In the recent Max live broadcast, Lee said the team has no plans to improve upon the FPS mechanics already present in Game Guru Classic, citing that Game Guru Classic is descended from FPS Creator and therefore the team feels they have a lot of experience in this genre. I beg to differ. Shooters have come a long way since FPS Creator first hit the shelves in 2005, and even back then the mechanics in FPSC couldn't be described as "industry-standard". We're now 15 years hence, and while some aspects of gun gameplay have been opened up, very little has been improved. Some features present in FPSC have even gone MIA during the transition.

I can think of a few improvements that could be made, but I really want to open it up to the community. If we can all collate our suggestions together into one place, we might even be able to convince Lee to implement a few of these.

1) Decouple arms from weapons
This is a big one, and I'm not even sure if this is how other engines do it, but it's so frustrating having arms be part of the HUD.x model of every weapon. It means I will never be able to use a BSP gun alongside an EAI gun alongside a stock gun, not without re-rigging each weapon that is, because the arms never match. Instead, imagine a system where you select your player's arms separately to their weapon. Let's say I want my player character to wear a snow jacket. I would select 'snow jacket' as an arms option on the player start marker. Then, I drop in a gun. It has been provided with FBX animations featuring an animated gun, but also a standardised arm skeleton. In this scenario, Game Guru Max is smart enough to fit the arm model I selected to the skeletal animation of the weapon I selected, maybe with a bit of inverse kinematics to deform the fingers accurately. Then you could have any weapon pair with any other weapon. Blue sky thinking, I know, incredibly difficult, but endlessly useful and functional.

2) View distance of enemies are too low
This is a hardcoded limit, and I get it was done for performance reasons, but the limit is 1500 units (38 metres), which is nothing. When I wanted to put a sniper in Extraction Point, I resorted to a raycasting script that randomly plays a gunshot sound and deals damage...all because I couldn't get a sniper to attack the player unless they were within the 1500 unit range. 1500 units should be a default for characters, but not a hard limit.

3) Lack of bullet holes
FPSC has bullet decals. Basic though they were, they at least made players feel like they had some impact on the world. Yet, they are totally absent from Game Guru Classic vanilla. AmenMoses wrote a script that partially addresses this but it's not perfect and I cannot understand why this feature was dropped from FPSC to GG.

4) Lack of complex hitboxes
Aside from headshots, every shot in Game Guru Classic does the same damage regardless of where it hits the enemy. Aside from being deeply unrealistic, it robs us of the opportunity of playing specific wounded or death animations based on where a character has been hit.

5) Dynamic crosshair/targeting recticle
Out of the box, the standard crosshair cannot animate or change. This is a shame because many shooters convey key information through their crosshair. Some games change its shape or colour to signify a hit, or display a different symbol to signify an ally you can't shoot. Game Guru does none of this, and although some of it is theoretically possible via LUA, it would be better to give the developer some control over these visuals in-editor.

6) Additional weapon animations
The current weapon system leaves no room for fidgeting idle animations or jumping animations, nor does it allow for transition animations between walking and sprinting.

7) Better support for projectiles
To its credit, Game Guru Classic does feature projectiles, but the physics on them is very wonky and they don't bounce, ricochet, or fall convincingly.

8) Named or number bones for weapons
This one is weirdly specific, but basically a HUD.x model currently is not dealt with in the same way as any other entity; it has no entity ID number and therefore you can't assign particle emitters or lights to specific bones within the HUD.x mesh. This means you currently can't have weapons that feature realistic particle effects or cast light in the environment, beyond a basic muzzle flash light.

9) Move gunspec properties into the editor
More of a quality-of-life improvement, but now that Game Guru doesn't need to be restarted to see changes to the gunspec file, surely it makes sense to bring many of those editable properties into the editor, even if only in text-box form.

That's all I've got for now, but I know there must be loads more. What do you think? Please post your suggestions below. Hopefully Lee might even read this thread if it gets enough traction!

AE

I agree what you wrote 100%.

I think if Lee and the crew can improve on these issues it will draw in a lot more people to Max.

