Lighting is incredibly important in games (or any kind of art, actually). So, what's up with lights in GameGuru? I was very surprised to see that lighting is incredibly limited. I can position the light, access its properties and adjust it's color ... and that's about it. Well, I can change it's LUA script, too, but since I don't (yet) know how to program, that does me little good ...

I'll stop here. I just did a search and I see that lighting is one of the things that people have been complaining about for some time. It's a shame because having a powerful lighting system, particularly with real-time lights, would really help GameGuru a lot. Lighting is often key to level design and how a level looks. Having real-time lights that you can't control very well and lights (static and otherwise) that leak through walls ... well, that's not great, to be honest.

BTW - How do you affect the direction of the sun (so I can have shadows pointing in a different direction)?

Fully agree!

People have been buzzing around the Light Subject for a long time now - PBR is useless if we dont have a proper lighting...

This should be the MOST IMPORTANT feature to improve right after Performance !



I know the skybox has a settings file... I played around with it in the past but it didnt have any effect... so.. others might know more.

I am new to GameGuru but, frankly, it's stuff like this that's starting to get to me. GameGuru is supposed to be an "easy" game maker, where you don't exactly need to learn to program or code. But you can't even change the skybox settings in the editor (or during test mode). Instead, you have to 1) know that there is a settings file, 2) know where to find it, and 3) know what to do with it once you do find it.

My first post was about frame rate issues. There was no way I would have known that GameGuru had a .ini file that I could access to make changes. When in the editor, if you go to Help and access the docs there, there is no mention of this setup.ini file. In fact, you are not told that there are actually a ton of docs hidden in the install folder (under Docs)! Who thinks to go poking around in there? Most of the solutions to problems I've read about on this forum deal with finding a particular file somewhere, opening it in a text editor, and making some changes to it. How is that easy?

Don't get me wrong. It's not difficult (once you know where to go and what to do), but shouldn't stuff like this be made accessible from within the editor? If I have an entity loaded in the editor, I should be able to access it's .fpe file from within the editor and make changes. I should be able to access the skybox from within the editor and make changes to it. I shouldn't have to go outside the program, search for the appropriate file, open it in Notepad (or some other editor), and make changes.

I've worked with other game engines and, frankly, getting a level set up, lighting up and working, etc., is a lot easier than in GameGuru. It looks like everyone is having to jump through hoops to get things working right. And that confuses me. It's too bad, too, because GameGuru has a lot of potential. At least I think so. I am weirdly drawn to it (like a bad relationship?) and do want to create a game project in it, but the more I test it, the more frustrating it becomes ... and I've not even played with learning LUA yet.

I guess it just comes down to, if you're going to provide me with an editor, then let me, you know, edit things in it. Let me do more than just place objects and tease me by providing access to only a few parameters that can be changed.

Sorry for the rant, but testing lightmaps and dynamic lights are getting under my skin a bit. Elsewhere, in other game engines, this is normally the fun part for me, to be frank.

it has disheartened me that as of late the static lightmapper has been basically broken (for a good while now, since x11 came out), but similar to the memory issue, it is being ignored in favor of outright ridiculous other things like the ability to put 38 dynamic lights onscreen (somehow i notice all the people who even kinda wanted that never use static lighting, as if they dont even know how it works )

how do you call your renderer "physically based" if proper lights dont work. nothing physical about that.

what's worse, in x9 gameguru, the lightmapper works pretty well! in FPSC, if your level wasn't lightmapped and you posted it, you'd be largely laughed at/criticized. Since gameguru came around almost everyone has decided it's now a competition of how many good looking stock assets they can get into their game in one picture, and ignores lighting completely, so much so that lee gave it an "extra" keypress. god forbid someone "accidentally" discover one of gameguru's best features and come asking what it is, only to figure out its how we make our games actually look good.

somehow I forsee this being gradually swept under the rug until everyone forgets about static lighting having existed and gameguru becomes even more of an "asset flip machine". it's a pity but i can't say i expected anything different given the past few months of gameguru, lee pls fix.

so. We are here at the moment, let's make a short list of the most important graphical features gg needs:

- Dynamic Lights casting real time shadows
- a WORKING Lightmapper
- Particles

Yeah, that got me ... dynamic lights that DON'T cast shadows? What?!? But I could work with that ... if the lightmapper worked properly.

