What’s new in GameGuru V1.11?
It’s only three weeks since we released the big performance version of GameGuru. That went down really well with the community and we’re now happy to announce V1.11 which focuses on many small and very sought after features and tweaks.

Level Editor
There’s been many little improvements to the main level editor in GameGuru.

• New toolbar option which allows the selections of markers only
• Markers can now be single selected, even if clipping mode is active
• Adjusted widget system so X, Y, Z, XYZ scaling is axis aligned to entity orientation
• Added new EDITORS\KEYMAP folder with ability to remap any key used by GameGuru
• Sped up entity zoom in mode
• Spray mode now has a range, similar to the dynamic lights. Use + and – to change size of range
• Added a modifier to all entity properties to control when LOD kicks in
• Current editing mode is now displayed in window title area
• Using return with clip mode finds the floor rather than the roof
• Fixed PGUP and DOWN respects the size of the selected entity when in snap mode
• Adjusted free flight mode to not break the sound barrier!
• Fixed a slowdown in the IDE when not selecting an object or scrolling with WASD or arrow keys
• The Download button in the Store Downloader is not ghosted out whilst updating the list of items
• Character Creator now reports head limbs being shot and has been added to light ray render
• Fixed an issue with Character Creator heads not displaying correctly
• Fixed an undo issue with regards to raising terrain with characters on, then undoing
• Fixed an issue where an entity would turn to wireframe when still above the ground
• Fixed an issue with SKYSPEC file settings
• Fixed an issue where the property panel would stay open if a video was selected whilst in properties
• Fixed a problem with resetting weapons
• Fixed an issue with using the widget and R key to rotate

Editor/Importer
• Waypoints are no longer shown in the importer
• Importer collision tab drag handles now work
• Removed objectives from the importer options as they are never used

Games & Models
A new game’s been added to the demo games and all the content from that game is now available for you to use in your own creations!
• New Gem World game added
• Media from Gem World added to the Cartoon category for you to use.

Gameplay
Shoot an enemy in the head and you’ll take down the opponent in one shot, yes we’ve added headshots to this build. Try it out in one of the demo games!
• Head-shot feature added
• Added back spot flashes for player and enemies shooting
• Picking up an enemy weapon now yields more than one bullet

Rendering
We’ve made some subtle and important changes to the rendering engine to improve the visuals and at the same time keep up the performance.
• Ambience does not contribute to shadows on highest entity settings
• Fixed an issue where enemy fire decals were not displayed in the correct order
• The Occluder no longer causes shadows of occluded objects to being rendered
• Fixed an issue where fairly large objects would be distance occluded far too soon
• Fixed an issue with the occluder where certain objects would flicker

Stand-alone
Many users have reported issues with their stand-alone games that used third party media.
So we’ve improved the save stand-alone system to ensure all files are exported properly.

Lua Scripting
The scripting commands have been expanded significantly so you can take final control in many areas of the engine.
We’ve added a new sprite commands which are ideal for creating your own head up displays in your games. You can see a simple demo by loading and running the Sprite Test.fpm game level. There’s also a radar system that uses these commands.
The size and position used in these commands use a percentage system to ensure your sprites appear where you want them to no matter what the aspect ratio and resolution of the display used by the game player - e.g. a position x,y co-ordinate of 50,50 is the middle of the screen.