"2) View distance of enemies are too low"
Certainly-- as is the case for most ALL objects-- needs modernized for
more robust systems, higher end GPU's. If you decide to make another
game genre that your important objects are intentionally distant, but they
become invisible too soon... fresh outta luck.

"I cannot understand why this feature was dropped from FPSC to GG."
You, me and the crowd asks this question regarding many features...??

It is. In Unreal, for example, weapons only need to have their own particular animations, but don't need to be animated to move with the arm/hand (i.e. move up or down as the hand does, or move left to right, etc.). You bring in your own weapon, connect it to a "bone" in the hand, adjust it as needed (so it fits in the hand properly) and can even move through animations to make even more adjustments, if you need to.

In this day and age, it seems really strange to have the hands be part of the weapons (i.e. if you have two weapons you'd need 10 sets of hands).

Fix 3D sounds, properly this time.

Also, the lack of any kind of projected decals in general. No blood left on characters/surfaces, no "scorch marks" left by explosions, nothing. It makes the leftovers of a battle look more like a peaceful naptime rather than the aftermath of an intense firefight.

There's a lot of other shooter stuff that TGC is faaaaar behind on too; stuff like bullet tracers (seriously I cannot find a proper game made in the last 15 years that doesn't have tracers for hitscan weapons, even Half-Life from 1998 has hitscan tracers!) , enemy factions (why don't zombies also attack soldiers? are they picky eaters? did they sign a treaty?), enemies that can use more than one weapon (Ex: Throwing grenades), proper melee hit detection (Right now melee is more like a super short-range gun that can only hit something if you pinpoint aim at it, realistically anything roughly infront of you should be hit, look at L4D2 as an example.), allied soldiers (The "one man army" thing kinda phased out in the 90's, you at least have SOME kind of backup in any FPS game made in the last 2 decades.), gibbing (you'd think an RPG to the face would leave some serious holes in a soldier instead of just causing them to limply fall over...or a shotgun to a zombie's head would do SOMETHING destructive..) etc. etc. etc.

I could go on and on, but we all know little if any of this would be implemented, which saddens me

This is a game made in Unity from one guy and a small team of contractors.

The game has some issues, but has the gameplay mechanics that we wish Max would have.

Look good no chance om GGMAX getting to this quality, but would love to be proven wrong.

I think all of us are for puzzle solving and RPG stuff, but I think game mechanics that Avenging Eagle listed is just as important.

Great post Avenging Eagle , all very valid points

Dave

agree, but these things have been requested since years, lets hope max doesnt get stuck in development for 8 years like classic
one my biggest problems is the lack of impact effects on the player

@fearlesswee


Okay, maybe the zombies being common threats is valid,
and the melee damage... lol @ exploding

I think Lee said there won't be a voxel world coming stock for GGM.
I guess game developers would have to build the models and animate
for damage effects- no?

You would need free access to script the camera, make the animations and script the actions.

As for the graphics and assets, graphics won't look the same, obviously different rendering engine and all that.The assets isn't a problem, things like the terrain would only be partial and the rest filled with entities, to make up for things like cliffs and such which gameguru can't do.

You will definitely run into issues, but far from impossible. Sculpting the randomness of the terrain assets would be quite the under taking but can be done.Nothing is really impossible but only limited by skill, imagination and willpower.You need to be willing to spend hours just shaping and texturing the terrain assets.If some one is willing to provide a budget for it I would be more then willing to take a crack at it

The more explosions and violence the better.

Out of the box -

0. Keybindings menu option in standalone games.

1. I dunno how the blood splats are going to work in Max but they definitely need to be improved.

2. Allow us to set in an enemy properties what kind of blood splat we want to associate with them. Right now any character bleeds the same red blood. Be nice to have black blood for robots.. green blood for insects and so on.

3. Dismemberment, not really sure how possible this is with max.

4. Allow us hide characters limbs, like we could in fpsc. and on that note limb detection. FPSC had limb detection, could use for faking dismemberment. Or have only a torso left of an enemy after a grenade explosion, etc.

