There will be many reasons to remember the year 2020 and, for all the ups and downs, I like to think TheGameCreators did their bit over the last 12 months to generate some excitement around the present and future of our game makers, GameGuru Classic and GameGuru MAX. Before we charge into 2021, I wanted to post a few words that sum up the year and provide a few hints for the future.

To do this chronologically I had to skip back through my email history and go back around 900 emails before I found some entries for January and although this sounds a lot now that most of our communications regarding projects and products happen on 'TeamWork' (our project management system) think of those 900 emails as the very tip of a very large all-consuming iceberg!

JANUARY - At the start of the year we announced Operation Bug-Free and the ambitious task of fixing ALL the reported bugs on our GitHub issues board. As it transpired this was a great initiative and by the end of the year we had not only fixed all the bugs in GameGuru Classic but fixed subsequent rounds of bug reports during the year and hit the zero bugs count three times in 2020!

FEBRUARY - In this month we started our pre-orders for GameGuru MAX and originated a look and feel around the new features we created for the VR Quest product the year before, including a new Character Creator that could produce characters which could talk, lipsync and convert text to speech. This treasure trove of features also included support for Virtual Reality on Windows Mixed Reality, which offered a great new way to experience your creations. We also saw the launch of the Sneak Peek videos that would eventually morph into the regular live broadcast sessions. To see the first every sneak peek of MAX, check out the YouTube video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD28Cm9kFfo&feature=emb_logo

MARCH - It was important we kept faith with all GameGuru Classic users and ensured that ongoing development would benefit Classic as well as future MAX users, so the source code was consolidated and a plan to release several Classic updates a year was put in place, with the chief aim to fix all bugs reported in our issues board, which we ultimately did with the last three updates in 2020.

APRIL - In addition to bringing more new DLCs to Classic, we also started making plans on the type of content we wanted to showcase in MAX, including our Zombie Demo set in a creepy cellar, and this content was tested not through our old graphics engine but the shiny new Wicked Engine technology, which gave us a strong edge on visual quality that really shone as the content was produced for the demo.

MAY - As we developed the technology and made regular announcements on the progress we had an offer from a UI expert to start looking at MAX from an end-users perspective to see if there is anything that could be changed in the old 5-year old UI we had been using for Classic. How prophetic this offer was as we came to the end of 2020!

JUNE - By now the sneak peeks and broadcasts have revealed more of the wonders of the Wicked Engine and it became apparent we had found the visual edge we needed to take GameGuru MAX to the next level, but of course plenty of work lay ahead to turn a graphics engine into a fully-fledged and modern game maker.

JULY - It was around this time that we had a pretty solid list of deliverables and we were underway creating the underlying technology required to manage the new terrain system, the VR aspects needed and improved importing capabilities. If you ever wanted to see warts and all progress, this was the time you would have seen it live on YouTube!

AUGUST - With the news that OpenXR was gaining in usability we made sure this was the technology that underpinned our Virtual Reality offerings. We even increased our team size to accommodate increasing development needs as we hurtled towards our September deadline for the release of a first version of the product.

SEPTEMBER - We had a good beta by this point, with a good chunk of the functionality up and running. In the past, we might have been tempted to release on the day predicted and continue with updates, but it was agreed internally that the product simply was not ready and, despite all our efforts to gear up for a release on that day, we decided to push to December. This would give us the time to ask ourselves what was missing in the product and address them before rushing into a release.

OCTOBER - We had identified many areas we felt could be improved and set about adding resources to tackle them. One such development was the full support of the Particle Editor system which allows a wide variety of very cool and fast particle effects. Such a feature would further help on the visuals side and provide a great customizable feature for users.

NOVEMBER - Even at this point it was only a background thought that the whole UI for GameGuru MAX could do with some improvements as we raced to complete the remaining features for the revised Christmas launch. However, during the testing, it was apparent that having come this far, we could do much more and produce a better product if we sat back and looked at the product with a fresh pair of eyes. It was in this month we scheduled an intense series of internal reviews of the product, starting right at the beginning of the user experience. With the help of most of the team and some very generous outside help, we began the journey of a full UI review which subsequently fed into the functionality required and the 3 game types we would focus on; aiming this time for quality in those specific themes.

DECEMBER - As we completed a first run of the UI re-design work and coding to support this in the background, we finally have a blueprint for a game maker that will be familiar to existing GameGuru users but much more powerful and intuitive for a wider audience. We are very much looking to share this new design with everyone in 2021.

GameGuru MAX is my baby and I am super excited to restart the development in January. The awesome news is that GameGuru MAX will be getting a greater level of investment in 2021 as we ramp up additional coders and artists, and take the extra time to make sure the product is top-notch before we declare it complete. We are putting software stability high on the list and preparing a schedule of public updates that will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the development phase; with solid development builds for those lucky enough to have pre-ordered. I have been making game creation tools now for over 30 years and I'm putting everything I've learned into GameGuru MAX. With the help of my elite team I aim to bring you a product that will take easy game creation to the next level and give you the tool you need to bring your game ideas to life. It is a privilege to be part of this amazing game making community and I very much look forward to diving headfirst into the world of game making with you in 2021.