You've already stated that GameGuru (now GameGuru Classic) will continue to get updates. So, my suggestion is to make MAX 64-bit and offer Classic as the 32-bit version for those that don't want (or cannot use) a 64-bit version. This way, there is a version for both (and no reason to limit MAX to 32-bit). Having said that, I would still make an effort, even if it's after MAX is released in September, to improve Classic a bit, such as adding in dynamic lighting that casts shadows and even more improvements on FPS and level load times.

BTW - Even though I posted the above (in a previous post), I still pre-purchased MAX. Just an FYI.

Pre-ordered. Godspeed with the development!
I do hope that our GG media can be imported directly. You mentioned that the old maps will still work which implies that our old models and media will as well?



-Wolf

I really can't decide how I feel this. On the one hand, I'm extremely excited to see Game Guru finally get enhancements we've been asking for for years. On the other hand, it's yet another example of one TGC product being stiffed in favour of an incrementally better one. Dark Basic became DB Pro, AGK became AGK Studio, FPS Creator became FPS Creator reloaded, then Game Guru, now Game Guru Max. In all cases, the former version was more or less abandoned on launch of the latter one. This doesn't fill me with optimism for Game Guru Vanilla's future.

So far, the previews shown don't really do the product justice. But I guess we are - being optimistic - still a full 7 months away from release so I'm sure much has yet to be implemented.

The new paint job looks OK but still a bit basic. Modifying a handful of variables is the bare minimum for 'in-editor customisation', but I'd much rather have a node-based LUA editor, or even one just for character behaviours. Great that characters will soon be able to talk and gesture, but the character creator itself looks as rigid as ever with too little customisation. Hopefully the workflow with third party character creators (I know Makehuman was touted a while back) is easier.

I've spent so much time harping on about the lighting system so it's encouraging to hear that's finally being reworked. That alone is worth the price of admission for me, but I'm afraid I'll need to see it in action before I part with my money.

I'm a little irked by the whole spiralling cost thing, especially for existing customers. It's holding a gun to our heads and saying "pay now or the ransom goes up". I know we're only talking about $50 here, and with nearly 800 hours on the clock with GG Vanilla, it's never going to be not worth the money, Game Guru is almost cheaper than the electricity you need to run it. In all likelihood, I will cough up, but it's just...I don't know...come on, guys, we're about a year away from being abandoned in the cold with an unsupported product, the least you could do is give us a blanket (by which I mean a fixed $25 price tag for existing GG owners).

Anyway, looks like my abusive relationship with Game Guru will continue. You've said you're willing to change, I've fallen for it before and I probably will again - you're even wearing a new outfit to try and convince me. Please don't let me down, not again. I can't take many more trips to the support group for disenfranchised Game Guru developers, dabbing the bloodied wounds of my ambitions clean with tear-soaked cotton swabs after being battered by your broken promises and buggy, underdeveloped features for the umpteenth time.

+ 1 for 64-bit too
And while we're at it, add alt-textures, video textures, a GUI menu designer, the ability to create, save and load prefabs of entities, dynamic sun controls, reflection probes, and import custom collision meshes.

AE

You and me both!

Here's a (strange?) thought - I know that GameGuru MAX uses LUA, but what about somehow adding the ability to work with AppGameKit Studio? It would be pretty awesome to be able to create a custom, functioning GUI in AGK Studio, for example, and have it run in Game Guru MAX. Or to be able to to code in AGK Studio and use it in MAX. This could encourage the sales of both products as those who already own AGK Studio might want to get MAX to use as a level editor/designer for their 3D work while coding in AGK Studio and those who get MAX may want to purchase AGK Studio, etc. Also, since you have the AGK Studio Particle editor, then that could be made to work in MAX, too, adding yet another tool that MAX owners would want to purchase to add more customization to their games.

A very good goal
Voxel Global Illumination

Mr. Lee:
Please add some rendering images of GGMax in this post.

i have mixed feelings on this. glad that there is a next step, sad this is what it is.

can you speak at all to the load times of the new gameguru's built final .exes?

will GG max be a feasible option for a small indie development team looking to easily create a multiple hour long, DETAILED, commercial single player shooter that holds up to something made by an equivalent team in something like source or unity or godot?

has pathfinding been improved at all?

has there been, or is there planned, any sort of stress test? and a minimum benchmark on this test that GGmax must exceed to be considered sucessful?

has the actual architecture/optimization of the software been improved whatsoever to be able to make your games actually be... deployable? 64 bit is nice but that doesnt mean much if the game you make on your 64 bit computer can't run on your friends slightly less powerful 64 bit computer. (or even your computer after you compile the final .exe file)

I ask all this because even the 20+ year old 32 bit goldsource engine is infintely more capable than is the gameguru engine from track-record alone, as is pretty much every other engine. it's not 64 bit, but it can load level after level after level without crashing, becoming slower, bluescreening your pc, etc. It doesn't have PBR, but it also doesnt have 6 minute load times for 2 minute maps.

I have never seen an issue with anyone not being able to run a goldsource game. conversely, i have not seen a gameguru game that every single person was able to run without failure.

This is being marketed less and less as a kids toy, but the budget behind this big update is, from what I have been made aware, through the education side of the business. Given this, one would assume the goal would be more geared toward being something a kid can easily play with and make his first game, but once again not something worthwhile to a reasonable game developer looking to create an indie shooter that holds a candle to its competition.

I would love for someone to come and dispel my fears here.

I understand, the opinions of a few "oldschool TGC forumites" from forever ago doesnt bring in the revenue that 1000 12 year olds does, but it is us "oldschool TGC forumites" who either:

1. use your tool to make games, thus enticing future business for you... (thats how i got here, youtube videos of cool FPSC games)

OR

2. we feel our needs are ignored for the sake of short term financial gain, over a period of years and years, and therefore badmouth your products to anyone in ear shot.

seems like we would have learned by now not to pre-order TGC products based on their marketing promises
i definitely have, but for other people like me who are also gullible and like to believe that "this is gonna be the one that fixes it" i think we should worry about seeing real results before we go throwing money at TGC again. you got us donating for more features to be added, half which never fully function, then sell us the rest of them... prove to me they actually work this time!

I am more than willing to pay a price in the hundreds, for a gameguru that can actually make a game, but until you show me that game and prove to me that gameguru made it, and that it will work when I try to do it, (even with my custom media) I will remain a skeptic.

