Hello
Recently People have started complaining about the size of Game Guru Max . I think that people need to get a grip on reality if your going to make games now days that compete with what is out there then you need power and you need graphic models that look the part. Most people that use Game Guru Max don't have the time to program and do all the things you need to do to get the current quality of games on the market. To me if your a serious developer and going to use Game Guru Max as your engine then need to get some decent computing power . Even if your going to not use the models you will still have a decent size file. If you look at Unreal 4 I believe the download is around 20 gigs and that is with no trees rocks or anything else. So considering your getting a bunch of trees and what not that would cost you a good amount of money its a good trade off. Here is something else to think about the average games that are coming out are becoming very large now . In the past the a average game was about 6 gigs up to about 12 gigs for Xbox 360, Xbox one the average was 20 gigs to 60 gigs and next gen will probably be 110 and up. I just read that Unreal 5 looks like it might be 100 gig install when its ready so Max is small . I know most people can't afford to have the best computers and the best internet connection but if you don't maybe making games is not your best option. The days of making cheep games by your self is going away and were really going to have to start looking at having teams of people making games. I know its not what anyone wants to admit but if Game Guru Max is going to compete I feel for what your getting there offer is the best. Right now if you just one person or a small developer I feel Max is your best option. But if you can do better for your money then do so.

@shivers
Sorry, don't agree. Don't get offended but I have a different opinion.
But first:: I'll agree with you! "The days of making cheep games by your self is going away and were really going to have to start looking at having teams of people making games."
True, it's very hard to make a great, fun-to-play game as a sole developer that must script and model and design and imagine and build all yourself. Agreed. And GG and GGMAX are NOT the tool to get this to happen (as everyone is deluded into thinking). You can of course have the same ol shooter as the next guy following the same routine as everyone else.) But who's so interested in that?

Graphics: They aren't everything.
What kind of games are you referring to? In my opinion today they have trashed game play and replaced it with high graphics. Sometimes is really buggy, sometimes it's worthless content game-play wise. "Back - in - the - day" game-play was a whole lot better than you see with these cash grabs of modern tripe. Don't get me wrong-- it's possible to get much better, immersive, story-rich games today than you could then simply because hardware is exponentially much higher spec. But is graphics the only thing that EVERYONE is looking for? Steam says NO! Some of the most popular games today are co-op with cartoony graphics. So back then, you didn't have the option of super graphics in previous generations so a game consisted of as much <FUN> as possible. Not so anymore. - even if the graphics are 8k ultra realism - makes no difference to the actual "game". I personally browse the Xbox games (or Steam) for the simpler, cheapest games that look <FUN>, usually more RPG / builder / Co-op style and am not a fan of 8k in-your-face violence.

.......poo- another lightening storm is coming, gotta shut er down and go. Will be back later.

............. told myself i wouldn't come on here to write these engrossing articles in the forums anymore.........
............. lol so what am i doing? lol ..........................................................................................................................

Short storm- good.

So as I was saying, GG/ GGMAX [out - of- the- box] has rotated their guns and locked down the knobs onto the focus of a single genre (FPS), and I don't think it's actually the #1 genre in platform that GG/ GGMAX can publish to. But then there's of course Fortnight, et-all. But look at the logical publication point; Steam, seeing as GG/ GGMAX has ONLY ONE portal to publish to; PC.

That means your options for a commercial release are limited. Though I don't think FPS is the most popular genre, *maybe* the PC is the best device option above consoles- if you had to chose just 1. Even when considering all consoles together. That's only from my own personal experience owning Xbox and browsing the store regularly, as well as looking through Steam games. Also a few articles I read here and there including the one that said people of India basically don't own gaming consoles, but ~everyone there games on the PC. India is a highly populated country so if we take some example from there, probably PC's aren't going the way of the gasoline engine any time soon (are they?) By 2040 probably gas engines will be as archaic and non prevalent as Nintendo maybe even Atari today. (Meaning they will be more rare than common). But like everything else, trends could reverse if in the case of a major calamity, etc.

Anyway, to the point.
So now we have to look at the ways to market your project on Steam; you can:
A> Self-publish
B> Publish to a games portal (other than Steam)
C> Publish to the #1 portal in the field (Steam). So that could be our best reference as to what people are playing today on the PC.
I'll just end with; https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/

What that shows is that graphics intensive games may not be the most popular games in the world. FPS combat may be down the list a few lines but people are social animals and seem to (usually) prefer multiplayer interaction, or at least level up your character, build a base, and protect your base, customize your world and re-play your creation, find great treasures, etc. There are very many kinds of people, and of course this list varies day by day and even hour by hour. But this list should get the point across.

