It's because, historically, a lot of those assets were lacking quality control. I remember once ranting on the FPSC forums about the model packs being shoddy. Officially released packs should represent the pinnacle of best practice for assets working in the engine, a standard other third party content creators like myself should aspire to; that means every single model needed _D, _N and _S textures, and LOD meshes where appropriate. Instead, much of the assets from those days were supplied with, frankly, terrible _D maps and that was all. And what happened to those assets, many of which were lacking and all of which are now nudging 15 years old? They ended up getting repackaged in the mega model packs, the quality of which is so lacklustre, members of the community have had to retroactively sort out smoothing groups, textures, and even remodel some stuff from scratch, just to bring them up to standard. No one QA'd those packs, thus things were overlooked and slipped through. Deeply embarrassing.

In more recent times, the picture has been far more positive. I personally love all the recent model packs that have been sub-licensed from Dekagon, although there's still room for improvement (including doors that don't animate in the Medical Pack, for example, lack of LOD meshes too). ErrantAI's weaponry is top-notch. THIS. This here is the level we should aspire to. Thankfully, it sounds like you've picked up this sentiment from the community and will be producing less content but better content. This is a good idea.

The idea of 'game packs' as DLC (which include scripts and sounds as well as models, almost little starter kits for each genre) is an excellent idea and you should definitely proceed with that. Just make sure someone QA tests the assets for basic stuff like smoothing groups first.

AE

It maybe nice to had a standalone test mode, and generate executable file when you are done to release game or demo.

Perhaps swap the boy and girl for male and female (fantasy) dwarf (or goblins)? It would be a shame to take out the functionality as having civilian children would be a good thing to have... Even if the actual model parts need to be imported separately.

"We have supplied tens of thousands of assets in the past over the years, and never really been thanked for it, instead getting a constant bombardment of critique over the quality"
>> Who is 'we'?

@3com >> Nice idea-- how it'd work? But good thought.

@ smallg-- my sentiments as well. It's too bad this engine has been getting
the reputation as simply the run, gun, and shoot escaped zombies engine.

Maybe the new CC will help that out a bit. Let's hope the first game placed
on steam from GGMax is not just a bunch of new CC characters that sit up
on a balcony while you run up and shoot them all until they are mutilated!
Yeah, we are a highly advanced, civilized society!!

@Lee
Excellent news, I have not yet pre-ordered, I will wait for September and the demo that will be available to decide, however, the conditions for a product that meets my preferences seem to be all there. The vr experience is promising (also excellent for "dedicated scripts" such as "pickupsimple").
Also promising what you explain about the DynamicLua system, I'm not an ace with programming, however, I manage, and then there are always the scripts on the store. Good job

Gods, what a world we live in. Because a tiny majority of people focus on the negative aspects of everything, we end up losing functionality. At least it sounds like we can add it back in. Crazy world we live in today.

@Lee.
I'd like to request that Blender base models are supplied as well. 3ds Max is all well and good, but is a professional, paid product. Expecting users to have 3ds Max seems odd in an easy game maker that as you have said; does not promise close to Unreal or Unity features. Why then expect users to have professional 3D software?
You also mention paying an artist to make your characters. Again fine if you have a budget and are planning on selling your game. Most people will not be in that position. Making character import accessible to as many as possible is important. If Max ends up being just as hard as GG currently is to get characters in, people will be unhappy.

What about the plan to make Makehuman characters import in? Could you not add that into CC? As long as it can animate and the animations provided cover all bases, most people would be very happy indeed.

I think the CC is a vital part of Max. Get it right and you will have a popular product, get it wrong and you will get similar reviews as you have got in the past. My advice, get it right It's looking really, really good so far.

Why add all this to cc when gg max will be way superior.

Take away the new CC and on what basis would you say GGmax wil be way superior?
you nee good characters in a game, that not all look the same after lets say the first 10 games out on steam. then afterwords you will hear again that people say , yes its the same old models used again and again, that's why the users complain . what is the use of attracting new users with the new GGMax if most of the new users, and a lot of the old ones, would still not be able to create , or pay an artist to make there characters. Buildings and cars , stuff like that , is ease to come by , a lot of artist make them and gives freely, but not characters. Compare all the free models that has been given away by artist how many was characters and how many was other stuff, Yes its a big difference between those numbers, so lets not fall in to that problem again. with a proper CC creator that you can modify any character the way you want, would cancel that deference out.

You got it DVader!
Whoever (engine) supports Blender -- supports a monstrous platform of ever-growing
users and artists. The big AAA engines are funding Blender, the least an Indie engine
could do is allow this mega tool-Blender users to use what they know!

New rendering system, New terrain system, Realtime shadows, 64 bit. Quite a lot to be honest and don't forget GG never originally had a CC or importer so we basically had to use what we had.