I don't get it. Lee you ask if we would like 64bit over 32bit. It's common sense to make it in 64bit without question. windows 10 is a 64bit OS and Microsoft is only support windows 10. So whether we like it or not their is no other option but to move forward making the engine 64bit. if any lessons has been learn from Game Guru classic the best thing you can do is to move forward with this next engine and hopefully get it right this time. Meaning no backtracking like C++ over haul and no half done features like third person. I will pay full price for a fully equip third person. I would even double my payment and pay $100.00 for a fully equip stand alone game builder like Fps creator have. I'm willing to put my money on this if it's done right. Speaking of moving forward maybe it would be best to use DX12. I would hate see you have to backtrack and do a DX12 over haul which will waste more development time in the future once the engine is done and goes live. Like I said lesson to be learn from Game Guru classic you do not want to repeat the same flaws and problems again.


questions
will it have fully equip third person? Include projectile system, melee and 2.5D control.
will it be DX12?
will the stand alone game builder be complete so we can build multiple levels at once?
will it be C++ optimize?
will the draw call be optimize?
if using DX12 will it use the max draw call count DX12 have to offer?
will it be fully equip FBX format compatible?
will it be fully Xbox controller compatible and have full button control?

I believe if feature is done right you can avoid backtracking and save on development time.

also what about the lighting system?

What about PREFABS? Will MAX support any kind of PREFAB ability? What I mean by a prefab is that I, as the end-user, can put together a model (such as a street light) or a collection of models (such as a street light, a bit of sidewalk, a bit of street, some grass, some bits of trash on the ground, etc.) and save them as ONE object that can be loaded and used in a GameGuru MAX project. Included would be custom scripts and/or parameters (i.e. if I made changes to an object's LUA via the new access in MAX's GUI) so I could load these "custom" models at any time for my project.

So, I am not talking about creating models and model sets outside of GameGuru MAX, but about using imported models (my own or those that I purchase from elsewhere) and, once assembled in MAX (like the example above of a street lamp, street, and sidewalk) and any code adjusted, being able to save the "set" as a prefab so that I could load the set (all models and scripts) as one and duplicate it as one within the editor to help quickly create levels.

Actually you can get Windows 10 32bit and its still fully supported. Really good for those 10 year old laptops

we need copy & paste ... LOL

There we go again, with the defending the dinosaurs 32 bit stuff...

@ MooKai - exactly 1000% Copy and Paste, no valid engine would be
without it!
Not only MAX, but GG junior needs Copy and Paste now. Always has.
Thanks Lee, for supplying this come early spring.

This type of thinking is what holds this engine back. why would anyone want develop or play a game on a 32bit non gaming laptop or desktop? 32bit can only read 4GB of ram. Even consoles have more ram. don't Nintendo switch have 4GB because that's a mobile device. Technology is moving forward. what's the point of holding on old limited Technology?

I guessed we would have some concerned responses as soon as I saw the front page Personally, for twenty quid, if we get a far better version of GG I'm all for it. I just would hope that some foresight is put in, so we don't get the backtracks we have had with GG. Hence me saying I am not bothered with backwards compatibility, if it meant a way better product could be made. Obviously many people will differ from this view as they have ongoing projects on the go. I have many, but would gladly remake em in a more sophisticated version of GG.

I was a gold pledger and although GG has never been perfect, I've had my monies worth regardless. Never managed to make a game I could sell, but that's probably more down to my perfectionist nature than GG itself (or a combo). I knew the writing was on the wall for GG when it went open source. Of course that move has for certain helped a lot of people improve their games, so well worth doing.

Edit

Perhaps the size of your pocketbook. I agree, but not everyone can afford to upgrade to a better laptop.

Can I vote again for 64bit?

first of all thanks Lee to take time to answer to me but sincerely the answer about no plan for an underwater system make my day..
all of us here are asking about volumetric fog, Prefabs (seriously), a GUI menu designer,node control based programming, save system, day and night cycle and so on..are you kidding me guys??

GGMax will miss all of these but it will give us photon, vr and what else??

a new engine with missing basics core features?? again?? not for me this time..

come back to my Unreal udemy tuts..

Looks like I have a lot of questions. Here are all the answers from Page 1. Enjoy the marathon read:

@MooKai : Remember you can still use the GitHub issues tracker to record Enhancement features. Once we blitz the bugs, there will be nothing left but Feature Requests, and we will be pulling new functionality ideas from there. Hopefully there will be a way to assign priority tags to the items on GitHub issues tracker We have already improved the way paths are created for characters, so perhaps there is room here to do something closer to nav meshes to confine your entities to specific areas for pathfinding, I noticed this was how it was done when I saw a postmorten of Borderlands 3. You will get the alpha builds no matter if you select Steam Key or Download.

@shivers : GameGuru Classic will remain on your PC in it's present location. GameGuru MAX will occupy a separate folder so it will not corrupt any projects you are working on. You can of course load your existing levels in MAX to benefit from the new features. All Asset Store models can load into the new product just like the old one, and still support the PBR texture set format, we will be focusing more on how the lighting model takes those textures and uses them the best. Their 'might' be an extra format for HDR textures, but we will see if that is necessary.

@Mipastu : No pressure to buy MAX at all, we will still be maintaining Classic and chasing down those issues the community had been promised. We can decide on a case by case basis whether the community want that feature to work first on Classic, or added directly to MAX. I think it's very likely most users will move to MAX at some point, but we have no intention of abandonning Classic as it is still the product to support the lower-end graphics cards, integrated graphics, 32-bit support and other componenets we may well remove in the final MAX version. As for milking cows, GameGuru actually costs more to develop than it currently earns on Steam, and we are in fact milking our other products to keep GameGuru development going. Also, as part of resolving and completing pledges on what will now become Classic I would like to chase down all the promised features as some of them have taken on mythic proportions and I personally cannot remember what was said over 6 years ago. Can you chase down some of the promised features you mentioned along with a link to where I said it? I guess I said a lot of things back in the early days

@synchromesh : If the vote is 100%, I would make sure the deadline is still hit, even with 64-bit support. It solves some major issues, and would give me the chance to do a core overhaul, and it might even produce a small performance boost in some areas! Someone recently mentioned on Steam that GameGuru is bad because it uses old DBPro code, well I agree about the DBPro code part, not that it's bad as such, but it would be a good exercise to clean up the code base and remove stuff that clearly has no place any more such as MDL formats, BSP compiling and support for 3D Monitors

@Belidos : We will continue to support and develop for GameGuru Classic, it still ticks many boxes for us, and allows MAX to aim for mid to high end graphics cards and techniques which might not work as well on lower-end cards. Just as AGK Classic and AGK Studio run side by side, there is room for both products. Don't feel under any pressure to fund the MAX development, it's only for those users who see features in there they want this September. I imagine there will be a time when most of the community will call for the end of development of Classic, but that's not anytime soon I feel. No worries about this being your last purchase with TGC, I think I had my old PSP7 painting tool for 8 years before I decided to check out the upgrade

@cybernescence : Just like GameGuru Classic, I plan to release the MAX source code on it's own GitHub repo in September so you can make your own branches for your game projects. Usual rules apply, use it for your game making but you cannot recompile it and sell it as your own MAX2

@MadLad Designs : I am not opposed to switching to something more akin to an annual upgrade system as you suggest, not least to help with development funding. I've seen it a lot with tools like Sony Vegas, Anti-virus software, etc. Basically the same software with new stuff added and old stuff removed, but I would like to sort out the bugs and 'holes' in Classic, and built MAX as the higher price point alternative, before considering this standard method of product upgrading.

