Hi All,

Here is the recording of today's broadcast:


And here are your live chat answers:

Q> Can enemies jump, climb, swim, etc?
A> Currently enemies cannot jump, climb or swim. They are pretty much land creatures right now until we get the basics correct. No point putting enemies on rooftops until they can survive on the ground.

Q> Can we allocate different sounds to different painted terrain?
A> Each material provided to paint the terrain will have the correct sound associated with it for the footfalls. There will be no option in the EA release to change the preset terrain textures.

Q> Will we get ambient occlusion and wicked's voxel-based global illumination?
A> There are no plans to add ambient occlusion or voxel GI in the EA version. We are however very closely tied to Wicked Engine and will be looking for the right times to introduce new features found in this excellent graphics engine.

Q> Are there any major optimizations coming? MAX can chug quite even on good hardware well above min spec?
A> Yes, we have identified some areas that will need speeding up before the release, but if you can be specific in our issues board so we can reproduce, that will help a lot.

Q> When building a game can you adjust the view to lit, wireframed....etc?
A> There are no controls to change the rendering modes of the software, only the finished visual. Please provide some usage cases why this would be needed for most game makers.

Q> Will MAX be compatible with Oculus quest 2 or Index?
A> There are no plans to support Oculus Quest as it is an Android platform, but we will be supporting the Valve Index when we add VR in 2022.

Q> Will there be some sort of water or liquid shader to make a model appear liquidity. Like a bathtub with a dirty water model in it?
A> There are no plans to add a water shader for specific objects, the only water shader in the EA version is used for the water plane in the terrain.

Q> How is the soldier AI progressing and what method will this use?
A> The soldier AI will undergo many iterations as we bring in more animations, and refine their behavior of them in different scenarios. Writing smart game bots is not easy, but we understand it is more a process of continual iteration to get it working well for generic scenarios.

Q> When a player walks downward on terrain it is jerky and jumpy, would the smoothness be looked at before launch?
A> I am not aware of an issue board report on this, but I have seen this happen. Can you post an issue on our board so we do not overlook this, good point!

Q> Will there be any discount on launch?
A> I am not aware of any launch discounts planned, you will need to write into our support system as that will get you to the sales side of TGC

Q> Are we going to be able to paint puddles on the ground? wet mud?
A> There are no plans to 'paint' puddles or wet patches, but you can select a number of puddle objects from the MAX Collection of assets, which can be reflective and look pretty good.

Q> Can you add dismemberment or at least beheading (with headshots) to the characters, especially for zombies?
A> There are no plans to add 'ultra violent' asset content at this time, we want to keep the game maker as family-friendly as possible.

Q> Can I use a Frozen screen and shoot free with my mouse. So the screen doesn't move when I move my mouse?
A> There are no features in GameGuru MAX to freeze the screen and free up the mouse point to shoot. We are pretty much focused on perfecting the first-person experience which keeps the shooting to the center of the screen. If you have usage scenarios that you feel belong in the shooter genre of games, please do post your ideas so we can consider them, or add as a feature request in our GitHub issues board.

Thanks for all your questions, more answers for you next Wednesday 4 PM GMT

@LeeBamber
It will work on the Quest via OpenXR on steam like it did before right ?

15:44 - The question about colour blind colours refers to the increasingly common practice in modern games to provide adaptations for gamers with colour blindness. In games such as Battlefront and Doom, this is done using toggleable full screen filter effects which apply to the whole image, often squeezing the game's colour palette into two narrow hues in an effort to make everything more readable. This is not recommended.

In practice, everyone's eye condition is different, and since normal life isn't seen through a filter, most gamers with colour blindness are OK with a game that renders everything in the colours that were originally intended, provided (and this is crucial) the game additionally offers ways to customise the colours of certain in-game elements from a settings menu. An example might be a enemy health bar, which a colour blind player may wish to customise from its normal green colour to a bold pink to make it stand out more.

In Game Guru, we already have lua commands that can change the colour of text and of sprites. A useful adaptation for Game Guru Max would be a lua command that defines a colour as 'editable' by the player, which would then be listed in an options menu somewhere.

Sadly, most developers aren't going to bother with that though, so it's probably more effort than its worth to implement the back-end into Max. It's also worth noting that accessible game design isn't just about a colour swatch in an options menu; using shapes and text over colour is a more effective and universal way of distinguishing one piece of information from another, as is making sure to have appropriate contrast between text, icons, and backgrounds. All of that is really up to the users of Max rather than Max's own developers.

