Hey guys,

First of all I'm not here to slag out GG, I'm looking for serious opinions on whether any of the below has been fixed or implemented and whether this tool will ever be viable as a game development suite for an indie dev.

The way I see it: It's 2017 so the games we create using this software should at least resemble a game coming out in 2017. I found that was not the case when I first tried it out, but I could see potential with it AND I SERIOUSLY HOPE this can be a simple tool for kiddies but have powerful options for serious amatuer game devs.

. Here's what I remember:

-I recall the scripts were VERY basic and enemies had potato AI to the extreme. The enemy animations and movement were stiff and rigid (reminiscent of an old 1995 dos game). Lots of stuff was hard coded into the engine (stupid) allowing minimal customization. Although there were some custom scripts that worked they were incredibly basic. All you could do was display text on the screen no option to load an image file to make it look pretty etc.

-There was no option to create a menu/settings screen. (Not even a basic one!!! The 3D Gamemaker program I used as a kid in 2000 let you create a menu screen!) .

-No options to customize or tweak the hud just changing graphic images.

-No options to use global variables or conditional branches.

-You could only create one giant map, no option for muliple levels, no option to resize the map. I'd like to actually be able to enter the buildings on my map and not just put them there for aesthetic purposes.

-Overall feel of gunplay was clunky and not optimized at all. Sseeing as it was called "FPS Creator" you'd expect they'd at least get the animations/sounds and movement down and pay someone with skills to at least make some cool guns for the engine.

I realise this is all still a work in progress and want to give it another try.

So has any of this changed?

Is it now possible to create a game with levels and a little substance? Am I able to create an NPC that I can talk too with a basic diaglouge system? Is there a way I can implement this via scripts? Think Fallout 3/NV type dialog system.

Has the scripting process become more dynamic or are we stlll limited by the hard coded junk in the engine?

Menu Screens? Inventory Screen?

Am I able to script my own systems for the game? For instance a karma system, stealth system/stealing system.

Quests with a decent looking quest log via scripts?

Objectives that I can view via a inventory screen?

Any options to use conditional branches and variables within the engine?

Will I ever be able to create a semi professional game within this engine or will it only produce amatuerish playing/looking games like previous FPS Creator tools?

Why don't you just install it and try the latest version ... See what you think.

yes, I agree with Synchromesh, just install and try it out. At the end of the day it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, see for yourself. You can decide whether it suits your needs or not.

I see. Games made with GG can visually hold up to something interpreted as a game from 2017 in a sense. However, definately for all single devs and most certainly for the majority of indie studios. You can't touch AAA visuals as you simply don't have the million dollar budget to do so.



There has been improvment here. Even before the most recent updates, it was quite decent. Feel free to try this game and see for yourself. They aren't the AI in FEAR but definately not completely rigid.



You can do this. Most games in the showcase menu have custom loading and menu screens. However, you will do this in an art program and replace graphics, there is no in-engine tool.



A lot of users have custom huds including custom elements as money and so forth.



You can have maps any way you want them to be, including the scale. Feel free to browse this project to see some of my small indoor maps.



Not a fan of the stock guns myself, but they are just that...stock, raw material to work from. I got a whole bunch of different weapons running and a lot of them are responsive and pack a bunch. Of course, not comparable to the new doom game but still considerable.



Dude, just browse the work in progress section, see what people on there do and if any of it is up your alley.



That really depends on how many FPSCreator projects later on you have seen. If you just glanced over it as you seem to have done with GG I really can't say. Will you ever be able to make a game similar to AAA titles like Fallout3 / NV? No. However, you will also not be able to do this with any other software out there. I'd bet money on this. Individuals can't make these big studio titles on their own There are a lot of decent indie games out there, but they never have that kind of scale and polish.

Just look at the projects presented in w.i.p and see for yourself.

At the end of they, the scope and look of your game depend on your 3d modeling, texturing, leveldesign and scripting knowledge. Some engines make it easier than others, some render prettier than others....but in the end it all comes down to yourself. There is no tool that takes the core chores away from you yet, but GG is certainly making things easier.



-Wolf

I also was away for some time, but I'm back now. There are a few hardcoded things that are still barriers for me but in the meantime im trying to work around that.



You can now easily load in images on the screen using sprites. Its incredibly simple and I've been having a lot of fun with it recently in creating my custom UI.



Yes you can do this. Game Guru has some new Text commands that are fairly easy to script with. There is also now mouse support. However lip sync is not yet supported in Game Guru, as far as i know.



I did talk to Lee about this briefly a few years ago. When I gave mention to "cells". Cells are like maps within the overall world map. They have their own way of optimizing LODs, culling of assets and handling AI. Cells are pretty much limitless providing a complete open world option. They load in a complete LOD of a world map rather than the individual assets when you are not within that cell. I do create full city size expansions for the Bethesda community and have a pretty good understanding of what is going on under-the-hood of things to make that happen. There is no single click button however for all that. Big challenge for TGC would be creating that LOD generator software that Bethesda uses, which maps out your entire world and makes an LOD of the terrain and landscape and building assets. But any who that's a topic for another year perhaps.


There unfortunately is still way too many aspect of the gun control that is hardcoded. That is unfortunately frustrating. The good news is for most of the functions you can alter them yourself in their gunspec files. The timing, sounds and animations. The advanced stuff like custom projectiles is still hardcoded unfortunately. Unless you are asset swapping from the rocket launcher or fireball staff.

As Wolf suggested, you should really check out the WIP section of the forums. Some incredible stuff is in there that can really show you how far along Game Guru has come and what is possible now.

