Will this ever be possible?
[video=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28DYXaI2of0]
GameGuru seems to be going in so many directions but never finishes anything. What's the point of focusing on new features when basic parts of the game are broken? Animations are choppy and look really bad, performance is still terrible, the terrain system is almost cartoonish, the explosions (focused on a lot early on) are terrible, and the segment system was replaced with a system that gives slightly more flexibility. However, it makes any building hard to construct, adds even more polygons (I don't remember where this was said, but I swear they got rid of segments because it adds extra sides to walls that make performance worse).

I backed the engine as an investment. I knew development would take awhile, but I'm starting to think that this is never gonna be where I imagined it to be. I try to have patients, but it's hard to when nothing has been proven to me.I'm sorry that i'm a little harsh, but I wish I could go back. I wish I would have put my money, and effort into something else. I was a kid. I couldn't back the kickstarter because I didn't have the money. I spend a lot of time saving up my money and I had to convince my parents that it was worth it. $85 USD was a lot for a stupid kid like me. ...Please make something of this engine. Don't rely on the community to make all the improvements, and don't rely on their assets to make money. Focus on one thing at a time. Keep on improving it until it's perfect (or at least can function... i'd like that too). Finish that before moving on to the next thing. Sorry that I went on a rant. I just don't want to give up completely. I wanna see this engine succeed. ...Goodluck

Sincerely,
Kevin

Ya lol, Im watching that video and listening to the things that they said before and thinking the same thing. What ever happened to parallax mapping, reflection mapping etc etc? Ambient occlusion was actually working there for a bit and now doesn't so it just looks like steps backwards when it comes to GG eye candy. There are FPS creator mods that can do better eye candy then GG at this point. x10 looked so promising when it came to that, but sadly it went by way of the Dodo Dodo.

Yeah, I kind of assumed we'd get everything FPSCx9/FPSCx10 had plus everything mentioned here in that video:



Things mentioned that I did not see in GG while (and after) it was under the label of "FPSC Reloaded":

- parallax occlusion mapping
- improved AI = Allies
- awesome explosions and effects
- new weapons = lasers
- multiple camera
- attach a camera to a rocket and see where it goes
- import any scene data
- great shaders lined up

Of course the excuse everyone will tell me is that this presentation was for a Kickstarter project that never got funded. However they got "privately funded" and the project did move forward from there as the same title as FPSC Reloaded of which we actually put real money into. The terrain editor was put in motion which required an overhaul as well as surpassing that memory limit we had with FPSCx9.

A lot of whats on the feature vote list -- have things that should just naturally be in the engine, since the start; then there are other things higher up on the list that are not as logical as others below them. I just want everything that FPSCx9 had first. I'm still struggling a bit with the fact that I cant even get more than 2 sounds to play from an entity. I cannot think of a single engine out there with this limitation we have. Really basic things that were achievable with FPSCx9 early on. I wont say too much more than this as I don't want to come off too "negative". They already got my money anyways and I do have my trust everything will eventually make its way in... its just the question of how long... as the thread states.

Character creator, multiplayer, 3rd person, construction kit, jet pack.... these things, i felt should not have been worked on so early on, while other fundamental things were put on the back of the priority list. In any case, this is just my take on things... my opinions and my experiences and what I say doesn't reflect the entire community. Some of the items voted on the feature list is proof of that.

From Kick Starter and Reloaded through to Steam and GG development progress has been a little fragmented to date.

Developing a game engine, especially a good one is a big job at the best of times even when there are no problems or issues and all is in place to aid continuous and smooth development and few restrictions exist.

It's been some time and unless anything changes I guess it will be a lot more before the product is mature enough to suit the wide range of users needs, the features list being large and probably even then missing some things that some may wish for, want or need and to suit their priorities.

