I have purchased a HUGE amount of packs and assets from the TGC store over the last few weeks and I am noticing that I have NO IDEA what i've bought nor how to use them (if they are a construction set or large-scale asset of some kind) mostly due to inefficient or no organizing and no blueprint, how-to or sample level. Some, and only some, such as Galaxy Seed, created an example level (Thank You).

I kindly request that you:

(1) Organize everything better than they are - make it really easy to know what's what and what goes to what

(2) Create a blueprint in PDF format that we can look out to see how to build your asset if it's made up of different pieces - along with other possibilities.

(3) Create a sample level with your asset fully assembled (especially if said asset is made up of tons of pieces). This goes for buildings, corridors, sewers, etc.

I think if you did that, it would make it much easier for us as level designers to design the levels. Likewise, if there was a fully built prefab that we could drag and drop into place, that would make level designing much faster.

Thank you.

Mike

This is a great idea, I have some asset packs that i struggle to assemble and a test level would be very helpful

I think it's the game designer's job to familiarize themselves with the media that they plan to use. If you don't make your own media, you should at least spend the time to make a test level (or several) with your media or try to use it a few different ways yourself before using it on your game so you know what you're getting into. There is more than one way to assemble a corridor or a building or a hallway or a sewer, and crafty level designers use media in ways most wouldn't expect.

You don't become a good mapper by buying a bunch of assets, you become a good mapper by using them.

The store file directories and artist directories aren't the same, which means even if the artists creates a sample level it needs to match up with the directories of the store, the artists don't have access to the content they upload, while you could ask the store admin to add the content to your account.It means spending store bandwidth which already costs a pretty penny in the first place.

So unfortunately it ends up being a mission and not worth the effort in the long run if you need to jump thru hoops to get some thing done as mentioned above by bugsy perhaps playing around with the media in the first place, will assist in a better understanding of media, to be honest gameguru has the easiest media to assemble in the whole world other then scripts and things here and there.Users shouldn't have a problem at all, if the really do have issues, they can actually contact the artist on his page or open a support ticket for assistance.Other then that, it's not really needed.

A couple of examples of the media users are struggling with might be more helpful than a simple 'across the board' request for 'prefabs' or map samples. For obvious reasons you won't be seeing prefabs anyway since these aren't possible in GameGuru at present anyhow and you should know this yourself, for Artists this is a major drawback and media creation is a drag which never seems to be addressed even though the store has been in full swing since day one.
A good example of the media design mess is the fact that there is no way to assign multiple materials to models, this medieval approach to media creation in both Classic FPSC and GG has never been taken the slightest notice of and although Artists and users alike have whined endlessly about it they have been asking for the wrong thing...multi texturing has always been achievable if you know what your doing even since the earliest days of FPSC but is a bitch to implement. .x will will assign multi textures but only if the the file is saved as text and not binary and you won't be using multiple shaders with it.
FBX can save out material assignments but we all know how rudimentary and basic that implementation has been so far, for some reason it is expected that it will require a certain version of fbx format but I find that any version is usable in just about any other engine. Developers knowledge is extremely dated and this can be seen with just about every update and new feature put into the engine where a certain amount of learning and study is required...it is laudable that they want advance their knowledge but you would think that as a company TGC should be keeping up with trends in their own field and not struggling to implement what are now old advances in game engine features. Particularly when it appears as an afterthought, if this product was thought out rather than rushed out we would be well ahead by now.

My point here is that you shouldn't be having to ask for this unless you missed the fact that snapping together a sewer or a cave system is something you need to learn to do as a user unless it is easier to use an already created level out of the box, which would be asset flipping at it's worst. I am not saying that is what you want to do but it is the reason you get that sort of thing.
If we could create and upload a prefab to the store you would be seeing that by now, if you want a prebuilt fpm of a 'prefab' asset then you are going to have to load it up and build around it from there, not exactly ideal for any level designer is it?

I have noticed a tendency to blame the Artists for the drawbacks of this product, particularly when they try to create anything 'out of the box' which is very simple to do in a more 'modern' engine with a far better asset structure. We have been dragged over the coals since the start due to an archaic thought process which seems designed to suit the developers and the store admins.
I try not to blame the current admins for this since the set up was put in place by TGC at the start and they just inherited it.

Although they are always asking if there are ways to improve things many of the fundamental issues which would make life easier for users and Artists alike are ignored and media creators pay the price as seen in many of your recent posts.

