Lee participated in a 3+ hour live stream where the broadcaster was playing around with GameGuru and doing a Q&A with Lee. I have only had the chance to watch the first hour so far but here are a few noteworthy quotes I took away from it:

"We're going to be around for five years developing and adding to this, and we're going to use the community to figure out what order we're adding things."

"In the next couple of months, probably in the next 4-6 weeks, we are adding a lot of RPG third person elements, so it gives you more of an adventure storyline all that kind of thing."

"We've started at the common denominator, trying to get all the game elements that you would expect on all the smallest hardware possible... We have big ambitions. Definitely before the end of the year, we'll have a full global illumination system. So, you'll be able to have lots and lots of lights, as many lights as you want, casting lots of shadows in every direction, ambient occlusion so you get those little details and a better sense of depth."

"Working on free flight camera mode. We've freed up the right-mouse button because we'll be using that so you can zoom in and rotate around, do the whole mouselook thing. We're actually working on that starting probably next week."

"For early access, we won't be adding any major new features, just focusing on the fundamentals. We've got a tentative deadline of July/August to get out of early access [but naturally this may get delayed as development often does]. We aren't going to use early access as an excuse just to keep adding things. We'll be adding new things for years... We'd like a situation where you can use it for days and weeks before you run into a bug."

Does that 5 years include the time already spent I wonder?

I was about to ask myself, if that means Game Guru needs 5 or 7 years of development. But it doesn't really matter, given how fast graphic improvements are developed, the engine will already be outdated by the end of either period.


which of course means that the Steam crowd will decide in which order things are added - until they loose interest and by that time the engine will have been rendered unusable for serious game development.

Hello multiplayer toy, goodbye development tool

" probably in the next 4-6 weeks, we are adding a lot of RPG third person elements"
ah, great.... an unfinished basic fps engine, an unfinished multiplayer mode and next an unfinished "rpg 3rd person whatever"

The same happen to me, if I start a project, then the next and the next. In the end I've 3 unfinished projects.
(I think I know what I'm talking about, I'm working in the game industry 15+ years for a xxxxl publisher...)

"But it doesn't really matter, given how fast graphic improvements are developed, the engine will already be outdated by the end of either period. "
Hmm, well, the engine was already outdated when it was finally released as early access on steam.
But I like the engine and the idea behind it, I just see that they start too many new parts (multipl, rpg, conkit).

I think they don't have unlimited manpower, how many devs they have? 3, 4, 5?

( edited out my rant )

I will say that the best news i heard this month was this

I could be philosophical and ask if anything creative can truly be called complete, but I would like to ask specifically what core features are missing from Game Guru? We had a team call earlier today and each item we picked out was in some way an extension to the core rather than a missing cog. I am very keen to learn if we have overlooked an important cog in the FPS machine before moving on to additional game mechanisms. By core cog, I am looking for functionality that fundamentally exists in every FPS game rather than special extras that some games have and fall more into the 'want' category as opposed to 'need' category.

We will eventually be ticked off the 'want' column, but for the immediate future we're looking at the 'need' column only. Basically, what is missing that "prevents" the end user from creating a first person shooter game?

For casual forum readers and newbies, the posts here are from veteran community members with join dates ranging all the way back to 2002, so their feedback is not 'negative' Lee bashing, but 'years of built up frustration and disappointment' Lee bashing, and it's all good. How else will I know what people are thinking? It might seem like I am not listening, or listening and then doing the complete opposite, but it's the crazy world of game engine development and you only have to meet me to realize I ain't no rocket scientist. Just a coder, creating software, making good use of the things that I find. To make up for the unique speed at which I work, I am charging between $20 and $100 for this new product and providing you with 5 years of support and improvements. The same price as a few movies and a take away

I do not think this is a case of "Lee Bashing". For those of us that have spent countless hours working with this engine over the past few years, there seems to be a feeling that the rules have changed before the game has been finished. (no pun intended)

Can one make a basic FPS game right now?? well yes.. but can we make a unique and sophisticated FPS game... NO!

With all the AI action happening at terrain height, with the lack of multi-level interiors, with the lack of scripted camera control, with the lack of many features to improve the quality of terrain editing, a number of missing scripting connections, plus the lack of video integration, creating a complete sophisticated FPS game is not currently possible, much less other game formats (which GG has announced it will support).