As time has passed TGC remains from what I understand a very small team to tackle such an undertaking. Lee himself seems to have not so much time as he may have done in the past given the current nature of the beast and situation and seems to have to undertake all sorts of work apart from just raw engine coding, blogs, meetings, forums, emails, promotions, model packs and so on not to mention eating and sleeping, and can only do so much with his time.

Unless something changes and TGC aquire a lot more Money and perhaps staff working on development I guess the speed of development wont change a great deal so one will have to learn to live with it and settle in for a long job yet.

As to the outcome, what features and capability it will eventually have and what it will become down the road, when you will get the feature you may need, we don't know, so nothing to do but wait as always....

Seems to me that for many or the majority of users they don't actually want a great deal from it and are happy enough as it is by and large as the Save Load feature is top of the list and under development, which seems to suggest that most are ready to make a game with it of whatever nature with what they have right now, as it stands now and distribute it - and don't need to wait for anything else or further development. Not sure why else one would need to save/load a game .exe otherwise.

Presumably the majority don't want anything much more mature or are in no hurry to get it. If you therefore want any major improvements to existing features or more advanced features to be developed and added to a higher standard, then that would seem to be not the majority of users need and may not happen. I don't know.

Given that being the case if so then I am not sure how the minority (whoever each are in each case) will cope or manage with that....

Given the Resources and time TGC have I guess its a question of waiting a very long time for more features and perhaps the ones you personally want as a priority developed to a higher standard or you have more features quickly developed to a lesser standard and that seems to be the current trend given the majority want it "Now".

I can't see you can have it both ways unless TGC have more of what they ideally need (money and staff and perhaps the will) to aid development available to them and they are limited to what they can do quickly with whatever end results that mean in practice.

TGC don't have a magic wand unfortunately so as the saying goes "don't expect too much as it may not happen" and if it does then you will be lucky and happy, but.....

You have to wait for it I guess and see what develops.

If this was still from the kickstarter from my experience it would be one of my best ever ...... I still have some that are 2 years late ...Older than Reloaded / GG ....hardly any contact from the devs and so far absolutely nothing to show for it ... " Lacuna Passage " for example ..

Probably the only other I have had a product from is Elite Dangerous....
Oh ...and bits of Star Citizen ( Which isn't anything to shout about )

As kickstarter / Crowd funding goes non of my others have stayed on track and not been changed in some way since they started ...
Elite Dangerous cancelled its offline version for example ...Lacuna passage changed engine half way ... More than I can mention has changed in SC so right now if we are talking crowd funding then I'm thinking .... I have the product ...Daily Dev blogs ... 24/7 support ... a great community ..

But that's just what I see from experience ..

you can get great graphics like this in fpsc now. watch the video.

I'm no graphics expert but I enjoyed watching that level, looks good

If you want a third party newcomer (gold backer for FPSC Reloaded, never messed with FPSC Classic) view on what happened with the development process:

Kickstarter failed (though admittedly that video sold me on my gold purchase).
Direct Funding went forward - got enough and proceeded to make FPSC Reloaded. Reloaded focused on newer broad features which turned out to be flatly incompatible with previous version of FPSC - specifically outdoor terrain. This likely caused a massive derailment on bugfixes/repairs.

That said, there's been some really good stuff done:
LUA support gave us a huge boost for scripting. A lot of very excellent third party stuff has been made by many though just look at smallg's thread for an example of a massive code-bank.
Lightmapping - allows really good indoor shadowing/etc. I've gotten some pretty solid results out of it myself.
Conversion to C code for engine - Speed increases
Outdoor terrain - Let's be honest, this was a way bigger ordeal than I think anyone anticipated and if nothing else you can make some really stunning outdoor scenes with this engine.
Reshade added to Game-Guru - Admittedly a third party addition, it gives a LOT of power if you are willing to mess with it.
Character Creator - A simple base but can grow exponentially if they can add some decent quality items to this (like they did with the sci-fi pack).

