Hi All,
Find a recording of this weeks broadcast:
And all the answers to questions we did not reach during our live chat:
Q> Are there moving dynamic lights yet?
A> Yes you can assign behavior to a light game element, and use that to control the position and state of the light. All lights in GameGuru MAX are currently dynamic
Q> I just saw you hit that "area of play" boundary that's FAR from the end of the editable area, are there still plans for the "rolling generation" to remedy that issue?
A> Yes, I am not happy with the imposed play area. It makes 'technical sense' but I think most users on first entering a new terrain will want to walk a few miles and see if they can find the editable border. My bottleneck right now is the navmesh more than the terrain physics, but both will need elegant solutions to give the user full scope within the editable area while keeping memory down and loading time fast.
Q> Will there be options to change the parameters for the tree instancing, e.g. changing the density, etc. or clearing an area of trees?
A> We are planning some settings in the tree mode to allow good control of how you want your trees to work in your game. There is always the option of adding single trees the old fashioned way but we will be pushing the 'spray tree' system as a better way to sort out your forests and jungles.
Q> Will we see things like waterfalls?
A> There are no plans to add waterfalls for the EA version, and the first sign of them will probably come from third-party artists and some nifty visual and behavior systems.
Q> Will game guru max have fpsc map editor?
A> There are no plans to bring back the old FPS Creator Map Editor system.
Q> Will you look at making the play area bigger or editable smaller zones with links between procedural roaming. of course after the release?
A> Yes this is something we want o to resolve sooner rather than later. The experience needs to feel unrestrictive and natural.
Q> Those trees look a bit stiff. Any plans for a basic wind shader/effect on them?
A> There are no plans for wind effects or animations on the current tree system, mainly focusing on fast rendered static trees on the scale of forests and jungles. You can still of course drop in single trees for animations for canopy, and you can trigger wind effects through third party tree object animations with a clever behavior if you want to put in the work in the EA version. We do plan to have wind as part of the overall weather system, and that will affect all nearby trees (look out for that in 2022).
Q> Have you made any progress with improving terrain speed yet?
A> We are pretty happy with the virtual texturing speed, and the savings we have made to render such a high resolution terrain using an optimized terrain shader, but we do feel there is room for improvement. For drastic reductions in performance, it might be related to terrain but not the rendering, so please do report on our issues board if your system is misbehaving with large terrains.
Q> Could we please have a live session just for questions? So many questions!
A> Alas, the Wednesday broadcasts will have to suffix for this year, too much development to do. Perhaps in 2022 we could expand our social channel activity if it looks the development is ticking along nicely.
Q> Will we be able to swim in water?
A> You will be able to splash around on the edges of the water but there are no plans to add full swimming into the EA version.
Q> Will we have fish as well as the animals shown?
A> Yes you get three fish included in this Friday's build, and all animations have their animations included, and properly named. You can play with them, and perhaps create some simple behaviors in the Advanced Mode Behavior Editor.
Q> How are the physics of building importing going as I have models I can't enter any. News will be good thankyou?
A> You have a new collisionmode value of 9 for "hull decomposition" which you can set in your buildings FPE file which will cause it to calculate convex hull chains to create a physics structure you can enter. It is not 100% perfect, but will handle most simple building structures.
Q> Will MAX ever have the ability to export games for other platforms ie, switch, Xbox? so on
A> There are no plans to support other platforms at this time, we want to focus on creating a quality product for creating first-person shooter games for Windows 10 and above, then VR, RPG and Puzzle after that, and beyond this, many things!
Q> Is MAX going to have some sort of bullet holes, i.e. on the walls.
A> Yes we have that on our dev plan for the EA release, and will detect different material types when the bullet hole is made on static scenery.
Q> That last person's question reminded me, how do you expect the planned quads for bullet holes/blood to work on terrain or uneven surfaces?
A> Bulletholes are easy as they are small, and can be placed neatly on most surfaces, even if the macro surface is large. Blood splats and scorches are not planned for EA for the reason you state, they would need to envelop the surface which would require a different technique, perhaps decal projection, but this is a 2022 conversation.
Q> Will instancing ever make its way to characters? so we can have lots of similar characters (even if they're doing the same thing) such as an army etc.
A> No plans to convert characters to instance characters (to build a hoard) for the EA version. Each character is an object with its own settings and behavior. Nothing to stop you from putting a bunch of them down to attack at once, but there are no plans to support vast armies of soldiers at the moment, nice idea though!
Thanks for all your questions, more answers next Wednesday 4 PM BST!
GameGuru Classic will continue to be supported with bug fixes and functionality additions.