Yes I can see all your points, but please bear in mind that Preben has worked hard to give us these extra features, the lights are a work in progress and not something that Lee has not done yet, the extra lights were graciously given to us by Preben and I think he did a brilliant job, he knows about the shadows issue and I am sure he is working hard to give use the correct shadows in his FREE time.

Yes the light mapper does not work but that is a side effect of PBR, PBR should work with real-time environment lighting not baked maps, PBR would/does look odd if it did not react to its environment and yes it only works outdoors atm.


I can understand the frustrations but things are progressing and I applaud all those giving there free time to help give us these features.

Hi GraPhix. I hear what you are saying and I don't think that anyone, especially myself, are coming down on any of the developers or those that are helping out in the free time. However, keep in mind that GameGuru is a commercial product (i.e. it is not a fee, open-source project like Godot). No matter how little or how much, I paid for this game development tool. Because the price was not very much, I was not expecting AAA quality. However, there are certainly some things I was expecting that are pretty standard (even in the free engines). Proper, working lightmapping and working dynamic lights (that cast shadows) are one of them. And, frankly, finding out that, up until recently, there was a severe limitation to how many dynamic lights you could have in a level? Wow. That is ... very old school, to say the least.

Don't get me wrong. If I didn't think GameGuru had a ton of potential, I wouldn't even bother continuing to reply. I think my disappoint lies in how much potential GameGuru has while missing the mark on the basics. It's like the tools are almost there ... almost within grasp, but not ... not quite yet. And that's frustrating.

People may be working on the lighting issues, but from a game development standpoint, lighting is pretty essential. Lighting can make or break the ambiance of your game. This is something that, by all accounts, should have been sorted out a long time ago. Especially in light of the Monster Update and adding things like PBR. PBR and poor lighting do not mix well.

In any case, I do appreciate your post and I am looking forward to future updates. I hope they come quickly and frequently (though I do understand that basically GameGuru is made by a one man team).

And I apologize for being new here and griping. But I am/was excited about using GameGuru and wanted to dive in as quickly as I could, but it's these types of things that are sapping my energy, quite frankly.

I'm thinking back to the days of FPSC... and the wonderful developments from people like Nomad, bond1 and s4

what the... ahhhh !!!

I'll be frank, I remember FPSC and had almost purchased it back in the day. And it's because of what I remember of FPSC that I purchased GameGuru, figuring that it was basically the same, but better because of the updates and new features. I believe a bit of my frustration comes from the fact that it appears some of what was in FPSC was lost to some degree (at least when it comes to lighting).

The rotation setting rotates the skybox itself not the sun and merely allows artists to align things, the sun is at a fixed height and rotation. The sun direction settings have never had any effect on things (might be different now but not far as I know). This has meant that any skyboxes I created have been limited to only one setting since the very first release of GameGuru and one of the things most important to fix particularly for an engine mostly limited to outdoor scenes all this time.
I reckon Lee has been waiting till introducing a day/night cycle before implementing this but as always sidetracked by less important feature requests.

You can brute force a fake day night cycle in a couple of ways but those static shadows will destroy any illusions yo may have of doing it this way.

There are many many elements of FPSC that are still not within Game Guru (original titled FPSC Reloaded).



FPSC had a full feldged particle system

and welcome Argent Arts !
I have a feeling that you will get along here pretty well

@Rolfy - So, you're telling me that the sun in GameGuru is stuck in its current position and cannot be rotated or raised/lowered to affect shadows on terrain? That's ... disappointing.

