Windows (PC)

@Lee : I would love to put together a map with stock media that has transparency, but oddly enough I can't see a single stock media model that has transparency apart from trees which use a different shader, odd that, almost as if your artists have intentionally avoided transparency.

I say again, this is not a new engine; it's the same base engine as before but with some tweaks to make it 64-bit compliant, bug fixes, and enhancements to some features (lighting engine, character creator, terrain tools, UI).

Those expecting a vastly different product from what we already have will be sorely disappointed.

AE

It is most one GG upgrade with new goodies to play.
In order to be a very different product they could write engine from scrtch, and pure C++. so they might add many features they are unable so far.
Perhaps the idea is to rewrite the code on the fly, this way is more difficult than starting from scratch, but it allows you to present the product in a shorter time.

Here's maybe an example of some Tpp running on Stock media map, nothing too crazy yet only 4 weeks in, pure base prototype footage.
Lab41_Tpp division - incoming signal...

@Belidos.
I had a conversation with Ravey one time about adding transparency as part of the paintbox in RPGWorld. His response was that he was 'not a fan of alpha as it interferes with draw order'. I know nothing about the niceties of Direct X coding so took it at face value.
Since he did quite a bit of coding for GG, I suspect that opinion was shared and thus alpha avoided.
'Course I could be wrong.

Pre-ordered.

Does you already seen GGMax steam key, on steam key page?

This GGMAX look good.
Text to speech. That is interesting. Will the TTS have voices that can be edited and saved as a profile?

Did I read it that it is going to support multi core CPU?

So looking forward to getting GG Max. Looks like it has many good features that are welcome.

TTS voices have most of the time very stickt and expensive licences. So I think only the default windows voices are supported.


GG already is multicore. The AI is calculated on a different cpu core than the game. And as I read the features correctly, the asset loading will run on another core too, but that does not mean multi core support in every part of the engine. The most will still run in the main cpu core.

Glad to hear you got this covered by someone else.

Very cool @Defy

Dave

Pre-Ordered

This is a great start to the Year.. fun .. fun.. fun

I can't believe it, change the name of guru to guru max, thus killing guru and eliminating having to continue updates for guru. Same as FPSC and FPSC x10. Everyone has jumped on Lees bandwagon and throwing more money at him. Not me, I'm finished paying for upgrades that will end up just like FPSC x10. Im not looking for a fight with anyone, I just want to express my opinion. TGC gives great promises that usually fail.

Have you read through this thread? Lee has said that bug fixes and updates are still continuing for GameGuru (Classic). In fact, the entire month of March is set aside to squash all (or as many) bugs in GameGuru. Lee has stated that he will deliver on implementing all features promised for GameGuru Classic. So, development for GG has not been eliminated, not according to Lee.



That's a possibility, of course. No one is twisting your arm (or anyone else's) stating you need to purchase a license to GameGuru MAX. You can stay with GameGuru Classic and see if Lee actually provides the bug fixes he promised in March and see if any missing features are added as well (at a later date). If you know of any promises made by Lee for features that he had actually promised to include in GameGuru (not MAX), then let him know. He's been very open to people sending him links showing him what he's promised so he can verify and move toward implementing them into GG.

Ye you gotta read through so you know the facts or im gonna start deleting some of these repetitive posts..
Its just wasting users time typing the same thing over and over ..

I did suggest some sort of FAQ in the first post so people wouldn't ask the same things but Lee said no one would read it anyway.

What GameGuru development over 2019? Would that be the VRQuest product you built on the product users have been paying for the past six years and still isn't completed properly to this day?
I guess your saying now that there was no income from that product that would count towards GG development if your milking other products to keep gameGuru development going now.
Lets face it Lee it is pretty contradictory when you claim you got no money for development and then decide that a new supposedly different product will finance both the old and new products when you got a small team who requires a bottomless pit of cash, and you cant even complete the old one without asking for more. How are you going to achieve this when it's always the got to with such a small team being the reason for lack of development time. It is also easy to say that Steam sales don't bring in enough currently but pretty sure they did well enough previously. So that's irrelevant today.

