I notice (@LeeBamber) that I'm still not showing on the news section. Not that it's any skin off my back. I do this for fun, but I wouldn't mind a followup so I'm not twisting in the wind (nudge nudge).
Official Game-Guru News:
This week we got a PBR update to some assets in the Sci-Fi pack and also a new 'ally' AI delivered via a drone. I'll be interested to dig into that one to see what's different as the current AI is a bit of a slush pile that can be difficult to interpret.
You can find the official news release here: https://www.thegamecreators.com/post/gameguru-scifi-pack-dlc-update-released-2
On the note of AI, it appears that's Lee's primary focus right now and so far I hear the results are promising. Those results can be found in detail here but essentially there's a demo level out there with a lot of cover objects. The AI *SEEMS* to be productive and functional, but time will tell. That said if the vast majority of users are claiming it's improved then I think that's a fair litmus. I watched the demo video and I noticed a few good changes, notably that it won't shoot through walls and will path far better than it used to.
What I'd like to see:
- A system for enemy accuracy; right now they still hit 99% of the time and that's just absurd.
- Better synching of the movement to animation, which often times is a configuration setting but should be the default.
- A system for enemies running away when injured/hiding/etc.
- A module in the AI itself that allows us to 'hook in' as modders, as it is it's more of a black box with a few function calls outside of it.
Now for those of you who are using the EAI Weapon Pack, which is phenomenal mind you, you may have noticed some errors or bugs with assigning said weapons to enemies or NPCs. This apparently is going to be resolved in a future release after verification by EAI himself.
Forum link for EAI Info: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/219912
What's good in the store:
You know I was going to say there was nothing going on and just move on, but this week has been a big drop of lots of really great assets. Of course as the quality goes up you may notice the price increasing but some of these are ... top shelf stuff. I don't know any other way to put it. Stuff you'd see in a AAA game.
Let's go over a few.
First of all, Gtox is really into fish... Well, that's true but apparently he's also into porpoises as well.
If you're making a sea-world game, this is probably right up your alley.
What's really intriguing to me is that Teabone, Robert Fitzy and Gamepoly (A new challenger appears!) all created fantastic high quality models this week. I mean just look at this:
I really like GamePoly's work, this is a new level of quality that is desperately needed in Game-Guru's overly-asset flipped environment. You can also see some new models by Mad Lobster and Pasquill at the bottom (the exacavator).
Not bad for a single week! Make sure you swing by http://en.tgcstore.net and check out the latest for yourself!
Third Party Applications and Tutorials
This week I was poking around on a project I can't discuss at this moment (wait till next week!) but I did end up at this wonderful tool - https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/
This is a free heightmapper that I found worked a bit better than the one for terrain.party. Definitely give it a look, the values on it are fantastic for use with the game-guru 'Heightmap to MDAT' tool.
Also in the forums, Wolf showed an older tool that I wish I'd have had in the past for my own imports - an import scaler tool to help adjust the scale on your FPE files: https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218348
And lastly there was a pretty nice video posted by Bugsy in the discord chat discussing how Mirror's Edge used lighting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0sM7ZU0Nwo
Free Stuff
Nothing free that I could find this week. Sorry guys!Random Acts of Creativity
So in the WIP section we have some things from VincentHendriks who continues his use of the stock assets in the only way they could ever potentially be used - as a desert combat game. It's looking ... well, like a reasonably good desert combat game!| Reminds me of the photos my buddies would send me from Iraq. |
It's coming along well, I'd say.
There's also a new asset flip for us to look at on Steam. Now I will say while the game itself was a fairly bland and boring flip, the demo video for it was interesting - the guy took live video with some basic video modding to provide a little more oomph to a Game-Guru game than I'm used to. That said, it's not worth the price asked for and apparently is a buggy mess.
See it here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/798710/Voltage/
Also another new user showed up, this time with an odd cyber-punk style game where I guess you're on a rooftop? He took some of the advice I offered him but it needs a lot more polish. Regardless though it's getting there and at least it doesn't look like the same old same old. I can respect the effort.
In My Own Works
This week I've been working on a special project, which but it's allowed me to focus on getting another segment for the book done - specifically a 'how to do a forest in Game-Guru'. This is a difficult topic that I think most will benefit from a little personal understanding on.That said though I'm still behind the curve here. I need to bang out like 20,000 words this month to stay on track and that's no easy feat.
I also aggregated all the new Lua commands since 5/12/2017 for you here:
http://gamegurureport.blogspot.com/2018/09/new-lua-commands-since-5122017.html
See you next week!