@Duchenkuke - Thanks for the welcome. I appreciate it. I think me and game engines are like some relationships ... I am mysteriously drawn to the ones that aren't good for me, but I can't help myself.

LOL I think this applies to quite a bunch of people here haha

if you want a working lightmapper, use gameguru x9 version 5/12

sadly that version, which was equally stable and your game worked on windows xp in directx9 will no longer be supported

I know this thread probably sounds like mindless whining complaints to the hardworking programmers doing all they can to put cool features in gameguru, but it just saddens me to see what i was hoping would be a newer, better FPSC turn into this disappointment while 4 or 5 remaining members of the old FPSC community have been improving the rock solid foundation we used to cherish to the point that its visuals outdo its spiritual successor's, and it is in every way a more commercially viable game engine.

maybe the grass is just greener on the other side of the fence, FPSC had it's own host of issues that still seem untouched just like gameguru. seems like nobody really understands the memory issues, or i feel like we'd have had a lot more 50 level games.

to this day I still haven't seen an x11 gameguru WIP that has truly impressed me any more than an X9 one did. more graphical effects do not mean better visuals automatically. refining the working sturdy x9 DNS renderer we already had could have made way for them though, whilst simultaneously improving performance.

My view is that it is unfair to Preben who has put in so much time and effort into bug fixes, shaders, dynamic lights, memory management.

I miss the appreciation towards the contributors.

It’s always good to get a new and (sensible) view of GG from a new user.

Dave

As long they not rant about existing features, I think the devs count this as a win At least I do this.
And we know what needs to be done, we use GG too. So do not think we sit around and do nothing(ok it is august and a cool drink is better than sitting in a hot room in front of the PC).
And of course the lightning system needs some work, but the physic too, then we have bugs, beginners who want that it is easier and so on. GG makes small steps, but at least it do some steps and not rot in the github repo(like some forum members predict)

It wold be nice if any setting that can be changed via files under the hood could be done through the editor, and remain specific to that level. This would allow for variation between levels within the whole game being developed. I doubt that will ever happen though, but there is always hope.

I just feel Game Guru has never had any real direction, which is why all these seaming important issues are taking so long to be addressed. Couple that with a limited work force actually building the engine and you get this frustration thing happening. For example we have gone the PBR rout which of course has the potential to look really cool, but uses twice the maps per model, all in an engine that has critical memory issues even with DNSi models already.

The up-side is that since going the Git-Hub rout, much has been added to this engine, or improved so big thumbs up to all the contributors for making things happen.

I love Game Guru, but really don't see any of the major issues being fixed any time soon.

Reliquia....

louder for the people in the back now

I don't think it is, actually. For a few reasons. One is, a casual read through this forum will show that some of these issues have been talked about, over and over again. If they are still here in GameGuru, not getting resolved, then why does anyone have to appreciate that? Secondly, if GameGuru were being offered for free, like Godot, for example, then there is every reason to be appreciative since the developers have no real stake in developing the engine, but are doing it anyway. But GameGuru is a commercial product that is being sold. As a customers, who paid money for GameGuru, I think we have some right to voice our opinions about the software and how it functions. After all, some here have purchased it in order to create and possibly sell games. So, when a tool is failing in some areas, it can potentially hinder someone's development. The key, in my opinion, is an honest critique without any name calling. Every artist learns how to take a critique. Those that develop things like game engines are no less artists and should be willing to consider the honest critiques of those that offer them, especially paying customers.



Adding PBR and not first making GameGuru 64-bit was a mistake, in my opinion.



I agree and I am glad to hear that this is a thing. Perhaps development, updates, and fixes will go quickly and smoothly? I hope so.



That saddens me, actually. I just got GameGuru and have been excited to learn it and develop with it. And I see that the community is very responsive and friendly, too. That's a definite plus, in my book. But if the engine is going to continue to have these massive holes in it, then I can't see myself creating the game project in it that I had wanted to. But I won't give up on GameGuru. It's too early for that! Let's see where they take this engine. It has real potential, me thinks.

