Just feel I should say that this thread is in fact in GameGuru product chat and therefore the other product isoff topic, besides I think the OP's actual point wasn't to raise awareness of another product but to point to the reason for what they see as lack of development on GG so it really hasn't gone off at all

You're completely right!

It may be true that it is just another product and not the end of the world but lets face it anyone creating games be they coders or modelers and media designers are going to be considered 'Artists' and these folks have a tendency to be passionate and fiery, this is what drives them. Users and developers alike

Totally agree.

@ Lee
Please, can you elaborate a bit, in what areas do you need more help?
I am an application programmer (ms office)
If you need to automate a repetitive task that takes a long time to accomplish, I can automate this task so that you can do it through a few clicks of mouse.

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?750003-RESOLVED-Excel-2010-Automation-Project-Problem

I develop my own applications, but use visual basic, in c ++ I have little experience, so I can't help much in these area, but modeling or something like that, for free and with or without the thanks; I just expect you working on the engine core, and doing us all those features than you know all we need and wanted.

3com

Na Rolfys and other posts are fine ... It was obvious this was going to go into the ...what about GameGuru ... thing ..
cleared the air on a lot of things at the same time and to be honest its mostly been very mature without throwing dummies everywhere

Plus a bit of humour chucked in here and there to keep the moral up

BTW !! If you have backed then say hello in the comments ....
Kickstarter message boards are usually quite a laugh

Thanks all for the encouraging words and advice. I certainly intend to switch off my brain Friday evening and spend a week in my home town of Wigan vegging out and contemplating the universe, but rest assured and fear not that I will return with my batteries charged and ready for 2017 with vim and vinegar. In the meantime, and related to a request I made earlier in this thread, if you can think of any CORE features (to complete GameGuru as a finished product) which we can add to the voting board, feel free to post here as I will be scanning this whole thing again next year as there are some great todo items listed here already. If you also recall any items that I promised in the past, if you can also include the link to the original quote, we can also resolve any past expectations by adding those too. We 'should' end up with a comprehensive and definitive list of just about everything we all agree are essential to put GameGuru in a good place. Once I have compiled this master list, I can get an idea of just how deep the hole I am sitting in might be. I rather suspect the voting board list is like watching the visible part of an Iceburg

Just backed... good luck with it

Harry

@Lee, I certainly hope you read this and perhaps it's not wise for me to type this after a few beers. But if you want GG to go in the right direction, perhaps you should listen to what the Veterans of FPSC and GG say what should be introduced into GG. The voting board is somewhat a misguided direction for development.

With the recommendation of the vets you can bring this software up to the standards that people expect. FPSC was mainly community driven thanks to senior users being able to script their own features. Make every setting and command available for via LUA so 99% of everything can be controlled via LUA. This community has amazingly talented scripters.

Improve the pipeline of bringing in assets. Support animated fbx files and more file formats.

64 bit support. This will allow more baked lighting in general and the baked lighting in GG does a brilliant job.

As a showcase in GG I don't have much to show as I dabble in GG and use another engine currently for game dev but I do feel the community drives this product just like FPSC evolved.

I have patience with GG because it is an evolving product but in order to drive it forward quicker it needs to be driven by the people that invest their passions into it.

Landman

Honestly, the cited figures are not much at all if you factor in that at least three staff (Paul, Lee and Rick) need to eat and earn some living. I suspect most all of the money TGC earns gets pumped right back into the business as it does in my own self-ran business. The Steam titles and Driving Theory offered a decent boost but I completely understand their lack of affordability for additional programming resources at this point.

1) Particles editor , anything named 3D engine has that
2) Navmesh with Recast integration
3) Allow DLLs , so we can enhance games with many frameworks available
4 ) A new animation visualizer , so we can define "idle", "walk", "fire " animations names and use them in Lua, without bothering with animation frames if frames changes
5) up to 8 terrain layers with bump map, specular, parallax
6) Use light probes with physically based shaders
7) Expose C++ SDK for advanced coders , integrate users contribution in GG
8) Multi thread graphics rendering , terrain ,entities, physics each on its own thread

GG graphics looks like games from 10 years ago, but GG can produce very nice graphics and lot better AI with some changes, some people from community could help in many areas and their contributions would make GG grow and become better a lot faster, like it is done in Unreal 4. Because collaboration is always better and faster to get things better.