There is a sense that since the Steam integration that the focus has changed, from building a development tool, to building a "Sandbox" (your term not mine). The concern we have is that after all we have been through, what we thought we were doing, is now something different.

Frankly, from the beginning I have said that I'm not interested in FPS, but was (and am) looking for an engine where I can develop more sophisticated games that stimulate the mind, not my trigger finger. I thought that the move to LUA was to provide that higher level of programming control.

This is not for me a matter of time. I've been at it for almost 2 years, so if the features I "WANT" are a ways out, then OK. However, if the future of GG will be nothing more than a mindless shoot-em-up sandbox, then let us know so we can move-on and not spend more time waiting for things that will not happen.

What me "prevents" to create a complete basic shooter.

- missing save/load option
- missing value take over from level 1 to 2 , I mean at level 2, all settings are back at default. If I left level 1 with 90% health at level 2 it's back at 100% . Same with the other basic values.
- player can not die, live counter gives no action after reached value 0. Means u can continue play even after the live counter is 0 or less...
- performance multicore support could maybe help

The first 3 points are basics which I think should be in a basic game (or game engine/easy game maker). Add the 3 things and I would have a nice shooter ready in 8 weeks....
Because nobody today wants to play a game with 20-30 levels without the option to save.

Thank you.

Pretty much anything indoors
Lightmapping is far from being great, there are many things here that need a lot of improving. For example the sun should not be affecting entity's indoors and really shouldn't be completely flooding light onto opposite walls as it does. If using both lightmapping and outdoor light some entity's will lightmap and some don't, they instead only use the outdoor light for some reason. I have seen this even using many of the same entity and even when I use a big box to get rid of the sun source completely it still manages to bleed in and frustrate me. Shadows need higher resolutions so we can create even a middle worthy game appearance they are blobs right now and some larger scale models refuse to work at all.
We all know lightmapping is anything but friendly on smoothing groups, sometimes it looks okay and others you get facets all over the media. Only hard surface modeling allowed.

Custom characters are a major chore due to so much of the AI control being hard coded, you have barely scratched the surface when it comes to allowing users to create custom characters easily integrated into Game Guru. Particularly those using custom rigs . Characters are everything and the fact there are none in the store speaks for itself.

Dynamic lighting won't cast character shadows on anything but terrain , which means none at all in an indoor scene. Sore thumb comes to mind and I don't know why you guy's aren't seeing this for yourselves and doing something about it. No point in me repeatedly squawking over it.
There are probably a bunch of other niggles I can't think of right now.

If it is meant that all the core features are in place to create a generic outdoor First Person Shooter using a sandbox game then you are probably right, up to a point, but I will be honest, there isn't a single game created so far that I would buy or even have any interest in playing, including my own (no offense meant to any comp entrants or whatever, I have tried myself and know the struggle) and a bunch of games created using default media gets boring really fast.

If you are trying to say that all the core features are in place for someone to make a unique game that stands up to scrutiny in the games market then we are far from it. I reckon as a game GG might succeed in pleasing the market for a short time but it isn't good enough yet for any serious development project and that is what I stepped up to fund.

Adding additional game mechanisms won't improve any of the above and though I would love to see that happen I think you need to vastly improve whats there before moving on.

Removed my original comments here. I think the instant change with market strategy really scared me and a number of older members of the community. A bit of uncertainty and confusion. Though realistically the software itself is no different and the focus isn't any different. I have a great sense of calm over the product whenever I hear more and more from Lee. I must say I do miss those blog updates I used to get with my RSS subscriptions :p

I'm going to be bookmarking the new blogs from now on

https://www.game-guru.com/devblog/

I really hope I didn't insult anyone incidentally with my posts. I just felt the community just wasn't informed on what was going on or what was currently being worked on. With the latest feedback we've been getting from all devs involved I am quite excited for the future of GG.

What worries me is that 'easy' will mean 'no creativity' in the long run and it becomes a mere 'toy' for kids to throw games together and that market is a lot less fussy about quality. I couldn't care less how it is marketed.