I would say there's a few things missing:
- AI is clearly incomplete (with respect to indoor scenes / Z vectoring) and in need of rework.
- Sounds are a bit cheap for lack of a better term, this I think is the way they're output without any filtering/etc.
- Lighting needs a more serious fix for dynamic lighting, probably after DX11
- DX11 is apparently the second coming but that's no small task
- Miscellaneous items, bugfixes, what have you
- I need more coffee to finish this list

I really feel like a lot of us did visually superior games with FPSC. What is shown there seems not all too new.



-Wolf

Thanks for the questions and feedback. Some answers for you:

Q. Animations are choppy and look really bad
A: We certainly have a 'mix' of assets right now, but I invite you to check out the new animations in the SCIFI DLC and FANTASY DLC update (going to drop a few of these into the core product for free). These are the standards of animation we are now working to.

Q. Performance is still terrible
A: The last performance update increased some frame rates to almost 300% of the non-C++ version, and certainly from our own mid-system tests we got ALL of the sample games to run well over 60 fps which was our personal goal. When we receive a performance bug report now, it's usually due to running on a laptop or non-gaming GPU. Do you feel we should add performance work back onto the voting board so users of lower-end systems can get additional speed increases from new optimizations like multi-core, potential visibility sets, e.t.c.

Q. The terrain system is almost cartoonish
A: There are now a LOT of terrains to choose from that I feel have some realistic textures, and I do acknowledge that we need more than 4 textures per terrain to take it to the next level. Was there something specific you felt made the terrain look like a cartoon?

Q. The explosions (focused on a lot early on) are terrible,
A: Agreed. It is likely I will be externalizing the hard code for the explosion mechanic which means you can craft your own 'boom' effect using LUA, or more likely get a good script from the community. I think the days of a single animating decal for your explosions are done

Q. The segment system was replaced with a system that gives slightly more flexibility. However, it makes any building hard to construct, adds even more polygons.
A: This will be addressed with the implementation of the Building Editor which re-introduces the power of the segment editor but with additional features we felt had been missing from the original approach (such as axis aligned editing).

After several years in development, I can completely understand your reluctance to stick around a few more years, and I cannot really ask you to do so. I can tell you that I am working through the voting board, starting with the Save/Load Progress item. At the same time I am removing the hard coded title and game menus, replacing them with powerful LUA scripts for total customization. Once this has been tested and released, I will move onto the next highest voted feature. I also accept that we have a small mountain of 'fixes' that supersede new features, and I will be adding a chunk of those with each release as they relate to the work of each item from the voting board. This way everyone gets a little bit of what they want, and the product gets regular updates throughout 2016.

I also want to repeat my thanks to those early pledgers who helped fund what became GameGuru, and even though you might check out other game makers and solutions over time, rest assured you are always welcome to return and check out our progress, you are a lifetime member of our little troop and your support (and remarkable patience) over the years has been amazing. We may not be the fastest or largest developers in the world, but we aim to be the friendliest

Definitely

To be honest I would prefer this to any other type of business. Thanks for all the hard work and I am looking forward to the changes this year.

Yeah, I don't really know much about other 3D game engines. I started messing with NeoAxis, but that just crashed whenever I edited the terrain, then I came across FPSC reloaded really liked its ease of use, and became a backer.

The only thing I absolutely hate about GG is that it is tied to Steam - that is just so annoying - but apart from that, I just love messing with GG, it has its flaws and there is plenty to be done\fixed\added whatever, but TGC are great to work with, and I really think the product will just get better.

We really need a way to clone Lee, so he can get more done quicker!

Reliquia....

Well actually if you create a desktop icon from the main exe you can bypass the steam loading process ..
C:\program files\ steam \ steamapps \ common \ GameGuru \ GameGuru.exe

It should be noted this breaks the store downloads, which uses your Steam account to download items.

@synchromesh, thanks for the tip. I would rather not have Steam on my system at all thou - just bloatware to me

Reliquia...

Yes of course it should be noted you still need steam ..... it just means it loads faster.