I think what they mean isn't that they want prefabs or levels built for them so they can just use them without having to place them, its more that they want an example of his some collections are meant to go together.

To an extent I can understand where they're coming from, while I don't have a problem with most kits there are a few that contain many tiny pieces that without spending hours messing around with them I haven't had a clue what they're for. An example of this is a few of oldpmans packs, some of his earlier work like the prison kit were cut up into such tiny pieces it was like doing a jigsaw puzzle without a picture, not to mention his early naming convention were confusing (not digging at his work, i love hid midels), that and the downloader just dumping everything into on folder instead of having it on a pack folder, just made it worse.

This is why in FPSC we had prefabs. Prefabs were assembled arrangements of individual assets.

Prefabs helped established what each piece was meant for and provided an easy way to plot out a foundation with their use.

I get it too, I was just pointing out some of the drawbacks with pre-built levels which would in fact be better described as full projects but not feasible since it is discouraged to create packs which are sold as 'pack only' and should be individual items. Of course there are some situations where it is unavoidable that items be sold only as a pack and it is then acceptable. But I haven't looked at anyone else's media much from the store so can't really say why an asset would be cut up into tiny pieces with no indication of how these go together, never seen or even heard of that with any asset from other engines stores but may be one of those unfathomable 'GameGuru' reasons.

As for built fpm examples with every update changing things even more so now, then it should be noted that many users complain in no uncertain terms that levels they built no longer work as they should and you can imagine how annoying it would be for Artists to be constantly updating and awaiting approval, this would be tenfold if they have a lot of assets on the store.

I am not trying to play down any issues users may have with store media but trying to point out that much of it is down to this software being in Beta for years and I understand how users might get frustrated by issues that aren't entirely the media creators fault and much of it is out our hands.


Prefabs in FPSC weren't made up of assets those only applied to segments and never at any point included entity's. You could prefab rooms and corridors but that was it and pretty pointless as a 'feature', never used much by anyone since you could draw out those in a few minutes anyhow.

I do agree that better examples of built assets is absolutely necessary but until this software comes of age and has far better editor capabilities than it currently has then it isn't possible really without a lot of onus and extra work on media creators part keeping it up to date.

A simple basic editor and big buttons certainly doesn't equate to 'Ease of use' for media designers and I got tired real quick of 'keeping it simple' for users to drag and drop assets but those same users keep asking for features and Artists take a back seat, let's be honest there isn't a single one of us finds it 'easy' to create for GameGuru and maybe for a change it should be taken on board that we got the crap end of the stick when it comes to getting things done about it in favour of a voting board that has no consideration at all for improving the editor and import of assets, the asset menu which has been a long term term whine or even grouping of objects into prefabs and multi-materials. Ya know? all those little 'features' taken for granted in any other engine out there.
Call this all a whine if you like but I don't really care anymore these days anyhow but if it's going to continue like this then I for one won't be creating for GG till the editor is sorted in general, after all what good is a 'game creator' without assets, it's really pretty important but don't see much attention on this side of things. Enjoy the shiny new graphics

Generally speaking, I find getting basic assets into GG to be very easy but I agree that the "Easy to Use" aspect is definitely targeted at the map making process (Which still leaves some to be desired) and not the asset creation aspect. In a sense though, this does not bother me... I'd rather be ducking and diving through hoops in order to make it easy for the customer to place and use rather than be stuck with some kind of integrated importer. The desire for ease of use aspect when applied to assets, so far, has led to things like the character creator and EBE. Both of which I consider to be lackluster and not worth the development time. Likewise, I've never once used the importer feature... I'd rather do things the tried and true way where I feel I have the most control. There is, however, room for asset creation to be made ... perhaps not simpler... but... more powerful. An example would be less awful LOD support that goes by name rather than creation order or supports multiple mesh objects. Support for collision/physics meshes would be another example.

That said, if the asset store is indeed reorganizing assets in a manner which breaks things, that is just dumb... but it is also understandable to the extent that it prevents competitive overwrites (example: Two different sellers list two different scripts named "whatever.lua"). There should be engine-wide support for whatever necessary subdirectories to separate artists and allow for fully descriptive alphanumeric filenames (some of the gamecore stuff can be sketchy in what it will and will not read) and sellers should be able to fully replicate the structure locally. If the assets need to ultimately be placed in artist subdirectories, then it should be set up the same both on the artist's local workstation and in the asset upload. Having disparate file structure is unacceptable for an integrated asset store.

