This is an appreciation thread; I tried using Sketchup to make model buildings. I then proceeded to import them into 3 different game engines. These are my results;

GameGuru - Models worked immediately. Scale was good. Texturing worked. Collision was fine.

Unity - Models were easy to import, though texturing had to be edited in Sketchup to reverse some faces as they appeared see though. After that was sorted I had no problems. Although I did have to scale the buildings because they were very small initially. Texturing worked. Collision was fine. The main problem with Unity though is you need to buy everything in modules. For me my Unity assets to make an FPS game include buying UFPS, Shooter AI (as it integrates with UFPS), Adventure Creator and the Relief Terrain Pack. The cost of that all adds up!

Unreal - The worst of the bunch for me. Importing models is still a mystery to me. There are lots of errors when I try importing. Normally imports models without textures, missing faces abundant. I managed after trying a tutorial and exporting from Sketchup to Blender then again to Unreal to get the textures in on the model, but couldn't sort out the missing faces issue. I then tried building the lighting the textures appeared patchy and black. Collision worked fine once I worked out how to set it. Scale meant buildings were too small and needed adjusting.

Final Conclusion - Game Guru was the easiest, a few settings to select and everything was working in no time at all. Unity closely follows, once I'd sorted out the missing faces issue, it was all very easy. Unreal is just impossible to get any result that's worthwhile. And that is why I love GameGuru, an all in one package that just works. I just thought I'd share my experiences and tell everyone why GameGuru is sill the cheapest and easiest game creation software on the market today.

Thank you for sharing your results.

I agree gameguru is fantastic value and a great program, it's early access but it is still very stable. You have to expect a few glitches here and there, but I will be sticking with it now. It's just so easy to get the idea's working and then put in a little work to perfect them... excellent support network too, lets not forget that.

Totally agree!

3com

While entities are very important. I think the real test would be to import custom characters, and weapons. That's what differentiates your game from everyone else's. Would it be difficult to do? Absolutely. But on the surface, it appears that the other engines may have better support. Either from the company, the community, or both.

You can do this your self now if you choose to learn to do it.

Many are doing custom character stuff now in GG.
Even in the other engines, you need to conform your model to there standard for importing. You just cant throw anything at them, so there will be a certain amount of prep to the mesh mostly scale and texture conversion to dds file, and then a standard skeleton created to attach the mesh to and the animations, Then put them together and export it out as xfile. Create the Fpe file and the bmp file preview, and attach a script a test it.

Simple enough, after the first one.

Making custom characters is not an easy process even for a fairly experienced 3D artist unless they are already learned in the art. I'm not really up to it myself, but the same could be said for any engine I wanted to use. I would have to spend some time in Blender to get anything like decent. The main issue at the moment is there isn't enough standard characters to make much other than a modern shooter, zombie game or a very limited Medieval/Fantasy game. We need civilians at least and a few more fantasy style characters as well before we could really start to make different games.

The next update sounds like a good start and I have high hopes for the new character creator and of course the 3rd person viewpoint We are starting to see custom characters on the store now, albiet creatures and dinosaurs rather than people, but they will come, given time. Sure you could say the same for Unity in some areas, but generally you will have to pay considerably more for Unity scripts and media. Certainly for most people GG is far easier to get a game running from scratch.

I certainly agree GG is a really easy tool to use in general. Even more so if you grab scripts by myself or other talented members of the community. Apart from speed issues and a few lua commands I would still like to see implemented I am very happy with GameGuru at the moment.

we need a bit more of this




Harry

Yes indeed we do, and the Character creator will be the start of it for many. This will also allow those who are gifted with the animation touch to do more custom work also. But scripting will be required to run these custom animation if you decide not to go with the standard, which there are a fair amount now. But still there are lots that we dont have.

Nice Video Harry

Oh yeah, specially me.

Nice custom model.
It looks lik we'll have a skin woman soon.

3com

I would say GG was the easiest, but that would have to go to the now dead Realm Crafter. Realm Crafter had the easiest custom character importing there was. Not to mention easy adding of weapons armor etc with there gubin system. The source to RC is free and out there. The admins of GG should take a look at it. Hell its still got a link on the game creatores web site. Ream Crafter Pro would have been the easiest MMO engine ever. To bad it didnt make it.

I bought Realm Crafter many years ago and actually had 2 licenses for potential development of an MMORPG. We ended up canceling the game not long after that, but I did play with realm Crafter a tiny bit. It had a lot of potential, but was so slow that it was virtually unusable.

If you really want to take a look at an amazing MMO engine, check out Hero Engine.

http://www.heroengine.com/