Here we go again....





"why does this run so bad"

:/

Since Game-Guru was mentioned this could explain the bad reviews we've been getting for the engine itself on Steam. I think one of the biggest problems with all the Let's Plays I've seen with GG games... is the FPS issues. Even on some of these youtuber's powerful rigs. I think some of these games are not that bad either, they just have serious lag issues.

I really wonder whether these guys actually have as good a rig as they say they do, or if they do, their streaming software is causing lag. I've got Hunted and played it through, and i never got below 30fps on it, i don't have a rig even close to the ones these streamers claim to have.

Also, at one point he says quite clearly he's never heard of the gameguru engine, yet later in hen he enters the building he mentions the gameguru asylum assets, ok so he or hasn't he heard of gameguru? I really wonder some times if these videos are set up to fail the games, i know there's a steam "element", various groups, that basically take backhanders from developers to up their games and trash their rivals, i kind of wonder how deep it goes.

If there's money involved it's bent,learnt that years ago.Shame,but true.

Dave

I can say I got about 12 fps on this game, at least in a demo I tried awhile back. I don't have a beast computer though. Still, I can understand people thinking many GG games run slow, when you compare how other games run on my system as a general comparison. There's been quite a few games released of late that don't do GG any favours. This is one of the better releases overall, but for me could have done with a lot more optimisation.

He was talking about "Autumn Dreams" which was an FPSC game he played just before this one. Which uses similar assets (Lobotomy). Additionally he has played in the past a game that someone put on steam that was a direct export of the Asylum map.

With the character being so over-used now, i might have to rethink of what assets I will be using for my own game. Definitely canceling my remake of an FPSC project that was going to use the same assets.

I'll add also, the present mentality that if you use store assets in a game, you are then asset flipping. Yes, when people package entire demo maps and such and sell on Steam, asset flip applies. When a dev has merely purchased assets from a store however, I consider that completely acceptable. It's up to the dev to make those assets fit their game, either by careful selection or re-texturing, either are fine.

Most gamer's have no idea how much work it takes to make a game (at least for a half decent one). Sure, they're often impressed, but still have no clue what is entailed. So, they form their opinion on other games they play. Generally GG games are slow in comparison, so it's only to be expected.

Even so, as soon as people think any assets are purchased, they seem to instantly dislike a game, although 100% of game assets in all games are purchased in one way or the other. The fact it isn't unique to the game makes the game an asset flip. I feel for any devs who get stung in this way when in all other areas they have done their best to make a good game.

I do think that this particular game is considerably better than other GG games of late that I remember. Some effort was involved. Catapult Shooter, or whatever it was called, that was truly bad, looked like a couple hours work, including time to put on Steam. Also another, I can't remember the name, but the fact you could instantly walk out of the level design and see an empty map was utterly awful. It was on Sterlings channel, he spent an insane amount of time exploring that blank GG map. Running for hills that didn't exist, they were just the default glitch on a flat GG map you always get unless you edit it. Drove me mad. Releasing that on Steam is a travesty and a testament that if you do not test your level even to a minimum level, bad things will happen.

I'm sure it won't be too long before some GG games are released that get better reviews, but good games take time and so we must all wait for something that shows GG in a more positive light than many recent games have. Even if some have been perhaps unfairly reviewed because of said asset flipping mentality.

So random just checking out more of his channel and just now he uploaded a video playing my friend/co-worker's game Maize! Developed in Unreal Engine using 3D Studio Max for its models.


(and another youtuber)

Been talking about this project of theirs for sometime in the off topic section. Their environmental artist, Eddie teaches Unreal at my work and 3DSMAX. Unrelated to GG but maybe it can prove to be of some inspiration for others within GG. His team avoids violence in games, so they are all about puzzles.

@Teabone: YOU made bath salts?? Was it your first game?

Edit: Yeah Maize looks funny and competently designed. Also thanks for highlighting something made with UE4 in the unity parade we usually get here!

On topic:
I could make a quip about insufferable manchildren with a disfunctional youtube hobby....but I am also a grown man who enjoys making videogames so I won't . Besides, I don't know these people personally, they might be rad dudes... and they are correct....the framerate is bad. The optimization is terrible and this has been discussed to death and beyond on here.