Why my posts get deleted ? because i said GG has 10 years old graphics ?

The forum conversations are a bit split. They are on Steam, Facebook and here. Ironically also on Youtube comment sections. I put together a Discord a while ago but I think GG needs an official one. It might be best to have people ask small questions there and get answers or rant there and get solutions rather than on the actual forums.

When Discord chat was introduced it quelled a LOT of negative posts in forums on many product websites. Also people who were lost were able to get real-time support more quickly from the active community.

So here is the unofficial Discord chat:

https://discordapp.com/channels/204773420511002624

Many game development companies and software developers now use Discord as a quick way to take care of FAQ and a great way to share resources. They even have voice chat and the ability to post videos and images.

@Mouaa: You post was not intentionally deleted. It was in the middle of an approval when 2 mods pressed accept. Things happen sometimes in the computer world, and I am sorry if it caused you any grief.

I see by your post before your question that you had a copy of it.

Thanks.

Merry Christmas all.

If you want to see more of what "My World" is about then there is a Live stream Today at 4:00pm GMT / 11AM EST

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tgc/myworld-imagine-create-play?token=a0783d6b

Okay I'm starting to get the bigger picture of what MyWorld is and why it was created.

Earlier in FPSC Reloaded's development, it was becoming clear to me that there was a lot of focus on providing a product for youth. A lot of the convention interviews were proof of this. There was a lot of dialogue around youth focused content. Age restriction control options followed as well as the cartoon pack.

The Construction Kit prototype was a pretty big indicator of this as well. Since it had that Minecraft First-Person look to build method of constructing. Even with a 3D model of a hammer or hand. Very kid friendly. This was not an ideal solution for building a game professionally however; as it would prove to be difficult when attempting to be precise. Since you would be restricted to the in-game First-Person look (without mouse cursor) rather than operating and building in Free-Flight Mode, which is an industry standard method of environmental design. Which soon followed when much of us complained.

The Construction Kit, in the eyes of youth, would have been an incredible tool that they would be familiar with, in regards to Minecraft. As it appeared to be a fun and more engaging interactive experience for building structures. Similar to the F9 Edit Mode of which most of the more experienced developers additionally complained about. When Free-Flight mode was finally introduced to Game-Guru the F9 Edit mode seemingly became depreciated by most. As for myself, I haven't used the F9 Edit Mode at all after the Free-Flight Mode and entity widget controls were introduced. Two features I strongly advocated for back at the time.

There was yet another hint that Game-Guru was aiming for the younger demographic; when out of no where FPSC Reloaded was changed to Game Guru with "the easy game maker". On top of that, it was categorized as being a "game" on Steam. Which I'm sure MyWorld intends to do the same. I'm glad to see Game-Guru is now in my software category. But this did cause quite a stir in the community when it was labeled as a game rather than software.

So it seems Game-Guru was trying to be two different things really and trying to tackle two different demographics. As I had mentioned a couple months ago, I had proof that a lot of the questions I was getting in regards to Game-Guru issues, were coming from youth (some as young as 12). These were people not interested in creating a stand-alone nor in any commercial aspects of what they may create. Also much less likely to purchase DLC or anything from our store. More of the Garry's Mod and Minecraft type crowd. I still get messages from them to this day and I'm glad I can now direct them to MyWorld.

EDIT: I do vaguely recall Rick mentioning Garry's Mod and Minecraft in GG's regard to inspiration.

So it is my understand that this is why FPSC Reloaded became Game-Guru. And subsequently why MyWrold was created after the realization that Game-Guru can't pretend or try to reach all demographics. With that said I totally support MyWorld and am very much looking forward to the future of Game-Guru. This should help keep a clearer focus for TGC's two demographics.

Or maybe I'm just a conspiracy theorist...

Wow, thanks for pointing all that out! It should have been obvious to me all along, but sometimes things just go right by, lol. I do wonder what is currently the average age of their users. Based on the folks around the forums here, I would guess well over 25. I never read the Steam page so I couldn't guess what it is over there. It does make sense to target a younger user base if that is the case. One bonus: kids are much less likely to rant about missing features, lol.

I've watched it and my thought is that TGC has gold in its hands with 'My World'.
Xan is almost 9 years old and Gab is 12, both are very addicted to minecraft.
Ocasionally they are busy on a map together to create their world.
This will certainly be a hit and i know for sure that they will love this new game software.
What i did not see and what i wonder about is if there will be prefab walls and ceilings so kids can build build their own houses.

