Hi all!

Following the PBR update I'm seriously considering to give GameGuru an other go. Graphics looks great and the performance reached an acceptable level, but because I did not used GameGuru a lot because of the poor performance and poor AI in the first place, I'm not that familiar with the capabilities and I'm really don't want to spend months and possibly years with GameGuru only to get the answer.
I plan to do this project in AGK but I'm going to be using GG as my 3D editor to design the levels and I'm wondering if would it be possible to not just make the levels but the whole game in GG. I expect to use lot of Lua, but last time I tried Lua was pretty limited, you could not even control the camera. But I think it also improved, changed now but not sure how much.

It would be an open world game where you can go anywhere including in and out of buildings, but I have concerns regarding performance, propably interiors need to be separated levels but it brings me to my first question:

-can I load any level I want or GameGuru automatically loading levels after each other?
-in case I can load any level I want, is saving, loading information and generating levels dynamically using that information would it be possible? I don't mean procedural generation but let say If I have destroyed something, it remain destroyed when I go back. Can I set up some kind of database to store what is already opened or not, what is destroyed..etc
-get in and out of ground vehicles with 3rd person and cockpit view (can look around inside cockpit) and driving mechanics, physics?
-get in and out of aircraft vehicles with 3rd person and cockpit view (can look around inside cockpit) and flying mechanics, physics?
-crafting using a crafting screen?
-farming, building by placing items in the 3d space using the mouse?
-interaction with items using the mouse, select multiple using a selection box?
-dialogues where you have multiple options to choose from?

I would appreciate if people experienced with Lua in GG could help me answer my questions.
Thank you in advance.

I could do all those things in Lua, in fact I have already done most of them, so yes they are all possible. The +physics bit is a work in progress but you can certainly fake it at present to a limited extent.

I'm glad to hear it. Thanks
I did also some search and come across some decent work and some not so decent work too.
I think the biggest challenge is going to be the ground vehicle. I don't want anything special for the aircraft but to be able to take off vertically, able to move around in 360 degree then land vertically. The ground vehicle though would require to follow the terrain while moving, I could definitely benefit from some joints to connect the wheels and the body at least. Not sure how the improved physics progressing or progressing at all I did not find any news on that.

An other thing, In some levels I don't need terrain at all it would be about flying only. I remember it was possible to hide the terrain but not sure if I could still collide with the invisible terrain or not. Could anyone tell me if I can disable the terrain completely including collision?

Something like this:



or this:



No joints or physics, all done in Lua with simple mathematics.

Yeah, exactly like that, looks great.
The only way I can think of to do something like that without joints is to have all the wheels and the body independent objects using the same lua code for movement/control and take in to account the position of the wheels on the Y axis to update the height and roll of the body...

I was searching for the terrain, it seems like it can not be disabled only make it invisible. Which is a shame, it was one of the very first things I was suggesting many years ago to add the ability to remove the terrain in case I don't need it, I guess I need to limit up and down movement if I decide to go with GG. I think I give it a go for a week or two, will see.

Thanks.

... not for my noodle

Brilliant stuff!

Cheers.

@AmenMoses those vehicle scripts are awesome. Is there any way I can purchase them? I need a vehicle script badly for my project..

Here are the basics of the code, may need tweaking as I did this a while back and GG has changed a bit since.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218283#msg2582026

@Zigi, Lee did promise a 'no-terrain' mode in the 'next-release' but not sure when that is going to be.

I am waiting for it so I can continue with this little project:

Thanks very much AmenMoses!

Been using the BlitzTerrain commands for quite some time now since creating my Heightmap to GameGuru app, so I will probably create my own branch again on Github and add some code to physically remove the terrain and see what happens.

@AmenMoses Always impressive.

Here is a really old example of what you can do in GG, forgot I still had this one!:

It's probably worth mentioning that all those examples are from older versions of GG! For more recent examples, or for examples of in-cockpit, search the forums as I'm always sticking new stuff up.

I'm trying to learn about DX11 shaders at present so not doing as much scripting as normal, just wish Visual Studio wasn't such a pita!

Well, if I were you and you don't want the terrain, I'd hide it as you say and then place the start position of your plane really, really high That way you should have plenty up and down room.



I tried something like this ages ago, got it working great apart from when it turned in certain directions the rotation went to pot (angling the exact reverse down hills for instance, but working fine in the opposite direction). I agree with cybernescence not so easy for those of us who find mathematics a bit of a tough cookie!

I think you have had most the answers answered, but yes I think it is possible to do most of the things you mentioned in GG. Not sure about selecting multiple objects with a selection box though. You could do that in AGK but unless new commands are in place, I remember nothing in GG to do that. There's a lot of new stuff I have not even looked at now though I'm sure. There may be a way with some creative thinking

I would recommend however, starting out a bit more simple if you are not familiar with GG. Start out with the more simple ideas you want to implement like farming and crafting, then move on to the vehicle stuff once you have your eye in. I did a farming script years ago that is probably still on the forums, so you could have a look at that as well. Look s like AmenMoses has you covered on the tough driving stuff

That's Euler angles for you, and why quaternions are required to get smooth rotation. Luckily you don't really need to understand how they work to use them otherwise I'd be living in a padded room wearing a cuddle jacket!

Thanks for all the tips. Yes I'm going to start small and try a few simple things first in the next week or two and see how it goes. I have the project only on paper yet and what I have in mind is that GG could help me a lot with having many mechanics already in place such as camera control, collision, weapons, health, damage, pick ups, interactions, path finding, AI, content management in general. Not to mention the huge amount of script have been shared by the community and I only need to build on the top of it. Will see how things goes with GG this time but I'm pretty confident now because almost everything I want to do someone has already done it.

I'm aware of that many of the vids are made in the old version of GG but still very impressive and I would expect GG have been only improved since and not only graphically, at least I hope.

Regarding the terrain, yes maybe it is a good idea to set the position of the player high above the terrain and leave plenty of room for movement. I'll consider it when/if I get there and it is still not possible to remove terrain completely.

That's what I did for the asteroids thingy, player camera is at 30,000 units high and terrain is hidden. Problem is that the other entities, i.e. enemy spaceships and asteroids themselves still 'collide' with the invisible terrain, even if they have CollisionOff set, which is rather annoying to say the least.