Hmm...
My first game could be ready within 6-8 weeks, if...

If the performance would be better, I mean my PC is not that bad, an i5 4690k & Gtx970 but after I have some actors inside the level, the framerate goes down -15 frames or more.
Sometimes I have only 20, 19 or less frames. I don't wanna know what happen, if someone would play my game/levels on a 3-4 year old AMD CPU

I read somewhere that GG uses only 1 CPU core, so multicore support could be a boost for GG. Also Dx11 would help the performance.

Another thing is a missing save & load option in the menu of the final standalone game.
It would help already if you could save the level no. (E.g. Player at level 2).

Last point, file encryption. After building the standalone exe, you still can access all the files in the folders (jpg, ogg, wav, dds etc...) if I buy licensed artwork, music etc... The owners would not be happy if they would find their files somewhere in the internet. Because a little dev didn't encrypt the licensed material properly. These are 3 points why I (and maybe some others) can not release games yet.

I think I could develop/create/make a nice little game, which could be also good to promote GG a bit more, if people can see what u can do with it
(Watch my beach videos from the other thread)

A couple of things you need to understand and consider.

1. Multi core, will not be added untill such time all of the core engine has been added, and is 100% stable.

2. DX11 support is still a long long way off, as it requires a major code rewrite in order to add support for it, it will also need the multi core support.

3. Have a look at the levels I designed, the warehouse and the big escape you will notice that AI is spawned in groups with a trigger to keep performance up, the only exception would be morning mountain stroll, which has over a 100 AI in it without a single trigger to spawn the AI.This is the result of carefully tweaking the camera and rendering distances so the engine is not overwhelmed with draw calls, at full slider settings there is over a 1 million polygons been drawn, and 900 odd draw calls.

So you really need to reduce some distances, if the player is not going to see that far any ways, carefully tweaking, the settings you should be able to get max performance without the expense of reducing graphics quality.

Using a 100% flat terrain, isn't going to work either as well using the terrain to your advantage will also help to cull objects , indoor levels and you can completely remove the terrain altogether without water and you will get a healthy boost there as well.

However basic the engine is for FPS games you should still be able to release a decent game.

So good luck I hope you can sort out your performance issues.

You have may have to reduce the scenes you are working on a little. I know the beach scene you did a video of would probably run like a slideshow on my system if I were to test it. The fact you have a 970 means you can push GG somewhat further than many of us would try. I have a 660GTX, which is a bit more of an average card, and so if I get a game to run just about okay on it I know my minimum spec Well, mostly, you would be surprised at some older cards ability to run this sometimes.

Multi core is needed and it has been touted that the physics at least will probably be switched to another core. On my old Q6600 (still current) this would definitely help keep things smoother overall. We do need a newer version of DX ultimately to gain great performance though, as many newer cards, including my own are running it in a brute force fashion and many new features are not used.

What we really need for a good gain, anytime soon, is occlusion. Currently GG displays everything that is in the map. So you will always get slowdown when looking in certain directions, where your map lies hidden in the distance, but still being calculated. I see incredible amounts of polygons occasionally, over 2.2 million is the highest I remember. It's a wonder it can run at all with such high volumes. It does well to manage as is. A system that cuts that down dramatically will make larger games far more palatable and avoid detailed areas in the background slowing things as much.

With standalones, the media is supposed to be encrypted. Although you can see it fine, you should not be able to copy it into GameGuru or other engines. I have never tested this as such, but that is supposed to be the case. If this is not, then something is amiss.

My trusty old 4870 doesn't do too badly, I don't know why but it performs better than some 5000 and 6000 series GPUs. I tend to get 17/18 fps with it.

Think I might overclock it now though.

My PC was pretty high spec when I put it all together in 2008 but it's starting to show its age now.

Not only the AI reduces the framerate, also the trees. As I am working on jungle and beach levels, I need a lot of trees and plants. A jungle without trees is... Not very realistic

Hmmm, no the files are not encrypted after you built your exe. So everybody can copy the files and do whatever they want with them. My scenes normally are over 1.2 polygons, a today's engine should be able to handle that.