This discussion and others like it have been had countless times before.

Links to some recent ones:

Exhibit A

Exhibit B




-Wolf

Jim Sterling just reviewed "Island Simulator" another product of GameGuru...

ah showing off the acid bath we still have for water. I don't think we'll have any improvements there till much later next year or possibly longer considering how far below the "swimming" feature is on the voting board.

I would think that swimming should be part of the AI improvements, not it's own feature, at least for NPCs. As far as the player goes, if your enemies can swim, shouldn't you be able to also? Just my opinion, they should go together!

Thats not a product of game guru, that is a product of incompetence.

THIS.

The FPSC game yes and I was in the process of shifting it over to Game-Guru last year. Had been rethinking the entire concept due to the possibility of offending the families connected to those affected by the drug. Was to be renamed to "The Addicted". The over use of Lobotomites though is what has pretty much led me to canceling the project.

I remember telling the author of My Little Apocalypse Town to make sure to not sell his custom assets he had made for his game... or else his game would lose its uniqueness.



I think we really have to get creative and try to use as much of our own custom media as possible. Or take a look at whats in the store that isn't overly used. If we intent to make a unique looking game in GG.

Hunted: One Step Too Far... Hmmm... it's not a crap game. I enjoyed it actually. Tbh, I wouldn't have thought it's done in GG but because of the lag spikes you clearly see that it's a GG game.

*looks at a spade, starts to lag.

I can run, Man Kind Divided on Ultra and get 30FPS comfortable....

I must admit I enjoyed it also ....
But I do agree you can only use the Asylum assets for example only so many times before games look the same ..

That's why in only fleshing out my levels with temporary models, and slowly retexturing them or making my own to replace them.

To many of these so called "professional" reviewers don't actually k ow what asset flipping is and the moment they see a familiar model they scream flip at it.

It reminds me if that film princes bride ...

"You use that word a lit, I don't think you know what it means..."

<insert picture meme here>

I genouinely don't understand why you are all so worried about what these youtubers think.
Everything I use is generally retextured or otherwise personalized enough that people don't accuse me of things. I think I only got one snarky remark once somewhere on youtube. But oh well! I think its a good thing... I've always been preaching that you have to at least do mild texture changes to purchased assets because they rarely to never blend with the work of other artists.
FPSCreator originally had no postprocessing or any engine magic to unify the look of your game... This caused a lot of tremendously ugly games from people who didn't know what they where doing.

@Teabone: I must admit, I find the FPSC alpha of Bath Salts to be quite bad Almost everything about it doesn't work visually. Hence my surprise that you did that. I think I remember seeing far superior work from you (maybe another project). The environment you made in GG to test the lobotomies in looks already better designed though. The accusations of asset flipping are going around because of plenty of bad games that just threw in the work of others and gave it a bad rep but also because of designers trying to hide either what engines they used or what assets they purchased.

I came through so many painfully dishonest advertisements or profiles for indie games that they deserved the resulting attacks. If I where to sell a game I'd openly share the adresses of the artists who designed assets I may have bought. I think being open about this sorta thing is far more rewarding than attempting to hide it. (But then again, I ran into enough people who actually thought themselves their basic little drag and drop game was a blockbuster...and did of course blame it all on the engine when getting flak from the gamers...sigh!) Whoops! Look at me rambling here.

@Belidos:



Oh! They found a niche to make some money and get some public recognition. The amount of technical ignorance these people have shown so far. (the written gaming press isn't better). Things I have heard so far are:

Whenever there is a flat texture or an overlay somewhere they say that "its just a jpeg". No, its rarely ever a .jpeg.
This lags, maybe its something with the texture of the game... Games rarely lag because of the textures. Unless you use absurd resolutions which I have not seen happening outside of these HD mods for popular games.
This texture has a lot of depht to it, so it looks kinda 3d, thats the cry engine doing that! No, thats a shader... we had shaders for a while now!
Moba, Mobs, Skin are either slang from the MMORPG or FPS Modding community. They don't mean anything or the same thing in the dev scene. A skin can be a texture in the dev scene but its never an entire animated gun as it can be in the fps modding scene.
HD visuals / HD graphics Means nothing. I can have a game that only relies on low resolution textures look infinitely better than one that has huge textures. A lot of HD mods tend to swap textures with better ones in the same resolution. (Usually some mod that throws in high res floor textures and a lot of lensflares and colour grading is adding "HD visuals" zOMG!)
And the list goes on. And yes, I am that pedantic occasionally.

