Hi All,

Thanks to everyone who attended my little live broadcast, and for your questions, here is the recording for those who missed it:



Below are all the questions asked and answers to match. Enjoy!

Q> When do we get functional terrain?
A> We are adding it to the product now, watch this space for more news on the terrain editing!

Q> How is the tutorial documentation coming along?
A> We have an outline of the user manual, and we expect it to mature over the course of September as we refine and finalize UI features for the release.

Q> Approx. what time will Copy and Paste be implemented?
A> We added COPY and PASTE a while ago, try the latest alpha build, highlight a few entities, press CTRL+C and then CTRL+V to see it in action!

Q> Can we get snapping/grid for the UP axis, too?
A> Check out the latest snapping options and provide some ideas how you would like to see the vertical snapping work in concert with what we have now, interested to see how you think we can get a 3D snapping from a 2D interface starting point. I am sure we can come up with something!

Q>​ Will grass throw shadows?
A> No plans to add shadow casting from individual grass blades/decals.

Q How about blood sprays and decals?
A> We still have these effects in operation but the images associated with those renders are not present at the moment, expect them in the final release if we opt to keep blood and damage indicators for release.

Q> ​When will the complete engine come out?
A> We have agreed on a final release date of the 30th of September.

Q> ​Do assets belong to the terrain 'tiles' or are they placed anywhere in world over the streaming terrain?
A> You would place assets/objects/entities separately onto the terrain. The terrain would not contain assets, except of course for its height field and the textures it has used to paint the details of the surface.

Q> ​Will there be multiplayer in VR too?
A> Yes, the plan is to have VR work whether you are single-player or multiplayer, but we have yet to test this in a real scenario, so reserve the idea that for some reason it does not work for release.

Q> ​How will water work - is it all at one level like classic? Will it follow the player rather than be static in relation to terrain (so seems infinite to player view)?
A> We will have a single water table plane which can be adjusted up and down, and the terrain intersects this water plane. No plans for separate water bodies.

Q> When will water be added and will it have the vanilla under water efx?
A> The water will come in around the same time as the terrain and will have only basic underwater visual effects. Nothing fancy.

Q> Has extract entity been sorted yet, so we can extract an entity and it keeps its height for placing them inside and over top of other entities?
A> Yes indeed, in the next interim alpha build you will be able to test out the new extract modes which allow entities to follow the floor, keep to their extracted height or use a fixed Y position for more accurate constructions.

Q> Will MAX be compatible with the new oculus quest?
A> Yes you can use the Oculus Link with your PC to play VR levels on the Quest.

Q> ​Will the terrain feature tiling in the beta as you demonstrated in a prior vid? How will entities work with the limitless terrain?
A> Yes the sculpting we demonstrated will be the same in the forthcoming beta. There are no plans for limitless anything, the terrain will have a finite amount of resources to work within, as indeed, humanity has yet to figure out how to make a PC with limitless resources.

Q> ​Will custom lua working in the current Game Guru engine be compatible with MAX?
A> Yes indeed, ALL LUA scripts will be backwards compatible so anything created in Classic should work fine with MAX.

Q> Will entiybank and the files folder be writable in 6.1?
A> We have the writable folder system working in Alpha Build 6 with some issues, hopefully, most of the outstanding nuggets will be resolve for our Alpha 6.1.

Q> After release are you planning on having voting for future features on the forums?
A> No plans to reintroduce voting. As it turns out there are a gazillion features and just as many ideas what votes are important, beyond the simple metric of quantity. For MAX we will aim to keep the feature list static, and instead, focus and lavish effort on those described features before moving onto pastures new.

Q> Is player collision still being worked on?
A> Yes indeed, you can still get stuck on some entities and imported objects that have no configured their physics property for the engine.

Q> Can enemies navigate inside buildings?
A> Yes, characters will be able to path find through a building created with the Structure Editor. For buildings that have been imported, it will largely depend on how the geometry for that model has been assembled, so we cannot guarantee navigation through arbitrary imported meshes.

Q> ​When will this be released for the Mac?
A> There are no plans to release GameGuru MAX on the Mac or any other platform.

Thanks for all your great questions, feel free to continue the discussion below and as always, happy game making!!

Is player collision being worked on , i cant walk around this level part without bogging down or am i missing a setting i need to use .Thanks


Dave

very happy with my response today tomb raider-esque options are in reach

multiple entity copy and paste is here at last, great news!

@smallg
Agreed! Phew- nice work Lee.
Guess now I won't push spawn Entities by script so much--
wait, yes I will. I'm sure I will, and Lee can do it!

Missed lt live today due to traffic but and awesome broadcast.
Pretty much what everyone wanted to hear

where is the version 6.01 ?

Patience. It's not been released yet. There will be an announcement when it is out. Alpha 6 was just released, so give it some time.

Vertex snapping
Grid snapping

Edit just to add some 3ds max snapping video using vertex and grid to snap and even duplicate objects nicely.