I can't comment on improvement as i have only recently started using it but as it's in development I would assume it has improved in the last 12 months, the developers wouldn't have stood still or made it worse in that time, like others have said try it and see what you think and also try Wolf's game, it is really good and shows what can be done, the only down side is the length of time it takes to load but I think that is being addressed with the dx11 update.

The AI are still dumb as bricks, however, character control has been opened up to Lua. If you can wrap your head around the new AI (I sure can't, lol), you can make them better. They will chase you on multiple levels, though, a definite improvement from earlier versions.



Still not in there yet, features are based on the voting board results, which now get reset as each new feature is added. A custom menu could be scripted, though, I'm sure, never tried it.



The ability to customize the HUD has been available for quite some time. I guess it depends on how much effort you want to put into it. There is no built in HUD editor if that's what you're looking for. I don't think a HUD editor would be a good idea anyway, because it would seriously limit what's possible vs. just creating it through scripting and custom graphics.



I don't remember not being able to do these things; must have been quite some time ago!



Multiple levels have been possible for quite some time. Buildings have ALWAYS been enter-able. The building itself, of course, has to be designed and constructed that way, lol. With the EBE, very easy to do even for modelers and non-modelers alike.



Ah, it must have been FPSC Reloaded when you last used it. I've never had any real problems with the gunplay, but have read others having issues with it. I'm no expert in first person shooters though, by any means.



I believe it could be scripted. lip syncing on the characters would be the hard part. A text based dialoque system could easily be done, even by someone with meager scripting skills, such as myself.



Everything in these questions can be scripted at this time. I've seen all of them in the forums, except perhaps karma and stealth, however, those are pretty much just derivatives of other systems that I've seen around here.



It was never impossible to do, except perhaps in the first several betas of Reloaded. As with any game engine, it depends on how much time and effort you want to put into it, along with a willingness to work within the limitations of the engine itself. Whenever you have a built in editor for a feature, without adding some personality, said feature will be instantly recognized as being from a particular engine. Right now Lee is overhauling the engine to be driven by DX11. This will not change anything, really, in the short term, but will open up a lot of possibilities in the future, especially for artists.

As said above, install it and see what it can do. (unless, of course, you were using a pirated copy, lol, then you probably can't) FYI, the GUI will look ALMOST identical to what you had before, so you may not be impressed with what's changed. I recommend opening global.lua and seeing for yourself what has been opened up to the end user. Also, somwhere in the GG root folder ther is a changelog file that, if you are in the mood for some light reading, should update you pretty well.



EDIT: I hit post reply only to see others writing as much as me, lol!

Cheers guys, it seems Game Guru has gotten better by the responses I've gotten so far so I'm going to have a tinker with it once it's finished downloading.

One thing they really need to do with this engine is allow players to enter interior cells within a level (i.e fallout 3/skyrim/oblivion where you walk up to a buildings doors press E and wallah your inside that building.

In game switches and variables built into the engine would also make the engine far more powerful but I suppose its possible to achieve this to an extent with in game scripts but would be harder to implement.

I'm going to start messing with LUA scripting as it seems like an easy-ish language to learn and see what I can accomplish. I just want to be able to create something that is more non linear in terms of gameplay and is more of an RPG as I'm a big fan of first person RPG's.

As I stated above that the scope of such a project as a single person is extremely limited. I just think its fair to let ya know this. I know! I tried and still try to some extend.

This is technically possible, however when you exit a building you will always automatically be placed where the original start maker location is on the world map. So unfortunately the player will not be able to exit at the front of the building of which he entered. Unless you build an interior space within the same map off to the side some how and just have the player teleport there. But that is just an unnecessary work-around.

I did bring up this issue to Lee sometime ago but I think he's waiting for more support and voting for such a feature. In Fallout and Skyrim what they do is use " door markers" that you place at every entrance and exit and you link the two together from different maps by ID and it just works. In fact in their engines whenever you place a door of any type it will automatically puts down the "door marker" for you and asks you which door in another map you would like to link it to. It even lets you rotate to face the way you intent it to for when the player exits/enters. Very straight forward and easy to use. Game Guru does not have this type of system in place. If it ever intents to I think they should make it similar to the player marker in appearance but just a different color and give it the properties of an ID and target ID.

I recently started going full force into LUA since I'm quite new to it and have some very ambitious ideas. Maybe I can figure out a better workaround for this. I may create two loading screens however. Requiring all maps to always be dark when you enter and leave and only light up after the player has teleported to the correct location based on where he was coming from. Dark so you dont see the teleportation of the player take place. This would require various variables to be transferred over though. Not sure how much support GG has in this area of things. Its possible someone has figured this out. I'll have to test that out sometimes, as I am also trying to achieve the same desired effect.

That's definitely a limitation right there! Well here's to hoping!

I'm just going to build my post apocalyptic world for the time being and have a play about with the some custom scripts and see how it goes from there, whether this program will ever be powerful enough to make a decent looking/playing game is now down to the devs and on how far they're willing to go with Game Guru feature wise.

Lee has been doing a tremendous job this year. You can now have multiple terrains in the same map... multiple grass types.. and now there is a building editor for your interiors.

You can do this with scripting. It takes a little bit of work and isn't as slick as you're talking about Teabone with the markers - have to keep a list and track these things or it gets pretty complicated. I have multiple levels in cogwheel that can be entered and exited in many places and returned to in non linear fashion. This is achieved by using lua to write out the level name, xz coordinates and rotation y angle. On return each level checks the file and if it finds a location for that level the player is immediately transported from start marker. It works

Cheers.

How?

For multiple grass types there is this method.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218261#msg2581795

2 posts down from that one is a zip file with the media in it to test and modify.

Fantastic, this just gets better and better. Thanks Pirate Myke

I'm telling this community is full of geniuses