Really nice presentation Lee.

My Grand Daughter really enjoys My World. Will play it for 3 to 4 hours at a time.
It runs and looks decent and it is my hopes that some of the things I have seen in My World, will make it's way into Game Guru.

But I want to customize everything.

Have a game that does not do what they want, or a bad server connection, ark is one example due to glitches in the game.
Then you'll learn how kids can go ranting and complaining, holy hell

That being said with the younger Generation taken care of with My world ..Lets rename GameGuru and beef it up a little bit
J/K

My daughter is already knee-deep in Game Guru, taking care of the vegetation placement in our games. But I guess she would like MyWorld, too.

is it possible to have a survey/poll to find out exactly what the age groups are that use gameguru (on a regular basis) I for one would be interested I have used and have all of TGC's products and sometimes I must admit I feel I should not be using gameguru that I am to old for it LOL that's one of the reasons I have been hammering Blender tutorials and LUA scripting so that I can justify it not being for kids.

I am 51 years young I have 3 daughters 2 step children and 3 grandchildren with another on his way in January

I think a poll on the actual age demographic would be very interesting

Too old? don't lose the child in yourself

I think your children are blessed with a fairly young dad and grandad.

LOL thank you I must admit you are never to old to learn something new I mean a few weeks ago I thought a polygon was what happened when you left the parrot cage door open and a sprite was a can of pop

@Teabone : Thanks for breaking it down, and very pleased you will be backing MyWorld. With MyWorld catering for the younger age range (if it gets funded) we can slowly move GameGuru back towards its roots as a serious game maker, with more emphasis on importing, customizing and producing games that can stand up against other modern indie games. AppGameKit will then complete the trio for those users who want the whole hog and code pretty much everything from scratch. We can then create some messaging that will channel users to the right product for them.

Please also continue to post features you feel are missing from GameGuru (that don't appear in the voting board and have not already been mentioned in this thread) as I will be using this thread to compile the ultimate list for 2017. You can leave out any nice to have items so we can focus, but I want to get a complete picture of what GameGuru might look like if everything you consider essential is added to the product. As some have suspected, it could become scarily good when finished!

@GraPhiX:

Thread on the ages of some of our users.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/212210

@Lee -



Access from lua to shaders would be great - if we could get some user variables that can be set via lua that the shaders can read then some very cool advanced effects could be made visually that are in context of the game by being able to set shader paths through script (alt textures, different effects for health points, under water, in space etc). Maybe at the least being able to switch post process shaders?

If we could switch between third and first person by lua, some great game play could emerge (and may compensate for the lack of full control over third person for a while) in that player could wander around as third person but drop into first for weapons, jet pack and the like, moving back to third person when the drama is over

Cheers and Merry Christmas.

I asked our artist to knock this up to leave you with a feeling of confidence going into the new year.



Merry Christmas Everyone!

That looks good but maybe now drop the 'easy' from game maker and use a better word I cannot think at the moment maybe total or all round

There are people on here that will know the best word to use but I think easy is a bit tame because really it is not that easy lol

Actually it all goes together very well

It's awfully quiet on here tonight, anyone would think it was Christmas or something ..

I think GG does sit well in between like that as if you do just want to have fun you can put together a very simple game quite quickly and reasonably easily but at the same time you can also go crazy with clever coding to do something more sophisticated.

I've spent a year learning what it is capable of and now have embarked on my first complete project so there is a learning curve to cope with but apart from a new annoying bugs and 'features' I've managed to find work arounds to get it to do what I want it to.

I'm of the opinion that we need to concentrate on fixing what we've got already before we add any new features, assuming that the EBE is progressing to a point where it is usable my list of must haves would include:

Importing models, Assimp or similar.
Fix the collision off/on Lua command, I have a suspicion that it deletes the existing collision map (or whatever you call them) and then recreates a new one, but in doing so defaults to a 'simple' version rather than the one specified in the FPE. This seems to hurt performance quite badly btw.
Alternatively fix the interaction between the Bullet engine and Lua commands so we don't have to turn of collisions to move things around, there must be a way of telling the Physics engine which entities to ignore collisions on whilst still retaining the collision shape in memory.
Better control of and access to the Physics engine from Lua or from FPE settings, maybe some form of callback whereby the script can ask to be informed of Physics engine outputs that it is interested in (like for example this Entity will hit something in the next frame).
Proper use of the Bullet engine overall, i.e. proper friction so objects placed on top of each other don't just slide off.
lncusion of 3d math library, either as a Lua module or even hard coded in C++, I've made a start with a quaternion library which you are quite welcome to include in the base release but there are many other things that could be added that would simplify scripting of dynamic entities.
Expanding on the particle generator.
Dynamic lights (i.e. ones that can be moved about under script control).