@GraPhiX : The UI has some color themes that can be chosen from. We will get feedback from alpha testers what colors we ship with, but the AGK Studio method of customizing each element might work well too. The one in the current shots are the darkest theme, there is the grey one which I prefer personally and is the one I am going to push for on release as the default (as in the leaked shot).

@MadLad Designs : Your points:
1. VR support = A button on the toolbar, press it and you can play your game with VR controller on any Windows Mixed Reality headset. We will also be supporting an Oculus Quest Player (if Facebook approve the app) which allows you to send your game instantly to the device and play on a standalone VR headset (no wires).
2. Photon = No Steam dependence, so you can save a Multiplayer Standalone and your friends can run and play your multiplayer level
3. Character Creator = Brand new from-scratch, produces ones that animate better, talk with lipsync and gestures, controlled by dynamicLUA. You have more body parts so head, headgear, hair, beard, glasses, body, legs and feet. Comes with a selection of base meshes for man, woman, buy and girl. More body parts will likely be sold as add-on DLC for specific themes or added as part of a 'Game Kit' DLC which gives you the assets for a while mini-game and the parts to make new characters.
4. Terrain tools = New side panel to hold all terrain editing, more finer sculpting, many more paint and texturing options (R&D underway for best ones). I have some ideas to create videos to show you what we are working on, and I think you will like the new terrain editing that we have right now, but we intend to go further in the next 6 months with more realistic out of the box terrain creation (i.e. hold down left mouse, as hill grows, sand, dirt, rock, escarpments are created in both geometry and textures as it gets higher. No more pointy hat hill, you get a realistic (if high) terrain feature. The renamed 'Structure Editor' has clearer non-keyboard-shortcut controls now, and we are expanding the texture sets for it, and making it more intuitive to use. For now it will still be a block building maker, but with the rename we can hopefully look at different kinds of structures you want to make quickly and easily. The importer will hopefully take over the last of bringing in models that would be harder to do in a simple editing tool.
5. Rendering Engine = Still doing research, but I like Voxel GI so we can have realistic inside and outdoor lighting and shadows, performance is key of course but we are going to spend a good deal of time looking at how the top games of 2019 generate, store and render their terrains and complex scene graphs. I think it will all come down to the lighting model. We get that right, and pretty much everything you drop in or import will just 'feel' right, and resemble the kind of screenshots you expect when you boot up a AAA game. This differs from our traditional idea of having a good idea and setting about implementing it. This time we are going to find out what every other developer is doing first, then we can make a better decidion. If anyone has good links to lighting, rendering, terrain or other game scene techniques used in very modern games, please do link them, we plan to check them all out!

@jono gamer : The old PBR shader system was fine, but it existed in isolation. Compared to modern games, it did not have the benefit of being part of a proper HDR rendering system, had no sopisticated lighting controls, inferior shadow control and overall had this strange visual flatness you could not quite put your finger on but was always present. One of our early tests is to create a simple scene (likely Tropical Island) with which we can test a lighting model that rivals a modern game visual, and keeps its performance on a five year old card (say GTX 960) and from this initial prototype demo we can ensure we start with the best visual and keep that standard as we build out the rest of the tools and new assets that will come with MAX.

@Belidos : For sanity, I will not guarentee 100% backwards compatibility with everyone's map no matter what. I can say there are no plans to change the internal data formats of the files within the FPM files so they will load. It will certainly be likely to copy over all your media, scripts and other resources before trying to load your FPM that would depend on these files, and then running your level might encounter some functional differences (a good example is a level that depends on a bug, we fix the bug, and the level behaves differently). Others will be bugs on release day, reported through GitHub and then fixed as the test cases come in. The crux however is that if you have been working on your game project for the last six months, you can load it after September and carry on developing it if you choose to upgrade to MAX at some point.

@Lance : Yes, we have Microsoft Text 2 Speech for automatic creation of Character Speech, we also have voice recording inside the software so you can do your own voice dialog, or you can import a WAV file. In each case, the software auto generates the lipsync data and your characters mouth moves, eyes blink and arms gesture to the words you needed for your game.

@Argent_Arts : To give you some idea what our researches are aiming for, check out some of the videos on NVIDIA's VXGI. The idea is that dynamic lights dropped into a scene will produce both direct and indirect light, and these are calculated in the shader, so you get soft shadows and correct lighting for all the lights in your scene. We would also cast shadow maps to create definition for those lights you want a sharper shadow for. I think point, spot and directional should be supported, and I am very eager to support area lighting if performance will allow. The sunlight through walls issue is a compromise of the single sun shadow mapping system. The new one we will be looking for will most likely work on a per pixel basis to work out what is in shadow, so shadow mapping will not be the primary method of interior or exterior illumination. As to the way we tackled the upgrade/discount pricing, we needed a simple system and we anticipated that loyal community members would find out about the 50% discount right away which would the same as a 50% upgrade, and I hoped the community would be okay with extending this great offer to new users as well as long-standing members as it helps us fund GameGuru development even more! Your question on light probes is a good one, and as you will read later I am considering dropping the current pre-baking solution in favour of a real-time approach that does not require light probes (each pixel knows how to get indirect light for itself). I am not 100% commited yet to zero-pre-bake as I recently saw a tutorial on a modern game renderer and they used static light baking 'extensively' which included the use of light probes and other tricks. If something better than VXGI is discovered that produces better visuals at a faster performance, then we will discover that as we do out researches from March onwards. Feel free to post any papers you feel might benefit our researches!!

@Loretta : I also want the very first version of GameGuru MAX to be solid, delivers on what it intends to offer and leaves very few holes to fall into. In order to do that, you will find me very clearly 'refusing' to add features as they are suggested and instead inviting users to post them on GitHub Issues Tracker as Enhancements. This is so I can control the timeline, and focus on what I think are the most critical aspects, and give myself enough time to test, test and test. We often reach for the stars and then struggle to deliver, so the fewer stars we try to snare fort he first release the greater the chance of success.

@SHAHIN3D : Your points:
1. For MAX I am seriously toying with dropping the Lightmapper (or replacing it with something off the shelf), and instead focusing on realistic realtime lighting and shadows, and asking users to accept a higher minimum specification for GPU (currently marked as the GTX 960). The new system will DEFINATELY case shadows from EVERY LIGHT you want to cast shadows from, and the light can be of multiple types, some more expensive to your scene than others. It will be up to the level designer (you) to use these lights and shadows responsibly
2. If you look at the VXGI technique mentioned above, it will take indirect light in realtime from the rest of the scene, so you will see lights and other surfaces that bounce light if it strikes the surface being rendered. Check out "voxel cornell demo" on Google for more info on this effect.
3. Preben and I have got the current alpha of MAX to load in about 5 seconds. I am hoping to drive this down further with increased use of 'run now show later' techniques as texture loading and sound loading are two of the most expensive 'waiting times' during the load sequence.
4. I plan to release the GameGuru MAX repository in September so you can create branches and mod your own low-level stuff as you need them. You will be able to post MAX bugs in this repo, and Classic bugs in the existing Classic repo.
5. We will be running Classic alongside MAX for a few years at least. Classic has some advantages for lower-end systems that MAX will not have, and if you have almost finished your game in Classic, my advice is to finish it in that tool and upgrade to MAX when you have the time to see if it's right for you. There is absolutely no compulsion to upgrade to MAX, your Classic bugs and 'holes' will be fixed!

