Here is a recording of the live broadcast that went out on Wednesday 1st July at 4PM BST, and below are all the answers to the questions posted during the live event using the YouTube Chat channel.


As always, feel free to post more questions on the YouTube video itself, or here, and I will eventually get around to answering them for you. I hope you enjoyed this broadcast and I look forward to bringing you more progress soon.

Q> The arms should be separate from the weapons?
A> Something I should have mentioned. The plan (though not set in concrete yet) is for the hand+arm to be separate from the weapon model, so that either can be swapped out so you can customise your game to your requirements. In Classic, some users wanted green scaley arms as the player was alien, or wanted to change an iron pole with a brass poker, etc. This separation will allow this.

Q> Is this a 'hands on' demo?
A> Nice attempt at funny Yes this is at least 50% hands in.

Q> ​The price goes up every month. Best to get it now.
A> We wanted to reward those who helped us pay the bills as we developed the product, and a big juicy discount was a nice way to do this. As we get closer to release, expect the discount to shrink until the final product becomes full price. Of course, for those who are not pre-order fans, we will be releasing a free demo of the finished product so you can try before you buy.

Q> I would gladly pay $100.00 for it!
A> It is probably worth $100 when you consider the work that is going into it, but we also want to make it affordable and use a simple pricing model. $49.99 is about the price of a modern console game, which we felt was a good price. In terms of typical usage, the lastability of the purchase (if you get the game-making bug) presents extremely good value

Q> On behalf of AmenMoses. Will we have full access to the VR controllers from Lua?
A> We already have some VR commands buried in there, but yes we will expand to ensure all the major actions of the controller can be detected and acted upon in script. OpenXR uses controller abstraction to ensure you can use the same 'action events' mapped to different controller 'parts' which means you only really need to support one VR controller template when scripting, and instantly get access to all supported controller designs.

Q> ​There’s likely going to be a lot of assets for sale for it.
A> For release, we only intend to ship a few assets, just enough to showcase the various elements of the features. The idea is that with the help of better guides and templates, you can import your own assets from other stores and create your own for importing. We will be doing DLC down the road, but the general thrust is that MAX allows better support for importing rather than relying on TGC to create the art for your game. This should also reduce the instances of 'asset flipped games' which may dog the perceived flexibility of GameGuru MAX.

Q> How will we import materials and will it support .dae?
A> There are no plans to import materials as standalone imports. Material attributes will be contained in the model file you import, over which you can apply a chosen texture set. We may look at being able to modify material properties in the editor itself, but this is not currently on the roadmap right now.

Q> Will it be easier to import blender meshes?
A> There are o plans to support blender meshes specifically, but if they are exported in a format supported by MAX then you can import them fine. Check out the list of model formats supported by AssImp for a clue as to what we might be supporting.

Q> What kinds of game genres will you be able to make?
A> Primarily first-person games, and maybe very simple third-person games. Smart scripture could hack other genre's together, but other game types will not be possible out of the box, and if in any doubt, you should wait to September and try the free demo.

Q> Are the tab tab sliders changing in how they are displayed?
A> Yes, we will be looking to give them an overhaul and improve the management of the panels so they work better on smaller resolutions.

Q> Will I be able to JUMP SCARES?
A> Yes, you can use a Sound Zone marker and a very scary noise, and you have created your creepy corridor jump scare.

Q> ​I have a sneaking suspicion that EWP2 will release with max. Is this correct or can’t say?
A> The current plan is that EWP2 is designed to work with GameGuru Classic. There are no plans that this DLC will be tailored for MAX.

Q> ​Will we be able to customize armor?
A> There is no armor in GameGuru MAX, so no way to customize it. You can of course buy armor from an asset store and import it, or create your own in a 3D modeler, customize it there and import that.

Q> ​What about post-processing ?
A> We will be supporting the post effects you already get in Classic (bloom, depth of field, vignette) plus some improvements on our anti-aliasing including FXAA, MSAA, and temporal. Even though Wicked Engine supports more types of post effect, we are keeping the number for MAX small so we can focus on rounding off the product, though it seems clear we can expose Wicked post effects in the future.

Q> Post-processing should be customizable.
A> No plans to allow post effects to be customizable, except within the confines of settings exposed for the shader technique used. There are no plans to allow you to create your own post effect shaders for MAX.