Lets take a look at some actual figures using pledging credits posted by TGC themselves online just to get the whole thing started.
https://www.thegamecreators.com/gameguru-credits

Gold pledgers 2160 $216,000
Silver pledgers 120 $6,000
Bronze pledgers 1512 $45,360

Total of $267,360

Thats a quick and dirty estimate based on rows X columns for pledges alone and doesn't even include your mystery investor or Steam sales plus DLC over the years let's be REALLY conservative with this and say you at least doubled that over time, though I suspect you did much better than that. This isn't even scratching the surface of the income you must have pulled in so far and it gets annoying when you say that other TGC products keeps it afloat. How much do you actually need to build this game engine? one million...two million? And that's not enough? This product should be well ahead by now

I simply couldn't go through another cycle of you swamping the forums with promises and then the inevitable long periods of silence only to have you drop it and announce the same product with a different name and calling off all previous deals. If people had known you intended 'classic' to be so basic once you complete bug fixes and finish up whatever features are currently in it(yep those bugs that you stated were being worked on a year ago) then they would have waited till you released 'Max' but truthfully there was no indication of this was there?

I do hope it all works out for you and GameGuruMax is a huge success for the sake of your users but I will make this my last post around here and just go crawl back under my rock. It is a pity because I really was a great supporter of TGC in the past.

This is what I like about you rolfy. you keep it real and I know you are not a robot. To me GGmax is a revised version of GG classic. but as I said before I'll wait til September to see it in action. I don't care the price cut I care about what's going to make it better. I will happy to pay full price for it. But the feature it offer like multiplayer and VR I have not use for. So this why I will wait to see how the finish product turn out.

I couldn't agree more.

If GameGuru MAX doesn't become the 'killer game maker' that we all hoped FPSC / GameGuru would be then it will be the last time I buy anything from The Game Creators. I really do hope GGMAX will be.

Yes most likely. Honestly, one million dollars to develop a decent 3D engine sounds extremely cheap. Developing an entire game engine is no small task. There are a lot of factors at play and hiring devs, using technologies, creating custom content is super expensive. I'm a web developer and people would easily pay thousands of dollars for a web application. Obviously, web dev and game engine dev aren't even remotely the same but it sort of puts things into perspective.

As an example, Unity has invested well over 50 million USD since its start in 2005 to 2013. And back in the day, Unity was absolutely terrible

@ Lee


Maybe you want to take a look

Voxel-based Global Illumination

Edit: Just adding other link.

I thing the majority will change from GG to Max and then, after one year GG classic will become free like FPSC.

+1

Unity is now one of the top engines because they have focus and goals to make it great.

TGC have proven they can do a lot more in a lot less time than what has been done with the GG, as two products in the last two years show.

There are plenty AAA engines to choose from, but there are few that are aimed at those who don't have a PHD in computer science to make an enjoyable game that doesn't just involve running around with a gun.

All TGC need is focus and a desire to make GG great, an engine that really makes 'Game Making For Everyone' possible - and they will be able to grab a pretty good chunk of the market for Indie Game Devs.

Hopefully MAX will be what we wanted Classic to be

OldFlak....

Dear TGC-Team and fellow GG-devotees,

I am using GG for a several years and I like it, because of it´s simplicity. I tried the professional engines, but it takes a lot of time, before you get the same result as in GG. So I always came back to GG, because of the fast effort you have with it. You can get a little fps with a good atmosphere for personal use.
It is rather unlikely to sell the games, with which you advertise. The quality is a few years behind modern titles. For me it is no problem, I have fun creating levels and write scripts only for me.
But I think, the tables are turned since the upcoming of VR. If you take a look at the VR-titles available on Steam or Oculus, we may be able to create VR-games with the same quality, just with GG classic.
When I read the announcement of GG Max, which will include VR-support , I was very curious about what will come. It lead to disappointment. The only support covers Windows Mixed Reality and Oculus Quest on release. Further support might come. But as long there is no support for the Oculus Rift S (or other HMDs) I won´t buy GG Max.
In my opinion VR is the future and we are just in the beginning. GG Max should support a wide range of VR, because it could be a strong criterion for buying GG Max. For me it is.
Just my two cents.
Keep up the good work, I´ll wait for Oculus support…

I think Rolfy really summed it up!

The proof is in the pudding as my old mum would say....... once we can see a demo running on GGMAX and can see the difference, then and only then will your plethora of questions be answered, until then it is just a business model rehash of what TGC did with FPSC for added revenue.

end of line.