GG is written in dark basic, right? This could be also a problem, basic interpreters are normally slower than a compiled c code.

Check again they should be ?

My files are not encrypted with the build either. I have to hand copy over my other levels into my build.

Most files in built games are encrypted, you may find it confusing as they keep their file extension but the contents of the file are scrambled so only the engine and the store can decrypt them. Any file with _e_ at the front of the file name is encrypted and cannot be extracted. We are adding more files to the encryption system in the near future and the store will soon be encrypting all media by standard so even your store downloads will be protected.


Some of it is yes but the team are in the process of rewriting everything in C++ as they go, so when they change a module in the engine they rewrite it in C++ the aim is to remove DBP totally.

These forums are great for learning things. If we think about it, we're going to see a lot of noobes. As one who is still learning, I'm often thrown by acronyms and comments that I simple do not understand.

For example WOI's comment above...


What does AI Spawn mean?

Thanks

What can I explain for you?

Or you could PM him and ask if he could explain further for you.

If you p;lace a character it automatically appears at the start. You can set it not to and then spawn it manually from a script and/or a triggerzone. That is what he means by AI spawn.

This is very good news and I'm happy to hear it. Thanks for doing this. It would also be nice if you would then make it possible to extend the engine through custom C++ code.

Pretty much you can boost performance a lot, doing this

@synchromesh @The Next

Ok, I've checked the files again, yes some are already encrypted (wav, jpg) that's good. Some files are not yet encrypted (.fpm level data).
But it's already a good start

Also good to read, that you (TGC) switch to C++, which should speed up things too.

So... what about saving the actual gameplay progress (savegames)?

Hi Mookia

Of course this will be a feature in GameGuru and is planned....
Sometimes some features have to be added first to enable other features to be added so they work correctly ..... if that makes sense
I just cannot predict exactly when at this time ..

yes, it makes sense...

If you are able to do your own scripting, you can do this using standard Lua commands to save various aspects of your game levels and re-load them as needed.

Animated trees...

They are a xxxl framerate killer, it's better not to use so many of them. Also the water reduces my framerate...

Can we get a screenshot of your TAB+TAB settings?

I can do it, when I am at home... But for what you need it?

was my first thought when I saw your beach level.
Into similar levels I've experienced same issues, even the game going too slow.


Perhaps a low poly model forest but surrounded by trees hight poly, only to fill gaps in places where there should be trees, but the player can not access them.

I think there are too many things to calculate around a tree, I do not want to imagine, if this is multiplied by 100/1000 trees.

3com

Hey Mookai
The reason I asked to see a screenshot of your video setting, is so other people can see them, and maybe make suggestions about how you could improve performance for your game.

Turn off physics in the trees that the player cant get to.
in many games you are able to walk thru smaller trees and bushes. this is to save on performance.

It works.

walking thru trees is a nice idea. but if you use the trees as... let's say border or guide thru the level it's not so good.
a screenshot of my normal settings is in the bug thread "grass bug"
I hope that bug will be fixed soon...

then make billboard hedge row or trees the same way. It is common in game. how many polygons in your scene with out terrain.

Press F11 to turn off different things to see where the bottle neck might be.
Down in the bottom part of the screen are the options to toggle on or off.

See what that turns up for you.

You can still do this to the trees, and put an invisible entity on front of them. Single plane with normal facing where the player would be. If you don't have that, then you can assign any object with a pure black texture, and in effect have a blocking solid you can scale to your needs.

Best I have for you at the moment. we discussed different ideas for blockers, from premade objects, to a special trigger zone. so we have been thinking about this.

Thanks

Yes, thanks. I found already F11 options
In some levels it's good to turn off the water, which sometimes increase the framerate by 50% (looks like the water needs some finetuning )

Blockers:
Hmmm, something that keeps the player in the playfield, if he leaves the playarea... then he die or return to the starting point. Maybe a trigger, or better a paint tool, for easy paint the block zone/area

At the moment I use water, high mountains, deep valleys to keep the player in the area...