@3com : Your points:
1. My plan with the third person system is to fix it I believe this will be done for Classic as part of operation Bug-Free, and those fixes will make their way to the MAX code. I don't plan a large expansion of the existing functionality apart from small tweaks to help interesting projects I have seen recently using TPP, but quality is about focusing on the most important things first and a fast, amazing looking engine is pretty high on my list right now.
2. You will be able to drop the new Character Creator creations onto your Start Marker for TPP, and they will animate as dictated in the now external LUA script, which will get the same improvements as the regular character entity scripts. I am very keen to move the specific definition of the animations themselves away from the script and into the editor on a per entity basis, but it remains to be seen how that might look and how sophisticated we get.
3. I think this is already in the GitHub issues tracker, but if it's not there, definately add it! I don't think the report specifies that entities in your clipboard would survive loading in a new level/scene as you would lose all your entity references (unless the paste processes gets smart and loads in all the missing entities!). See if you can find it, or just create a new one and we will mark it up as an Enhancement. After the bug fixing on Classic, we will be going through the feature requests to figure out which ones become redundant when MAX comes along, which ones the community insists much be completed in Classic and which ones are to be moved over to MAX to be implemented there instead.
4. We are thinking of the old alt-texture, but it would be in the form of a special field for some entities which allow the texture to be replaced with one specified via the editor. This is primarily for things like decals, signs and other in-game graphics were you want to drop in some custom art quickly without messing about creating a new entity for it. I will probably not extend this to support animations for the first release, but we can expand on the idea as needed as it may give rise to some great creative options for users.
5. I think I have been working too closely with educational material in 2019, but I am tending away from building in lots of blood effects to the core product, such as blood pools, gibs flying of exploding humans, tearing skin and blood soaked clothing. I am keen add rain effects with puddles and rain splashes on the ground if that is worth anything. Perhaps with the new 'alt-texture' replacement, coupled with some clever scripting, you can create these gory features yourself.
6. The new DynamicLUA system is pretty cool, and something I have been thinking about for a long time. No more need to go into a script to change one value, you can now get at it from the editor on a per entity basis, and it even describes what the script does in plain english. It's also designed so other users can create these scripts that can then work out of the box with the DynamicLUA system, expanding the choice for non-scripters even further. Naturally all the scripts we provide at launch will be DynamicLUA enabled and easier to use than the ones in Classic.

@fearlesswee : Your points:
1. It would be a crime not to add day and night cycles for MAX. It's been a very long requested feature and not that difficult to do once you have control of a good lighting model and a cooperative sun and moon. It's not on my dev plan, but if you can create a GitHub issue for it, we will get to it and weigh it as a popular request we've had over the years.
2. Agreed on the 'not quite right' PBR rendering, it feels flat to me also. A new lighting model will help with this and our test scene will ensure the lighting is just right and PBR handled in respect of this new model before we charge ahead creating lots of visual content. It has to look right from the get go. Expect screenshots of our experiments April onwards!
3. Do we keep all the legacy media in the new MAX product, great question! I would prefer to bin it all and only add assets that pass the '2019' test for AAA quality and game-ready status, and all characters created in the new Character Creator module. The main downside is that old levels that rely on this legacy art would fail to load, and it would bloat the installer to about 6GB before we even start adding new content. Once we see the results of our new lighting model, and render the legacy art in the new renderer we will probably make a decision to drop or keep the old stuff.
4. Thanks for the link to the water effect (with source code) Yes, this is the goal for our new water, otherwise our tropical island scene would look pretty laughable.
5. Photon does host the server for you, or you can buy Photon license and host it yourself. You can host small game sessions on the Photon servers for free, and you only pay when your usage gets to the point where you ought to be charging your gamers for the service. It's a good way to get started, and still have a world class infrastructure supporting your multiplayer game, and it scales effortlessly.
6. Ideally we would have used a screenshot from the new renderer, but we've not written it yet, so we will have to use stock footage until a real image can be dropped in. I am pretty happy to say the shot we will replace it with will be better!

@Zigi : The goal with the DynamicLUA of exposing just a few values was deliberate. The moment you introduce a user to coding, or something like the Blueprint system which requires a good grasp of logic, you are in effect trying to teach programming, even if it's done visually. For teaching programming, we have our AppGameKit Studio product which I think does an amazing job. For GameGuru MAX I don't want to duplicate the depths of other tools like Unreal and similar, as you eventually get lost down the rabbit hole of logic and may never come out. I would like a product where you can quickly drop stuff in, make some simple behavior edits, then play your game and it comes to life. At least for now while we get the other aspects right like performance, modern visuals, engaging characters, etc. I have been thinking about a click-blocks-together style visual logic maker but I first need to be convinced users want me to work on a layer between the new DynamicLUA system and coding LUA, and I guess I will only know that once the alpha builds start going out. Sorry for all the disappointment in your report, I think you will see the light when you get your hands on the alpha build, it's really a slick experience already and I think you will like the Character Creator!

@Bolt Action Gaming : Your points:
1. It currently looks like 100% vote so far for 64-bit which would seriously solve the Memory management issues we have seen in previous updates. Basically, the software will have an address space able to store a value up to "9,223,372,036,854,775,807". This means you can use ALL of your system memory for your game!
2. As mentioned above, Preben and I have it down to 5 seconds on our respective rigs. We will be looking to squeeze this a little more by September.
3. Of all the bullet points about terrain, grass, trees, sky, clouds, weather, etc the one I really NEED to get right is the lighting model. Currently researching all the tricks, and also looking forward to raiding the GDC Vault at the end of March 2020 and become a mini-expert at all the viable techniques being used to create the illusion of realtime lighting and shadows. As a management team, TGC have decided not to look too closely at RTX (realtime ray tracing) as it requires an absolute monster card and we would code ourselves out of the market. Not ruled out, I just don't see this being used outside of tech demos right now.

@UNIRD12B : We will continue to offer free updates to GameGuru Classic for as long as the community are interested in and using this product. We see GameGuru MAX as our first upgrade product (like a version two). If you want to keep using Classic and getting free updates, we will be here for you. If everyone migrates to MAX over the years and there is no-one left in the Classic universe, that would be the time the lifetime updates end. As mentioned above, there is no obligation whatsoever in upgrading. Classic will continue to get bug fixes, tweaks and even features if the Classic and Pledger community feel that's the right thing for us to work on. Thanks for your patronage over the years, it is very much appreciated. I hope you got 'some' fun out of your purchases over the years and hopefully one day we can deliver a product that's rock solid. On the DBPro front, I thought we did a pretty good job over the decade of updating it for free and providing add-on packs, what did we get wrong with Dark Basic Professional?