The good news is Max characters can be used in GG so even if you got in early and paid out 20 bucks just for the new character creator it was money well spent. I think DVader nailed it with Make Human. If we could get those to work in GG and Max that would be a bonus but we may just find we will have to learn to make the parts we need for our own unique characters.

so fbx file format could be a good solution for everybody.
I've got makehuman chars working on GG without issues, I`ve some issues with iclone or Character generator, even with zbrush humans in GG, but not with makehuman ones.

I was talking about CC in Max

@granada : No plans for cut holes in terrain, I have yet to complete my researches into a new terrain generation system. Most techniques involve a sealed height field, which may still be used for fast physics, but if we go the mesh group way, then a 'hole' may be possible, but at the very best it would be aligned to the polygons of the terrain mesh, not a smooth round circle, but a jagged triangle or rectangle.

No plans to provide additional support for specific modellers and formats. I am looking at a new importer, not this is not promised for MAX. I will also be looking at how body parts can be created from tools other than 3DSMAX, but again, nothing planned as the first stage is to focus on the new terrain system and graphics engine. Not really much time to September and it's important these two new additions are done properly. The character creator will not substantially change between now and the release, and anyone wishing to you use it will be required to follow the same instructions as our arists. Right now the final internal format for parts is X files, so if we provide FBX templates, you 'should' be able to make them rig-ready in tools other than 3DSMAX (but again no promises).

Thanks for the answer Lee



That would suit fine

Dave

Just get Jason to approve them
I remember the giggle I had when the sci-fi pack was released, the very first model I looked at was the cryo chamber which has a very noticeable Z-Clash. (still does)
If it had been put through the Store it would have been knocked back till it was fixed....

Obviously DLC should set the example of quality media - not quantity....

So yeah less content but better content would be a much better way to go.

Then some time later the Companion droid was added, which also had a big blurb on the news letter about how cool it was. I thought awesome, loaded it up and none of the droids worked at all - still don't.

So there is an obvious need for some QA.

The biggest thanks you would get tho would be if someone made an awesome game with the media. But then all the Steam Heads would be shouting about asset flipping - so you can't win Lee - lol

Just Make MAX awesome....

Oh, and yeah if we could cut a hole in the terrain even with jagged edges that would be cool, we can just build our underground models and entrances to suit.

OldFlak....

Cutting holes maybe as Lee said maybe more difficult, voxel based maybe even more difficult ….but if Max started out with say a voxel based terrain it would cater for a massively wider market don't know if this is even possible but if it was even if it held back the launch would set Max up for a massively bigger market in the long run, there is soo many games using voxel based terrain now and they ALL are popular in fact just being able to dig holes for some reason is!. Start as you mean to go on! just a thought

Square hole is enough for me , instead of trying to put rocks over a valley . Create a mountain with a hole each side a place in your tunnel model and you done . Lot more possibilities , trenches shafts ect

Dave

@ LeeBamber.
Triangular polys around the holes would not be an issue. We could simply cover the glitches with a model. Not sure why you couldn't smooth the edges though as you do already with slopes.

Still, Blender support for the win! I reckon the coverage alone from Blender enthusiasts would add a lot of interest!

Definitely. Most of the people who would use something like GameGuru MAX won't have a copy of 3DSMax as it's way to expensive. Most will be using other modeling tools, particularly Blender, especially since the release of 2.8x (which has pretty much shaken the industry to some degree ... at least making them take notice of little Blender).

As an artist myself (both creating 2D and 3D content), I am not really interested in the supplied models that come with GameGuru or that may come with MAX. I will want to create my own content for my own games. I suspect that there are many like this. If the new Character Creator makes it easy to set up fully animated characters, then I would be very open to using that ... but only if I can create my own parts and pieces to use. But I won't be able to do that if it requires MAX. Most of your users won't.

I agree with Argent_Arts 100% , Blender saport is the way to

Dave

@Argent_Arts. The exact point I was trying to make. We all get GG and GG max won't be Unreal beaters or even close. But at the same time the only tool supported for default models is 3DS Max. Now I can understand this, it's the industry standard. The artist making the models will likely only use 3DS Max. However the majority of GG/Max users will use Blender. We need Blender tutorials at the very least

Actually, no. The main tool used for 3D modeling and animation for games (as well as various other things) is ... Maya. 3DS Max is not far behind, but Maya is usually considered better for animation. Max is considered the better modeler, though. And while Max is used in the games industry, it really has a strong foothold in architectural firms.

In any case, it just does not seem like a good idea to tie models for something like GameGuru MAX to the .max format. It is a closed, proprietary format and no one can use it without having a copy of 3DS Max installed on their systems. Thus, it would make sense for GameGuru MAX to support either a universally accepted format like FBX or, even better, GLTF or even USD or some other universally supported format that can bring carry 3D geometry, materials and textures, UV maps, animations, and more.