Actually you are dead wrong. If you look at the newsletters start from 120, funding from pledges took place over several months, quite a few folks upgraded from bronze to gold or to silver. I started out as a bronze pledger and eventually upgraded to gold.My name is on the list twice.

Also went over my records I paid 24$ dollars for bronze and $54 for gold for a total of 80$. Then considering the new content for game guru which isn't cheap not by a mile and considering you also did some work for TGC a quick look at my records, for 2014-2015. Adds up to a few thousand, and considering I wasn't the only artist that was working on content for gameguru. A good decent amount when to the content for gameguru alone.

Additionally at the time of development, TGC was in the process of retiring their old products, In fact the only revenue generating product at that time was AGK, i think there was 3 model packs released for fpsc classic in that time.

In the mean time, there was still day to day operating expenses, you really think the next, maintained, TGC websites, store and backend out of the goodness of his heart. ?

Would about the thousands of dollars TGC gave back to the community, with competitions, graphics cards, store points ect, in promoting their software.

In the meantime, lee and rick and whoever was employed by TGC needed to be paid.

Lets not forget TGC also needed to pay tax on all their sales.

Sales on gameguru slowed down in 2015 already, to maybe 20 or 30 sales a month, most of the time sales driven by massive discounts, hoping that clients buy DLC's not on special.

TGC has not paid for a DLC since 2016, all of the DLC's recently released at least the major ones are royalty based sharing with the artists that made the DLC's.

Considering you mentioned the totals of what gameguru got in initial funding is wrong, I am going to let you in on a little secret, gameguru with all DLC's for the last few years with exception of holiday sales is barely pulling in $700- $800 a month. I was dead set in mentioning totals, but considering you were painting a picture of TGC rolling in gameguru cash, without any regard that a business needs to operate and stay afloat some how.

Gameguru pledge sales averaged between $2000 - $2500, during a time when gameguru was in full development, programming and content alike, and having retired their older software, operating expenses other then development costs, is just made up expenses. ?

You are misleading the facts unfortunately. Lee has already mentioned in this very thread gameguru sales are not enough to sustain it's development. You want to tell me you can develop, Pay staff, maintain the website, and keep the lights on for measly $800+-. Seriously. ???
Why did you think they did vrquest, gameguru isn't paying bills and hasn't in quite a while. I expected better from you, you have always been unbiased and considerate and based opinions on best factual information available.You have simply ignored all of the other information.

Not sure if this has been ask, but will the new GGMax support tunnel building under the ground,? so that you can literally dig a tunnel straight down and then run parallel under the surface with a tunnel, in witch you can then pace your cave system or what ever model you have to use in the tunnel.?

For starters I am not painting a picture at all, I am merely trying to show the other side of the coin when TGC and its users try to paint a picture of poverty, no matter what you say initial investment and sales brought in a fair amount and using TGC's own credits it looks like it was healthy enough to me, you can ignore the facts that early on TGC were handed a fair amount of cash to kick off this product and Steam sales were good during the first phase in favour of poor sales now if you like, it doesn't change things.
And that is exactly what I did in my post above. I went on the facts available to me.
If you went from bronze to gold that's good for you but unless you are privy as to how many actually did this your in a minority far as I am aware and it still doesn't change the amount for Gold alone which I stated was an estimate and it is in fact easy to ignore information you know nothing about. Just like you are doing with regards to payments to Artists for content. Thing is, sales are bad and I don't deny that but it is also assured sales would be far better if TGC had stuck to the original plan and kept the momentum they started with. If the product was solid from the get go it would be in far better shape today. Instead they adopted a hack and slash approach that was all over the place and moved the goalposts for those initial investors/pledgers.
The lack of transparency, silence and updates to this product is on TGC, even to the point of lying about their absence during the development of VRQuest which I can only believe put cash in the coffers for TGC but not much to show for users. The fact you seem to be ignoring with this is that it was built on the product pledged and paid for by users around here and who are seeing nothing from that going into GG, despite the claims that there was going to be a 'great reveal' after the 'sort of NDA' was lifted, users are still waiting to hear what these great benefits are that the development brought. It doesn't take a genius to work out now that this NDA was imposed for plans concerning MAX and nothing to do with VRQuest.

