Hi All,
Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated, and I wanted to fill the void with some progress and news on the current state of play with GameGuru. I did not realize my waffle was so much in demand! Firstly, thanks for the words and concerns, it was never my intention to inconvenience you until I had something worth reporting.
Thanks for the tip about the Twitch announcement, I have now edited the schedule to avoid misleading anyone else to my rare corner of the Twitch universe. Service will resume on that channel when I have released (or about to release) V1.132 which will feature tweaks and of course, 2GB of new game making assets for you to try.
Since my holiday, I have been running around like a headless chicken making sure the TGC business stays viable with projects which will keep us going for a few more years, and specifically, gives us the time to complete the features for GameGuru as voted by you. I have almost finished spinning these plates now and got them on a perpetual spin rate, allowing me to return home to my GameGuru universe and the marvels of game making. Still need to make a few tweaks, but normal service is almost ready to resume.
That said, I have not allowed ten spinning plates to prevent me from continuing GameGuru development, and have some tweaks ready for V1.132 plus some high priority items I would like to deal with before release. Here is what I have so far:
V1.132
Fixed issue which caused 'hidelowfpswarning' in SETUP.INI to be ignored
Move LUA and AI processing to AFTER PHYSICS/PLR code in main loop so scripts have more up to date plr/camera values
Added new 'zdepth' field to entity FPE file which can disable the zdepth render order (it will draw like a HUD weapon)
Fixed issue of GUNSPEC 'textured' field not finding internal HUD.X model textures when it was blank (legacy medieval weapons)
Added 'usespotlighting' as field in GUNSPEC to control default as to whether projectile has dynamic spot lighting
Added 'usespotlighting=1' to Modern RPG weapon and Fantasy Staff weapon to ensure they use spot lighting
SCIFI PACK: Updated Buildings and Interiors with correct AI obstacle settings
Changed geometry for Light marker so you can better manipulate in 3D free flight mode
New GAMEDATA.LUA that now supports global tables (thanks to feature and bug work by that fine fellow; Rickie Allen)
Added extra functionality which disables auto-removal of dead characters if ALWAYS ACTIVE is YES
Fixed bug in LUA spawn command which confused the entity parent ID (would cause strange behaviors)
Fixed issue of repeated calls to SetObjectEffect internally when SetFogRed(x), etc is called (performance hit!)
In addition, the 2GB of extra assets are assembled and tested, and will be delivered in the form of an optional DLC download (free) so those with a poor bandwidth do not have to download 6GB of GameGuru before they can drop in their first start marker. I hope to expand this optional DLC a few more Gigabytes before we draw a line under it. I'm not sure who I'm competing with by releasing 6GB of game ready assets for $20, but I think 10GB as a goal is a nice round number.
I also plan to radically update the Steam product page which I have been reliably informed is, to put it kindly, a work of fiction. It professes many things, misleads by misdirection and omits some very blatant home truths. Primarily, we promise users they can create finished games and sell them. The unintended interpretation is that the would-be purchaser can create triple-A games and match the sales statistics of a top Steam title, which of course is crazy talk for a product that is very much in development with large holes running through it. I will be taking the opportunity to describe the new things we have added over the last two years since the text was originated, but I am certain a good portion of our negative Steam reviews stem directly from the fact we painted a picture of paradise, and gave them a sort of hell. I'd prefer lower sales with informed users, than lots of sales with frustrated, disillusioned users. Hopefully a face-lift for the shop-front will serve to remedy any misinformation being projected.
The much anticipated EBE (Easy Building Editor) has taken a serious knock to development with my absence from full-time GG coding, but you will be pleased to know it was already at 80% when I went on holiday, and the hard parts had been solved. By moving V1.132 tweak and asset update forward I am able to give you something new to chew on while I give myself the time to complete the first phase of the Easy Building Editor and ensure its a solid little tool by the time we release V1.14. Most beta testers liked the taster build back in August, and some good feedback came in which confirmed some ideas I had myself for the first version, so hopefully you won't have to wait too long beyond V1.132 for the update you have been waiting for.
In my role of overseer to the forums, emails and support, I have also formed an impression from the community that you would prefer I cease to concentrate on adding features from the voting board and instead focus on what are termed 'core' elements. Elements that do not lend themselves to a single description, but exist as the space between features. Such esoteric elements as performance, bugs in the tool chain, bugs in the game play and essential access to vital parts of the engine (without which the game author is condemned to wait). I tempts me to forgo the next item on the voting board for V1.15 and address what are being termed 'essential' items.
An example would be A.I. The plan was to create some new C++ code with perhaps NavMesh style 3D path-finding to traverse building entities and EBE constructions, which would have given rise to more hard coding (i.e. heading away from an open engine). Perhaps instead, I add a raft of LUA commands which make the definition of floor spaces, connection nodes, scene markers, path-finding, timing, sequence databases and other aspects of a good AI system accessible entirely through LUA commands. This would mean once the foundation AI commands are in place, my work is done and the work of the scripting community starts. No more waiting for the feature which lets the enemy jump through a window mid-way through his chase of the player, it would be entirely controlled from within a script. The 'he jumped through a fourth floor window' feature would be as much a surprise to me. In this example, the essential work would be in creating the LUA commands and testing them, not creating the specific behavior for every conceivable style of AI the end user might want.
When bad reports are not talking about graphics, or general compatibility issues, they often center on the limited capabilities of what you can do with the games engine, and the above approach would go a long way to addressing these concerns. The responsibility would be rightly shifted back to where it belongs, the game developer, leaving poor little me to continue breaking open the closed world the engine currently resides in.
In answering forum posts today, I came across a thread which caught my attention and I invite you to seek it out if you have not already found and contributed to it, which is the idea of entirely ripping out the old DX9 engine GameGuru currently sits on, and replacing it with a Unity technology layer. Such a move would decouple responsibility for all engine maintenance, leaving only the application side to contend with. The benefits are obvious, but you would be saddled with additional license restrictions about what you can do with what you create (the price you pay for a world-class engine). it will be interesting to see how that thread evolves
It was suggested I post something more than a place-holder paragraph, and I hope I've given you something to chew on for the next few days. By the end of the week I will have completed my additional tests of V1.132 and should be in good shape to share with my beta testers, so expect an update in the not too distant future!
Again, sorry for the black-out, it's not my custom to stay silent (as anyone who knows me will certainly attest), but when you're putting out fires in your house, you don't stop to check your emails
Happy game making and rest assured.
PC SPECS: Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit, Intel Core i7-5930K (PASSMARK:13645), NVIDIA Geforce GTX 980 GPU (PASSMARK:9762) , 32GB RAM