Further reading/watching:
https://www.gamersexperience.com/colorblind-accessibility-in-video-games-is-the-industry-heading-in-the-right-direction/
https://igda-gasig.org/how/platform-level-accessibility-recommendations/do-not-implement-colorblind-filters/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrqdU4cZaLw

AE

I don't really get this answer. I mean the player is already shooting a gun and killing people. There are military assets, weapons, knives, explosives, etc. The default GameGuru type game ain't Hello Kitty Island Adventure. No one is gonna say killing a bunch of dudes with an AK47 is much more family friendly then killing a bunch of dudes with an AK47, but landing a headshot explodes their head.

Play any modern shooter like Wolfenstein and you know what feels really good. When you land that headshot and enemies head just pops into a giblity mess. Going HAM with a shotgun with arms and legs just blowing off. Immersion. AND It's rewarding, fun, adds a hint of realism, but the main take away is really... kids love violence. It's why edgy musicians love to get that PARENTAL ADVISORY big and on the front. It's what the kids want. It would be a win-win for everyone. Also, if you released a Max trailer that showed 8-10 seconds of some bloody combat with explosions, violence, heads popping and limbs turning to gibs, it would be a massive hit.

My only comment here is
Splash sceen

Does that mean every game has to have a splash before loading. This can be a total killer.
Why?
Err asset flipping 7 yr olds amd the thoughtless game brigade will get all their releases out to destroy any chance of great games getting looked at. Once somethings been tarnished its hard to be taken seriously.
I have no problem having a. Max splash in credits at the end or a splash at the end which will be a full on suprise and that in itself will prove the engine and the game is not tarnished straight away

Unless the splash is changeable

Also the icon is that going to be able to be changed or is it a max thing

Splash is editable at the moment but there are plans for something so EA games cannot be added to steam without some kind of alpha or whatever watermark so Maybe Lee has that in mind for the Splash Screen ?
Im guessing .. Basically Steam wont allow them.

Then thats cool thanks for clearing that up for me

Even with the icon changed and references of Max removed, if the game crashes, will no doubt list max. Unless it creates an exe called the name of your game. Always tough to hide the games origins with this sort of engine.

The splash screen as synchro says, is there to show people that it was made in an alpha version. Which will stop the asset flips or at least show people it's not the finished product. I highly doubt Steam would vet it enough to disallow it from release, but I have no idea how thorough they are these days, certainly not renowned for it anyway.

That depends how clever Lee is with it
Steam will not allow advertising. They are not allowed.
A temporary hard coded splash screen and links to their other products perhaps should do the trick.
That's one way round it.
But to be honest im not sure what Lee has up his sleeve

Tissues would be my guess.

many games in steam started with unreal engine splash screen

Not talking about a Logo .. Talking about advertising other products

If you follow dani on youtube or steam, you will know they are not, as long as you pay the 100$ they couldn't care less. Look up the game dani made, muck and crab game. He intentionally made a horrible video for the steam page, and they approved it anyways.

If you haven't heard of dani, then you have really been living under a rock, you should check out his games muck and crab game, intentional assets flipping, stolen code, stolen ideas, ect, ect. While it is parody game developer of sorts, his games have millions of downloads and crazy amount of youtube time as well.

Here is proof, steam will allow just about any thing onto their market place, and yes people are going to release games made with the first release regardless of their being an alpha screen or not.It should be note, that because it is going to be first version and early access product, if there is any warning screen at all, it will likely change to early access instead of alpha product.

https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/256857267/movie480_vp9.webm?t=1635098741


However it should be noted, I am in no way against people doing with the software what they want to do, whether it is an assets flip, poorly made game or some thing that is just plain terrible. People bought the software and completely entitled to do with it what they want, whether it shines and good or bad light on the product, it is neither the users fault or the products fault, after all beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The real culprit here is steam and allowing just about any thing on their market place.

Their quality control is sus, however it is also a double edge sword, they only have so many daylight hours and staff to devote to the actual process, with thousands of developers, 1000's of game updates, dlc's and having to deal with new products and changes to product pages ect. It isn't exactly the easiest job having to deal with all these request as well as checking every single line of code submitted from the product.

Increase the overall quality control and higher approval procedures, you end up with discouraging people from submitting games, you double and triple man hours.It isn't unnecessarily a easy solution, to suggest steam up their game, every thing and any thing has an associated cost and if there is money to be had or saved, they will be cutting corners. But don't forget there is equally bad unity and unreal and games made with other engines as is with gameguru, it is a general problem rather then a problem associated with just gameguru.