Sorry that I never Responded to anything. I remembered several times, but never had the time to. I don't know how I should format this, but I think this is good enough.

A: We certainly have a 'mix' of assets right now, but I invite you to check out the new animations in the SCIFI DLC and FANTASY DLC update (going to drop a few of these into the core product for free). These are the standards of animation we are now working to.

-R: Will you go back to previous assets and redo their animations? Or are those not going to be touched again?


A: The last performance update increased some frame rates to almost 300% of the non-C++ version, and certainly from our own mid-system tests we got ALL of the sample games to run well over 60 fps which was our personal goal. When we receive a performance bug report now, it's usually due to running on a laptop or non-gaming GPU. Do you feel we should add performance work back onto the voting board so users of lower-end systems can get additional speed increases from new optimizations like multi-core, potential visibility sets, e.t.c.

-R: I am running game guru on a laptop with integrated graphics (i5-4200u with intel HD Graphics 4400), so I do understand that performance won't be good. However, will all the graphics settings down, no shadows or anything else on, I still get max of like 15fps with a couple objects on a flat terrain.


A: There are now a LOT of terrains to choose from that I feel have some realistic textures, and I do acknowledge that we need more than 4 textures per terrain to take it to the next level. Was there something specific you felt made the terrain look like a cartoon?

-R: My problem with the terrain wasn't so much with the textures, but the shape. It's very hard to sculpt the terrain to make it look nice and realistic. I've spend a lot of time messing with it, but it never seems to be up to par with other terrain systems. (Although more textures over time would be nice)


A: Agreed. It is likely I will be externalizing the hard code for the explosion mechanic which means you can craft your own 'boom' effect using LUA, or more likely get a good script from the community. I think the days of a single animating decal for your explosions are done

R: Thank you haha


A: This will be addressed with the implementation of the Building Editor which re-introduces the power of the segment editor but with additional features we felt had been missing from the original approach (such as axis aligned editing).

R: Sounds like it has potential, thanks.


Once again, I'm sorry about the delay. Good luck with the development. I'll still check on it occasionally and maybe mess around with new features.

Sincerely,
Kevin

From memory I believe the video linked in first post was taken in classic, Bond1 fpsc shaders and new models being created for reloaded.. I may be incorrect so don't quote me on that. listen @ 0:35.

A: The problem is none of the game engines is going to give you great performance on inter integrated graphics card, gamegru isn't unique in this. There is unfortunately a limit, the days of you can run development software on any hardware is long gone.




A:You can create stunning terrains with little effort by simply increasing and decreasing the paint brush, hollow out, smooth, flat and rinse wash repeat, played around with the leadwerks engine terrains and it is much the same as gameguru with regards to the brush tools.Gameguru should really be looking at creating voxel tool, while this will be extremely graphics intensive tool, it is possible, I have most engine on steam, and axis gamefactory voxel tool is by far my favorite out there.

I'm getting the same, with the same resources. (laptop plus intel card). see my sig.

Intel card in not the better out there, and processor speed is very important here. Large amoung of ram does not prevent you for suffer mem frag, just delay the time you get , but it help a lot.

It is very hard to make a decent video from your level, when you are running into 4 fps like me.

Now I'm working in a pack. And one farm than days ago work fine in GG, today when I run the level to take store screenshot, I got a bunch of points (pixels), instead of the farm like days ago.
Even I try with blank map plus the farm, and I got the same.

Are these kind of things than make me angry about GG, from time to time.

3com

[quote=A: The problem is none of the game engines is going to give you great performance on inter integrated graphics card, gameguru isn't unique in this. There is unfortunately a limit, the days of you can run development software on any hardware is long gone.]

I know not to expect great performance, but I do believe it can be improved. The only other engine I've had some experience recently was with the cryengine. It seemed to run rather well, and was for sure playable. But I do understand the difference between a AAA engine and this small scale one haha.

Patience is the knot which secures the seam of victory.
- Chinese proverb