Doubtful many (if any) GG users would be using 3DS Max ($270 AU a month) - ridiculous!
GGMAX $94 AU one off payment - and not for pro game dev now....
Just bizarre

Make Human to GG was all we really wanted.....

OldFlak....

I've said it elsewhere and will say it again - to go from selling the dlc under TGC's name and lauding them in all the forums to now disparaging and (almost) disowning them creates a bad smell.

With regards to the 3DSMAx vs Blender discussion, i think people are getting confused, GG is and always has been compatible with Blender, and every other modelling software, just because some source models were provided in 3DsMax format doesn't denote any kind of compatibility in any specific software, it's just that those models were made with 3DSMax and thus the source file for them is in that format. Lee and co don't need to faff around making anything compatible, because compatibility with a modelling program means nothing, all they have to do is provide the models in a format that can be read by most modelling programs, like .FBX or something, nothing special needs doing to make them "compatible".

It seems that Blender is continuing to improve. When 2.82 came out that was an exciting release. And now just recently 2.82a has come out with lots of fixes. It seems they are making sure it is fairly bug-free before they integrate all the new features of version 3.0. Some of the previews of version 3 are pretty amazing

No. There was no confusion on my part, at least. I was addressing the new Character Creator and Lee's comment that the source files for it were all .max files. Thus, in order to alter the Character Creator files or to make new content for Character Creator for GameGuru MAX, you would need access to the .max files and, to do that, you would need 3DS Max. People are going to want to use Character Creator and some are going to want to create new pieces for it (hats, other clothing, masks, glasses, etc., etc.) and in order to make that happen, they would need 3DS Max, according to what Lee has said. Because of this, I am suggesting that something be done to open that up so that anyone can make Character Creator models or pieces. To do that, Character Creator for GameGuru Max would need to either support a common file format (.fbx, .gltf, etc.) or support other programs than 3DS Max, with Blender being the obvious choice since it is free. Even if you don't use Blender, by providing .blend support, anyone could download the free Blender, import the .blend file, export to whatever format they need for their 3D modeler of choice, make changes there, and then go back to Blender for re-import into GameGuruMax's Character Creator.



That is not necessarily correct. If the Character Creator parts were created in 3DS Max AND saved as .max files, then the only place they can be opened is in 3DS Max. .max is a proprietary file format. Even those pieces of software that can "convert" .max files require you to have 3DS Max installed in order to do their magic. So, if the end-user cannot access Character Creator files in a format that is accessible to them and can be imported into their modeler of choice, then we cannot make our own Character Creator parts. On the other hand, if Lee can get the models/animations exported to a standard format that most/all modelers can import (.fbx, etc.) then anyone can make their own parts for Character Creator ... provided there is a way for us to get them into Character Creator (i.e. which file format would it accept?).

Yeah it's just getting the default stuff in a format we can use. Converting to and from different programs always has a chance of mucking them up. That's why we have several AI types, with different animation frames and totally different AI code at the moment.

I do remember having a Blender file made available ages ago by a kind user who knew enough to get it converted, but not sure if it is still about now.

At the very least, as much info as possible should be released for people to have a chance of making stuff for the new CC or whatever other system is available in Max.

Yeah, actually a simple "save out as fbx" would make us independent regarding modelling software used.
I have licenses for all softwares at hands, but you cant expect that from the standard GG user.

.fbx/ .obj; Bravo!
As having a discussion with people that are using Blender, even that has
been on there a couple years--
I mentioned to them (multiple people) that GG uses the '.x' format--
the first response was-- what? Did you say something? So what format
does GG use then? Like I said, the '.x' format...? Hu... never heard of it.
What kind of format is that?
Well, I think it's from uh direct x.. maybe.

Then it's time to take the old clothes out of the closet.
I must admit that although for me .max file format is not a problem, fbx file format must be most friendly format for everybody and almost every 3d soft out there.
Personally I would like to know the guidelines to create my own attached items. I would like to customize my chars, to give them a personal and unique touch.

FBX is pretty much universally used by most 3D programs. However, there can be issues. FBX is licensed by Autodesk, is not free, and has various "flavors". I've heard other developers talk about how expensive it can be to keep up-to-date with FBX. GLTF and USD are free, but not every 3D software supports import/export of these natively (though many have plugins/extensions that add it). X is old and not every program supports that, either.

.x is old. Yeah, still it's a pity the latest version of Blender has dropped it though. Anything I exported from it as .x always imported into TGC stuff with the least difficulty, all the way back to the original DB.

Even MS refers to it as: X Files (Legacy) (Direct3D 9)
X file does no save anims done via cloth and / or many Max modifiers.