I assume those are all the buildings don't being made with EBE. So can you explain how those buildings should be, in order to be 100% compatible with?

Snapping could function in the Y direction via the translate/move gizmo. The end-user would enable grid snapping and then the selected entity would snap to whatever increment is set when moved via the gizmo axis arrows or via the square between them that restricts to two axes.



Copy/paste is nice. Thank you. But it's a bit clunky. A more elegant solution, imo, would be to have a duplication system - something like, the end-user presses CTRL will dragging with one of the gizmo axis arrows. That would pull off a duplicate in the direction translated via the gizmo. This is fast (only one click) and gives the end-user better control. Currently, with copy/paste, the pasted entity is offset in a direction. This means that the end-user has to adjust it's position in at least two directions. With CTRL+drag, you just drag from the original's position directly to the new position. This is great for quickly creating a line of duplicates, etc.

CTRL is used with keys to give fine adjustment, using it with drag for a different use might be a tad confusing.

Drag whilst holding LMB might be more intuitive. (and avoid having to SHIFT - CLICK )

Plus you could use the WASD or arrow keys to reproduce in a straight line rather than having to move the mouse which is less controllable.

I had said "something like", indicating that what I was presenting was an example. It could just as easily be ALT+drag. Or any other key/mouse combo.

If you drag using the gizmo axis arrow, then you get a perfectly straight line. No need for the WASD keys. It would be faster and, with snapping, perfectly precise to drag out a duplicate with the gizmo ... much faster than using the WASD keys. So, dragging with the gizmos and snapping, perfectly controllable.

We can currently, in GG at least, page up and down an object in grid mode to position via the grid, which is great and should be kept imo. But it would also be nice if in grid mode it snapped using the gizmo as well.

I like the Ctrl C copy and Ctrl V paste as it keeps to normal windows shortcuts. Makes it a lot easier to use for many users. Perhaps a Shift D combo to duplicate at the same position then you can drag the still selected objects as needed. I know where your coming from here, but I'm happy with the current system. Having both would of course be better to reduce key presses for people more used to the program.

Not sure about Lee's answer to my question about terrain. When I typed limitless, I didn't literally mean that, obviously; I was just typing the question as fast as poss to get it in. He did do a live stream or sneak peek about the terrain and how it could be tiled for massive maps. I was just asking how Max would implement entity placing in the map to suit it. Will they all be loaded at the start or stream in the same way as the terrain? Tis a fair question me-thinks.

Definitely, there is no reason to remove/replace copy/paste. As far as keypress+drag to duplicate via the gizmo, this is standard in many 3D packages, both modeling and game creation (within the editors). So, as far as level and 3D design, it's well within the scope of "normal" shortcuts.

I do not advocate SHIFT+D to duplicate in place and then drag into position. Why? Because it then becomes possible for someone to hit SHIFT+D and then not move the entity and end up with two entities overlapping each other. This is why a keypress+drag on the gizmo (such as CTRL+drag or whatever) works because nothing happens unless you click AND drag one of the gizmo handles. Once you start to drag, the entity is no longer overlapping the original, helping to prevent the scenario of doubled geometry from happening.

I had envisaged that the duplicate entity would only be created once a space exists for it, I'm not really a fan of the current system where you can extract, hold down shift and place a hundred duplicates in exactly the same place!

Many times I've moved an entity and found another one underneath.

@dvader - that was what my question re terrain was trying to get at - don’t think I phrased it well on the live stream

Cheers.

@cybernescence. Same here I typed it in quick last minute as I joined almost at the end, due to real life interruptions grrr lol. You had got in before me Although someone grabbed my post and spammed it like mad at the end, so I guess it was a popular question with that dude.

I'm hoping the large terrain size has not been dropped since it was shown. Just wanted to know how entities would be handled in relation to having a big tile based terrain map. If they can stream in like the terrain was shown to do, great! If not, then at least we know Certainly worth attempting though Be a big plus on the box.

Regarding duplicating objects Shift D was an example that would please Blender users only lol. Shift and drag the mouse would be fine Blender has fried my mind with its changes of late, I mean really, I trained for years to get used to right clicking to select stuff, and NOW they change it! About time, but years too late grumble, grumble...

@DVader - You can change it back in preferences (speaking of Blender). Go to Edit>Preferences. Then go to Keymap. At the very top it allows you to choose Select with Mouse Button Left/Right.

Hi,

This is a test with GG Max Alpha 6 : EBE building (with the nice new materials) + sphere(s) (uv mapped mesh created with Wings 3D - PBR textures created with ShaderMap Pro).
Real time rendering is quite good with the shadows.

@mikeven
Nice looking scene you have there

Synchromesh, thank you for your appreciation

Here is a screen capture from an experiment with Game Guru Alpha 6.1 :
Walls created with MetaSequoia 4 Pro (texture Gltf) -> export in FBX 2020 format.
Ground with EBE.
Furniture provided with GG installer.