Hunted was a decent game... the only real issue here is the lag

Forget whatever somebody farted out about asset flipping. THE LAG is the real issue!



-Wolf

Of course wolf is right.

Asset flipping - just goes to show what these guys know about game design industry.

Did you know? - there are stores out there where you can buy models made by other people!? Well I never....

Who really cares what these guys think anyway, exactly what are their credentials? Oh, look! there's ads in the video - ah, so that's what this is all about!

I work at an Arts Centre, and you would be amazed (or perhaps not) how one person thinks a piece of work is incredible art, and another thinks the same piece is rubbish.

Bottom line is if you like the game and he doesn't means exactly that - you like it and he doesn't. I for one would much rather check it out for myself, than watch someone else play it and rave good or bad about it just because they like the sound of their own voice, or think they look real cool as they go about it.

Reliquia....

I should also mention, the game itself does look quite interesting and i can see some work has been put into it. But the lag is what really hurts it and that seems to be where most of the negative feed back for it is coming from. Apart from familiarizing with the assets.

We can go in circles talking about that, I do believe at some point in GG's development more optimizing efforts may have to be considered. Something about trees seem to be the biggest drain. We may need to do LOD stages and billboards with them. Has anyone tested that with GG for tree models?

When Youtubers do videos specifically aimed at slagging off bad games (like most of the Jimpressions videos), and they don't find something to obvious to complain about after a couple of minutes, they become very nitpicky, just so they can complain about something and keep the momentum going. For example, they'll make a nebulous comment about textures being bad when there's nothing obviously wrong with the textures (even in AAA games, textures don't look great at ultra close range).
These sort of videos are extremely popular (I watch them all the time - it can be very entertaining to watch truly awful games), but it does create a market for bad games, as certain 'devs' deliberately create bad games because they know they're going to get a lot of attention and probably some sales because of this.

I agree Gtox, I've seen fairly reasonable games treated quite unfairly for quite small glitches. Then the same guy can rate another game as awesome, just because they have been following it for awhile, yet I see as many issues as in the prior game. Total Biscuit is very snobbish with this sort of thing, although he doesn't post vids of this nature generally, he does deride games for the silliest things. What there aren't a million game setting options? That's rubbish!

I also agree with Wolf, many devs deserve bad press as the games are, bad, unbelievably so occasionally. One I mentioned earlier comes to mind, I can't quite wrap my head around why anyone would release a game that runs that slowly, has black textures on quite a few objects and literally has no real objective beyond shoot all the slowly animating enemies. It cost them what? 100$ to put on Steam? Is this a one off cost? Or does it cover any game once paid? I can understand more if that is the case, but otherwise I'd have kept the $ in my pocket.

@ Teabone, I 'm, pretty sure the default trees do have LOD as standard. I think slow down in this area is more to do with the transparency needed for the leaves. I know DB was always way slower with objects that use an alpha layer for transparency. It could even be an issue with some of the models themselves. I've had some models fixed by Lee that were slowing the game down quite a lot in the past. There may well be some others that are still broken. I think one of the best ways to speed them up would be the batching system offered on the voting board. They also use limbs, which most other objects do not. Not sure if that slows things here, but I'm guessing it may when there are a lot of them placed down.

One last thing I have seen here mentioned is the lag comment. It drives me mad, it's not lagging, that's a internet speed issue, it's slowing down. Lag is a consequence of internet speed and ping rate, while slowdown is due to the machine not being able to run it fast enough. There's a big difference Many modern youtubers/gamers don't seem to know the difference, everything is lag. I'm being picky here of course, but I expect youtube game reviewers to know the difference.



I imagine the dev of the games do They may or may not have credentials, but if they have a large Youtube following that's a lot of potential sales down the toilet. Of course many of these recent games have not really been games as such, more like really bad tech demo's.