@DVader : Short answer, the current terrain system goes in the bin I am only keeping the old data structure and painting info so I can impose your old terrains on the new system when you load your old projects in MAX. The new terrain system, amongst tools you might need for a modern outdoor scene, will include something akin to a texture splatter for painting details onto the terrain so you can say goodbye to the mysteries of overlaying texture choices in order! I have not penciled multiple water and sloping rivers into my short list for September, but if this request is already on GitHub, we can mark it up as a popular request to give it some priority when we decide what we can do in the remaining time once lighting model and associate features are cracked. The technique for sea/ocean wave effect is different than the trick used to create pools, rivers and waterfalls, and although it could be done now with a clever artist and patience, I know what you really mean, which is a nice paint tool that 'draws' your river up one hill, down the other, then plummets off the edge, and the water 'just works' (GameGuru style)

@Kitakazi : If the crash was related to memory (and a 45 second load time might suggest some decent content in there), then the new 64-bit based standalone (if we get the vote) would solve this. We have already improved the loading times significantly so MAX will manage your loading times much better. We are also optimziing all the media that ships with MAX so if you use our default media it is designed for speedy loading out of the box. Preben has recently done some tests that show some DDS files would take 3 seconds to load in, and after our optimization, could load in just 350ms (or thereabouts). Multiply that by all your level textures and you see the benefit on your loading wait time. There are other ideas such as procedurally generating stuff on the GPU and extracting data in memory instead of hitting the file system, but we would like to see the raw loading speed of the new MAX system before going that extra step. It might be that 10 seconds to load in your current 45 second level is sufficient for the release version?

Err, not sure that was me.

Wow! Thanks for All the Info and the fast response Lee!
Can't wait!

Yes Same for roads

Wow my questions wasn't answer , all well guest I will wait until September. goodbye hype train.

I only have one question:
If I buy it, will I get access to the source code or is it closed source?

Will my current GG projects work in MAX?
Like map, scripts, models etc?

Oh behave … I was just correcting an inaccurate statement ..
I voted 64bit like everyone else ..

Wow Lee! So nice to see you take the time to respond to everyone's each and every single point! I'm really liking this more open communication and direct involvement!

Also, I've seen you mention rain/weather support a few times, how might that look? I'm hoping it looks as good as S2 Engine's rain:

https://gyazo.com/6fc9255676103dd8159d276ed65d07e4

Honestly, if GameGuru Max looks like S2 Engine with the easy workflow GG currently has, I'd be happy to jump in to this engine full-time!

EDIT: (Whoops! Accidentally tried to link as an image, lol)

Oh don't ruin it for us
J/K

Pre_orderd GameGuru MAX - will see how long the life span of this version lasts,
before it gets made into gameguru infinity .... your money
or your life. As the work for current version was never completed so bit miffed that we had to pay again
but guess someones wages need a bit of a boost...

And before i get abuse from anyone I am not the only one thinking it trust me, and yes i have free will to buy or not buy but as we
already supported the cause to make FPSC Reloaded ermmm sorry I mean FPSC Reloaded / GG and the engine was never completed
for the version we pledged for. It will be interesting to see what upgrades are in GG-MAX that we should have got in the current version
we were constantly told were getting there but never did.

I sit awaiting it release........................................................................................... and it successor 4 years time, just a guess.

@Corno_1



Dave

i like how you're expecting it to be a whole new engine, it's just GG with a new UI and some extra features - stop expecting miracles or you will be disappointed

curious about the multiplayer statement on the homepage - specifically this bit

if you don't own MAX how are you making the multiplayer game?
i'm guessing you mean you can share and play with "others" who don't own MAX?

Thanks Lee for the inputs.

@granada thank you.

-what about a gui designer and menu designer? (we cant make different splash screens for different resolutions
, and we need a visual GUI for our projects)
-what about ai?(there will be sensor like see, hearing and so on?
-what about animated characters importing? (i left many projects due to that,it' a pain.. i have tons of fbx animated models characters that would to add to gg or max and use in my games)
-why particle system need to depend for mAGK particle system.. why Max could not have a proper particle system by its own?

smallg said:


Lee said:


That may not be a completely new engine, but that is quite a decent chunk of one. And if Lee is seriously considering moving to 64-bit, then that's a bit more of one, right? From his comments here, it seems like its more new than not. In any case, I'm certainly not expecting miracles, but if GG MAX can load levels fast (or at least a lot faster) and can look as good as a modern game engine, then that gets me most of the way to where I need to be.

Slaur3n said:


Lee said yes earlier in this thread, but since they are early in development of MAX, things could change. I'm sure others will be able to tell you more about that once the alpha is released in April or so.

With MAX, will we still have to create a custom splash screen for each resolution we want to support or will MAX be smart enough to simply resize them?

+1000 for 64 bit.
Also, repeating myself for the last 6 years: Dynamic lights casting dynamic shadows. Period.
Can that be guaranteed?

Everything else is for me just the icing on the cake.

Will third person / isometric still be possible ?
has that changed, improved ?

@LeeBamber - interesting to say the least, can't wait to get hold of MAX - project backed

My two cents:

64 bit obviously
- modern game design requires it.

Backward compatibility
- it is commendable to try and keep backward compatibility, but that should never come at the price of better technology or techniques

Models
- so support for .x remains?

Transparencies
- MAX needs better support for transparencies - currently a nightmare in the GG - especially when there are lots of them together

Lightmapper
- good riddance - how does that even work with PBR anyway...

Cubemaps
- do we get rid of cube maps, or at least be able to assign the same cube-map to multiple entities

Scripting
- An event editor like Construct2 has would be awesome..

HUDS \ Menu System
- Menus and HUD editor would be cool
- Missing features in The GG
- MAX could use them....

Layers
- currently we dump everything on top of each other - which is a right pain to work with. Why not add layers?
- layer for waypoints
- layer for markers

Promises
- initial video for GG (FPSC Reloaded) mentioned:
- drive cars
- fly planes
- still waiting for that.......

Lighting examples
- download Lumberyard - it's free, and just run the demo levels
- or spend an hour or so watching some of their tutorials - they are pretty short, may give you some ideas.
- one of the demo games has a feature where they explain some of the ins and outs of how the engine works, for example transparencies
- lighting, shadows, volumetric fog, ground mist, particles.
- Huge levels - lots of content, loads in seconds (actually, practically immediately on mys system) and plays at constant 60 fps.

Alpha in September???
- can we get a beta version sooner - like tomorrow

Thanks for reading.....

OldFlak....

Kind of agree there. I would be happy just to be able to load my map in as the template .. I wouldn't expect it all to work in a newer engine if im honest .

Yeah, it's basically a new engine promised here.
New engine, new maps. I be happy to remake the level completely.

Ditch old tech and employ current techniques. Make MAX awesome

OldFlak....

