It's always struck me that GG doesn't have a proper Project Manager running tings behind the scenes. The whole community-led voting board initiative was supposed to give power to users to steer the direction of development, but ultimately a lot of what resulted was buggy and half-implemented features.

I recently attended a two day training course for work which had a number of optional seminars. I opted to take one on agile development, despite not being a developer myself (well, not outside of GG). I'm sure many here will know what I mean but basically agile development is a project management philosophy that relies on regularly-released 'sprints' with frequent testing and feedback, and iterative development. You build your product gradually, refining month-on-month, sometimes even week-on-week. The direction of the project can change based on the changing needs of clientbase, it's not set in stone and then developed in isolation for months at a time. Not really applicable to my job, but all I kept thinking was , "this is what Game Guru needs" (and also, "I should do this for my next game project").

Let's imagine how this could work for GG. Lee announces he's going to make a concerted effort to open up third person functionality. Historically, this would mean he would go away and develop largely in isolation for a few months, then come back and debut his work, at which point we all find 50 bugs that get added to the issue tracker, and Lee moves on to another feature. With agile development, Lee would commit upfront to releasing a new sprint of Game Guru every 2 weeks. In the first sprint, all that would be implemented would be a simply camera control. Drop a character on the start marker, it can hover around the map but you can free move the camera by holding mouse 1. Release, we test, we feedback. Sprint 2: bugs from the camera system are ironed out, and Lee adds collision detection to the camera so it doesn't clip through entities. Release, test, feedback. Sprint 3: Bugs from the camera system are fixed, and Lee embarks on making animations call depending on what key is pressed. Release, test, feedback. Sprint 4: Characters can now be moved about, now it's time for hitbox detection so enemies can shoot the player. This goes on and on until, eventually, the feature is finished. It's been built up gradually, with constant feedback, so it is less likely to have bugs and is more likely to satisfy the needs of users.

Maybe all that is wishful thinking, but it's clear from this thread that something has to change with the way Game Guru is developed. Getting in a proper Project Manager, or at least adopting a new style of development, might help.

AE

One thing to be careful of, though, is feature creep. If things keep changing (or can potentially keep changing), then the goal post to completing the project (be it a game or whatever) can keep moving, making it impossible to complete the project. To work like you've outlined, you have to have a very strong goal in mind and keep to it, else client "needs" keep things ever shifting. One thing I've learned from working with clients, especially creating art for them - they rarely know exactly what they want. If you don't "handle" the client, they will "handle" you. And when that happens, the project tends to drag on and on and on as the client's "needs" change.

Good point, Argent, that's always going to be a risk. But unlike the creative works you and I create, software at least has tangible functionalities, which either work or don't work. But yes, I agree with you it's very important to set out your end goal upfront and stick to it.

AE

A programmer I worked with once landed a project with a major company. They asked for a quote on the work they wanted done. While they thought the quote was reasonable, they wanted to bring it down by reducing features. We hashed out which features we could create, both from the programmer's perspective and art-wise, within their budget and they agreed. So, we started the project. We had milestones to meet and we met every one. However, with each milestone, the "needs of the client changed" and they wanted us to change with them. In the end, what they were trying to do was to get ALL the features from the original quote at the cost of the much lower quote - all under the guise of changing client needs.

I'm not saying that working as you've suggested is bad. It's not. Not at all. I am saying that whomever works this way has to have a very, very definite goal in mind that ensures they are not swayed by all the changes supposedly needed by a client base. In the words of the famous General Ackbar, "It's a trap!"

This is my experience of 'agile' as well, it's just as way of trying to have your cake and eat it whilst short changing the the bakers and food tasters!

I think the problem with GG Development is simply a lack of real direction.

The Kick Starter campaign for what is now Game Guru, held promise of a great game engine. Not a First Person Shooter - but a GAME engine - which included things like flying\driving vehicles and other goodies, to help you make the game of your dreams.

Now I know the kick starter didn't take off as hoped, but we still hoped for those features to come eventually.

All these years later, essentially we still have just a FPS Engine. There has been little if any movement in the direction of reaching that GAME engine we hoped for.

Instead we have seen much time being spent on rebuilding the engine from the ground up, what a couple of times? And yet in doing so, none of the core issues - like memory - have been sorted.

We have also seen much time spent on bells and whistles that were totally non-essential to reaching the original goal. EBE, 16 Texture Terrain, PBR, for example. Now all these things are great to have - but have done nothing to reach the goal of GAME engine.

The irony of it all is that we keep adding stuff that takes a lot of development time, taxes system resources more heavily, and all the while the core issues are not addressed, and the original goal is nowhere nearer than when we started.

Reliquia....

It may be true that many have left and come back, but I am pretty sure there are many more who left and never came back at all, therefore no feedback on their experiences with other engines around here.
I for one am having a blast with an engine that is actually usable and I know others who are doing the same in whatever engine they moved onto and very unlikely they will look at coming back to this one, maybe for quick prototyping or whatever, though you can prototype just as quickly (and build your game just as quickly once you learn) in the 'more difficult to use' engines.
It has become my belief that if you have to learn how to script,model,animate,texture etc. not to mention navigate this programs horrible folder structure, to create a worthwhile and original game. As is always being suggested by experienced users of GameGuru. that it would be best putting all that effort into a product that actually works and doesn't feel like abandonware.
I was told to "try Unity or Unreal and come back in six months to see how things have moved on" best advice ever except the "come back" part, I still lurk around hoping to see this 'moving on' but it's kinda like that fascination of hanging around staring at a car wreck.

My own experience is that this definitely not the 'easy to use' or even 'easiest to use' game maker or whatever the tagline is these days, with so many workarounds needed to create a working game that runs smoothly and doesn't crash on users due to core issues and so many missing editor features that you need to dig around to make the simplest of changes. It actually becomes more time consuming and frustrating the more you go down the GameGuru rabbit hole.

This thread has originally been posted on May 2018 and was originally about GG being perceived wholly as a mere sandbox level editor by certain steam reviewers. The discussion has progressed to GG's merit as an engine and the direction behind the scenes again. As we have had several other threads going further in depht here already I am taking the liberty of locking this one.



-Wolf