There are things they legally cannot allow and they must at least check something.
Even if its just the initial loading screen.

Has the 11/5 update been posted? My updater says 10/29 is up to date.

No update as yet .. Lee is still tweaking but it should still be up tonight.

Legally ? Legally, what exactly ?. They are obligated to check whether or not the game works as intended, the game fits the description, and whatever criteria they may have.They arent obligated to reject or approve based on what the loading screen says, whether the product says beta, early access, or alpha.

Of course, the legal stuff, is stuff like, hate speech, racism ect.

And Advertising .
So you admit they must check for hate speech, racism then.
I dont disagree they dont care if the game is a load of turd or not and will still take your money.

EDIT .. Never Mind its all sorted.

Great! I have a game ready and waiting then

One purpose, find something, anything on the vast empty map

But that was what I meant by Steam checking stuff. Not realistic. No idea about ads or such, but overall a splash screen will only inform the buyer they have purchased a pig. Max can make some impressive screenshots that may well lure buyers into purchasing a game which in reality is just a nice terrain with a few objects plonked about. Ah, just the thought turns me into a Cyberman "DELETE! DELETE!"

Never heard of Dani though, so better go crawl back under my rock. Alongside 99%+ of the population

Have you created a standalone build yet ?

You have been the spared from experiencing the great milk vs orange wars, that's a good thing.

Dani's a GameDev YouTuber with about 3 million subscribers that makes parody's of computer games really quickly, intentionally making them as bad as possible. What a lot of people don't realise is Dani is also a serious GameDev too and has several high selling quality games under his belt under a different name, so we can forgive his parodies

Democracy is a delicate thing, and there's so many people that want to squash it under their feet.

With all this talk, I don't know if I (looking at MAX's Steam page or TGC site) would be a potential customer buying a DEMO that is limited in features (and has intrusive splash screens), or a paying customer that is getting a usable product? This isn't a game (though it might fulfill that role for some people), it's supposed to be a viable game MAKER. (To put this entire discussion into perspective-- Some mod on Steam told me that GG Classic (rife with bugs, but having no splash screens) was a viable game engine!) So I hope that is all cleared up before they ask for any more money from us, the public sector.

It depends on your perception of EA

What is Early Access?
https://store.steampowered.com/earlyaccessfaq/?snr=1_5_9_

It is as temporary thing while MAX is in early access.
The software is not limited in any features it currently has.

The whole idea is to stop the youtubers and steamer wannabees - considering the idiots out there in that category, surely it is a preferred option to just disabling standalone altogether.

This be the info presented when making standalone:


This is the splash in standalone:


Other than that it all works without limitations.

OldFlak...

Agreed.
The discussion here was never whether it should have a Splash Screen or not.
It started as to whether a simple splash screen would prevent early Alpha's being put on Steam.


Turns out they are.

Now they are, but it is not to say steam entirely incapable of turning a blind eye.....lol stranger things have happened. :p

Its not an absolute definitive impossibility granted
Nothing is.

lol consider I have a game on steam that was developed with unreal, that game to date still broken, only loads made with unreal screen and nothing else.


That said, regardless if it releasing end of the month, the demo level I have been making and submitted to tgc has me concerned as it made it abundantly clear max is still highly unstable and random crashes out of nowhere appear. I have encountered the ragdoll system tanking performance. Creating a indoor level is a mess and counter productive, take twice as long if not more to make a level in max then it would in classic.

Some scripts simply don't work at all, I have found instances of random navigation bugs occuring.

To be honest it is isn't ready even for early access and they are going to have a bunch of negative reviews and blame steam users as being trolls and unfair in their reviews. If you were to plea with them not to release it, I would hazard a guess they will do it any ways.

Personal opinion in having to use it to make a workable demo this week, tells me, there is going to be a slaughter on steam.

Agree - should cut-off feature addition and test & fix/tweak what's there for 3 months at least. A huge amount of change is evident, so needs a corresponding significant period of test and fix. Seems this is what EA will be used for and likely not everyone will be as understanding as folks around this forum.

Cheers.

Sure before adding anymore features and get performance and stability 100%.However it is nowhere near ready for that far too much feature wise is missing especially in the editing and level designing department.

