GameGuru has lot of potentials and technically the easiest way to get in to 3D game development yet it a huge disappointment. Originally, GameGuru started as an improved version of FPS Creator that was aimed to make AAA quality FPS games. All the big titles have been tested by Lee for reference what a AAA FPS game is looks, feels and plays like and the development of FPS Creator Reloaded has started but years later, it doesn't feels like an AAA or even a complete FPS game engine but an education tool for kids instead.
I'm explain why:
Originally promised good optimization, but after years of development, instead of trying to optimize the engine, Lee decided to "target modern hardware". I understand we can tweak the settings and also my old GT 430 is just too old but what I'm saying is that, more complex games runs better on my config at higher settings then any of the example levels comes with GameGuru.
Fine, let call GameGuru a next gen AAA engine and accept the fact it requires good hardware. I need to upgrade my graphics card anyway to run new games. But this statement leads to the next thing that made me disappointed.
Originally promised AAA quality visuals but years later the visuals are still not AAA. When someone mentioning to me "AAA visuals" the first thing comes in to my mind is S2Engine. Okay, it not true, but considering GameGuru is an Indie engine I think would be not fair to compare it to big commercial engines such as Unreal and CryEngine. S2Engine is a similar Indie engine developed by a single person from low budget but take a look at the visuals, the ocean, the weather and cloud effects, rendering. This is what I would expect to see in GameGuru when we are talking about "AAA visuals".
Originally promised AAA quality assets and animations. The first assets was indeed very good quality of it time but if you take a look at the assets today..... I don't really want to complain on this as the assets comes with GameGuru is still better and more then what you get with any other engines but this is not what was originally promised. In the next update many assets going to come from FPS Creator Classic with updated textures which is great in general but this is not what I would call AAA.
Originally promised AAA quality soldier AI. An unstoppable Predator that is going to use stairs, climb ladders and walls, kick the doors, jump through windows, jump from heights, find covers and shoot from covers, find the fastest way to catch the player wherever the player is hiding.
Years later what we got is a zombie and creature AI that able to walk around and attack or run away and it even works only on ground level.
Originally promised a detailed character builder where we can build our very own characters, character creators of certain RPG games has mentioned as an example. Years later, in the character creator we can swap heads. That's it. Okay it not true, we can also add hats, helmets and change hair but yet again we are years after the promise has made and the result is nowhere near as good and detailed as it was originally planned.
Later, the team decided to open up the possibilities and advertise the product as something to make not only FPS games but anything using the power of Lua scripts and call it GameGuru.
After years and complete conversion of the engine from DBP to C++, we can't even make a proper TPS as the camera code is still hard coded in the core engine and the way scripting works is a complete joke as we need to puzzle existing features to get the result we need but in most of the case the result is just ugly because of the limitation and poor implementation of the commands and Lua.
Ideally, Lua should be integrated in to the core and EVERYTHING and I really mean everything should be using a Lua script that we can open and modify just the way we want or create a new script form scratch. Including the player camera and the controls.
But instead, many things still hard coded in the engine and things that finally can be controlled through Lua, are very limited in the way what we can really use it for. If you are trying to use a Lua command outside it original use case, there is a good chance it simply not going to work as you expect, because it is not intended to be used that way and you can see many examples of this in the Twitch broadcast when Lee trying to get new staff done in Lua using the commands he made.
EBE... It not even released yet and I can't even remember what was the promise I think the only thing mentioned was we are gong to be able to build anything, but god sake, from cubes only? While it still in beta, please consider at least for this feature to go beyond the minimum from the start and do something similar to the editor of Space Engineers for example. I would be completely happy with an editor like that, and the only thing seems to missing is more variation of shapes, why is that so difficult to add more shapes from the start?
Why every single feature coming and did come to GameGuru is brings only the minimum and then remain like that because the devs move on to the next feature before anything is complete?
As of today, in GameGuru there is no a single feature that would be complete and polished, everything just rushed and sort of works "fit the purpose" and the upcoming EBE is the best example of that. Why EBE is not intended to be released as a complete and polished tool but instead only brings the minimum feature we can get? In my opinion this way of development need to be stopped. We need complete and polished features from the first day of release.
I would even pay for every single feature as a DLC but please, make it complete and polished.
I know I'm going to get lot of hate from people love GameGuru, and appreciate all the efforts Lee has put in to it.
I'm amazed what people can do with GameGuru and I agree on that, GameGuru has lot of potential and lot of things to offer already but according to original plans and promises GameGuru is a Huge disappointment to me and the way it developed makes me feel I'm never going to get the AAA FPS game engine I was originally backed years ago
By opening this new thread, I'm really hope the devs going to read this and realize the development of GameGuru is going in to the wrong direction, at least if GameGuru is still intended to be a serious AAA engine and not only a toy that kids can play with and take the first steps in game development.
Thanks.