Of course this all goes to prove that Game Guru really is the easy game maker. Anyone can make a game and put it on Steam quickly and easily it seems. How many other engines would allow this to be done so quickly? As far as I know a standalone is practically ready configured to go for Steam, I doubt other game makers out there do that out the box. I could be wrong here, I'm only going by the fact each standalone has steam files in there by default.

Steams greenlight fee is a one off cost, once you've paid it you can submit as many games as you can make.[

The word Lag and Lagging these people use is to do with the controller input lagging, (screen lagging behind the controller) be it joypad or keyboard the time it takes from a key press to the screen doing something e.g. moving firing etc. This is because of low frame rates (GG games) and with on line games your internet ping and speed will be another factor of input lag.

These people should be saying e.g. I'm getting a lot of slowdown here and my controller is lagging a lot this is making it hard to control the player movements.

And now it becomes clear...

There seem to be quite a few GameGuru games coming onto Steam Greenlight. Here's another:

Oh Joy

I can't stop laughing...

... the narration... that random goblin sound at the end... the colors... i have tears...

"Trials of An Apprentice Wizard": It's not a joke nor is it a troll. It took me a good few months to create (maybe a bit unfair of me to post the above video without owning up to it but I wanted to ensure any feedback was not coloured by the GameGuru community spirit).

Anyhows. It's hard to really appreciate the game from the trailer. I've had good feedback from those who have tested it. For the trailer, I used slow motion for a couple of scenes (including the bridge scene at the end) for dramatic effect. I can see now that was a mistake because people think it's the actual game FPS (notice the sound is also slowed down). Look out for the game in the Showcase forum.

Obviously, I don't want any sympathy votes but I would urge you to look again at the Greenlight submission and keep an open mind. It's not meant to be a serious shooter. The plan was to make a colourful platformer that was suitable for all the family and fun to play. Most people at least agree it is vividly coloured!

All voted appreciated!

I'm sorry mate, but there's colourful, and theirs bleeding eyes (i actually felt nauseous watching that colour scheme, not nauseous as in just not liking it, but physically sick because the colours effected my vision), and going by the video and screenshots that looks absolutely aweful, no amount of content, plot line, humour, or mechanics could ever make it fun to play for me, i don't usually say that about peoples work, i usually say its nice even if it isn't, but i can't even bring myself to lie for this one. If that is how the game looks for real, then at least we have someone to blame :p

OK. Well, thanks for your honesty, Belidos. I appreciate it.

There is humour in the game but that may not come across in the trailer.

I'm glad you can take the criticism, i don't mean anything personal by what i said, and i hope there's no bad feeling.

To be honest, i've seen you do some pretty good work, and i was quite shocked it was your game.

I can only hope that it's just bad video and pictures that make the colours look worse than they are.

To me not only are they bright fluorescent colours (which are epilepsy triggers so make sure you add a warning), it feels like there's no definition to your entities, as if you just took a single flat image in one colour and slapped it on instead of the original texture, maybe if the textures were done right, with details, AO normal mapping etc it might not look so bad.

I did like the music you used though, one thing i'm seriously lacking for my WIP at the moment is a decent soundtrack, ive got plenty of music, but none of it feels right for the style of game im making.

Belidos, are you implying that over 5 million ZX Spectrum users played their games with bleeding eyes ? Don't think so!
LOL

ZX Spectrum never looked that bad, they at least used a 16 colour palette and tried to match colours :p

Of course not. I'd much rather people be honest than nice. That's the only way to learn and grow. Anyone who can't take criticism shouldn't be in this business.

Actually, it only had eight colours, I suppose you could say 16 if you could the fact you could have 2 colours to a 8x8 pixel square. How us old timers would have loved 16 colours.. .

SC

There were per 8x8 pixel square the BRIGHT (=intensity) attribute and 1 of 8 colours for PAPER (=background) and 1 of 8 for INK (=foreground) - and I loved it.
But I must admit, there is an emulator allowing to fine tune all colours, and SOME Spetrum games (such as COMMANDO) looked better with a VC20 like pallette - much to my surprise.

wow quite a thread going on without my knowledge, until now^^ Let's get back to the topic here: When I saw the video I was pissed. But I decided to forget and ignore it. There are people who enjoy it and there are some that just want to bash games like harshly critical and this dude right here. I can't do anything about it. I think rather than judging a game like that they should actually do something useful themselves...