I have actually gotten somewhat annoyed when I encountered the if you set all terrain sliders to zero you can't dig below that level, classic could go into the negatives.That is a real problem.Additionally water slider works in meters, do you know how difficult that is to work with, if you have a indoor mesh entity room that is two meters high it is either going to be full of water, half full or none at all.

Those are not so much bugs but rather issues with practical application being flawed and not considering how users would need to interact and use those features.

There is also a difference between holding off on more, then having incomplete or lacking features that makes actual use of the product productive, max is in that last phase, even for early access it isn't ready.

If you ctrl click the water height field you can type the height in and it uses decimals.

Might give it a try, but first time users will not know about that... It is little annoyances like that, it should be doing , decimals default, no ?

*Edit

Just checked the latest build, today's build in fact doesn't have the option to add a decimal, it is 1 meter increments, that is it.

Other issues as well, like zones borders follow the contours of the terrain when placed, place a mesh on top of the terrain, it ignores the mesh and follows the terrain contour, is it a programming flaw, nor didn't they simply not consider a zone might be placed inside of a building.It is things like that, that has me wondering, whether or not they actually test features added to the point that they can break it.

I agree on many parts.
They have to be honest done amazing, the guys have excelled with max. The terrain is huge and 400000 trees i have a village of high poly models and about 4 zombies going around attacking and chasing me and yet the frame rate is 60fps
I have a zen5 and a gtx 970 16ram so i aint on a huge system and i have 15 plus enterable houses with windows in lights and zombies that walk around fantastic

However i dont feel they should rush a release out just yet. Sooo much to sort out. We are still only on a 2. 5km map and no grass yet and a lot of logic unavailable. I cant run my beasts I created and no ai template for none biped as in a flying demon etc. Spiders just animate. So does my floating eye the ability to put anims to a working ai is not there yet can't wait till it does as that will open up the biggest can of whoopass this side of max. So i think there is so much to do and steam should be left alone till its ready for the mockers of youtube to not be able to destroy it. Classic has got a good ratimg now but it took years of lee combing and defending and tending to the teens of hell rather than the community. Once steam comes in the game goes the way of too much input of the teens and then prioritise wrong areas and then sales fall and mocking and anger and the guys here get left behind for steam tendering and silly ideas that take up more time than actual solid functioning they need to nurture the beast here further to lessen the bad impact of steam and the brat nation of teens

You're right, it only goes by full meters now, that must have changed recently because i literally tried it when you posted that it was only meters and it worked then.

OK worked it out. You can still choose decimals, but only in the level creation menu when you first create a new level ...

That is a bit pointless then.....Again TGC focusing on the outdoor aspects and ignoring indoor, much like they did with classic which for the most part is still outdoor engine.IDk they really should be a level designer on their team, during a development phase at least o push the engine, as well as give feedback on any features added that is counter intuitive to design like water being essentially useless for indoor use.

Rendering engine is great and all, but if you don't have the ability to tweak features better you are going to miss the mark a lot.Really only started to notice these little niggles when building a fully fledged level.It still has a long, way to go before being usable.

As usual it is a case of great ideas but poorly implemented.

"Other than that it all works without limitations."
My money trees in the backyard have no limitations and covers the roof every night with crisp bills to keep us warm!
Huh? We have no game engine when splash screens like that are attached. Like I said- a demo. A 'splash screen' could be postage stamp sized in the bottom corner and visible for the first 5 minutes the game is running;
GGMAX
test/ 2021
first run

>>Lee- ya'all doing hard work, but I always have some comment- don't I? <<
It will be another year then until MAX will be available to develop games in. That's a disappointment seeing how they developed the engine-- more interested in showing something every week than sitting down and concocting a market forward strategy plan. AI / Character Creator for example should have been by a separate team, it's a completely independent system not entitled to even exist in many a game, so if it never came out until mid 2022 I sure wouldn't have been hurt since it has nothing to do with modern projects The little tweaks that help build levels though nice to see, but don't effect map to map compatibility should have waited till AFTER GGMAX 1.0) All we needed to start is basic terrain and script spawned entities. (half-joking).