Irrespective of income today TGC were handed a lot more than they asked for on the Kickstarter and if it all turned out to be a failed business model then that isn't on myself or others who bought into it.

When you say that you charged a few thousand for content then you assume that all modelers did the same then it is you that fails and ignore the facts that personally I charged a lot less than minimum wage for anything I sold to TGC, maybe if you were privy to those facts you would be less inclined to total that up as major costs to TGC. It is also easy to be blase about what you pledged when you made that back tenfold from TGC, most users around here don't have that luxury.
Maybe sales are bad for GG now and you seem to be claiming that this has been the case since 2015, since I don't have access to TGC accounts I can only go by what is posted publicly and then make an assumption based on how many pledged as to actual sales on Steam, you seem to believe you have a handle on that so how about some actual sales figures before 2015 to balance the argument?

Someone mentioned Unity's investment and business model but got it totally wrong, the 'terrible' engine release was before Unity Technologies was formed and yes they did end with twenty staff and 50m investment by 2013 but that was down to smart business sense in looking at the mobile market which was being ignored by the games industry in general and that release was pretty far from terrible.
Irrespective nobody expected GG to match up to AAA a simple A would have sufficed.

Others around here like myself believed strongly in this product and were willing to work for cheap and even for free to see it flourish, this is part of my disdain towards the really poor roadmap and lack of business sense which has killed this product.
Pretty sure you remember the first video shown when they wanted to start on FPSC2/Reloaded which was created in DBP, yeah, if they had simply stuck with that idea it would have been a success, now six years later you got a product that isn't even competing with FPSC and the user created mods for it.

Now you got screenshots of a new pipe dream which show a new UI and not much else to get users on board with an entirely new product or upgrade and the cycle begins again, not much to show and still waiting to see the great reveal. Lee has stated he would throw together a video showing the new product so where is it? Maybe then users can decide if it is worthwhile buying into it or if it just GG with a new UI they are being shown, whatever, any fixes features etc went into VRQuest should by default be going into GG in my opinion. Not that my opinion matters here anyway but at least let your users make an informed decision before buying into another failed product and sorry but that's exactly what GameGuru is at this point. No matter how you cut it.

I think your the one using misleading statements here with this, TGC have more than one product you know and I am left with the feeling that funding was directed to these and not much from the others to GG.

Okay, so let's run with that last number for a moment. When did these pledges take place? I don't actually know. Wasn't something like 2015 or 2013? If it was 2015, then that's $270 thousand for five years, which is about $54,000 a year. That's not really rolling in cash. It's barely enough for one person's salary over in England and definitely not enough to fund a product, it's advertising, taxes, and the day to day costs of running a business. If this number were a few million, I might start to think differently.

Oh for crying out loud, that wasn't the only income even an idiot could understand that. It is only an example of the sort of income that was coming in and you can view it as funding to start the project...thats all, if you can't work this out for yourself then pretty sure you can carry on regardless in your naive and simple minded example of earnings.
If TGC's Kickstarter had succeeded it would have raised around 64.000 which would have been a disaster according to your reckoning, perhaps TGC should never have bitten off more than they can chew if you believe this.

Here's where it goes wrong TGC knew better than to re-invent the wheel with two engines on the market they couldn't compete with but their kickstarter failed so they turned to their existing user base who wanted a more than an 'easy to use' engine, they knew they weren't going to get kids to pledge money for development. They have struggled from day one to provide this and marketed towards the ease of use. There are several users around here that could create pretty awesome games if they could only get a bug free and consistent build that worked on at least most of the systems out there, what they actually have is frustration trying to create a game with more than one level to this day.
This is the reason you see so few actual games worth mention and the bad reviews on Steam. If it had been stated at the outset that this software would never be anything more than a level design toy they simply wouldn't have raised that money.

Well, need to get all testy. But we can both play at this and speculate, right?



No, it wasn't. But TCG is not only made up of one employee, either. So, again, $50,000/year is not a lot. When you start adding up all the other costs of running a business (especially the taxes on all of this), then you'll find it is even less. My point was NOT that this was the only income, but that it was a very INSIGNIFICANT piece of the puzzle overall. Even an idiot could understand that, to quote someone here.