I have the urge to post this picture whenver lighting is being talked about. It shows how monumentally important it is to all those who are not aware of that yet:



Party on, dudes... and yes, I've been talking about lights for years now which is why I have that image ready.
We had a nearly statisfactory system, but currently we got almost nothing.



Yeah, you fit right in. I'll show you your bunk and the coffee machine then.



-Wolf

Lol, it is indeed a Game Guru thing - Hotel California!

Reliquia....

I could use some coffee. Thanks!



Yeah, we can check out any time we like, but we can never leave! Might as well embrace it.

Don’t fall into that slot,keep voicing your opinions

Dave

No worries. I will.

So its rant week

Real time spot shadows goes into beta in GG Loader next week , if ok and people dont rant to much ( kidding ) , i will also add it to GameGuru.

That is great news Preben.

How will this work, in the tab tab panel?

Just hope we can have the option of turning off the sun and sunlight shadows (Dynamic), as well, as using just dynamic lights for shadows.

Some ideas if the controls are in tab tab panels.

Dynamic light shadow falloff, distance from player the shadows are visible, (improve FPS hopefully)

A percentage increase in brightness in ALL dynamic lights, would save player from setting each one individually, after they are placed.

Once we have realtime dynamic light with shadows it will open up GG to create some truly amazing scenes.

not when i tried it. It still "works" but nowhere near how well it did.

with dynamic shadows being added by preben, which, oh my god, awesome!!! It could symbolize a whole new direction for GG lightmapping possibilities. This is truly awesome and inspiring, but I hope it doesn't try to replace our static lightmapper.

Optimally I'd like to see a combination approach like what's done in the Doom 2016 game. That'd be probably most efficient while at the same time providing the best visuals. We're getting there inch by inch thanks to guys like Preben (Thanks man).

@Bod : I was thinking the same thing. I have seen words like 'broken' used, and of course, I will be trawling the issues tracker for a mention of lightmapper related issues, but if there is something amiss and not in the issues tracker, please do add the issue there so we have it on record. All my tests with stock media and static lights produce lightmapped scenes, and issues resulting from dodgy geometry can be solved by putting them through a few corrective processes with something like UltimateUnwrap3D Pro.

@Preben - That looks awesome and sounds promising! Can't wait to see it in action. Now, what about shadows for dynamic point lights? Any idea how far off that is? Or if it's on the docket at all?



Well, I'm new here and between work projects I've been conducting tests so I can know how to best work in GameGuru for the game I want to make. One of the tests was playing with lightmapping. I did some simple things, like set up some geometry (some huge rocks from the entitybank folder) and set some static point lights between them. I expected to get some nice shadows and light streaming on the terrain and rocks. I played with the in-test settings, particularly ambient level and surface level and more, but the shadows cast by the static lights could barely be seen on the terrain even though the faces of the rocks were virtually obliterated by the lights near them.

I then brought in the tunnel model and placed a bright static light in it near each end. I extended the range to ensure it went way outside the tunnel. What I expected was to get the interior lit up and a "beam" of light projected on the ground as if the light were funneled by the tunnel. That didn't happen. The interior of the tunnel was lit up, sure, but no beam of light, no extra shadows (not visible enough to make a difference, etc.). And this was after hitting F3 to build the lightmap.

I was able to get some shadows cast on another model (one with columns, a ceiling, and a floor), but I definitely wasn't getting what I wanted because the light source had a bad hot spot that it left on the ceiling and floor (due to range, I'm sure). So, yes, the light map is working, but it doesn't appear to be all that great ... yet.

Just and FYI - I'm not completely new to lightmapping or setting up lights in a game engine. I am completely new to doing this in GameGuru, though. So, I do have an idea about what to do, but possibly not in GameGuru yet. I admit that. Oh! And I did read several posts about lightmapping and I did make the changes to the startup.ini file to increase lightmap quality.

