Hi All,

Where is the recording of the live broadcast from today:


And for those questions I could not answer in the time allowed, here they are:

Q> Will max allow you to have custom movement methods?
A> If you can expand on this question, I would be happy to answer.

Q> Can we make level tab in standalone like if we have to include 6 or 7 levels?
A> There are no plans to have all the levels listed in the standalone main menu for the user to select. This is something that perhaps could be done down the road once we have an early version of your menu maker created.

Q> Will we be able to adjust the player's height? He looks 7 ft. tall right now in the demo, haha.
A> There are no plans to adjust the player's height, mainly as all the other objects we provide as stock assume a certain height so you can fit through doors, pick up things, operate buttons, etc. Perhaps you mean small adjustments, i.e. 4ft through to 8ft?

Thanks for all your questions, and I look forward to answering more next week!

is this in VR? haven't tried VR in max yet but yes, there definitely needs to be a way to adjust the player's height in VR mode @Lee

i can't say i've ever felt tall in the normal play mode, it's normally the opposite and you feel too short because the camera is more focused around the gun height.. so you end up looking at door handles etc straight on.

VR seems fine to me as far as Height goes ..
looked really good in fact

For VR the ability to change the player height is essential.

Yes, I meant within reason, of course. I feel like this isn't really a "feature" request so much as something that should just be there as a given, really; "adjustcameraheight" or "cameraheight=50" (50 being default, then up to 100 or down to 0)? I'm not a programmer so I don't know the proper jargon, but yeah.


The ability to change the camera's field of view to a point in which you can see parts of the player's arms that you're never supposed to see extended WAY out in front of you is already in there, so why not also give everyone an additional slider in that same window to slightly bump up or lower the player's height, and let them figure out for themselves how much tolerance they have to play around with to fit through all of the stock assets they add to their levels?


EDIT: I am really happy to hear that we'll be getting much more control over the flashlight's functions this time around, Lee, so thank you for taking time to answer all of my questions each week.

Yet ironically hardly any do .. Set position maybe if your sitting or standing but not how tall the player is.
That's usually set by your Guardian setup. Unless i have been missing something.

recommend a height setting when in VR mode, something like VR_PlayerHeight = <value> or similar. I guess it's not in their plans though

What i mean is one thing the VR headset does do is set your floor level on setup. You know if your not accurate if your sunk in the ground or feel like your floating. The floor level is the floor level. Whoever wears the headset will see it naturally no matter what game, Any external commands like VR_PlayerHeight would just mess up the setting.
Its all very Holodeck and still blows me away

It would definitely be a good idea to be able to adjust the player height/size. You may want a game where you are a giant or a mouse. Its certainly a lot easier to scale the player down or up in this instance, than scaling everything else. Sure have the default size to match objects, but give the ability to scale your physics capsule up and down as well.

Player height has always been too high, even in classic, for example the EBE walls are 100 units high, 1 GG unit is 1 inch, so that is about 8.3 feet high, now look where your camera height is compared to one of those walls, its very close to the top, i'd guess that the camera height for a game guru player is close to 7 feet tall going by that measurement, that's why i have always made my ceiling heights on my models 120 units high.

Gameplayercontrol.lua already lets you change player/camera height, doesn't it?

"There are no plans to adjust the player's height"
This is not true- crouching (already implemented) adjusts the players height!
"mainly as all the other objects we provide as stock assume a certain height"

Duly noted, but I don't agree, I can see the uses for customization especially for VR, where
that is more likely to be one of those game genres that could move away from FP shooter!
Therefore I agree @ community. Above is the wrong methodology to bind games into the
engine developers mentality box. Maybe nobody even uses any stock assets- remember
that in itself is frowned upon!?

Yes- someone one day may want to create a game outside the box where you play as a very
small creature- or a giant. But there's always custom scripting for that--
@Cobbs;
I'm sure the stock scripts can be hacked like we did for swimming...... etc- but that way doesn't
spread it out to everyone who might be interested.

I see what you mean, but adjusting camera height to give your character a different height isn't a hack. Lots of similarly important values are available in the text files, I don't know if I'm comfortable calling this an out-of-the-box solution, hacking, or even programming. I mean of course it's programming but it's also kind of not.

We're making games here, not using a level editor, so personally I've become more open to doing light work like this to get GG where I need it, without needing to script/code too much complex code.

Personally I've made my character taller since I feel the opposite, that the default height is too short. It's up to your taste and how you make the 3d space, it's a relative value. Also, I've removed the height snap when crouching, since it's redundant - the camera dips twice, once smoothly, and once with a snap.

Many things like this are part of GG's default workings. Jumping felt inconsistent and behaved differently when moving (etc), so I fixed it. I changed how sprinting/crouching works, changed in-air physics. Little changes that make first person games different from each other in non-visual ways. It's our responsibility to wrangle and tame this part of the engine. It's fair to want TGC to put more options upfront, but at this point only developers who work these problems out themselves will be releasing titles - the rest of us will be waiting.

@Cobbs Ah I'm an old school GG user and haven't used it for sometime for an actual FPS game. So there may well be something in the Gameplayercontrol.lua to do this now. I'm still used to using it when that didn't exist and tend to forget the addition of lua scripts for some stuff.

Still being able to simply scale the players physics capsule up or down in the editor would be much more like it than having to alter code. If the code is good it will work with any size automatically.

I also agree that in game you appear to be a dwarf, the door handles are practically head height and that can't be right! Those doors are big if we're already 8ft high!

@GubbyBlips. I personally don't care if people use default media. The term asset flip is generally misunderstood or exaggerated imo. An asset flip is when a pre-made level/game is released as a full game and passed off as your work; with no real changes made whatsoever. Making a unique game using default or purchased media is not an asset flip. The worst you can say about a game that uses commonly available assets, default or purchased is that it is not totally unique.

