Just a curiosity and no intention of going into any great detail on the import and AI controller issues I faced making this work but here's an example of a GameGuru character in 'another' engine. Still got a lot to tweak and additional animation transitions to add before it's finished but real happy to see this character working so far. It wasn't easy and it isn't just drag and drop as some seem to think, of course simply purchasing a controller package and firing up the demo creates the illusion that it's all going to be a breeze but the reality is something entirely different.
The controller I am using at present only supports 'humanoid' characters so it is something of an achievement for me to get the generic attached wing rigging working with it and retain compatibility with the player controller.

I have been holding off on creating new assets for GG till a full release with directx11 but lurk around keeping an eye on you lot, I am glad to see you are all still being innovative and doing amazing, unexpected things despite the limitations and look forward to the day we have great fully working engine that lets some of you talented folks really do your thing and create some great games

Good to hear from you Rolfy, glad you're still lurking, and i must saying, as usual awesome work in the video.

I didn’t think you would go far ,been keeping an eye on your other project very cool .

Dave

That looks great Rolfy



Hope you come back and create some PBR magic when engine and you are ready. I can't even imagine what you could do ...

Cheers.

Hi guy's, thought you might like a heads up that getting this particular character into any other engine was as difficult as it was getting it into GameGuru due to the extra rigging and increased bone count. What most users of GG encounter with a drag and drop system where the character is put in scene and works out of the box is only the tip of the iceberg and they don't have any idea of the work involved, but will be quick to point out if it doesn't come up to expectations, particularly when it comes to characters and AI. Character assets for other engines will come as is and it is up to the user to integrate it with their own controller, you get a model and an animation list and that's it. Same thing with GG for the creator but the end user doesn't have to deal with that, at least for now.
Having fbx import may be nice and all but it wont mean you can take a pre-rigged and animated character and drop it into your game and your off, even with GG there will always be a learning curve and hair pulling issues that crop up as you go along. Having a lot more in editor control and open parameters to tweak is very cool but also means more to learn, I guess what I am trying to say is that there is no such thing as an 'easy' game creator with one button to do it all but anyone who has tried to add custom media in GG will know this already even if only trying with static scenery. The current problem for me isn't .x import, it is the lack of individual entity material and shader control directly in editor and the constricting restraints of integrating with a pre-existing and limited controller system.
If AI is improved it will also mean it becomes more complex, this is seen in GameGuru with a lot of animations unused over the years with stock assets, I think maybe the mission on 'ease of use' has been a big part of holding back progress on this engine and a voting board which at first glance seems to promise features which will make your games shiny and improve quality with no effort.

There are an awful lot of games created with other engines which already have DX11 and pbr shaders and not many casual users or 'quick buck' creators actually use this at all but you won't hear any comments about 'years old looking graphics' . You don't get users complaining about graphic quality since it already there and they ain't gonna complain about their own lack of knowledge and ability to implement it. It's always going to be a nice way around it to blame the engine for 'lack of features' rather than your own confusion. Nobody can do complex things straight off and the sooner they take on board that you will suck at anything new to you but with time and effort you will gain experience and knowledge, rather than throwing crap at the engine, the quicker you can bite the bullet and ask for help if you really are struggling.

Basically the new render engine will silence complaints about graphic quality but the real major issue is broken AI that's there and any way to change change up behavior in any way without some serious scripting abilities. GameGuru's player controller and AI aren't open to users much right now and if there is one thing I have learned it is that if all npc's use the same behavior your game is going to get really boring real fast. so there is no way you can use an 'out of the box' generic AI to make a worthwhile game and important to have a lot more options in the controller.
Believe it or not even I as an asset creator find this more important than any amount of 'shiny' graphics.

I can believe it. The AI is a train wreck right now and if there's one thing I'd like to see opened up to end users, it's this. My gamedev background originally was AI and some of what I see from the current stuff is fairly ugly.

Glad to see your efforts elsewhere are turning out so well though. That actually looks very solid.

The scene looks great

One small thing is that the blood from the skeleton looks rubbish compared to the player's blood, is that just normal hit effects? Obviously the skeleton shouldn't bleed at all but just curious why it doesn't look the same as the player's?

AI is always a challenge, GG is getting better at letting us control it but it could certainly still be improved (ignoring the obvious bug of it not currently working).

The AI blood fx are default in the vid can't decide for now whether to use a dust puff or whatever, my intent was simply to show the character with additional rigging working in another engine so yeah the effect is pretty banal
Just for info I can now work some more on this and create more animations to make this character come to life, I am also looking into using a spell casting system for AI to create a throw fire effect from distance with up close melee.
Once particle effects are created swapping them out is a simple drag and drop in the inspector panel for hit fx. The player hit fx splash on the floor and walls (anything set to default layer) I can set a layer for it to appear on the player as well just haven't got around to these smaller details yet but as it goes along everything will be put in place, just so many small details you have at your control that I haven't got around to yet

Hehe! I doubt that. Throughout the development of GG I have noticed that, with a few noteworthy exceptions, the voices being the loudest about adding PBR where scripters or newbies who have no experience with creating assets. I expect quite a few complaints once it settles in how texturing in PBR is an entirely new workflow that is rather unforgiving on photo sourced stuff.



We are lacking some crucial features here. There is no denying that. But I actually cracked up reading that. I experience this mindset way too often!

Your work is offensively impressive as always I love that castle area you built there.

Have a good one!


-Wolf

You will find that most games use a mix and match of PBR and standard shaders on assets and for some reason it seems to be thought that all current GG assets should be upgraded to this across the board, load of ballyhoo if you ask me.
Mostly PBR is effective with metallic and reflective surfaces anything else is too subtle to even be noticed in a game environment. DX11 isn't only about PBR materials, the real interesting stuff is Parallax occlusion mapping and tessellation. Which isn't being shown so far and I reckon is far more useful than realistic wood lighting effects. For me game design is an Art and 'realism' is an illusion.
For example those pillars are square,,,yes square meshes, but they got 'roundness' and fluting details in 'em on render in the engine and low poly as it gets. You will notice if you look closely enough.

Doesn't mean I don't have a use for PBR in the right places, the 'castle' above is a very small part of a very large city and there are a bunch of PBR materials used but not all of it is. I highly doubt anyone could point out the assets which do use it and without a side by side comparison anyone would even notice if it was missing.

I like your comparison and analysis.. kind of shows why GG is necessary in some respects. To the challenges of other engines. but at the same time GG still has a lot of its common restrictions.

Fun to see some of the stuff your still working on.