Side note; TGC should look into any requirements GG/ GGMAX needs to happily run Steam Deck games. That would be an interesting discussion. Or it might not.

It seems to me that every console out there are doing their damnedest to give the ability to run PC games via their console or Mobile device whether through Steam or some other link process. Personally i think that's where its heading whether on a PC or some kind of PC Hub.
Then add to the fact mobile games are mostly created on a PC anyway and exported to APK means i think the PC will be around for a long time yet and a required platform for game creation whether PC or Mobile.

The last little Adventure I did with Unity Engine, had a size of 73GB.
So yes, I think big is normal. Of course graphic is not everything. But GG Max includes an asset libary. The game when finished will not be that big. But the libary everybody can use (or not) is it. There are pbr models in it and many more.

My Unreal folder is 14gb, and that includes a ton of downloads (first and third person controllers, post effects, sample scenes and so on) i've done from the store. My Unity (2020 clean install) is 7gb. So nope, not even close.

The library size is not abnormal.With multi texture support and higher polygon support it is going to increase.Additionally it should be mentioned the gameguru install is not being compressed and uncompressed on the target PC, like with steam for example. So you are downloading 1:1 copy from the tgc servers.

My current classic library is about 45 odd gig . Additionally some MAX assets and such have slightly higher textures resolutions in part due to higher quality assets and because of the VR. VR you ask ? VR are games in general need higher texture resolution, the VR game Asgard's wrath is over 120 gigs in size, textures just texture increased the size drastically.

I can tell you TGC is heavily focused on the VR aspects of max and have doubled the texture resolution of assets in most cases or where needed this has led to an increase in size.While you may argue that a packet of smokes is perfectly fine with a 256 x 256 texture, under normal usage sure is fine. However it is no longer good enough for VR games and what the focus of max will be.

With gameguru classic they weren't strick at all with regards to assets and had a certain level of acceptability. With max with regards to naming conventions, the quality of the assets is extremely strict, TGC has high quality control in place.

So yeah naturally the the product is going to increase in size.I would say be careful trying to compare with other engines as it isn't exactly the same as no one product is exactly the same or like for like.

Definitely in my personal opinion max size isn't abnormal if you consider all the factors

the size isn't the issue here - the fact you have to download the assets is the issue - imagine if we're talking about 100s of GBs or more here - the more assets get included the problem only gets worse...
i'm sure when Max gets released on steam it won't be an issue as it will all be DLC but until then it would be a good idea to include their own DLC type interface.
regardless this is already being addressed so TGC agree it is becoming an issue.

p.s. nobody is complaining about the assets being included, only that they are included as part of the "core" files.

i hope soon they are going to give us the option to soon downlaod only the software GG MAX without the assets !

And get downloaded every Friday!

Absolutely agree, but that has nothing to do with the discussion being referenced by the author (and the author of this thread is kind of responding to that discussion out of context anyway) of this thread, which is about whether we should be able to download the core engine and the assets separately.

My post about Unreal being only 14gb and Unity being only 7gb at its core was merely to dispel the misinformation given by the post author that the base downloads of those engines was in the multiple tens of gb's.

The main issue is that currently the download is eating up a lot of bandwidth unnecessarily, if the assets were separated from the main download into their own download packages which can be downloaded separately at the discretion of the user so they could download only what they need at the time, then that would reduce not only the bandwidth usage at the user end, but also bandwidth usage on TGC's server side.

That's why a majority of other engines have a core that gets installed and then additional media is downloaded as needed by the user, i know TGC doesn't want to copy other engines, but to be honest they wouldn't be copying them, they would be using common sense to reduce overheads for both the user and TGC.

To be honest this is not a new conversation.
It was talked about behind the scenes when the assets got around 4 gig in the Beta testing ring which Rick also had concerns about and it was clear this would have to be addressed eventually with extra assets being optional and just the core assets supplied on the main download.
It will happen hopefully sooner rather than later now

It was aked even in the last stream, at least I answered a question in a related survey, while in the last stream's chat.

Oh don't worry I am not motivating the size lol. I haven't downloaded max in over 3 weeks now since it wanted 10 gig update.I won't be downloading it either till I can select what I want downloaded.

Was just pointing out that software size has in general gone up and will do so in future as well