it's nice to always go after the new and shiny, but sometimes it's worth polishing the product you have before jumping up to something gigantic like dx11. That's a huge undertaking for a conversion of an engine. And while I wouldn't kick it out of bed for eating crackers, at the same time there are VASTLY more important feature sets which need added that are well within the scope of dx9.

That's my two cents, at least.

here's a quick demo i put together to show GG is definitely capable - obviously it's not perfect because i put it together in a few hours, given that Lee/Ravey have much more control and more time to spend on this stuff i see no reason why it couldn't be included in the core scripts (when AI gets worked on again)

It is Always amazing to see your scripts.... awesome work....


Harry

That is very interesting. Great looking script.

Thread derail ---

Very nice dude, from one AI geek to another - that's slick. You're not too far away from some pretty next gen stuff there.

Have you considered adding solid state lookup tables to give 'personality' to the chase algorithm? I.e. to give a % chance to flank, % chance to take cover, % chance to chase, etc. Hit me up on PM if you want to discuss in more detail.

--- end thread derail

@Smallg

Why oh why don't TGC add your scripts to GameGuru as part of the package ... ?
You have quite a collection now and many are better !!

Beats me ?