I remembered today I pre-ordered this, but I haven't tried it out yet. But I was reading a thread on this forum and someone mentioned 25th March as release date?

So to those who have used Max, can you compile a EXE and ship a game yet? What about Steam integration (achievements and all), is it in yet as well?

Downloading the alpha now to try it out.

You've sort of answered your own question in a way:



MAX is still alpha software. On the 25th, it will be Early Access software. The software comes with a disclaimer that whatever you create with it should not be distributed or sold. And that's because MAX is still alpha/Early Access software. It's quite useable at the moment, though it has it's bugs.

Haha, to be fair, from FPSCreator to GG Classic, all TGC products have always felt like they've been in forever alpha or Early Access. So being in alpha isn't really a reason not to use Max for release. That's why I asked.

I'm more curious if it functions on GG Classic level, only better visually.

Anyway, downloading it in the background, all 28 GB.. and it's taking longer than it takes me to download a 40 GB torrent (with no speed visible). It'll take a while..

You can sell games usually right away.

I'm not 100% sure it applies to you or your studio If made over $50k for licensing using GameGuru.

Just double-check to be sure.

Peace!

Your creations cannot be sold or published whilst Max is n Early Access.
You can share them though.

Once out of Early Access, though, there are no restrictions. You can sell and distribute your creations as you please. There is no cap on how much you can earn, etc.

Why?

Engines are forever in EA. Imagine Unity doing this while they release another broken update (and they do that a lot). Hell, GG Classic still feels like it is in EA..

Because they and we don't want a ton of buggy trash games being thrown onto steam and giving Max a bad image before it's out of early access. The engine is not complete, they're still working on a lot of features and optimization, and it would be unfair to TGC and the community if the fist impression people had of Max games on Steam would be bad.

I know the reasoning, but that ship sailed with GG Classic. GG name is already tainted, so I'd hope they would wanna get more sales out of people who do get impressed by visuals (which do look nicer in Max).



Oh trust me, the moment they see same UI and AI in first few Max games (let's face it, most people will not change anything), the impression will be the same. If you go through GG Classic game reviews on Steam, you'll notice the pattern of what people complain about the most. UI and AI is always pointed out, visuals the next.

But, I am hoping TGC will finally have a hit with Max, I have followed them since "3D Gamemaker" so I am curious where Max will end up.

It all boils down to one thing.
Max is not ready to publish full blown games yet.
Its Early Access and still has a lot of work to be done.

totally agree. give them enough time and space to do the job.

True true.

Going through Github features/issues people are posting (like performance issues and re-bindable keys for players, complaint GG Classic games got from players), realized it would probably be a good idea if people didn't start using it to ship games on Steam.

GGMax is so great that users get ready to ship games after a few days of being released, even if the engine is not yet done.

This reminds me of a country where people were so far ahead of events that their builders started building a building at 12 noon, and by one in the afternoon they already had to expel people from their homes, because they had to six months' rent.

Hey, you never know, somebody could be making a ground breaking horror game taking place in an asylum or a graveyard. I'm not skilled enough to do that, but I have faith in others.

If its done in a few days believe me its crap.

No one except asset flippers and excited 10 yr olds (approx) who will be releasing a game two days after early access.

Releasing a game now? Why would You unless you have no shame and happy to sell an unfinished game

I have made heaps of content for max animated etc. I have been working on things over a year and still there are issues and things change then i start again it would take weeks to transfer all my content and i Am still no where near. So as i say asset flipping will rule on full release. Unless everything has been done in ea of which it will still need refinements and the extras and testing etc. So as i say any releases of games after full release within 2 weeks. will be pretty lame i won't say all as i may be eating humble pie but a well thought out worthy 10 levels game wont appear within 2 weeks unless its crap or at best crap

@ Harkin Hails M.

You are right. I also have faith, and would like that the user understanding that the engine is not yet ready, to make a decent game; atm the engine is just EA, and this usually means a lack of features and many bugs.

You say something important, and it is that you do have not enough skills, so, this is the moment and the place to use this delay getting your hands dirty with GGMax; I'm willing to help you with my limitations (these are a lot) of course, but this community is fantastic, and everybody can help you.

I've been playing with the engine for the last day and a half. It is very similar to GG Classic, with updated graphics and a few systems are simplified. The terrain generator is buggy if you try to customize your playable area much. Ex. winter trees placed while not selected, but a tropical tree IS selected. AI is still quite buggy, too. I'll check over in the GitHub, but I'm pretty sure everyone has seen some of this stuff already. Trigger zone doesn't seem to do anything - there is no slot to put an object to activate / deactivate. Advanced / Dev mode doesn't persist in a level after exiting the program and restarting.

It's all good though. I know it is a hobbyist tool, and it is EA, so that is to be expected. I just hope they can get to all the bugs and kinks in the system. It has a long way to go before anyone could reasonably create and release an actual game.

I think the biggest issue is the performance. GG Classic ran like garbage for me, so I never bothered with it, but I was expecting Wicked Engine base to provide us better performance out of the box. Lack of LOD's and/or instancing, just a unexpected outcome (I didn't really touch the beta, waiting for the EA release).

Also, I didn't know you couldn't do LOD's for objects manually (unless we can) in GG. I'm used to LOD method of Unreal where I could export models out of Max with LOD1, LOD2, LOD3, etc. states and have engine use the LOD's easily. Pretty sure I did that with UDK too.

I have posted about this on GitHub though. Let's see what happens in the next few updates, because with this kind of performance it's hard to enjoy working with Max for me.

time will solve this.

I hope so, cause time didn't solve this problem in GG Classic for me.

lol me too.

I am testing the performance of GGMax since the early days, even on scenes with 1 million polygon entities and 8k textures; I was getting around 60fps, with an Nvidia GTX 1060 card, which isn't too bad.

In this scene, there are around 600k in polygons, and all the textures are 4k

In 3ds max - notice the polycount



https://youtu.be/c28N7R8Vueg

Note: the player is killed by the fish before they even reach the pool; I must work on the level of aggressiveness of these fish,
this should only happen when the player enters the pool to activate the switch.



The same thing happens in this other scene. (59fps)
Here there are about 500k polygons between cars, roads, zombies, Z-hospital, plus all the environment meshes, and so on.
And this is surely going to grow, given that I am only starting to develop the level.






Here I'm just testing a rudimentary stretch of road, even the white line is too wide, but never mind I just modeled a prototype stretch of road to test the idea in GGMax, now that I know it's doable, the fps I can get by forcing the resources used at high levels; it's time to start modeling objects with less poly load and 2k or even 1k texture where possible, looking for the least possible impact on overall performance.

Performance is something that is not yet perfect and needs to be worked on, like many other things, but we can still do things if we take these shortcomings into account.

I have been updating a thread on Git about performance on my 1060 based system, if you're curious.

Would be interested to know what other 1060 users are getting in Max and what their specs are.