That word does strike a bit of fear for me. I'd be lying to say it didn't. Rick has always presented FPSC Reloaded/Game Guru as an easy FPS maker, though. Which is great and its been received really well when presented in this manner. I just hope we arnt restricted in our editing capabilities due to this word "easy". But I'm going to just sit back and see how things go. Lee's current task list is very promising.

I've been blasting the Bug Report section of the forums, stress testing and bug testing everything i can possibly find. Hopefully we can get to a point where the steam community won't notice anything wrong with the core vanilla aspect of the engine.

For me, these two points represent a critical necessity in order to create GAMES using GameGuru. Without preserving any user data from level-to-level and without the option to save/load their progress, I still see GameGuru as a glorified level editor for a preexisting game rather than a unique game creator. There is only so much that can be done to resemble a marketable game when we are constrained to a single level of cohesion.

This should be pretty high on the priority list to get sorted, I recall some discussions months ago about supporting global Lua variables for storing and retrieving custom data across multiple levels, which would be a good start but the final product certainly must preserve the basics automatically (health, lives, inventory). I've been reluctant to do much of any work in Reloaded/GameGuru due to this severe limitation.

On this subject, the ability to easily modify the HUD/Title/Transition/Win/Lose screens is also crucial. Each transition screen should allow for a custom image and personalized text string. Having to navigate through the depths of the GameGuru folder and manually swap out all of the existing assets for each project is unmanageable.

I appreciate Lee taking the time to read and respond to the perceived criticism in the community. It seems that most of the time when any thread becomes even marginally "heated" in the eyes of a moderator on here we are told that our comments are going in circles and that we've made our point, whereby the thread gets locked and buried. Most of the comments I've seen have been valid concerns and often include valuable suggestions; I always appreciate the key players at TGC responding and allowing conversation to continue rather than censoring and blocking the discussions.

I think this 2 features are already done, but TGC do no want people selling games, wlthout engine develop being finnished.
Is not so difficult for them hold this values in a plane text file, and after take them when load game.
Lives=2
Health=200
Weapons=3
Weapons_type= {uzi,rifle,pistol}
And many other like Player_Pos/entities_pos, credits (money, points, etc, if needed), and so on.


Tatally agree, specilly when the discussion goes like this one (till now).
3com

I have added Standalone Save/Load functionality to my immediate task list, which includes saving and loading during the game, retaining player stats when you move from one level to another, and saving the 'state' of the level so the state can be restored if you go back to previously visited levels. Also creating a set of global LUA variables that can be preserved across level transitions for scripters wanting to create 'whole game' missions and objectives.

As to light mapping, I am not entirely happy with it, but it does enough to deal with outdoor and 'some' indoor scenarios when using static lights, and my gut feel is to investigate a global illumination solution which will take the visuals to a new level. Slapping plasters on the old light mapper is probably not a good long term plan as expectations have moved on quite a bit. At GDC, I sat in on some presentations which looked at some very efficient GI techniques using the GPU to accelerate the calculation of light bounce and I'm even talking with Geomerics (Enlighten) to see if there is anything we can do there.

I have also added 'easy replacing of the standalone title screens' via the IDE to the list too as this will go a long way to allowing the kind of full customization we're aiming for. Don't worry too much about the marketing and the name change, the software is not suddenly going to be butchered into some sandbox play-thing, it's the same game making system you committed, but with a name that allows us to go beyond a single genre. Brand building takes YEARS and YEARS, and we won't be able to change the name later on, so getting a name that works for all game types was crucial for us. I also don't agree that easy and powerful need to be mutually exclusive terms, you can simply think of it as STANDARD and ADVANCED mode. Users who have five minutes spare can knock up a quick game, and equally if you have six months, you can craft and customize your game until it's completely unrecognizable as a Game Guru title. I am old enough to remember the days of SEUCK (Shoot Em Up Construction Kit) and as much fun as the product was, it gave rise to hundreds of games on cover-discs and shareware collections that were almost identical, and it all got a bit much, and something I will be actively avoiding with Game Guru.

I remember Seuck, still have the C64 disk here
About light... I've tried a few times the prebake option, looks nice. But I always have 5+ frames less than with the real time render...