I may be ignorant on that, true - but these people are not any different...

I regret nothing, I did everything I could with my skill & knowledge at this time. I am still okay with the final product. I never sayd it was perfect and I know it isn't - But it was a very important learning experience. I am going to continue to make updates for HUNTED - It will run better at some point.
The Game has gone though very much since the release. Now, I have read everything you guys wrote and I agree in every point. Thanks to those defending my game.

I will remove the asylum inhabitant in a next update. I figured it has no relevant place in the game at all. I just thought it was a nice thing to add for halloween.

My work with this game is not over even though it's been released.
I hope I can make it a bit better and do something for gameguru and it's community at the same time - I really love this community - the first one ever in wich I feel involved in. kinda.

Yeah... I think I got everything off my chest for now.

DK Productions

Yup that's what I meant.

You know it may actually turn out to be a good thing.... the reaction it causes. even though you may not have intended to troll with it. I honestly couldnt stop laughing watching the trailer. I watched it several times over. Made me want to play it just due to wacky kind of nature of it all. In my head at beginning of the trailer i could hear myself saying "and here we have a wizard... cause we have not many other options... shooting stuff... with an explosive staff.. cause thats all we have" then the narration starts with the same type of voice I had going on in my head and I just died. One thing I have to say is I have never seen a more vibrant game in my life. I'll totally check it out for you. Is there any voice acting going on in the game itself? I truly hope so..



No I wouldn't do that since you already have put so much work into it. The main issues I see anyways is the performance. That's where most of the complaints seem to be coming from.

The Asylum works well .... Redo the textures so it doesn't look default ...
They look pretty easy to change actually...

PS...You should Review that guys hair .... Anyone with Green hair cant be taken to seriously

Thank you Teabone. Regarding voice acting: Yes, the guy who does the voice over also does the Master Wizard's voice. A small snippet can be heard about halfway through the trailer during the death scene.

Cheers, mate.

Okay will try to change the textures of the asylum... THX guys

@Duchenkuke - you could also try changing the grass settings if you want to improve FPS, as grass seems to have a huge impact on the frame rate. It would be a bit of a balancing act, as the dense, tall grass adds to the forbidding atmosphere (for me), but you might find a sweet spot with some trial and error.

Actually Gtox has a good point. I don't actually use the "Highest" settings for vegetation myself. I have it set either on Medium or High. They still look quite good, just not as light reflective.

In this screenshot here I have the grass set at Medium and I still think it looks good. Really helps with the performance issues. I also personally avoid using any animated trees what so ever.





If you need any help let me know I personally don't think you need to change anything just because a few youtubers recognize the assets. I think the problem is more for future games that use them. As its starting to become more common. But if you feel that switching up the textures might help with making your game feel more unique and stand out from other Game-Guru games I truly dont mind helping you out there.

Trees are a frame rate killer, as said above, if you need movement for the ambience have a few trees that animate mixed in with mostly non animated ones, also remove the collision from trees that don't need it, is the ones away from the route the player takes, makes a huge difference. Organic entities have a lot of Poly's so having full collision on them can drop the frame rate.

Sorry if I came off quite rude to you both, Duchenkuke and Lordjulian. I think my frustration with GG at the time was at its limit and I can easily become far too critical at that point. Duchenkuke, your game looks to be fine, apart from only the performance issues.

Lordjulian I posted some feedback on your showcase thread:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/216789

Also if you want to reduce the slow down from trees even further you could do what i did, if you have any trees that need to be visible but are in places the player won't go then, make a screenshot of a tree against a plain background, edit it in a paint program to remove the background and make the background transparent, then in a modeling program make a single plane the size of the tree and then use the tree screenshot as a texture, export it, add an fpe, and place it in game. You get a convincing tree (from a distance) that is only a single plane, or two poly's.

Also reduce the light rays to 10 or 15... Reduce the water slider... Shadows at 55 is still good.
Delete some trees, delete rocks and things which are hidden in the high grass.
Btw. Nice looking game.