Hi All,

Here is the recording of today's broadcast:


And here are the answers I could not get to in the live chat:

Q> How long would it take to walk from one side to the other on the largest scaled terrain?
A> It should take about 50 minutes to walk the 5km extend of the editable area, and days to walk to the very edge of the known procedural terrain system (probably).

Q> What about the game UI system ???
A> The UI system for the game will happen as part of the AI work currently being worked on.

Q> Will the new terrain system change how the player can interact with water now? Will there be more options for swimming etc?
A> There are no plans for advanced swimming but you will be able to go underwater in MAX.

Q> We will have some weathered trees, such as winter trees to dress those mountains and valleys?
A> There are no plans for trees that adjust based on the weather, it would be your responsibility to place trees with snow on them for cold and arctic scenes.

Q> Are the lightmapping and baking options being worked on at all?
A> There is no lightmapping at present in GameGuru MAX, all lighting effects are in real-time.

Q> Can you randomize the terrain in script?
A> There are no plans to control the generation of terrain with script commands.

Q> What's the ETA on NPCs and Weapons?
A> These are being worked on right now, and you should see progress in this area in the weeks to come.

Q> Can we mixed terrain themes in a same map?
A> You would start off with the terrain theme as a base, but then you can sculpt and paint materials into that terrain for different biomes as you see fit, such as a frosty part of your level. Another option is that you have two levels, one being forest and the next being mountains (for example).

Q> What are the plans for the edges of the terrain as in reaching the end of the terrain will it have infinate seas or landscapes or loading again?
A> There is no 'egde' as such as from a walking perspective the terrain generates as you go. You can choose to ring your level with water as though on an island, and we are looking at the idea of projecting mountains around the editable area so the player cannot pass them and create a good horizon shot for distant terrain.

Q> Will we be able to use real heightmap data?
A> There are no plans for the EA release to import height map data. All the terrain generation will be done procedurally, then manually edited with the sculpting tools.

Q> Will it be possible to have "Biomes" in the game world handled by the procedural generator?
A> Each biome (terrain theme) already use procedural generation to create the landscape, and choose the textures.

And just for Kenzu who had many questions, I compiled them all conveniently below for you:

​Questionmark?????? When is gg max out?? ​When is GG MAX release 2021 or 2022???
LEE: End Of November 2021

​is there going to be refunds for those who bought gg dlc after they were told to work in gg max???
LEE: We do not issue refunds on DLC bought for Classic unless they do not work for you in that software. MAX is still in development and there are no DLCs being sold for GameGuru MAX right now, but will happily offer refunds if MAX DLC does not work for you.

​please link the forum thread under htis video ..
LEE: Added to the YouTube Video

​how high can a map be in km? and how deep?
LEE: The terrain can be as deep and high as you set in the procedural system, but generally you will have more KM high than you would underwater. The final values have not been decided as yet.

​they [the Classic DLC] look outright ugly the ones i looked at ..
LEE: All the Classic DLC we tested in MAX look much better thanks to the new graphics engine. Perhaps post some shots of what you see.

​Oh right lying is okey for a company hten (​about the dlc working)
LEE: It is not okay for anyone to lie, not even a company.

​it was ages ago they claimed they would work in max but its not the case
LEE: Most DLC from Classic can be manually copied over and will work in MAX just fine. Some things will not such as the old character creator objects, most scripts, and other edge cases. Those DLC were originally created and designed for Classic. Development on MAX is not complete so any judgements on old Classic assets imported into MAX are premature.

​.. yeah just because it imports doesnt mean the quality is the same.
LEE: Always true!

​not some of the stuff that i bought.. thumb down.
LEE: Feel free to apply to TGC for a refund of any purchases you feel mislead about, we only want happy users here at TGC

Thanks to everyone who asked questions, more answers next week at the usual time Wednesday 4 PM BST

Well must say im. Impressed with the terrain waited for this for a long time. So i can have an idea of what i can do and how i can create and what. This looks fantastic

Hoping underwater efx will be very good
Swimming im sure will happen.
I have been struggling to get my critters of old to move around the basic terrain so be good to see how they are on the actual terrain

I think im gonna have some very intensive trail and error over ai and my critters. I thought i could use the ai anx assign to my beasts amd away you go. But i have had a backwards beholder falling through the floor and my jelly cube as spun lile a flipped and span coin wierd stuff lol

Anyone else having issues with none biped characters

wow that terrain as it appeared was incredible, great work Lee & the team, Max is really coming along in leaps and bounds now

The terrain is looking fantastic so far, can't wait to try it out on Friday.

@Science boy. Not tried any animals out in Max as yet, but had a few issues with characters from other engines, but that could be something unique to those models. I've sent em on to TGC so they may be able to fix whatever is causing the slight oddities I have encountered.

I can always give a couple of your models a try on my system if you want. I have a few animals in GG off the store but not many, I'll have to try a few.

People aren't going to be happy when the new sewer DLC doesn't work in max lol. But It can't be helped due to the way they were designed.To be fair it was designed and setup for use in classic.Automatically expecting every thing to work out of the box in a completely new software and rendering engine is completely unfair. While compatibility was taken into consideration, only so much is can be done and up to a point.

I would say lee is being far too nice here lol. But that is just me.

Lee should just label the Sewer Pack ( GameGuru Classic Only )
Job done !!
Its a GameGuru Specific pack simple as that.


Even i cannot agree with Lee on that one .. It was always clear there will never be 100% compatibility and anyone with any sense should realise that. However 99% of what i have tried ( at least half the collection ) have been fine and any that did not auto convert i was able to Re-import via the importer. The Free Classic pack with 15 year old models. jpg's and old .fpi's etc is the exception. Anything in that pack that works is a bonus.
To expect a refund on a pack because a few might not work in Max is ludicrous considering pretty much everyone bought them for classic to begin with.