My most used and best ever program for the C64 ...... Now I have to slap myself for going off topic
Please don't reply MooKai

I think there was also an Amiga Version... I was really excited when the C64 came out 1987 (?) ... Same year Giana Sisters came... Still play it once a year.

Uhmn commodore, in thats time I was playing with the EAI's machine collection.



Very good news here!

3com

As its been asked I will make a now rare post at the risk of it being not relevant, unwelcome or simply repeating what has been said so many times and common knowledge perhaps or not as the case may be.

In general overall terms I would agree with most or all of what Rolfy has said and that makes my job easier and keeps it short.



i.e. As always : Quality, Stability and Performance before Quantity.....

Finish what you start before moving on.

The view on whats a "Need" and whats a "Want" as referred to in an FPS game depends on the actual various product users perspective for them and each making up the whole have a view on that of course which may not fit in with commercial realities which may direct the development, but that does not change the Needs and want views of users - They remain as always have been.

Re all the above : e.g. Terrain, Water, AI as is that's about all we have to make an FPS (not including building construction and details) and that's about all one needs in a basic form where outdoor environments are concerned and those three needed things in the main are what "you need to vastly improve". For example Terrain and Water. Terrain : constantly asked for "Easy" method to call up multiple textures of choice to paint on your terrain. Water : Well no need to go into that much as it should be clear where that fails to deliver. AI characters (and other AI dynamics) - whats making an FPS game is all about.....Again the Character AI is about a basic as it could possibly be and not at all at a level of "Need" or "Want" by far by any stretch of the imagination. At one time a long time ago during the early development I remember a mention of an apparent prototype where AI had some level of behaviours like following the player upstairs, climbing ladders, hiding and so on which sounded promising being AI is what its all about, however currently AI is worse than its been for quite some time back and no real improvement at all but the opposite. None of these Core things have seen any real improvement and the requests of users some as suggested improvements asked for above that they see as a Need have not been forthcoming.

In addition Yes an FPS may well Need Indoors and more than likely so sometimes/often extensively and the much talking about ConKit and or similar method of Easy construction of World indoor features of some "Quality" where reasonably complex structures of "individual Variety" to suit could be easily put together is a Need not a Want for many and for many reasons so enough of that other than to say you don't have it....such a feature out of the box is invaluable for many and would undoubtedly be an attractive one which should help with sales enormously apart from helping more people to make more and better games.

I understand the ability to incorporate/use Entities thing and out of the box or bespoke/purchasable building construction materials/models and so on of course but in many or most cases perhaps for various reasons some already mentioned that does not allow for end users games needs and or is a forced only option which may require many skills/resources or costs and so on which many wont have available or don't have the time to call upon.

In essence then what you need to make an FPS is something to stand on and enclose your world, somewhere to hide and something to shoot at and with. That's about it. Yes you have or can create all that.

There's potentially however a world of difference between that as a basic outline of an FPS and all that it might become as an end game given the tools available and used and the end user game makers own ideas, aspirations, efforts, Needs and Wants as envisaged for them to turn their game ideas into reality. In theory the better the tools the better the games all else being equal.

You don't need many things to make a basic FPS but you need a lot of everything to make a good one. True a simple game can be good but "User" options and choices allow for more flexibility and possibilities needless to say.

Therein lies the moral of the story.

As to MP and the whole GG thing. I wont go there....

I am talking here as if we are referring to a serious game making tool in the traditional understanding though currently it still seems to me we are now relating to a tool which is now to be considered more of fun game making item rather than a serious game development tool for the majority of users at least, perhaps because that's the only option left for it due to a variety of reasons again some of which have been discussed to death elsewhere over a long period of time.

That may be incorrect and time will pass by before anyone will see what future development brings.

Whatever the case may be "Suffering from a Hundred Cuts" or a "Thousand Cuts" of Issues, Bugs and Instabilities are no help to either a "Fun" or "Serious" or both tool, whichever the case may be so I pleased that Lee is working on that at the moment....

Down the line. Quality, Stability and Performance an avoiding those "Cuts" is still of some paramount importance as they do the product no good at all, and of all those things "Performance" is as it always has been, and will be the main issue, particularly if the Tool is to be a Serious one and not simply a Fun one.