And my answers for Page 2 here. I posted this at midnight, now must stop reading questions before my head falls off:

@Argent_Arts : Good idea about offering Classic for those users who can only run or want 32-bit support. That, and it's support for lower-end GPU intensive techniques is another good reason for Classic's continued support, maintenance and place in the lineup. I also want to finish what I started, and I see the bugs as a first major step in delivering on this. I think we will have users who want to stick with Classic, finish their game projects before moving to MAX, and I agree it's right they get those essential tweaks and additions which would help 'round off' their version and help ship the game they made. Only when Classic is 'rounded off' and of satisfactory quality, and MAX likewise, can we even think about starting the traditional 'upgrade cadence' we see in other PC tools. I know some users see this as 'ripping off loyal users' but offering an upgrade every 2 or 3 years is actually a decent way for developers to fund continued work. I think Sony Vegas is about version 17 now, and smarter tool developers have ditched the incremental versioning so you don't realise just how many upgrades you've had to buy over the years

@Wolf : One idea I had is a separate Legacy Pack Installer which installs (but hides) all the stock assets from the Classic product, so any old levels that relied on those resources can still load them perfectly and the assets show up locally in the level area and local library. This way new creations are made with only high-end MAX content, but older levels can still be loaded. The reason I would like to separate them is the legacy stuff is 6GB and thousands of entities, and if you want to create next-gen looking scenes, you don't really want a 256x256 textured wall staring at you

@Avenging Eagle : I am very much eager to show you the new lighting model and sample scene I have in mind, but alas it's only in my brain right now. When you see it, I would place a small wager it would get your blessing As you say, a long 7-month journey to go yet, and Classic is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future, and will cater for users who are happy with Classic and don't see anything in MAX worth upgrading for. I never thought of the pre-order discount as a ransom to force existing users to buy before they try, more of an early access price as the first alpha builds won't be much fun, more an ordeal in tester training. Are you suggesting some kind of manual system where existing users (need to figure out how to prove Steam users not registered to the TGC site) would be able to pre-order the product at any time before September at the 50% discount mark? I can suggest it to the team, or open it up for discussion here. It will probably mean a little less money to fund development, but if it builds bridges with disenfranchised users, I can see the merit in this, we just wanted to avoid the messy manual processing of requests and automate the process from the site so we could focus on development. Nothing sinister

@Argent_Arts : Funnily enough, one of our team members also suggested replacing LUA with T1 AppGameKit code. It's not impossible, but we chose LUA at the start because it was a somewhat familiar scripting language with a huge amount of spagetti flexibility, ideal for hacking some logic together quickly. It's also quite powerful, so much so that even I don't know all the tricks it can do and I've been using it for over 5 years! I can also see backlash along the lines of the 'evil developer forcing user to buy a $99 product just to create the most basic game logic' I am not even sure how my idea of using the new 'AGK Studio Particle Editor' to create custom particles will go down, as that's another purchase we would be seen to be forcing on users. Hopefully when users see the work that went into it, they will hopefully see that Gabor, the developer, deserves to be paid for his work. Bottom line, I think the LUA train has left the station for now, and it's what we have for logic for the next few years. There has been suggestions of a node or block layer between the editor and scripting tool aka Blueprint editor, but I would like to see how DynamicLUA is received before jumping right into creating a whole 'visual programming language'. I'd like to know someone would use it!

@SHAHIN3D : My research is early days yet, and will have lots more ideas from GDC Vault at the end of March, but I have grabbed the sample code for Voxel GI and it runs nice and fast, makes one light work hard, and with the right assets and materials in the scene, looks amazing (and all in realtime)! Alas I have no renders of all this new juicy lighting model, we are still researching the best method, but I can put up some still images and perhaps a few 'early' videos of the UI before the first alpha build. With all gagging orders rescinded, I am mostly free to share the progress, but I may still get into trouble with my brand director who does not like unapproved material leaving my PC on a whim

@Bugsy : If I were planning to use a tool for making a game project for completion in 2020 that needed to be a detailed commercial single player shooter that is multiple hours long, and that has the same technical dexterity of a good Unity game, is professionally stress tested and market hardened, has the pedigree to deliver a game binary that can run on a variety of different specifications, and it was my liveihood, I would choose Unreal. I think when you are working at the professional commercial level, you need to have confidence in your tool chain, and MAX is still 7-months away from completion and completely untried or tested in the market. I think we will only be able to provide the assurances you are after in 2021 when we have had a further 6 months to ship some official demos, see what games are created and hopefully see one or two success stories on Steam and Unreal Store. I certainly don't want to push away an 11 year veteran of the TGC community to the enemy (nice chaps though they are at Unreal), but I'd have to be honest and say planning a commercial project with MAX for 2020 is a risky move. If you asked me would I try to create a game in 2020 with MAX, just for fun and the possibility of a little profit, then I would say definately! You raise some excellent (and correct) points, and my hope is to produce a tool and engine that delivers the performance, visuals and functionality I think we've all wanted to see from GameGuru. I don't think Classic hit the mark, we need to aim a lot higher, and MAX is the latest attempt. At some point I may even exhaust my own patience, but it seems I'm not ready to give in just yet. Once more unto the breach...

@MXS : Your Points:
1. There are no plans to add sigficant new functionality to the TPP, only fixes and small improvements to help existing TPP projects
2. I have 7 months to do everything you have read above. Swapping in DX12 would eat 3 of those months. We would not be done for September. DirectX 11 is still an accepted SDK and most tools still provide DX11 support and others ONLY support DX11. DX12 also has no device drivers so I would have to write at the hardware level, meaning so safety net, and that's probably not a great idea to give Lee as a project!
3. You can build multiple levels right now for your standalone, but I think I know what you mean about a special dialog where you can specify your level files, add title screens and logic, etc. There are no plans for this, but if this exists in the GitHub issues tracker, and it gets support as a high priority item I think we can do something here. We have our new UI which will make adding to the save standalone process easier (we are using IMGUI) and I will be expanding this to 'some' degree for the release, depending on how quick the other compoenents take to develop and test.
4. We will be optimizing the code in a number of ways, one of the first being a code cleanup and hopefully switching to 64-bit, and then of course using multi-threading more to speed up interface reactions and loading times and finding bottlenecks that might stunt our showcase scene demo that shows of modern-gen graphics while keeping an industry standard frame rate.
5. We are going to need to improve the draw call system as part of the new renderer, not least to support instancing of multiple grasses and trees, potentially terrain and atmospheric rendering and by that time it might present itself to extend this to regular entities. Using hardware instancing is an amazing way to get huge speed boosts when your scene uses the same object over and over.
6. We have not had a great experience updating our own FBX importer, mainly due to the variety of import variations and only having a limited time to dedicate to the feature. For MAX, the plan is to investigate the implementation of the latest version of AssImp. I have tested it a week ago, and it loads and animates both FBX and GLTFv2 very well indeed, pretty much every model I threw at it (and I have a lot of different ones as you can imagine having had to test our own FBX importer). Using AssImp, theoretically, gives you access to over 40+ model formats, all of which can be easily imported through our new Importer Panel which has the same style as the other UI panels you have seen in the shots, but allows simpler use of scaling, retexturing, renaming and finally exporting as an entity.
7. GameGuru already has XBOX controller support with the basic buttons, but if you can add a GitHub issue on the buttons you want to support and how you see them being used, it's not a huge job adding this support into the engine.