Was just browsing through the old FPSC forums and the progress that has been made on the Black Ice mod is really quite astounding. It made me want to start up old FPSC and get cracking on an unfinished game in that engine.

@Preben, With the addition of real time spot lighting in GG that could be quite a game changer for a lot of people in this forum. Well done and thank you!

Let me back up a moment and say Thank You to the developer(s) that have been and are creating GameGuru. As I've said (between the gripes ), I think there is some great potential here. Despite the very strange editor (and it is very strange to me), there are some powerful things going on with GameGuru. So, please don't get me wrong with my complaints in this thread.

BTW - speaking of lighting and all that, what's up with the example PBR Preview Orbs? I decided to check out these since they are PBR-based to see what they looked like in-game. Now, I am not trying to sound ungrateful to the person/people who created them, but they don't really look like PBR materials. Are there settings somewhere that can be tweaked to help them look better?

They come into GameGuru by default with a script that makes them slowly spin. It's when they are spinning that on many of them I can see the texture ... how do I describe this ... popping? It's like the normal map or one of the others is sort of ... popping. It's hard to describe, but pretty easy to see on the Cracked orb. Also, there are visible seams all over these orbs.

But that's not what makes them not look like PBR materials. Chrome doesn't look like Chrome. It's reflective, sure. But it looks ... white ... lacking the harsh contrasts that you normally see in chrome. Cracked looks ... okay. But the cracks don't look very deep. Overall, it looks not too different from a non-PBR texture with a bump or normal map. Glass? Glass just looks transparent. There is no refraction. But it doesn't even look like clear plastic. It's pretty awful, actually. Old Wood shows off the texture popping when rotating. On all of these with textures like cracked, old wood, etc., the texture quality appears to be quite low and pixelated, which doesn't help, either.

So, is this a problem with PBR in GameGuru? Or is it a problem with the Preview Orbs themselves (that they don't look like PBR materials)?

On a side note - Does anyone know if GameGuru will ever get HDR lighting instead of a sky cube? Could it be the PBR examples look bad because there is no HDR lighting?

A good idea would be to let some of the community's more experienced lighting artists take a look at your map and game (in screenshot format) so we can make suggestions, and perhaps explain problems you might be having! there are setup.ini settings you may be misusing as none of that stuff is well explained. there are a lot of special tips and techniques only a lot of gameguru/fpsc lighting experience will afford you.

Yes, I'll agree PBR materials look pretty bad the way they are rendered in GG. its bloated self was never designed to be able to handle them, and I doubt it will ever be able to as well as engines with huge teams and budgets. That's why I was always so ardent about refining the existing DNS pipeline and perfecting it instead of completely dumping support for it to use twice as much textures in an engine that couldnt support half as many as we needed to begin with.

Nothing I've seen done in x11 by gameguru couldn't have been done in x9. Reflections can use cubemaps (if those actually worked in builds lol) and if you really needed displacement you could do it in a 3D software and export it as a model, likely at a similar computational cost when its all said and done (GG can push a few more polys than FPSC could)


i'm beginning to feel the need to do a defy-style stresstest on the x11 lightmapper alone since it's so lonely lately.


could you be more specific? is there anything we should note when making gameguru media? is using atlas textures harder on the lightmapper? is overlapping uv layouts ok? please explain in more detail what sorts of things we might be doing to confuse the lightmapper!

Hi Bugsy. I've not got anything to show ... yet. I've simply been importing a cube I made with PBR textures on it or using the entities supplied with GG, like the Preview Orbs. The last thing I was doing was testing free PBR materials (https://freepbr.com/) in GG. I followed the guidelines laid out by Belidos here:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219411

What I am discovering is that none of the PBR materials look correct in GG. They don't even look remotely like the screenshots on FreePBR. They actually look little different than non-PBR materials with a normal map. But I will keep testing.