What Core Features are missing from an FPS making tool? Well if you want a Serious one to provide for many of the missing features referred to at any serious level of Game Making quality the you cant get there unless the Performance and "Tool" efficiency will provide the Base Core to build all of that upon. Mention in the past of things like open world games, spray painting thousands of Trees in a Forest, Rocks, Great AI and behaviours, Allies, Decent Water and Weather Effects, Teams, Vehicles, Flying Enemies, Swimming underwater, not to mention Interiors and much, much more seems to be a long way off now.

From what I can see at the moment from experience and users developments, threads at the forums and the official Demos some previous expectations may be a bit over stated and the realities and limitations of the Core tool and commercial realities have changed the potential as to what kind of quality and complexity of Game you may be able to make.

I may well be wrong there and not for the first time I am sure and you can potentially make an FPS game with it and no one can argue about that.

Though I am not sure i's a good or bad thing for whomever or the product but that's the way it is.... No one can say the product now is an expensive item in and of itself so not sure what one should expect of it. Not a lot perhaps.

Happy Game Making and whatever you do...

Have fun.

Back to what Lee was saying... I've been scratching my head and thinking philosophically.

What does GG "Need" rather than "Want". My answer to this is above all else AI. Play any AAA Game and look how the enemy AI works. They shoot you, they run and hide behind cover. They collaborate together to gang up on the player. For example one enemy will run at the player while others hide in cover and shoot from safety.

While there are loads of "Wants": Construction kit, Character Kit, Map/Radar, Terrain Roughening Tool, etc... I feel that what GG needs is better AI. I think AI has improved tremendously since the early days of FPS Creator: Reloaded, but there is still great strides GameGuru can make to giving people a more challenging experience where the AI mimics and thinks like humans would in given situations.

That's just my thoughts anyway.

This is poorly worded. Game Guru is not a game, but a game maker. Core features shouldn't just be limited to what the final game can contain, but rather what the game engine needs. And to that subject there are lots of core missing features to this engine.

-Multi perspective editor
-Scene hierarchy
-In engine script editor
-True 3D sound with effects such as reverb
-Multi object select and grouping
-Access to all engine features through scripting, including physics
-Ability to place water anywhere not just have a water level
-Better terrain editing
-Wind zones
-Particle System
-Full control over character models and animation within the engine itself

Those are just the highlights.

@tomjscott

We all want that but Unlike unity that charge hundreds for a serious licence https://store.unity3d.com/ and then more for assets, addons and have hundreds of staff working 24/7 programming then to be honest you cannot compare the two ...

Seriously .... If other engines were that cheap and that good then you or I wouldn't be here ...
We just have to let this small team do its job

Not true. I have Unity and use it extensively for developing games. Yet I'm still here. I'd like to see Game Guru become all that it can be, all that it should have been a long time ago. My feedback has helped and continues to help shape this product. I still see possibilities with this engine although it falls short of current expectations.

As far as letting this small team do its job, that sounds all well and good, but I've seen Lee stop all efforts seemingly on a whim and implement a complex feature in a few hours or a few days. Yet it took years to add multi-key input support that so many needed. I think the focus has not been where it needs to be and the current product shows this.

I will continue to stick around and put my 2 cents in and maybe someday the engine will get there.

I've got to agree with the KISS analogy - Keep It Simple Stupid.

For people like me!

I could never use a program like Unity nor do I intend to... it looks far to complicated.

I just want an easy to use 3d Game design tool and Game Guru is perfect! They seem to be keen on making it easy to use and simple so as far all I can say is whatever direction it goes I'll pretty much be happy.

I think the comparison is relevant here, lets be honest if Unity is easier to use for editing levels then GG misses the mark entirely. I reckon Lee does it himself when he drags C64 SEUCK into the equation in a backward comparison, where he talks of how this failed in his view , way I see it GG is falling entirely into the same trap.


Simple doesn't always mean easy I would rather have a shovel than a plank of wood to dig a hole....or a JCB, might have to learn to use that but worth the added effort.

So do I, but Game Guru is far from perfect and far from easy to use for anything other than the most basic FPS that contains no story and no creativity. As soon as you want to build a real game with a story and that contains creative elements, it falls short. So, maybe all you want is a basic FPS with no unique features, but that's not what everyone wants. And although Unity may seem daunting, it's easier to use than Game Guru with some good training.

