I've been checking out the WIP section. I must say I am mighty impressed with some of the work on show there!

It strikes me that there are lot of GameGuru tutorials (on Youtube, etc.) on how to use the software (which features to use, etc.) but I have found no tutorials so far on the finer points of using the various terrain tools and visual sliders to create stunning effects like those exhibited by the likes of Wolf and Rolfy.

I think it would be great if a forum thread was created for such artists to create a "Tony Hart"-style/"Art Attack"-style masterclass featuring tutorials on how to create brilliant landscapes and compositions. Nothing technical in the computer sense. Just using GameGuru as is it, as an artistic tool. I'm not suggesting the above artists haven't used other software to create assets, but they clearly know how to get the best out of our beloved GG.

Well... just my little idea.

Sounds like a great idea! I do not possess any artistic talent whatsoever, but I think learning some techniques might be helpful!

Thanks, Jerry. You are being modest there!

The only reason I chose to work in dark settings in my games was to overcome some of the graphical shortfalls of GG when I first bought it. Now as GG is improving, I might start working in the daylight again soon. Once we have improvements in the lighting and shadowing, without much in the way of performance hits, then GG will really open up. Good level design is probably the most important thing I try and do, keep the levels small and packed with detail, and use the teleport command to move the player between different parts of the map, to ease up on resources to keep the framerate as high as possible. Sound is very important too, as it can lift a fairly mundane level, into a tension filled nightmare

Thanks, Tarkus1971. That's interesting. Keeping levels small obviously helps with performance and shortens loading time. Also, it would lend itself to having a greater number of levels in the game which allows more variety of terrain types and skyboxes. Using the transportation this is interesting to - I haven't really looked at that much.

While not videos, these are my current technique blog posts:
http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com/2015/12/technique-evaluation-lighting-in-game.html

Also

http://fpscreloadedreview.blogspot.com/2014/10/technique-evaluation-ground-clutter-and.html

I plan on doing an 'interior lighting tricks' one soon as well. Was working on the test room for it last night, actually.

Nice blog Mike! This will help me out a lot. Thanks for sharing.

You're welcome, toecutter - Wrapped up my interior lighting tutorial as well tonight so feel free to check it out:
http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com/2016/06/technique-evaluation-gameguru-interior.html

This will help some of the less informed on how to get their interiors looking more like this:

This is great! Thank you!

Seriously Mike, thanks for this new blog post. Very informative. I have only been using Gameguru for a few months and I have to say that the GG community is one of the absolute best I've ever seen! Those who use and develop GG are very talented, generous and all-around awesome people!

Don't forget good looking too. We're definitely good looking.



Glad it's of use. If anything I feel if I can raise the overall quality of the stuff coming out of the community it will bring better attention and thus more resources to the dev team via more purchasers.

Just read these articles, really good and informative, I learnt a lot... thanks for the info.......

@Bolt Action Gaming
Nice tutorial .... Great results as well

I'm glad these help others.

@synchromesh
For about a year there was a point where the lighting in the game engine really had me having my doubts. But the light mapper is easily a night and day improvement over the dynamic lighting engine (which only allows two lights at a time that go through walls and won't display shadows). The lightmapper, while not as impressive as a modern dynamic lit engine will still allow some really impressive results if you're careful with it. One thing every gamedev should know is how to work with the tools they have, IMO. So for me, it's about working within the limitations.

Given I'm of limited artistic talent (even my skies/etc are extremely limited in my opinion) I felt the best thing I could do was give the community the best possible tools for creating realistic or impressive lighting/level design.

The next one in the series will be more detailed tricks on lighting but that's going to take a while as I have to build a few test levels and what not.


It's my one biggest complaint about GG made games - the lighting; you can have the best concept possible and if it's lit poorly it just looks like someone didn't spend an ounce of time on it.

There are others who made good tutorial pieces too but personally I found this one the most useful (aside from Ravey/Lee's youtube stuff):

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/214049 Devcore's tutorial. His trick of using small 'negative relief' circles on mountains for depth works wonders, for instance.

Wow I am totally inspired .... Thanks for the video links

I'm happy that you view my work as artistic but I don't really know what I should write about. A terrain tutorial would be better suited for rolfy but I could make a really basic one if there is interest. Not sure when I would find the time though.



Well you get your papermaché and glue....
What I can say is that leveldesign and arttutorials for other engines can often be translated to GG and that I have written some tutorials, when I was far younger...and for FPSCreator. But they exist: Here goes.

Lightmapping

This can be combined with Bolt Actions Tutorial above. Just make sure to ramp up the surface level and decrease the ambient level for indoor maps. Especially scifi'ish ones. The values you need to set higher in the game guru setup.ini are only lightmapquality and lightmapsizeentity.

10 Do's and 10 Don'ts

This is...written in my old english. Its my fourth language and kinda shows in these old threads, but maybe someone gets someting out of it.

10 Checkpoints to get your game done.

Errh! Yeah, not really relevant and most of that is obvious. But hey!

Mapdesign (indoor)

Covers some useful things and will soon be relevant again when we get an easy building editor.

Once I have some more time on my hands I'll browse these and see what I can salvage for a newer, better, more coherent GG tutorial.



-Wolf

Excellent!

Also, I highly recommend a book called "Level Up!" by Scott Rogers.