Thanks Lee, The terrain system is looking Fantastic.

Great broadcast all round

Dave

Looking good MAX, looking good!


When I muck around being totally silly with the grandkids, my wife will sometimes say "cut it out your being stupid".
Those questions/expectations regarding media are just, well, stupid.
Some media will work, when they do some will look much better, some will not - this is an expected outcome for rational game devs.

jmo

OldFlak....

There will always be some thing to complain about. Well as soon as the max terrain system is in and the gameguru store is up and running the max version of the sewer will be available there at the same price.People will likely complain about that as well as some money grabbing scheme. lol

See, this is what happens when you mention backward compatibility. You think your doing a good thing, but really just creating a headache for yourself!

I also wonder just how much backwards compatibility will be in by it's release, seems a halfway house to me and I haven't tried an old map since very early days of release of Max. Didn't have much luck then and I imagine things haven't much improved. But as I said several times when Max was released, is there any real point? Especially as it's hit and miss with what will work and what won't.

There's only a couple of maps I would bother trying to port over, but as they are all heavily script based and some use 3rd person, I don't suppose I will have any luck with those.

Honestly, I don't mind backward compatibility. I have on my hands a new tool with a bunch of new features to work with, so why mind about an old map, when I can make a new one with the new tools, and do things even better than the old one? but this is just my thought.

I also have a large map I have been working for a time, with all my effort and many hours of work, and I would like to just open it in GGMax and it is working like a charm without me having to do anything other than run the map, but this is no going to happen, though.

Or maybe we are going to need some GGMax pro version that forgets the old and opens the doors to the new, without having to constantly be held back, by backward compatibility. imho.

I wonder what big cities would be like, if they still had to allow the flintstones car to circulate, just to maintain backward compatibility.

Well, Hello all for starters.
I was (I believe) one of the first ones who pre-registered way back then/when. Awaited for a long time as did a LOT of you. Now it seems that the day is approaching. I avoided many comments during the "waiting period", yet I FOLLOWED ALL of the weekly videos and promptly installed all of the updates. However, I didn't spend a whole lot of time with GG Max until I made sure that there is actually a release date. and the terrain module was actually shown.
Oh my! We have a release date! How cool is that!
Time to allocate my time to GG Max once again. On a brighter side, I learned Python\Pygame and made up plenty of 2D games for the grand kids.
About 2 1/2 months away for some serious game design and of course the enjoyable part of bug finding. I don't mind it!
So, excitement is afoot once again!
Thanks Lee and Team!
Cheers!!!!

Is the update a late one today? Looking forward to running around some terrains

No update?

Could be anytime up until midnight or later if Lee nods off in front of the screen

thanks synchro, I don't blame Lee for nodding off, he is really piling in the work right now....

LOL .. It would not be the first time

we need a "Guinness" and "Steak Pie" fund set up to keep him going..... but I have to say the new terrain looks so impressive. I didn't expect it to look that good this early on.

Hmm. Looks like the procedural terrain is not quite ready yet. No update so far?
--Edit: Spoke too soon. Just caught that there is an update! Downloading now!

The update has brok my software, VCOMP140D.DLL was not found????

yep totally not working, missing dll apparently so reloaded old version via downloader and will attempt again. if any issues do inform here

may do a total clean wipe and re instal from scratch

Problem is with with Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013 and if you have active protection switched on..on your antivirus software. Make sure you have your antivirus software off (paused) when intalling these support files.
UPDATE:[u]
Still can't install the file must be an error on Lee's side, I get 2 files to update and it won't update (around 10mb)



Where do you find the error text?

Install Errors text file: contains one line: Download file failed hash check "àœ”/", HTTP status: 200, Internal Error: "None"

Obviously, in his rush to get it out on the day he said he would, Lee has missed a few things. I'm sure he'll sort it out when he can.

My install of the new build went well but when I put down a player start marker and ran the game it froze with no error message. Rebooting the machine does not seem to help. Welcome to the bleeding edge of software development

Has Lee updated and corrected the error as yet, not tried to download the latest Max yet. Will do when the error is fixed.

I tried a reinstall earlier and nothing yet.

ok, i will wait. thanks.

Unfortunately the build is broken, and a clean install will not fix it. Just have to wait for the next upload.

OldFlak....

SEAMS to be working now!

Not working for me...I now get downloading updated files 22.4MB 0/3 but does nothing then comes with errors!
I am amazed the downloader has now broken, the long slow painful process of checking every GameGuru max file on the computer has now got worse! Who would have guessed!



intall_errors.txt Download file failed hash check "Max/Files/terraintextures/mat20/Color.dds", HTTP status: 200, Internal Error: "Could not find file raw:/Program Files/GameGuruMAX/"

Everyone sees that but it still should run.
Whether the installation is looking for old terrain files not required or available in this build i do not know but like i said it still should run.

@cyber again you tread where others do not nice bit of flying.

Great start to the terrain system. However I fall through the terrain sometimes!

I just tested the new terrain system out on my home-built computer (I still need to get a graphics card) right now I am running a Ryzen 3 CPU 2nd gen processor with Radeon Graphics built-in (I know not the best but it is what I can afford right now). Below is a short video that shows what I am getting out of this computer. GameGuru Max does take a while to go into gameplay but with patience (a couple of minutes) I am in and walking around. The video was taken with my iPhone, keep up the work Lee.

Thought i would give the Navmesh and AI a run for its money just to see if it would traverse area's well and have to say at this stage its not to bad at all