It can also be said that we need a lot more control over how assets behave when drug and dropped in order to make things easier for our customers (who here misses the snap to wall feature and being able to specify vertical offset in FPE??? I know I do). I also think that if an artist wants to provide a sample .FPM, then fine. More power to them. It could be a nice marketing point. However, it's on them to keep it updated should major breakage occur (the same for individual assets as well) and by no means should it be a requirement.

Hit the nail on the head right there.


One thing that is really needed is for the store and the downloader to work together and not only put them into artist folders, but within those folders have individual kit folders for each kit, that way models that are components of modular entities won't be mixed up with each other, it would make things much easier to work out.

Something I would also like to see is a proper entity system where we can add the model into a slot, then add each of the textures into slots, that would make it easier for us to have multiple textures for the same model, and would probably also again make it easier for Lee to implement a proper PBR system.
We also need a way for the artists to mark their models as part of a kit so that they can be sold individually, but will still go into their specific kit folders, because at the moment modular work is not worth selling in individual parts without making them pack only because they're not sorted how the user needs them sorted.

We also need each model to have individual folders so that the users don't have to trawl through tons of individual files to find a single one when they want to edit the fpe or something.

I'm not saying that would be all that's needed, but just that would be a huge step to help the users, and I think in the long run it would help Lee too, because it would create a proper structured base for him to work off of when he finally gets around to adding some sort of entity search/index.

What I have been doing lately is ignoring the downloader an downloading everything manually via the account page and putting packs in their own folders outside of the purchases folder, haven't used the downloader in ages now, because doing it manually is just plain easier. The downloader should be by default the easier option, that's the whole point of having a downloader, but it just plain isn't.

A thirdparty toolmaker could create a search tool for entities. Would that help?

It would help, but to be honest, it would become another excuse not to actually fix the issue, if there was a third party tool for entity searching we'd just get the line "you can use x tool" instead of what we need added.

FPSC Segments are assets in my opinion. Meshes and textures just the same. Fixed to the grid due to the ".FPS" file instead of an ".FPE. Only difference. Entities could technically and easily be segments if given an ".FPS" property file for assembly. (in FPSC). vise-versa segments can be entities with the use of an .FPE referencing their meshes and textures.

I don't use the EBE in Game Guru. Was hoping the entity controls would have been improved enough to include the features that made their way there. More specifically around the grid controls and snapping and painting of assets. Like a typical level editor. I find the EBE complicates things more when building complex interior spaces. With improvements to entity mode itself it would have been much easier to handle pieces of a pack of objects. As an asset developer you'd be able to offset the position of each piece so they would by default snap to the correct corresponding counterparts as intended by the developer.

Instead, if complex pieces are made as entities, you are left with just an object forced to the ground that you have absolutely no idea what its use is for apart from its naming conventions.

I don't really use Game Guru much anymore as it can be pain to even piece together my own created content for structural pieces. I attempted to build my own segment system specially to solve this, but realized quickly that Game Guru was very limited in this area. So I relied on the EBE release and it didnt turn out the way I was expecting. It does serve its purpose for what I have seen others do with it and I've seen little complaints about it. It just isn't something I feel comfortable with using myself. Piecing together complex connecting pieces is indeed a difficult process in Game Guru for me. Its not very friendly for organic design. More so linear.



One of the longest running feature requests for FPSC Reloaded/Game Guru in the forums; yet is still no where near the top in the voting board.

Your Hard drive is a filing system, and like any filing system, should be well organised - it is just proper use of a computer resource.

This becomes even more important when you have a mass of media like you collect with game development.

When I make my own assets I always use a folder structure, and do the same when creating assets for the store, Example:
Reliquia>
-- Toonland>
---- Paths>
---- Roads>
---- Trees>
---- Vehicles
-- Moltaren>
---- Buildings>
---- Collectables>
---- Decals>
-- SciFi>
---- Barriers>
---- Machinery>
---- Ships>

---- ect

I always just copy the structure to the entitybank - no changes - period.

When I upload to the store I just put them in one folder (usually scenery), as I am under the impression that we are expected to do so - I may be wrong though.

Developers should be able to upload their media in folder structures they think best suits the media, as in the example above. And that is how it should be downloaded to the purchasers system.

This way it is much easier to find content that is related.

Game Guru itself doesn't care at all, and it is possible for the downloader to do because they do it for the DLC content.

I guess the problem for the store with single items is it has to fit into a category for obvious reasons.

Reliquia....