As far as the setup.ini ... I need to look at that again. I've only changed settings for the lightmap and shadows. I've not touched anything else (other than vsync).

It was this part that triggered my response about appreciation for the contributors.



The dynamic lights are a part of Preben's contributions while Lee has been busy with fixing the lightmapper.
I should refrain from entering discussions like this because my knowledge and experience is way below that of you and other artists.

I will eat my words! dynamic shadows is the first step forward we've had in a long time, making prebens prior contribution of all those simultaneous dynamic lights totally needed. When it comes to lee fixing the lightmapper, I guess my frustrations can be summed up by it not getting the visibility it needed until this gigantic complaint thread, and the fact that it was working perfectly in x9.

I have yet to do the rigorous testing necessary to confirm how truly "broken" it is, but when some of the most talented environment artists around here are complaining it's broken, and they are, I take their word for it.

Argent: have you tried changing the cubemap on your chrome to make it reflect your scene and not whatever default thing it reflects (guessing the skybox) having something look just like a render for a website will take some serious work in gameguru lol


absolutely not. everyone here has a post reply button and everyone should use it. a dialogue is the goal of any forum.

@GraPhix - Thanks for sharing that! It certainly looks better than the results I was getting. However, having said that, it looks more like chrome plastic than actual chrome to me. Even so, miles better than what I was getting.



No. How do I do that? Do I change the skybox with a custom one? Or is there an actual way to just assign one to the orb itself?



I'm not going by a website's render, but by what I've seen in other game engines, like Godot, for example.

In any case, any help would be appreciated here. I do want to create at least decent looking scenes.

I have had some better success with some of the PBR materials I've downloaded from that website, particularly the ones that are not all that metallic (such as some of the rock based ones).

Something tells me GraPhix's isn't in GG. My results are like yours. In the chrome I can also see the seams of the skybox, lol.

Ok. So, I am getting much better results with non-chrome-like PBR materials in GameGuru now. Not too shabby. But I am running into a few other issues. I may post some screen shots later after a few more tests. I am testing with a cube that is 50 units along a side. With "B" pressed (for SNAP), they snap together just fine and I also stack them to form a wall. Despite snapping, I get seams. Not everywhere. And it seems to be in different places each time I run the test game. I'm also getting a few strange lighting artifacts. I'll get some screen shots of these later to post. But progress is being made. I have Ambient Level turned all the way down and Surface Level set to about 50. This seems to work pretty well for my current PBR scene.

In the settings.fx file in the effectbank/reloaded folder you have these options.

//Control how PBR is presented.
#define RealisticVsCool (0.90)
#define AmountExtractLight (0.50)
#define AmbientPBRAdd (1.500) //PE: Some ambient is lost in PBR. make it look more like terrain

Quote from Preben on this:

Thanks, Pirate Myke for sharing this info with me.

Do I have to exit GameGuru completely for changes to settings.fx to take affect? Or are these only applied when I run the test level?

You will have to recompile your shaders, when you change something in settings.fx it doesn't do anything until you change the following line in the setup.ini in your base gamguru folder:

from
forceloadtestgameshaders=0

to
forceloadtestgameshaders=1

then restart gameguru completely

(Note: While this setting is active gameguru will slowly, but once you have run gameguru once, you can change the setting back to 0 and the settings will stick and it will load faster again)

@Belidos - Thanks!

And don't forget the stash of cigarettes.



Yeah, finally! I didn't have any grey hair when I asked the first time for them ^^
...and shadows from point lights? I know I need patience, yes, but I cant resist to ask the obvious here.



Yes, it should have gone 64bit before that, but remember, if you have PBR and good lighting, you can cut down the texture resolution heavily. If you want realistic, non-stylized surfaces, currently you have to brute force it with texture resolution and extremely sensible NS tweaking.
From my experience in AAA dev, you can go down from 4k textures to 2k easily, in most cases even to 1k, if you have really good lighting and rendering.