Just a few I can think off the top of my head.

Merry xmas

I have missed that thread.
60 here, the next 12-31-2016.

Is there some game maker retirement house?



Less hardcoded and more LUA, please.

The ability to change textures via script.
I always want to create a game where the player face change a long the game, because he is poisoned, and needs to find the cure.

Day/night cycle, pretty well known here I know, but I want to mention again.

A command to get entity id easier, I already know we have workaround for that, but lately I'm getting some issues with tonumber(name), GG crashes when run script.

"g_Entity[e]['obj']" gives a internal id for GG, and it does not work as is, since you get ({70006}), instead of just the id number. Teorically number is 6 in the example, but not always, so you can't trust to split the id from these number.
So whats about something like: id = g_entity(e)(id), or something like that.

This script crashes GG, at least for me:



About the editor, well, the ability to copy/paste a group of items at once, wow.
Thanks for read my post.

3com

@3com



Relying on entity names is only any good if all your entities are uniquely named though so I don't tend to bother, instead I use a simple global list which each particular type of entity adds itself to as it first runs, for example from my LEM demo project:

I don't know if it is at all possible to do, but wouldn't a node editor for Lua be a good tool for accessibility for people who lack experience in coding?

Thanks a lot AmenMoses!, I already know that, in fact I've many time dealing with. since I developed some excel sheet with vba to list all the items in my map, names, ids, paths, etc.

Anyway I would to know if anyone has experienced the same issie with "tonumber", as I pointed above?

Since Lee kindly offer the chance to claim for features, I'll take profit, a LUA command to get the entity id, might help a lot, and you can avoid workarounds.

I really don't want to work with names this time, but with the id number; it comes handy when many items naming the same, and you want act just with certains items.

idionactionary gives nice features to play with.

You are playing right lately with multiarrays and tbls, keep up!

3com

Lua does not have arrays or tables, only lists. The fact that a lot of people treat them like arrays causes no end of confusion!

Don't know what tonumber is and I've never had to use it.

@Earthling45, node editors are great in some instances but they are pretty rubbish for scripting as they just aren't flexible enough. You end up spending more time trying to untangle the mess you've created so you connect up two boxes than adding functionality. Not only that but they quickly become indecipherable so when you do get a bug it is almost impossible to find it.

@3com e is the entity number, not sure why you're trying to use name to return it unless you're using it to relate to a different entity.
i.e.

will give the entity number of that entity.

tonumber() will try to transform the string to a number but it will return nil if it's not possible and Prompt() will crash if you try to prompt a nil value, most likely what's happening for you with your script.

I do agree! With the combination of features from its FPSCx9 / FPSCx10, on top of its current state, could really push it forward. I'll comprise my personal list that I think a lot of people may agree on of the many things I've been hoping for Game-Guru to improve it professionally and user-friendly. In Yellow is what i find most important and I put a check mark on the ones that are on the feature voting board already:

Water

Water Height Slider
- Water Color Slider
- Water Beneath Color Slider
- Water Refraction Slider
- Water Speed Slider
- Water Refraction Slider
- Water Shader Options
Swimming
- Air Variable
- Air Hud that appears when underwater
- LUA command to check for if underwater



Terrain

4 More Texture Paint Options
Randomizer Terrain Brush

AI and LUA

AI To Navigate Stairs and Slopes
Improved Melee Combat
- Enemy Character Footstep Sounds (onStep folder to randomize from)
Edit Sun Position and Intensity

Editor

- Name of Entity Should Appear on Widget once selected
- Entities to turn green when selected
- Double clicking on an entity should automatically bring up its Property mode
Volumetric Particle System
Select Group Copying and Pasting


Editor
I'm having a very difficult time in Game-Guru with complex levels because it can be very hard to tell what entity I have selected since there is no indicator. They don't highlight after being selected and their name doesn't show up anywhere unless you click properties. In the F9 Edit Mode you can select an entity and it will remain green (Extract Mode) so you know which one is selected, however in the editor, its very hard to tell as the widget alone isn't a good enough indicator with stacked entities. I understand clicking Extract will make the entity turn green in the editor, but we need some more immediate ways of knowing what is selected in the editor. So a visible name display on the Widget, or bottom of screen or have it highlight green when selected... any of these or all would help.