Having the version tiers, no splash screens would have been better; GGMAX 0.5 (all features including stand- alone bug free, even if those features are VERY sparse like just the lighting correct and scripts GOOD. But maybe could have come out in July/August or something so we start early running MAX in the real world). GGMAX 0.7 (Copy and Paste added, optimized graphics, a,b,c added. ) Always Stand-alone verified 99% bug-free.) GGMAX 0.8 ( Storyboard added, d,e,f added. ) Still verifying stand- alone is ( Check v/ ). GGMAX 0.9 (Terrain, g, h , i etc) And still can make stable games w/ stand-alone.) Finally GGMAX 1.0 ( ~02/2022? ) with the current features and stand- alones verified. GGMAX 1.3, 1.5, 1.7 during 2022.... would be the little perks that we currently see but more bugging tests would have been achievable since GG 1.0 was already released, so less pressure to push them out.
Hmmm... an earlier release could have occurred incrementally and a dedicated debugging team woulda been great (Well- I know this is GGIndie not Disney!) So, I'll keep plugging along in old GGjr while I read C# material.

Read the splash - it is temporary!

And if you really want to publish a game with an incomplete engine - email support.

It really is not that hard.

OldFak...

"Read the splash - it is temporary!"

Right- this is understood. This software is ready or it's not ready for release. I said a year ago they need a few months of testing with the release version- before release. I hope they make it ABSOLUTELY CLEAR up front and center notated (on Steam/ TGC website before people purchase). So our group will keep following from the sidelines while they play games and release their test demo. Here I'm saying that all these issues people are mentioning (minus standalone integrity) aren't a problem for some people because they less likely use any of the stock scripts or FPS nonsense GG "includes". Some people just want a engine that has the usual terrain, sky-box and renders entities properly while compiling tight stand-alones!

"email support... It really is not that hard."
Unlucky mandate. Sorry, just not interested in a Humble Games type application process. https://support.humblebundle.com/hc/en-us/articles/204303718-Submitting-Your-Game-To-Humble-Bundle

Since I'm trying to be a good, helpful respondent, I would mention that even if it's temporary, this makes me nervous for TGC. Like the time they asked for good Steam reviews of GG Classic, it might turn the reviews backwards instead of forwards and more sour than otherwise. They might unfortunately direct their reviews at this mandate and not at the engine capabilities itself. What if the first 20 reviews are negative because of it? Backfires? So just be cautious when you set mandates. Best of luck.

Its an Early Access Alpha Release which means Early Development. So no its not ready as a fully finished product just like all the other Early Access product on Steam.
I did post you a link which explains it in detail which is what a user should look at if they are unsure what it means and is on the main GameGuru Max Steam page under " What is Early Access " So yes its made very clear
https://store.steampowered.com/earlyaccessfaq/?snr=1_5_9_
I would say the majority of Steam users will be aware what Early Access means and what it is all about in any case.
Is Max ready for Full Commercial Games yet ..... No hence the Splash Screen explaining why.
If you want to assume Early Access products are Demo's then of course that is your prerogative.

I certainly do not think Max is for you at this stage of development as it seems your expectations are to make a game, get it on Steam or sell it with no Splash Screens which Max is not yet ready for. TGC have been creating for 20 years ( a good few years before Steam ) and are more than capable of deciding how they develop and want to release their products. Whether its the right or wrong way i would not know having never developed one.

Quick question, if squads alert each other, assuming they have radio's they alert each other at any range or is it a predefined distance?

At the moment its done by Nodes and selected Behaviour
For example the first character would alert the others in the link.
No set distance that i am aware of .

That is a shame, I think it would make for much more dynamic gameplay. It could essentially piggyback off the enemy activation range.

As it stands now it is still more then amazing and will still create awesome gameplay but food for thought.

In my demo level I created, the AI is not to connected to any nodes, and still make a concerted effort to flank you and they even follow as well as gang up on you regardless of connecting them with nodes or not.

AI reacts pretty decently indoors, and detection distance is pretty good, I can't aim, miss the crosshair....lol

Those dying sounds are really creepy.

Agree with WOI
The AI seems to be very good on its own and they still take different routes to flank you whether they are connected via nodes or not.

My test did not involve any combat from me just checking they were hunting me down constantly with nowhere to hide.
They seem relentless.

AI still seems a little off, in some instances, but they are a 100% better then classic. Lol some people seem to think the death sounds are a little creepy.However it might not be a bad thing if the AI has some lines to say while engaged in a gun fight. I need back up, the dude has been spotted, iam dying, ect, ect. It would make a world of difference.

Thank you, @wizard of id and @synchromesh I really appreciate the clips and perspective. I am really looking forward to getting my hands on max, and to see it in action with feedback like that is a really positive sign.

I wonder, do some Ai act differently, like some caring more about their well-being and taking cover vs some that are more gung-ho and charge their opponent?

Sounded more like La petite mort to me.