HI Pre-Order Users,

The news you have been waiting for, we have just released the first build of 2021 to anyone who has pre-ordered. Go to your TGC Account product page and you will see the new download for the "GameGuru MAX Tiny Installer.exe". Grab that and run it, and the updater will do the rest. Make sure you back up any files you may wish to keep, and even better, uninstall any previous version and delete the root folder so you have a fresh system.

This version is released mainly to test the new installer and auto-update system, and also to show you a few glimpses of new UI overhauls you may have seen in the broadcasts since the last update.

No need to report feedback on missing functionality at this stage, but feel free to post any bug reports you have, especially those that crash or freeze, or otherwise prevent you from roaming the software to our Issues Board here: https://github.com/TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo/issues

We hope you enjoy seeing a new build, and we look forward to bringing you another next Friday. Also, don't forget to tune in on our YouTube live broadcast on Wednesday 4 PM GMT to learn a little bit more about that build.

Thanks Lee, downloading now.

When I try to install I get the following error.

Here is a good link when your OS is playing silly buggers:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/-windows-cannot-access-the-specified-device-path-or-file-error-when-you-try-to-install-update-or-start-a-program-or-file-46361133-47ed-6967-c13e-e75d3cc29657

Thanks! Turns out it was the AVG anti-virus program i have installed. I turned it off and it installed fine.

Now that the Tiny installer is installed. It won't continue installing the rest of the program.

EDIT: Seems like AVG causes all sorts of problems for installing. It has to be switched off completely till MAX is completely installed.

Installed here fine . The Installer was quick but the download of all the 'stuff' ( I like the word stuff) took longer . Lookin good .

Lance

so far so good here, all runs fine on my new Ryzen 7 laptop as well. 40+ FPS, yet to test on my GT1070ti

Some drastic slowdown if player runs into shelving, lights or many of the entities in the cellars demo, I guess the polygon detection is doing a lot of calculations for collisions.

@Lee, When I try to use the installer it says server error as the screenshot shows below, am I doing something wrong? I am not sure if this is a bug or not

Nice one Lee will have a crack at it tomorrow

Please help me. I am a new customer and I cannot get the tiny installer to connect to the serve to check for updates. It says that there was a failure to connect to server. i check my firewall and window built in antivirus is not blocking. I am including a screenshot of the message.

Unlikely to be a bug as no one else has reported that one.
No screenshot attached either so not sure exactly what your seeing.

Downloaded the tiny installer and installing now. It's very, very slow at the moment. It was much faster to download the previous betas (by far) than it is for me to get MAX installed via the current method.

Did not seem that bad for me for a 5 gig download
But on a good note you wont have to do it again. It will just be updates from here on in even faster than the previous beta's

It took me close to 20 minutes to download on a pretty high speed internet connection. I've downloaded 50-100GB games much more quickly than this. In fact, I was able to make and submit art corrections to a piece for a client and MAX was still downloading after I'd completed the corrections.

@Shadow Master.
Did you uninstall the previous version first ... Current version Beta 3 ?
Anyone else see that.
Are you logged in to your TGC account .

@synchromesh I reinstall max again and even put it into the Program file on the c:drive then I reinstall tiny installer also in C: drive and same exact thing pops up

Uninstall Beta 3 ... The tiny installer downloads and installs the latest beta
Try that.

Max versus classic. The shadows just aren't there yet, it still lacking some thing can't quite put my finger on it.Wicked supports HDR might be the push it needs, and maybe some blur or some thing to soften the environment a bit.

Max


Classic

I have uninstalled everything and just reinstall tiny installer, below are screenshot of what comes up @synchromesh
I need it on my D: Drive because my C: drive (system Driver) is only 250gb while my D: drive is 500gb

Ok now it looks a lot more like it should.
Are you sure you have disabled your antivirus totally for this install ?
Or could you have anything else blocking it.

I am only using the Window built-in antivirus, my firewall is set to allow max access to the internet @synchromesh

even with Window built-in firewall completely off it still has that error message. It is really strange

You may have to wait for Lee to respond to this one.
Obviously something is wrong but im out of idea's.

@synchromesh I am only using wifi which is the only way my desktop connects to the internet, could that be my issues? I have no hard wire (internet cable) for my system

@synchromesh I went ahead and reported it as a bug on the bug form, so Lee and his team can get it faster

@synchromesh Working fine now, I decided to restart my computer LOL should had thought about that but nothing told me to restart my system LOL

Great News !!

@ Wizard of id - it looks like your bridge isn't casting a shadow, only the pipes underneath it are.

AE

Thanks for the reports so far! Looks like the only menaces are with fighting the OS to get enough user control to install this beast. Some feedback:

1. ANTI-VIRUS CAPERS - I think there is a formal way to get most top anti-virus tools to white-list MAX when we are closer to release. Something about submitting our binary patterns so they are not seen as hostile. For now, switching them off, installing, and switching on again seems to do the trick but of course, TGC takes no responsibility for this action. I myself use NOD32 (now ESET Internet Security) which works great for a developer and does not interfere with my many binary buildings.

2. TGC SERVER ACCESS - All dev builds (and the install phase of the release version) will require an internet connection to our servers, so we may need some additional gubbins in the installer/updater to detect when we cannot reach the server and provide some extra information so you can get around it (including switching it off and on again; thanks Shadow_Master).