@Argent_Arts : The PREFAB is a great idea, I can see LOTS of uses for that. Can you add this as a GitHub Issue feature request as this is where we will get all our short list for features going into the first release. I should really have put a disclaimer all over the forums to say anything Lee types anywhere except official News posts does not constitute a promise, otherwise I will be in trouble about 5 years from now. The only way for me to maintain sanity is to have all feature requests living in one place, which for 2020 is the GitHub issues tracker.

@JC LEON : Hopefully some of my answers just below your post stating "not for me this time" should help answer some of your other points. Sorry you won't be joining us on the MAX journey but we'll still be maintaining Classic for you and feel free to pop back and check out MAX development through 2020, we will posting lots of progress reports, screenshots and videos

@MadLad Designs : You suggested the next version of GameGuru MAX could be called "Game Guru SuperMAX", for the next one after this. No plans right now to switch to an upgrade cadance until we get Classic and MAX right, but I think I prefer different names than V2, V3, V4, etc.

@MXS : Those answers are all from questions on page 1, I added "Here are all the answers from Page 1" at the top of my post. It takes me about an hour to read through and respond carefully to each question. You will find your answer above as it was on Page 2. Anyhoo, thanks for checking out the hype train, feel free to come back in a few months and check out the MAX progress!

@Slaur3n : All your FPM maps will load in perfectly fine in MAX, we may have to some 'mapping' to get your horrid terrains into the nicer new terrain system but we will try to reproduce the nasty banding effect of the terrain painting Fear not, one of the goals is that you can load up your game project (after copying your media over) and carry on from where you left off.

@fearlesswee : I am liking that rain a LOT. We have snow and rain in MAX right now but we are planning to do more with it such as the raindrops on the floor, puddles for effect, atmospheric effects as it renders into the distance, built-in audio choices, etc. This time of course, avoiding the temptation to hard code and expose either script, resources and shaders in case you want to add more or tweak existing effects.

@Super Clark : I am also interested in making sure the transition from Classic to MAX is fair and acceptable to the GameGuru community, and don't want to force users onto MAX just to get features we promised would go in Classic. I know the Kickstarter campaign failed, and we completed the features our private investor wanted adding. Can you dig out a link that can list all the features we mentioned in the pledge campaign back in 2013? I did some Googling but cannot find it and my memory does not stretch back seven years If anyone can find the original Reloaded Pledger page from TGC (I think there is a service which stores old webpages somewhere) I am very curious how that list stacks up to what we have now in Classic. I am pretty sure we did a few things in the last seven years

@smallg : Good spot! You are right it is supposed to mean that the people you share it with don't need to buy or own the original creation software. I will forward this to our press office

@JC LEON : Looks like you are not quite 100% "out the door", so here are more answers for you, always happy to welcome old users back:
1. No GUI Designer planned for release, we will be expanding the Save Standalone Panel to include some basic controls over what is saved. No firm details but you can probably expect theme choice, some custom text and image boxes, custom icon and other small refinements to make the executable tailored to your game. Full-blown menu editor is a nice idea, perhaps something similar to how AGK Studio drag and drop editor works for 2D layouts?
2. We already have raycasting and line of sight for entities to have 'see' and 'hearing' logic can be scripted, but I guess you mean drop in logic without the need to write code. I think this idea, being able to drop in a sensor marker which triggers something. Perhaps you can expand on how you see it working, what it might look like and how it triggers things, and post it on GitHub issues tracker as a feature request
3. New AssImp based importer planned. Supports animated FBX and GLTFv2 importing. Also planning to route animation frame values to the editor, removing them from the script and giving them proper labels so you can use the same script with differently animated imports.
4. It took Gabor about 3-4 months to write the Particle Editor with the features need to make decent modern game particle effects from scratch. Are you recommending I spend half of my 7-month time budget writing a new Particle System for MAX, and squeeze everything else into the remaining 4 months One alternative would be to see if Gabor would give us permission to include his Particle Editor as a MAX DLC, this way it can be built-in to the software, accessed with a simple, and also means Gabor can be paid for his work.

@Argent_Arts : The ability for the standalone to use a single screen resolution instead of multiple resolutions is in there. Just delete all the other folder resolutions, leave the one you want. The loader will find the nearest size that matches (if there is only one it will find that). My fault, the documentation is lagging way behind all the features we have crammed in over the years.

@Ertlov : You have my guarentee, dynamic lights you place down in MAX and set to cast a shadow, will cast a shadow. Depending on the lighting model we eventually settle on, it will also cast its light of every other surface within range, bounce the indirect light around and cast even more shadows. And all this craziness from just one dynamic light! This time, instead of limiting the choices to save on performance, I am going to leave the choice of lights, shadows and how many you want in the hands of the level designer. If your level FPS suddenly hits quicksand, it's because you have put five hundred dynamic Christmas lights on your Palm Tree and they're all casting shadows at the player

@synchromesh : Yes we are keeping TPP in, making required fixes first in Classic, and tweaks to round off the functionality but not significantly enhance the feature set. We will then move this over to MAX and ensure it works with the new Character Creator characters so you can make your own avatar and run around with convincing animation and controls.

@OldFlak : Interesting that many GameGuru users are happy to DROP backwards compatibilty! I would have expected the opposite. So far I can see a way through that will not compromise our choices of new technology for the terrain and grass system. As it will be a whole new terrain system with much more powerful geometry and texture controls, we will have to 'convert' the old terrain over, but as the old terrains are pretty basic at best, and the splat maps (if that is what we end up using) are simple enough to reproduce the banding effect, there are no road blocks to backwards compatibility right now. It also means those who want to carry on their game project but with improved UI and engine can do so without much fuss. Naturally, I am sure most users will reset their terrain immediately and start using the new controls to get the terrain look they really wanted in the first place! Your other points below:
1. We will retain support for X file importing (not through AssImp to keep stability here) but the internal format for GameGuru MAX remains DBO
2. Thanks for the lighting examples tips, been a while since I tried Lumberyard, which I think is a branch spin-off from the CryEngine tech, so should be pretty cool. Hopefully I can drill into their demo back-end a little, hopefully they have some terrain I can take a peek at!
3. Can you expand on what you mean by 'Transparencies'? You mean lots of semi-transparent entities such as windows that are sorted back to front? I have looked at order indepedent transparency but apparently it's a drain on the GPU. There are other techniques but I find a nice sort and back to front rendering works best.
4. Multiple Grasses definately going in, no self respecting modern game has only one grass for the entire world
5. The lightmapper was trying to hold on, but its code was from the original DarkLIGHTS module of DBPro so had none of the special skills of modern baking systems. I have not ruled out using a baking solution to speed up levels, as many modern games (including Unreal) uses a LOT of baking tricks, but I am going to research some off the shelf stuff first to see what the standards are and if we really need them. If realtime works for our minimum GPU spec, I am happy to wave goodbye forever to pre-baked hacking of light effects.
6. With the VXGI lighting model I have been looking at, there is no need for cubemaps or pre-generated probes. The shader literally finds the right color to reflect from its surface as part of the light solver.
7. Can you send me a link to the 'Promises' items you mentioned, I would like to start compiling a proper list so I can start checking things off and have a remaining list which I can present to the community in March.
8. The 'event editor', 'node editor' or what I call a visual programming system would be a layer between DynamicLUA and pure scripting. I am excited to think about such a feature but it's a chunk of work, and I think we can get away with not having this for release. I want people to try DynamicLUA first before new calls for a new way to control logic, as it might be all cases can be covered with much simpler additions. I simple whenever possible!
9. The plan is to start releasing alpha builds from mid-April 2020, and then continue releasing until August. By then, and all the testing feedback from them, we should have something pretty solid. The trick is not to keep adding features towards the end, and switch into 'Lee not adding any more, just finding, fixing, testing and repeating it all again the next day'.