• LoadImage: myImage = LoadImage ( "myFolder\\myImage.png" ) -- Anywhere inside GG Files folder (however it is best to put into scriptbank images folder for making standalones)
• CreateSprite: mySprite = CreateSprite ( myImage ) – creates a sprite using the image loaded into image #myImage
• DeleteSprite: DeleteSprite ( mySprite ) – deletes a sprite
• SetSpritePosition: SetSpritePosition ( mySprite , x , y ) – sets the position of a sprite at the percentage based x,y position
• SetSpriteSize: SetSpriteSize ( mySprite , sizeX , sizeZ ) – sets the size of a sprite. Passing -1 as one of the params ensure the sprite retains its aspect ratio
• SetSpriteDepth: SetSpriteDepth ( mySprite , depth ) – this sets the ordering of a sprite, how they layer on top of each other, 0 is front, 100 is back.
• SetSpriteColor: SetSpriteColor ( mySprite , red , green, blue, alpha ) – add a coloured tint to a sprite using the RGB values set in this command
• SetSpriteAngle: SetSpriteAngle ( mySprite , angle ) – Sets the angle of a sprite. You can use this to rotate an image for example. Default angle is zero.
• SetSpriteOffset: SetSpriteOffset ( mySprite , xoff , yoff ) – This command sets where the handle is for the sprite. The handle defines where the sprites is position (default top left, 0,0). In the radar example the offset is set to the centre so that when it rotates, it rotates around the centre of the image. The values are percentage based. Like other commands you can pass -1 to let the engine work out the other parameter
• SetSpriteImage: SetSpriteImage ( mySprite , myImage ) – change the image assigned to a sprite, ideal for animating sprites.
• GetFirstEntitySpawn() GetNextEntitySpawn() useful for scripts (such as the radar) that need to deal with entities that can come into existence at any time (both return 0 if no new entity)
• GetDeviceWidth() and GetDeviceHeight() return the width and height of the screen device.
• SetFogIntensity(v) – sets the fog intensity level.
• SetFont ( "FontName" , 1) To change in game font. Font 1-3 are the default ones used.
• SetPlayerWeapons(0) – A value of 0 disables player weapons, 1 restores them
• SetAttachmentVisible(e,1). 1 sets the entities attachment to be visible (such as their weapon), 0 switches it off
• SetFlashLight(1), 1 switches the flashlight on, 0 off
• SetFlashLightKeyEnabled(1) - 1 for on, 0 for off. Disables the flashlight key from being used
• SetOcclusion(100), control the occluder from script! Set the occluder from 0 (off) to 100 (max). 10 and under for minimal popping

Fixes and changes to existing Lua commands
• If SetAnimationSpeed(speed) has a speed value over 100, it is divided by 100. So 100 becomes 1.
• UnFreezePlayer() no longer has the fade in effect or resets anything in the game
• SetSound(e,v) to be used before functions such as SetSoundVolume(vol) which do not specify a sound to use
• Added new keyboard, mouse and entityinzone LUA commands and scripts
• Fixed the LUA dynamic music load command
• Fixed a LUA bug where GetInkey() would report the previous key pressed when a shift key was held down
• SetAnimationSpeed now accepts a negative number to allow playing in reverse
• Fixed Dynamic music system (new scripts included)
• LUA Error and Stave Standalone messages can no longer go behind the window and appear to freeze the program
• Loading an image no longer causes a runtime error, instead it silently fails and writes to the default log file

Radar
• Updated Radar script to use new commands
• Radar and objective scripts, plus media can be found in scriptbank\radar
• Added the new Radar to The Big Escape, Morning Mountain Stroll and Get To The River maps.

Performance
• Shadows+Occluder are sped up to previous fast speed, but retrain the non popping of nearby objects
• Fixed the occluder to handle spinning round fast (The asylum doors would suddenly appear for example previously)

F9 Mode
• When in F9 mode, going into entity (e) mode no longer causes a slow down
• Fixed an issue with F9 mode where sometimes characters would not animate

Misc
• DBO self-delete now detects down to the minute so any change in minutes upwards triggers a refresh
• Fixed rocket enemy killing themselves after respawning
• Fixed a memory leak relating to keyboard input
• Fixed a crash that could occur in multiplayer when a selected avatar has been deleted

Light mapping
The light mapper has had some subtle improvements too.
• Added light mapping settings in SETUP.INI for higher quality shadows
• Smoothing angle added to light mapper settings and setup.ini
• Fixed light map darkness issue by correctly applying ambient light calc from non-LM shader
• Fixed an issue with the light mapper that ignored certain objects scaling
• Shadow intensities now match when comparing real time to prebake

We hope you enjoy this interim build, please post your feedback into the forums and we’ll get back to coding the next round of features and tweaks!
The GameGuru Team