Q> ​We need a MAC version. Please!
A> There are no plans to support MAC or any other platform, except Windows 10 and above.

Q> ​Any plans for weather?
A> Yes, we have a number of simple weather effects to offer when designing the setting of your level (currently light and heavy rain and snow).

Q> What type of fonts will we be using?
A> We will be using TrueType fonts and the UNICODE character standard, allowing full internationalization of your titles (about time right).

Q> Can you run quickly a test game for us right now?
A> The current internal build has no Test Game mode, we have barely got a Classic entity rendering. The next few weeks should see enough functionality restored that we can tentatively predict running around in 2-3 weeks if all goes well. Fingers crossed.

Q> Can we import the GG classic shaders to MAX?
A> There are no plans to allow the importing of GameGuru Classic (or any other) shaders into GameGuru MAX. All shaders are pre-compiled and fixed, and access to them is through settings in the editor. When it comes to high-quality shaders, it's best to leave them be.

Q> With the expandable terrain system, will there be improved performance for open worlds? (Streaming of models and textures, and unloading old ones)?
A> By implication, making the terrains 'bigger' does in no way imply improved performance! In fact, we will have to work very hard to make sure the performance is handled as we expand the size of terrains in your game levels. In designing the geometry and texture coding, we have performance as a chief concern, perhaps more so than visuals. Watch the terrain progress updates for news on how this battle goes!

Thanks again for all the questions, and it's always a pleasure to gather everyone into one time slot from around the world I hope you enjoyed the broadcast and I look forward to presenting another one soon. I will answer follow-up questions in the thread below. Happy game making!

Will catch up on this later this evening after work. Thanks Lee.

Already sat here waiting

Concerning the Tab Tab sliders - my recommendation is to get rid of them ... at least via using Tab Tab. Since the editor displays The Wicked Engine within it, all the slides available via Tab Tab should be available as preferences via the editor itself. There should be a place, off on the right-side with the other preferences, where the end-user could access and adjust the settings for visuals instead of having to run the game and hitting Tab Tab there.

Will GameGuruMAX allow the end-user to import models, put a few together (such as a room with items in the room) and save them as a prefab to be used later (and several times, if needed) in the game?

Will the arms work with the player when unarmed?
IE: to open doors, push something, etc

And what's about player swimming?


I honestly hope this changes in the future.

That would be cool but there wont be swimming, we know that already

Bad news so.
Player won't swim and third-person is not going to be as needed, my underwater level will be another paused project.
I'll wait for the GGMax release to see if it worts to model a frogman or a remote-controlled underwater camera.

looks good, the models definitely look a lot better in wicked compared to GG already and even the quick imports look pretty decent considering they aren't completely tuned (the sandbags more so than the barrels)
some basic IK on the VR arms would be good, it does add a lot to the realism of the game compared to just floating hands - especially as you are going to be aiming for realistic PBR models for the hands - but obviously i appreciate it's nowhere near as quick and easy to set up so maybe something to think about for a later update....my basic attempt was pretty poor

I agree. Since we can see the skybox, grass and water in editor as well. Be great to have these options in the editor GUI. I still would personally love a saturation slider. Be cool to make some noir style games or even just have better control over the theme and emotion of the atmosphere with a slider like that.

I've asked a few times for full color/LUT control. Many other engines (Unity, Unreal, S2) give this to you either natively or via plugins. This way you can make your games black & white, saturated, under saturated, add film grain, and a lot more. It really adds life to a game to be able to control how colors appear.

Such a shame that the shader pipeline is totally closed. Think this is the wrong way to go for Max.

Cheers.

Looks like you be working hard - looking good


It would also be good if MAX remembered the layout, so you don't have to keep moving the panels around every time you go into TabTab mode.


Awesome!

OldFlak....

Ditto.
In many times a shader needs to be edited to fit your needs, ie: animated decal is not always to be 4x4.

Q: Will there just be one set of arms included in MAX (white male), or will we have other options like female arms, black arms etc.?

AE

agreed.

me too

Also, we live in a multi cultural world, so more variations of arm HUD skin colours etc and female arms, alien, etc.

but if arms will be swappable and separate models from weapons this will be not a problem..

a generic standard rig would be cool so eventually new arms could be adapted to it and use same animations from standard ones but with different meshes and skin.. S2 engine could do that and it it a great and useful stuff.

i have tons of arms and hands models from unity and UE and would be great to can use them in GG

"saturation slider...."
Yes that would be great for post apocalyptic scenes
There's already a shader for GG classic, I think it was from... Preben (?). Well its more a sepia shader, the results are really great.