Terrain
In regards to terrain, I can see there is a complexity to how you have them blending. For instance I see that if you paint Rock, it will paint also Sentiment and Mud on its edges. As a way to blend the terrains. So adding new terrains would be tricky. I'm thinking imagine having lush green environments with dirt paths and etc and a rocky, snowy mountain in the distance you can actually go to where snow terrain is on the ground. Skyrim is probably the best example out there for multiple terrains in any given map.

Skyrim has a terrain painting system that allows for unlimited terrains. Each terrain paints on top of each other in a pressure sensitive way similar. There is no additional terrain texture painting that happens though. So while its neat GG has this by default, editors like Skyrim has allow for a lot more options and customization. Here is a quick example of their Terrain Painting Window:



Not sure how you might plan to tackle this since you already have a terrain system in place in the UI that relies on what terrain style is selected in the terrainbank. But I'd figure id show you how Bethesda Game Studios handles theirs.

Yah, that's the case here, I want to know X co-or about some entities to work with.


Yes. Just want to know why tonumber() is failing, I'm using some barrel to run the script just for testing, but firts I wanted to know if it is happens to other or just to me, Now than I'm sure about I can investigate about the issue.

Thanks a lot for the tip smallg.

3com

Agree with cybernescence,

Access to shaders from Lua , switch post process shaders.
But also some cleaver way to get a new image into the post process shaders , i had to make a agk function to convert the image to a shader array to get anything into them, but i will at some point run out of array space so...

Also a Lua command to set the sun position , so we can do day/night cycles ourself in the shaders.

Last a command in Lua to set the waterline , that the "reflection" camera follow , currently when i move the waterline in the shaders , the reflection is not correct.

Mainly more control to allow us to make our own functions.

Yes, i've read about this issue so it is probably not entirely possible.

I'm not very familiar with lua but I know casts like this from program languages.
Perhaps you try to cast the entenity but tonumber expects a string. Even if this will cast the name "barrel" to number/integer, it would not be the ID. But that is what you want to get, right?

Edit: On Google I found this:

Yes, that's the point with my request to Lee, a way to get entity id from any script, "without workarounds needed".

In fact I wrote that piece of code to recreate error thrown by "tonumber()", since arrives a moment in my code than I'll need use it, and GG chrash, so I wrote that piece of code to isolate the issue, without deal with all the code, and being sure the error is isolated; so ID just has to do with my lee's request, and does not with my code, I just want to know why tomumber() is failing for me, as tonumber() is getting string value from "name", never may the final result, most likely a number, the question is getting tonumber() working fine, so I'll can to incorporate it in my code again.

Getting id would might help, specially when you need interact with certain items named the same as many others, for example.

Thanks a lot for the tip Sanguis!

3com

Blah, Blah, Blah. GG Dev Blah, blah, money blah blah blah. GG goes on backburner some more blah blah blah blah. Vacation. Thats all I see and hear from this.

Then you obviously haven't read it ...
Adding to your Catalogue is something any company would want to do and often does ... Also of course you need to make money for wages, bills etc like anyone else .... I go to work Blah Blah Blah ...you go to work Blah Blah Blah we need to make a living .. Blah Blah Blah ...

Of course you free to assume anything .. But an assumption is all it is

When you assume it makes an ass out of u and me

@3com, I still don't understand your problem. The entity id is passed in to the script, i.e. it is the (e).. If you want to refer to the id of another entity then simply store it in a global and then access it via the stored global from the other script. The example I gave you does that, in fact almost all my scripts do it.

The only time you need a special id is when using the AI commands as the AI system uses its own ID to refer to characters.

@ AmenMoses
Problem is not with the ID, but tonumber() crasing GG for me. Anyway I already get it working with tonumber(e).



I'm getting the entity ID and X pos.
Thanks for the tips.

3com