Yep, it would have. Most good Kickstarters don't set a pledge level at just the amount they need, but significantly below it in the hopes of being funded and being funded early. Getting funded quickly often causes a drive toward many more pledges. This is how many get funded at the 500% or even 1000% level. I just helped create art for a Kickstarter campaign that had a $1000 limit to be funded. The campaign is currently at $12,000. His actual internal goal was higher than $1000 for this project, but $12,000 exceeded even what he had wanted. This person has successfully funded 5 or 6 previous Kickstarter campaigns (some in the excess of $100,000), so I think he has a decent idea of what he's doing.

My guess is that TGC had a lower funding amount in the hopes that it would get funded early and would catapult to much higher levels.

During the phases of content development I was in contact with lee ans it was his job vetting content, ect. Naturally we discuss other things as well shared idea ect. Yes there was a massive down turn in sales quite early on.This isn't an isolated issue, just how it is in the software world.

While pitching new DLC's/content/ engine ideas back then already, lee already mentioned that was currently no funds for DLC's, as gameguru sales weren't that great. It's only later they started with the royalty based system for DLC's. I get monthly stats for the DLC I made being sold by TGC, and have previously asked lee about the performance of the DLC compared to the other DLC's. Mentioned it is about on par with the rest of the DLC's and gameguru. Considering I get my own stats for my DLC, and check the daily steam best seller stats, often a couples of places between my DLC and other DLC's. Gives me an accurate sales stats. This is the second year for my DLC, not even close to to making $3000.0. First month was actual decent after which it took a nose dive, but with steady sales, some climbs during steam sales.

So yes I have a good "handle". Based on research and experience.

With regards to steam sales for gameguru, is a lot harder. Gameguru ran a promotion with Humble bundle, which saw at least a 150K+- keys being sold. Not sure what the agreement is with steam with regards keys being sold, but it wasn't cheap, and pretty sure they got pittance from humble bundle as you could set how much the developers got.

Since steam changed the way they show stats, there isn't accurate stats available any more, there is at least 200K gameguru accounts. 150k+- keys thanks to humble bundle. Gameguru was given away for free over a weekend a while back, which also inflates how many people have actually purchased gameguru. In between gameguru almost consistently running on discounts, it isn't even remotely possible for any one outside TGC to get a good idea of how many copies of gameguru has been sold, at full price or reduced prices, given away for free or humble bundle sales. Lets not for get the healthy 30% cut steam takes. Steam also allowing refunds.

Paints a pretty bleak picture. DLC stats unfortunately isn't available, but the longest available DLC's haven't even manage to sell close to 20K copies let alone 10K.


Nor is isolated either leadwerks less then 20K copies on steam.
Axis Game Factory's AGFPRO v3 was part of humble bundle sales and less the 200K
S2 engine less then 20k copies
RPG world between 20k and 50K copies.
AGK classic less then 100K
AGK studio less then 20K
Gamemaker studio 2 less then 100K

Of all the game makers on steam gameguru actually has some the highest number of accounts, but have to consider the accounts given away for free and humble bundle. The trend is the same for sales on all of these game maker DLC's. DLC's sells poorly across the board, it isn't unique.

You could have a UDK quality type engine on steam for a reasonable price and you will still get your behind handed to you. Steam simply isn't a game developers market, not enough is being done to promote game development on steam and by valve either.Lee said he is hoping to open TGC to a larger market, with products on steam. But it has been a hit and miss, while they did get it out to a larger audience, the audience simply isn't interested in game development all that much, and applies to all tools and software related to game development on steam, regardless the quality of the product.

In many regards S2 engine is comparative to gameguru on many levels and better in many regards, and is still struggling on steam. I have given S2 a shot but stability isn't all that great, visually it is pretty good, just isn't for me. Prefer gameguru, as it is a lot more stable, a lot easier to use, with the right content and effort, regardless of graphics you can make a pretty decent looking game.

It isn't so much the engine that is stopping the development of a great equal to that of a good unity or UDK game, the editor is the bigger problem and the ease of use content requirement that is really the issue. Gameguru in rendering thousands of unnecessary polygons, which doesn't allow for creating higher polygon and densely populated large levels you would find in other engines.