Thanks everyone for the encouragement! It's just gone midnight here, and happily finished all the answers right up to the deadline I set myself. Started the day at 7AM this morning so it's been a slog. I was meaning to switch back over to Discord to keep on top of that conversation but it took me all my five hours here I may pop over and answer some casual questions before I put this day to bed.

I know this is a long shot but if the rendering technique is being changed what about adding UDIM Support ?

U-Dimension (or "UDIM") is a texture naming convention that enables multiple texture images to map to separate UV regions on a Static Mesh or Skeletal Mesh model. When using the UDIM naming convention, groups of image files are imported as a single Virtual Texture Asset.

Virtual texturing support for UDIMs is beneficial for a couple of reasons:
It works with many separate, smaller textures instead of extremely large textures.
Each UDIM image can have a different resolution enabling virtual textures that have non-uniform pixel density.

For example, if you import a UDIM virtual texture made up of four image files—two 2048x2048 and two 128x128 textures—arranged in a 2x2 pattern, the virtual texture logically samples these images like a single 4098x4098 texture. The smaller 128x128 images are stretched to fill the same area as the larger 2048x2048 images without disk or runtime memory usage affected. Having the smaller 128x128 textures fill a 2048x2048 texture resolution doesn't consume any memory in this case.

Pre-Ordered with a slight sensation of Deja Vu.

Pre-ordered and happy to help alpha test if required.

Cheers.

@LeeBamber - thanks for the reply


Height-maps and mega textures


Yeah, anything that has one transparency in front of another two or three can be very tedious to get working properly.

My project Naelurec uses a lot of semi-transparent entities and is a constant battle to get them to work together
video here as an example.
If you drop another model in somewhere you then have to go and fight to get the transparent stuff working again.

Lumberyard use OIT: Order Independent Transparency - and their demo game runs fine on my system - 60fps minimum, mostly around 70-80.....

But use whatever method just so long as it works.
With current GG try putting semi-transparent objects in front of each other at different angles, I now only use objects as separate entities for anything with any kind of transparency, and even then you will get mixed results - but 9 times out of 10 something won't render properly.


Sounds great - the current cube-mpa idea is OK, but just wastes resources imo



It was in the initial video for the backer campaign
But more than happy if it is just implemented in MAX

OldFlak....

ok... wishlist... lol

- 64bit
- AA Lighting system
- AA render
- no more prebake
- maps larger than 768x768
- better AI navigation
- painting textures on the terrain
- HUD editor?
- TPP, player can shoot in the left/right direction (2.5D sidescroller)
- no old models
- a small set of 2019/2020 style models (trees, rocks, buildings... ZOMBIES
- maybe some nice DLC packs at the release (gore pack (lol), cars, buildings)
- copy & paste in the editor
- character editor (look at that awesome editor from the game "black desert"), I never played the game, but the char. editor is amazing.
- more fps (yes frames p. s.)
- console export???
- event editor like fusion 2.5 / construct 2 (the event editor from fusion 2.5 is easy to understand, even I was able to create games with it)

GG is pretty good since the christmas update, so if GGX is an improvment, all is great in my book. The features promised are impressive and with Lee confirming that our custom media will work, I see no downside here personally. We will all see in 7 months.



-Wolf

@Lee


Just to be clear, I was not suggesting dumping LUA scripting at all. Instead, I was suggesting ADDING T1 AGK code as an alternate means of coding. Some engines allow you to use several scripting/coding languages to get the work done. Perhaps GG MAX could offer the end-user one or the other when the start a new project. So, you start an new project and GG MAX asks, "LUA or AGK?" Once you select, your project is locked into one or the other (if both cannot be used). Just an idea ...



Done! Feature Request: PREFABS for GameGuru MAX #680

Forgot to ask this, (unless I missed it mentioned in the lengthy thread here...)

Will MAX have a system where you can script in LUA to 'spawn' new entities
on the fly in Lua, something that isn't inherently already present on the map--
but is of course in your entity library?
Did my question make sense? Probably most helpful with non conventional levels
like procedurally generated ones for example-- or ones where you can build up
bases, armies, turrets, walls, rewards, etc
IOW >> Can you call an entity (a box, building or tree for example) from the library
to include on the map-- at any time?? So this would be like the way extra sound is
called by Lua script.

Example: LoadInEntity ( Folder, filename, iID, script )
SWEET!

Hi Lee,

You guys have been very busy.

32 Bit Classic
64 Bit Max

This sounds like a safe journey to go for us community members to support. It would be inarguable. We were never "promised" 64 bit so even if there is a cost associated, nobody should feel that upgrade should be "owed" to them. However many will feel abandoned if Classic is discontinued too soon. I can also see it being challenging to consistently update both. I'd give it maybe 1-2 more years of life since all computers are being forced over to Windows 10 (64 bit) regardless.

This is where Operation Bug Fix will come incredibly handy, to bring Classic up to a satisfactory level.

Thing with Game Guru is, its a fantastic prototyping tool and a great intro to level design. Its a tool you can use to learn to make custom textures and see that reflected in the engine. You can build your own models and important them. You can even learn a bit of code. Make some fun short maps just for fun. For this Game Guru excels. However, this is not 100% the case for Indie Game Devs.

Game Guru at its current state at the end of 2019, the tool has many known bugs and annoying widget issues. The biggest issues being that for Indie Game Dev's they will soon learn that memory leaks or caps will plague their games. Causing crashing and all kinds of instability once distribution starts. This is all mostly due to the 2GB memory cap with it being under a 32 bit engine.

I support whole-heartily the road to 64-bit.

My games have suffered from memory limitations and my dream would be to see them to their finish lines. One day.