Game Guru has the potential to live up to its promise as being the easiest game maker around, but with missing core features that even the most basic engines already have, it won't ever be that. Adding these core features isn't going to make the program harder for people like you to use. If it starts up in top-down editing mode and has scene hierarchies hidden from view then you can happily work as you always do and we, who have more experience and ambition, can have the features we need to make great games.

I agree with your assessment, although TGC has technically been classifying GameGuru as a game itself both on Steam and in their PR. Lee recently stated this on Steam about its classification:



He is thinking big with GameGuru's future when mentioning some of these big named sandbox-style games, which is good I guess, I'm just not so sure of the whole 'game sandbox' angle that TGC has taken publicly since it became GameGuru.

In reality he is thinking big with TGC's future. If this turns out to be more of a 'game' than a decent development suite for creating games then it won't work out for many of us around here. Doesn't affect me that much, I create assets more than create games but my passion is for those that do. They are the ones that supported me in the past and I stick by them.

Well, until after the Steam coup, the fully commercially licensed engine was supposed to be a 100 bucks, not 19,99

In an effort to add something useful to this debate as it were let me tell you a little Story of an indie developer wanting to make a Game "Idea" and what the Needs and or Wants would be to help make the Game a reality : The would be indie developer is/was me....

Prior even to FPSC Classic existence I had successfully and partly build around five of the first levels in now old engines some like Game Studio which still exist and others long gone. For various reasons largely - Slow performance in those days - No Multi Core, 64 bit and so on, Fast technologies as we have today to take advantage of - if that is an engine does so. And the other main reason being the difficulty which has always existed in indies achieving a good level of AI behaviors for well known reasons including the AI decision making process and routines, think time and performance drain again. Good AI, behaviours, obstacle avoidance, pathfinding and so on is a big drain and hard to come by in an lower end indie engine..

Back to the point and The Story - of the game goes something like this.....A simplified version...

The game is set sometime in the future and starts at night. A vehicle moves over a landscape with a variety of features towards a high area in the distance. A camera follows the vehicle at a variety of distances and heights (path) while in moves across the terrain up the side of the distant hillside where the camera moves with the vehicle in an arc and all comes to a stop looking from the hilltop out across the landscape towards a distant city lit up at night (from where the vehicle has come one understands).

As the vehicle stops the main Character "you" gets out - walks to the edge of the hillside and looks towards the distant City and up at the sky which contains apart from some night time stars, some flying vehicles which protect the City.

At which point when looking to the Stars the main Character/Player/You tells the story of the game (audio) recorded for 20 years) and sets the scene for the whole game.

That's about it to make a start.

Now personally, much like building a game engine I would like to start - well at the beginning and end at the end. If I can't make the beginning of a game then I can't go anywhere....

You can see from the above short Story what would be required even to start by making an "Intro Level" leave alone a game level proper. Third Person view, Camera controls, Internal Cut scene generation tools (so real in game scenarios can be set up and recorded showing actual in game level content), vehicles, flying entities and more and at a quality level which would directly influence the result. A simple scene potentially requiring any/various amount of details and features you could call upon to enhance it. The better the tools the better the results, in theory at least.....

Now you could say either Go do it in Unity, cut down on your idea and aspirations, and or some will surely say you can do it in GG with scripting and so on given the engine allows support for all such a scene might require or contain - after all as an intro one would want it to be top notch - Yes. If you cant build a high quality intro the rest is likely to be in the same vein. Point here being something done well looks good or it does not. If you cant achieve the objective then best not start at all which is where I am.

I had hoped that at some time since before FPSC Classic that I may have been able to at least make some headway with the tools and now its said a lot of features, some of which I might look to as needed for my own Game are still - well coming - sometime - perhaps, so personally I am still waiting.

Yes I could get on and perhaps develop other things relative to the game but the bottom line is I really don't have faith that the product will deliver what I need Personally.

That's all not really a reflection now on the product but a reflection more perhaps on Me who as being just one person with an aspiration to make a game idea become a reality may be blinded of the realities which may say that I ask too much in this case.

Accepted, unless seen to be otherwise......

Still its good to dream of what might be is it not for its what keeps would be game makers going.