I have pushed lee on many occasions to focus on content and artists requirements and needs before, without much success.I have been tempted on many occasions to see how far I can push gameguru with content, I eventually came up Cold war DLC. In many regards I was happy especially with the indoor environment and especially getting a working solution for curves for the grid snapping, and a entity layered approach to building levels.

[video=youtube]S9N5A8JlQw0&t[/video]

But in many regards limitations with the grid system, editor and unnecessary polygons fell still short of what I wanted to do with the content.Honestly I have pushed lee to allow more complex editing and primitive creation like udk and unity, but pretty set in his way in wanting to keep it a "easy game creator". A more open ended editor experience that closer matches other engine, would significantly increase the general popularity of the engine and the quality of games that can be created. I don't see that ever happening lee is quite stubborn, in this regard, there really isn't a logic reason not evolve the program to more modern practices.

Here are the final answers from the last few pages, sorry if I missed any:

* For GameGuru MAX, most customization of game logic will still be via coding in LUA script. No plans to add specific features that could otherwise be done by scripting. The nearest we will get to is adding new LUA commands to help with the many things you can create with scripts.

* Yes you will be able to buy MAX on Steam in September when it goes live.

* Arms/hands in game will remain the same as in Classic, attached to the weapon model. When developing your own weapon models, ensure you provide your own arms and hands for the weapon, just as you presently do with Classic.

* No plans to add a dialog system or tree editor for conversations, this would have to be done in script.

* No plans to substantially change the functionality set for Multiplayer matches. They will remain single level, maximum of 8 players and simply be rewritten to run under a Photon server instead of a Steam server.

* The new Character Creator actually welds the various body parts together to form a single final model for your entity. I will be showing it off in a future Sneak Peek video so watch out for that one - it's pretty cool (but not to the standard of AAA games alas).

* No plans to add any new underwater or swimming controls in MAX, though the player control script is now external so you can add this if you can script. I recommend not preordering if you are looking for extra swimming features, and perhaps check out a demo after September and see if any of the other features are worth checking out.

* MAX will still be focused on First Person (not necessarily the shooter part). I think we need both Classic and MAX to do a decent job at making an FPS game before we dive too far into secondary game perspectives.

* No plans to reactivate VR in GameGuru, it was really just some test code for the first Oculus DK1. If you can dig out a link in which I specifically promised to the community that it would be added it to GameGuru as part of a free update, I guess I could resurrect that code but it might be best to put all the VR eggs in MAX as it already has Windows Mixed Reality support, Oculus Quest at launch and hopefully OpenXR shortly after too (maybe). One of my jobs in March is compiling the 'hit list' for things Classic needs adding (aside from bug fixes).

* Upgrading to use the latest bullet is an interesting idea, it is not planned as it might be a pig of a job but if it's just swapping in the latest SDK and making sure it still works, then this could be something we look at. What are the benefits of the latest SDK over the one we are using now?

* All assets in Classic will be compatible with MAX. Any new assets created specifically for MAX 'might' not entirely work in Classic, I am specifically thinking about possible HDR textures, new model formats, etc. I think it's the only way to make sure we have freedom to use some modern techniques. No worries bringing old stuff forward, but new stuff backwards towards Classic might be a bridge too far.

* MAX will not support the Intel HD Graphics 5500, the current minimum we are looking at (and this may change) is the GTX 960.

* No plans to add camera shake feature but doing it as a LUA command is the way we would do it, we are going to add some things to the save standalone so you can have a little more control of what is exported, so control of the 'preparing core files' will be amongst them.

* GameGuru Classic will continue to be developed and continue to receive free updates for as long as their is a community around it. I should have a swear jar for every time I have had to type this one, still it's a valid concern for sure!

* GameGuru MAX will only target Windows 10 PCs, no other platforms are going to be supported except limited support to play your game level on the Oculus Quest VR headset. There are no plans to have an export option to create your own Oculus Quest VR apps right now, but as we developed the player we will look at how easy this is to do (i.e. export an APK with the media needed to submit to Facebook, etc).

* No plans to finish faster, the release date is set for the 1st September 2020.

* The only TTS we have are the ones installed by Microsoft (basically one male and two female for the English ones). It's not the best in the world but it's an offline solution and gives you instant speech for your characters. After September we can look at the online cloud solution which produces much better speech and has more voice choice, but there might be a cost so we need to do some research.