For simple player size you should not need custom scripting in a visual editor like GG. That is for actual programming languages where it is your only option, unless you have written an editor to do it.

There always has been, it's just the gamplayercontrol.lua is one of those areas not many people venture because messing with that script can seriously screw up the engine, and it's also one of those scripts that will redownload if it's changed, when steam checks the files.

Scaling the whole Capsule would be the only way to get it right ..
If your 100 ft tall then everything should change, Body mass, Stride and that would be the same for 3 inches tall.
Length x breadth x distance i think was the formula i was always taught.
Which is why right now its more realistic to rescale the models for the most accurate effect especially for Classic having such a small map area.

What I meant by essential for VR is the following scenario:

Nine year old grandson playing a game where the protagonist is supposed to be a 6 foot Marine. You need to be able to tell the engine what your 'real' height is so that it can adjust your 'real' motions appropriately, otherwise you can spend a lot of time jumping up and down to try and see over objects etc.

Another problem he has is where the hand motions aren't scaled properly which makes it awkward to manipulate large weapons or climb things properly.

@Dvader;
Yeah. With stock assets-- I have no problem that people use them.
((wait-- I do have an issue with zombie mobbie bombie levels!! Dreadful. ) LOL I hope they use them somewhat responsibly.

In fact with the free assets posted here on the forums, they have given me quite a bit of ideas (or I am going to try to use them where I can) in a game-- and definitely CREDIT the artist gladly for their generosity.
My comment is; I'm just teasing out the notion that Lee entertained the idea that stock asset games should be limited (even if just jokingly), and this mention of the engine being designed around stock assets! You gotta see the irony in that. I merely stand for NOT limiting options. And I'm poking fun at the idea of limits. Everything's about **crossing out** limits!

So then I also agree with this; "For simple player size you should not need custom scripting in a visual editor like GG"
This message is again to Lee that something like swimming (as GG is a game maker for EVERYONE) would seem that should have been open to access for the whole clientele, but the community or silent user would figure out some "work-around" to get these features. We will invent where possible if the need arises. But there's a tricky line here. If the engine provides certain things already implemented (and no option to turn them OFF) -- you might have redundant games across the board. If you provide BARE minimum features and no options to ADD features to the general user, you certainly have redundant games.

Fix: open up the options (options means can be ON or OFF) or variable so they can be utilized or not....... As many options as possible.
Of course now's the time I'm gonna plug spawning entities via script! Shame on me!

Question: For GG Classic and MAX could you please move the resume game button in the pause menu to the top and the main menu button to the bottom by default? It gets infuriating accidentally clicking the main menu button and waiting another 5 minutes for your game to load (as evident of BigFry’s review of Dark Skies: The Nemansk Incident), and the layout would make more sense.

-Outlaw Software

@Belidos "There always has been". Well no, back in the day there was no gameplay.lua file at all, it was all hard coded. I'll admit is isn't a new addition, but I have been using GG since it's inception and often forget some of the newer changes. I agree though, editing that script can be a pain in the backside, as it is always updated and you lose edits quite easily. It is not advisable to edit at all in general. Backups are essential, but can be annoying if you have more than one project on the go. For this, having projects separate, with their own unique settings is for certain a plus.
@GubbyBlips. I can get a bit annoyed at peoples casual use of asset flip It's been a bit of a thing for awhile and most people get it completely wrong. If they spot something they have seen before it's an "asset flip". In fact it's just a reused asset that the game dev has used for obvious reasons. I'm pretty sure if you wanted to, you could spot assets that are used in several games, even from top devs. Doesn't make them an asset flip, it just means they have purchased said assets without them being exclusive. Oh, to be in the position where you could get stuff made exclusively for your game would be wonderful If however the game is just using an included demo with a few extra graphics tossed in, or not, generally, then yes it is an asset flip. No excuse for that sort of thing.
@Syncromesh. Movement details are something that can be adjusted easily to get right. But that's no excuse for not having the option to scale your player to whatever size you wish, within reason. I definitely don't have a formula in mind to suit any option that can be chosen, it could be incorporated as a default possibly, but movement speed should be configurable regardless of the players physics capsule size, no excuses. If you choose a silly size it's up to you to figure out why it breaks But in general it shouldn't be an issue. For most things There's always a caveat when it comes to making games.

Scale and such definitely seem useful but still are the kinds of things I'd expect to see a line of in the lua, not a button in the UI. Based on the direction of Max up until the genre buttons Now I wouldn't be surprised.

It's not about keeping things under the hood, it's about not letting a lua text file seem 'under the hood'. That's the issue with GG is they are making an engine people can use as a hobby, yet the program begins not resembling an engine when they make proprietary workflows that don't translate to other engines. It's like learning an exotic instrument that doesn't carry over to others.

The lua editing system isn't complicated, it's just cryptic currently because it's not clear what lua variables/commands/etc we have to pull from. This is developing in real-time and is part of their work with the engine, but that's where GG will continue maturing.

Developers grab GG and have to make their lua scripts, their workspace, and their elements - then they get to work. I personally like this, it's freeing and makes this engine feel like other engines. Which is perfect. But if they move away from this and make it more and more like a complex level editor, then users will not want GG to resemble a game engine. They'll want it to resemble a level editor.

TGC doesn't need to do too much when it comes to teaching game dev workflow. There isn't a set-in-stone workflow and trying to teach one is going to alienate others in this industry. As well as complicate your program. The less TGC tries to hand-hold, the better they'll do at making an easy to use sandbox engine that doesn't feel like a program in the matrix like some of the others.

Who cares what small fry says, like really - who cares.

Put the buttons where you want them......

OldFlak....

Want to put mine in my car, can I?
Just kidding mate. LOL