5. Bullet holes

6. Bring back "alttexture = " This has near endless possibilities.

7.(this one isn't that big of a deal, more of a wish/request)
Some sort of simple inventory script... the saves variables between levels, like simple stuff like health, ammo, weapons, maybe 1 currency too. But most importantly there is something whack about the ways obtaining a Key works. Like keys that open locked doors. Currently I have yet to see a community made inventory script that handles keys like a normal game would. In a normal game: typically the player finds a key. Key goes to inventory, player goes to locked door, selects the key and the door opens.

In gameguru... Player kinds they key. The key goes to inventory, player can then "use" the key anywhere, anytime which then just acquires it like it would if you found a key on the ground with no inventory script. Which removes it from the inventory, but adds it to the player. So then the player can go unlock the door. Most players would then walk up to the door, open inventory, select the key, and then stare at the door and wonder why it is not unlocked because they just "used" the key. But it is also weird because if the locked door is on the other side of the map you can still "use" the key in your inventory, causing the key to disappear, even though you are no where near the door. The door would still be able to be unlocked by the player but it is just really strange the way that all works. I have never seen another game work like that.
But it is also the same way with ammo. If you pickup a box of ammo and it goes into your inventory typically that means your weapon now has access to those bullets. But in gameguru, the box of bullets go into your inventory and then the player has to "use" the box of bullets, causing it to disappear from the inventory, the character then acquires them, which doesn't make any sense.
Which if you have a game without an inventory, then the way you acquire a key and ammo makes sense. But trying to use an inventory script and pickup things like that. It is not good.

8. Ive never played a game where if you come across a weapon you can pickup your current weapon you replace completely vanishes from existence.

9. Above all else, please god, fix the length of loading times between levels in standalone games.

In GameGuru the key only works with a door that has it's name in the ifused, so if you change the keys name to "bob" and you have two doors one with the ifused field called "key" and one with the ifused field called "bob", you will only be able to use that key with the door marked as "bob".

We need a script that identifies which keys you have and stores them in an inventory to be used, and a new door script that accepts input from the inventory script.

Also maybe instead of a full blown inventory script, something like having some "consumable" item slots. That way you could have I dunno, 2 slots Slot 1 [health packs], Slot 2 [uber syringe]. Or whatever you want. Would probably be alot easier to implement and would work with GGs current FPS setup. There are user made scripts that are similar but I havent seen any with more than 1 consumable slot. Also none of them save the items between levels.

@kitakazi

I have 30 slots in my game. Which supports duplicate object types stacked and individually slotted.

I currently have these items save to an external file that can then be read from. Which in theory would allow for the items to be maintained between levels.

@Teabone

Yes sir I am aware that it can be done, writing to the external files. But I dunno I was just throwing out ideas, for GGMax to have something a little extra "out of the box." I guess something that would benifit everyone probably new users the most. Even I am aware it can be done writing to external files at the moment I wouldn't even know where to begin to do that (although I will be learning in the near future for my own project) I imagine it wouldn't be to difficult for them to implement a simple inventory or consumable system by default.

But at the same time, I don't want Max to get feature creeped to death. If there were no plans to look at the core FPS gameplay, and loops and such then so be it, quicker to a stable Max we go and that is fine with me.

By the way your inventory system is really good. Very professional and by far the best of the GG games I've played. Very smooth.

How about simple gameplay improvements? Like crouch doesn't snap to a lower view position, but moves down. Also, fix the jumping so moving + jumping doesn't give you a weaker jump but mysteriously also gives you the ability to double jump and so forth. A few aspects to gameplay in GG can be fixed and opened up. The movement physics and aren't great as-is and they are not easy to customize in GG.

100% agree with Avenging Eagle's list.
The ability to use seasoned gloves would be nice as well.

With alttexture and a good script you can mimic char hits, even you could change the appearance of the character gradually, for example, because of a virus attack.

By the way, improving ai logic/pathfinding is a very important thing, soldiers walking thru the walls is unacceptable.