A word for the coders....
The LUA interface to GG often requires accurate X/Y/Z terrain grid coordinates for many control and movement scripts. This information has never been available at the editor level. Even in test play getting those coordinates is time consuming.

The values displayed in the lower right corner of the GG editor are not accurate enough. I should be able to quickly find the accurate X/Y/Z location of any point on the map, from the editor display.

Suggestion, Let's say I add a barrel to my scene. When I select the properties for that barrel, included in those properties are the X/Y/Z coordinates of that entity. Then I can put my barrel on the map at a point I want to measure, and quickly see those coordinates. Simple??? GGMax???

GD; Oh yeah- that is for sure, as I posted not so long ago.
For the life of me, I don't know why that is.

Because in all the years I've been on these forums I've not come across anyone who actually plans out the location of entities on the map accurately in advance, in fact it's rare to find users who actually plan anything at all!

You can hold down the CTRL key to get finer placement of entities and I do think we should have the ability to change the grid, the current grid placement mode is fine for large objects like buildings (if the artist has bothered to locate the origin correctly for it!) but not a lot of good for smaller objects, maybe have it so that the grid size can be adjusted in steps using the +/- keys in conjunction with the shift key or something.

Another idea might be to use the arrow keys, they are very underused at present so if for example you click the mouse on the green plane the arrow keys could be used to nudge the entity one grid place (or one inch in non grid mode) along x & z, click on the other planes would nudge in the appropriate directions relative to the plane. When in snap mode the arrow keys should indicate the direction of the entity to snap to.

That has never once on any of my machines worked for me, and lits of others have said the same when I've mentioned it, I think it's a myth like big foot and the loch Ness monster.

Or the user does a mouse click on the desired place, engine read the x,y mouse coordinates and place the item there, after all, z is not too important here. imho.
Maybe you have to move the item a bit, but you'll have the item already placed.
Anyway, as amen points out, the item should be zeroed (0,0,0).

Planning? Not done any of that since I wrote GAC adventures lol. Used to plan the entire game on paper then enter all the data into GAC Then again, I used t draw graphics on graph paper back then as well. Different world to today's game making.

My request for an editor display of the X/Y/Z coordinates is not about accurate entity placement. It's about creating scripts that move objects from one place to another ( background movement, camera movements, character movements). For that I need the starting and ending terrain coordinates, as well as coordinates along the way. The only way I can get them now is by moving the player around in Test mode, while running a script I wrote that displays the players coordinates (very time consuming).

In all my years I have never seen any 3D program where there is not an editing display of the X/Y/Z coordinates of an entity or a location on a grid. The information is there, all that's required is a simple display somewhere. What could it hurt?

Just attach a script to an entity that displays the coordinates.

The attached script displays the x, y, z ofsets between two entities.

Could be done with the mouse in editor if only a complete view is supplied.
Exactly right GoDevils ...

The point is-- why couldn't they just add two more digits to the 'X'
coordinate in the editor and 3 digits to the 'Z' coordinate?
Looks like a bug honestly that some text has been cut off accidentally--
even thought most of that line is empty so it's not for lack of room.

I may want to see the size of entities as I'm placing-- not sure if I want to use
them on the map yet-- but looking them over. So I could drag a ruler in... or
And yes- for the purpose of scripting- I often check the approx location of
entities in the editor but 10,000 'Z' units is not close enough to determine
where to align to, and 1,000 units for 'X' is hardly scientifically feasible either.

@cybernescence



Sure i agree , but again i think you misunderstand it , they will not be available in text format (and auto compile), but sure you will be able to compile your own shaders , you just need to do this inside visual studio, thats a must in the new engine. its also i "must" for me , and i will try my best to make sure that we are able to add all our little tweeks and changes as we wish , perhaps a little change to setup.ini where to load the shaders from would do the trick , but mainly we need to get everything running first, after that we can get the magic going.

But yes this will be a must for all you hard core coders (and me)

Thanks for the reply and the clarification Preben - much appreciated.

Cheers.