I guess I'm going to start updating this thread. Not sure if anyone actually cares but figured it will be good for me to document. I have moved this project to Max and restarted it. And looking back at some of these screenshots from 2019... yikes. Kinda glad I deleted those levels. Still have a long way to go until I'm finished but its coming along.
I'm like 98% finished with the first level. I've also got pretty far maybe around 70-80% completed for about 6 other levels.
However I sometimes find myself day dreaming of starting a side project, something a little bit smaller while I wait for Max to catchup. As if I were to once again build basically a whole game and then have it run at 20 fps I'd probably shove my face into a blender.
This is NOT a thread for me to complain about Max however there are some things that really hurt my confidence in my ability to finish this project as of now.
Biggest hurdles that must be overcome for my project as of August 9th 2023 are these 3 points below. I believe as a solo game dev I have done everything in my power to overcome these challenges. Alas I cannot do anything else to remedy the below issues and rely on Max or someone else in the community.
1. Performance of the engine.
Lets be real if you are coming to Max from GameGuru classic then you most-likely already are you used to optimizing everything. Texture sizes, polygon counts, drawcalls, etc. Because if you didn't do those things, then your game would not run at all in Classic. I don't believe there is much I can do as a dev in this aspect. Maybe I could cut down a few textures but I doubt that would help much.
I get sub 60 FPS on levels that I believe should easily run at 120+ for the amount of content that is inside them. The worst part is it isnt even a consistent FPS. It's alot of stuttering and micro-freezing that is just really hard to play through a level without noticing really bad. I dont think the occlusion culling is working properly myself.
Additionally LUA scripts absolutely dunk performance. If you're already at 45 FPS and you spawn in 3-4 enemies your going to be looking at sub 20 FPS. Once again not much I can do myself here. I have made my own AI scripts, and have versions that are simplified to the extreme.
I think in the current year of 2023, the #1 thing that will get your game destroyed in reviews is the Performance. It seems modern gamers will not even touch a game if it doesn't stay above 60 FPS. Hypothetically if all levels in my game were magically finished tomorrow, I would not release it to anyone because it would run at 15fps. And these levels are really pretty small. Sometimes I wonder why Max was so focused on these huge outdoor environments, yea it looks pretty in a screenshot but no one will be able to ever utilize 2% of that what the map is set to by default. I don't think it even runs at 60fps on the default level with grass and trees enabled which is pretty bad considering the grass and trees look straight 2007.
Some say Dx12 update will help this. I don't really know but I worry that anything else that is added to the engine is just going to make these issues worse.
2. Need new weapons.
Tried to import weapons from CGTrader. Having a bad time. I can get the weapons into Max and they work great but there are strange graphical bugs on the arms that you can see straight through. I cannot fix this issue. Opened the weapons in every other 3D software imaginable and they look fine and do not have any errors. Some people suggested it was some flipped polygons, but I looked and attempted to fix any polygons that looked flipped but that ended up not even being the issue. Not saying this is Max's fault but whatever is needed to fix them is beyond me. And this is one of those examples where, GameGuru is easier in some aspect of game making but in others it presents a massive challenge, I mean as a user I did everything correctly. I purchased a weapons pack that not only had animated weapons, but it has animated arms and weapons all as 1 model. Like it was made for GGMax as that is the same system Max uses, weapons and arms all one model. I import the weapons/arms into GameGuru, I set up the HUD.dbo, I set up the GUNSPEC, I get everything perfect and then BAM there is small sections on the arm of the model in-game that appears to be missing polygons. What can I do? Message the creator of the pack and say "Hey man your pack works great in every-other game-engine and modeling software but will you please fix it for GameGuru-Max cause it doesn't look right when I import your weapons into it." Yea ok.
3D modeling is my biggest weakness when it comes to game dev. Doesn't seem like there are many choices for weapons for GGMax, if any artist reading this wants to make some real $$$ I will happily pay for 5-6 custom weapons.
3. Need way more Audio Slots.
It would be nice if we could have 50 sound slots per character. I'm not sure my game could be completed without some crazy smoke and mirrors if I can only have 5 sound slots for each character. Audio is just not in a good place right now. A lot of 3D sounds just do not sound right to me. There are also numerous, small audio bugs that happen with a lot of the default scripts. And I mean 4 sounds for characters with 30 different states just isnt going to work. I can't believe this was left as is for V1 as Audio is one of, and some would argue the biggest, thing that brings immersion to games.
Of course all the above issues don't matter if I don't build the rest of the game but it is coming slowly but surely. Smaller issues that I would like to be sorted before I complete my game.
Need more anti-aliasing options. I notice very bad aliasing every single time I test a level. It really is an issue.
Need sharpening options, to compliment anti-aliasing. Just need more post-processing effects in general.
Particles are nice but I should be able to attach them, like with the "group" function to a dynamic entity and the particle moves with that entity. So I can make new bloodsplats and replace w/e the current bloodsplat is which legit looks like 1998.
This would also allow me to make different kind of bloodsplats for different kinds of enemies. I would really like it if the non-humans didn't bleed red human blood.
Speaking of particles, hopefully enemies and players will be able to fire projectiles? Not sure when this is planned to be added I really thought it was gonna be done with the RPG update or w/e. But really should have been a default thing with the original "shooter" game stuff. I mean shooting particles out of a gun was probably a thing before shooting a spell particle out of a staff was. At the moment the AI in my game are all melee, but I really need to enemies that shoot particles for gameplay. But if they are ranged I can't really design the levels yet because I don't know exactly how it will play out when fighting them. So if I cant test basic gameplay loops, I cant build my levels around them.
Enemy physics are wack at the moment. Same with the players capsule. Enemies with 300 weight walk into a box half their size, that is set at 25 weight and it just launches the enemies into the air. I'd like to have a grenade launcher type weapon at some point and enemies need to ragdoll as mixamo rig and actually get the force applied to them when they are all ragdolled.
So thats all I can think about that subject for now. Long rant but I felt it was important to state these things before I start posting updates to my game as there are some things, I cannot update and rely on Max.
I will end this on a positive note, I realy like the reflection slider in the materials setting in Max, I know it sounds like a small things but really it works really good and experimenting with different values with the surface sliders + reflection slider can get you some really cool and great looking results.
Anyway here's a screenshot of a new enemy. I used the Visual Behavior Editor to make his AI and it works great.
The Screites, those who worship Screos, have been converting prisoners now for some time. The true believers at the prison, those who seek to redeem themselves and absolve their sins can do manual labor at the Zarnik Research Base for a reduced sentence. This was once a few different prisoners, now they are truly one with their new god... and with each other.
Also looking for a skilled 3D artist to create some character models for me. Based off this concept art that I had commissioned.
Going to finish level 3 soon. Will post new update when its done.