3. SPEED OF INITIAL DOWNLOAD - I agree downloading 3500 separate files from a 5GB collection is slower than one 5GB file. I am sure there are ways to speed this up, but our goal was to get up and running with an update system that was flexible and stable for the start of the 2021. I am sure my geniuses in residence can help me figure out how to speed up the initial transfer of these files, perhaps some kind of batch/compress block of files and so fewer files are transmitted, and expanded at the local end (only for large updates and the initial install). It would need to be automated though as right now it is pretty easy for me to put up new builds quickly, and I don't want to add red tape to my life in 2021

4. MAX vs CLASSIC VISUALS - This is something the whole team is taking pretty seriously in 2021. To be fair, every time we got a scathing view on Steam related to graphics (some even comparing them to 1990's graphics which is original DOOM territory), we had a feeling there were always kernels of truth there. Anyhoo, we want to make sure MAX delivers correct lighting, shadows, balance, and what other magic techniques required to bring even empty default levels up to the standard of modern games. We also want to do this early so we know we will hit the required mark, and we are very fortunate that we are using the Wicked Engine and not Lee's cobbled together graphics engine that harks back to the days when 8-bit was cool. More on this in the weeks to come!

Again, thanks everyone for bashing through the issues of the first build of 2021, and reporting what you find. Hopefully, we will get the installation and update procedure as smooth as the PC will allow, so anyone who has even the mildest interest in making games can have a go with no obstacles in their way

Yeah there is a settings compatibility issue with classic FPE files and max, previously you could either set shadows it as 0 or 1, and it would render shadows regardless, you actually need to set it to -1 in classic for it not render a shadow at all, having it the default 0, actually doesn't render shadows. So that is some thing that changed in max, no biggie.Looks better.

[img]https://forum.game-guru.com/attachment/27349[/img
]Where do you report Bugs or what seems to be Bugs ??
I Imported Models from Classic to Max and Ever time I start max I get this message.

That is not a bug
You are supposed to put your assets in Documents \ GameGuruApps \ GameGuruMAX \ Files \ entitybank etc
Not the core structure. Remove them and try that. It will then only convert them the once.

Thank You..

Hello
I can't seem to get the new installer to work. Every thing seems to start ok I have the place selected to install but nothing happens I have waited over 20 minutes and nothing . I even cancelled and tried it again several times nada.

Same thing happened to me shivers, I had to disable my virus checker before it would install. May be try that?

Hello
Dis regard last post last post I figured it out. LOL

Just a quick test, mine downloaded and fired up fine no problems at all, had a look at the snow and rain which looks nice, i noticed also for me and those of you out there that maybe want to crank the speed up for editing purposes if i turn off MSAA my fps goes from slow to ballistic fps wise so if your suffering slow fps that maybe worth a shot while editing structure editor works and looks nice. entities.. trees etc look nice too maybe a little too shiny for me (but that's just my preference and maybe there's a way to dull them down a little) that's as far as I've got today but yeah like it and please keep in the ability to turn things on and off like this as it makes the whole design side a lot faster. cheers

Installed MAX 1.0 on both new laptop / PC. both work fine, PC is better d/t better GFX card. Installer is good, only slight niggle was I had to select install folder twice. Not had much time to test today, but did a quick test to see if it worked with my HM2GG tool (Heightmap->GG).
imports, but I noticed for this to work I need to do quite a bit of an update, if I recall d/t multiple .dat files. Anyway, looking good so far.
To increase/decrease the shroud, I had to use CTRL and +/- keys. Can't remember if it's alway been like that but works well.

Installing atm. My internet is ancient, about 1mb per sec if I'm lucky, so it will take awhile. Not tried a build for a bit, so interested to see how it has come along since the last version I installed. It's been about 20 minutes so far and I'm at 342/3576, so I'm guessing I will have a bit of a wait.

As you can see in the screenshot, the updater stops working at 1.6GB left to install, I have tried copying the files to another drive and updating ...get same result. The internet is busy as is the HD yet does not budge from this 1.6 GB and no files are being written as checking the size goes up and down but does not increase overall! It feels like it's writing and deleting the same file over and over again!

Below is a demostration of the changing size on the HD going up and down:

4,540,488,356
4,554,746,532
4,573,727,396
4,588,440,228
4,582,382,244
4,595,624,612
4,576,447,140
4,566,133,412
4,581,702,308
4,603,800,228
4,553,968,292
4,572,621,476
4,611,300,004
4,612,102,820
4,612,721,316
4,624,480,932
4,612,725,412
4,629,961,380
4,654,385,828
4,613,065,380
4,640,496,292
4,571,589,284
4,580,944,548
4,591,704,740
4,610,562,724
4,611,279,524
4,612,442,788
4,621,257,380

I'm hoping this means only for the TGC website version, and the final Steam version would just be able to download/install entirely from Steam (which would likely be way faster and be able to handle way more traffic at once)

Does the the file size update then? Still at 5.8 gig here, but files to go is updating fine, if slowly.

No sign of the total size decreasing yet, so not sure if it is supposed to or not. It does look like the 5.8 gig is the total size though and the only way to know how the download is going is to see how many files you have downloaded. I'm sure someone who has downloaded it will know if this changes or not later on.

@Stefos
Something is wrong there ..
As DVader states that should stay at 5.8 gig. ( The installation size ) Its not a countdown
Only the numbers on the far right change as its installing.

EDIT .. Forget my comment you were right

@Honkeyboy
I think your on the wrong version. Did you download the tiny installer and install via that ?
The Structure editor is not selectable in this build.

Keeping an eye on it and yes, the total size does decrease it seems at certain points.

So hoping it doesn't fail now!

I'm having trouble with saving as stand alone, when I try to run the exe, it pops up like its going to start but only show a white window and then it doesn't run and exit the exe, is there something I'm doing wrong or is there a bug on this?

Oh Wow
I Got that one wrong then .. Honestly thought mine did not alter.
@Stefos .. No idea on that one then. But you were right about the size.

@ wizard of id
Looks like MAX isn't computing for multi-shadows (overlays) nor light- scattering...?
The Earth has a robust atmosphere, so that's what should happen under those conditions.