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Just a brain wave last night.

@preben do most of the new AppGameKit Studio coding, and also did GG Loader.

What about The Game Creators, Combine GameGuru with AppGameKit Studio for 3D, and as a Bonus a GUI system...

That can make it really one of the best Game Development systems around...

Just to have implemented visual capabilities from GG loader (lights, pbr...) into Studio version and I would be more than happy.

There are few things right now I am not happy with GG loader
- necessity to convert all assets from GG instead only assets from project I want to import into AGK.
- too much code is exposed, I will rather see my own code and script files, and the rest (from GG loader source files) to be called with simple functions/commands that are implemented into Studio IDE.

Though I can see the benefit in short term but long term personally I would prefer if TGC would leave GameGuru alone in it own little corner and forget about it for good. I know they can not because they did invest tons of money and time in to GameGuru but I really don't want to see any integration going on between the two, I really don't.

I would prefer to see TGC to focus on Studio and implement the features directly in to Studio rather than require to import-export from/to GameGuru. I would prefer to see Studio have it own 3D editor and then maybe an object oriented workflow where we could attach scripts to objects (both 2D and 3D) that we can just drag and drop in to our game and it works similar to GameGuru but with the ability to change properties and parameters that we can expose from the script similar to Leadwerks and Unity instead. Then we could have a bunch of asset packs similar to FPSC and GameGuru that is already scripted in Tier1, can drag and drop in to our game and ready to go. I rather see TGC working on this for Studio rather trying to force GameGuru on us. We might need to wait longer for these features to come to Studio but it is going to better worth the wait if they come.

this is only true if you point to the default GG media, there's nothing stopping you from making a folder for your project which holds all the desired media and then you can just convert that by pointing the set up to that instead - considering GG has no search function or way to easily find media i quite often do this when attempting a large project anyway as it's much easier to come back to a project at a later date and everything is easily found again.
but note that the advantage of converting everything is that you only need to do it once, for future projects it will just move them as needed


the intention is that you don't use the GG loader files but call your own functions / scripts anyway, you only change the settings etc and link in your scripts as needed - this way you can update GG loader with very little worry.


i could see AGKS getting a basic 3D placement editor but it won't get it's own version of GG, that would be a huge mistake seeing as GG is still really basic and it's been in development for many years already.

I did not meant getting GG built in or any kind of game engine, but getting a 3D level editor, ability to attach scripts to objects maybe and save them as prefab that we can drag and drop in to games similar to Unity and Leadwerks as a long term goal.
The point is, Studio must remain a stand alone product in my opinion, it would be a mistake to force GG on us. If Lee would like to work on some sort of GG to Studio export, it fine, but I would prefer not to see resources used on any kind of integration with GG.

I think AppGameKit Studio should be very careful about the visual editor side of things before it's compared with Unity, Godot, Unreal etc. AGK's strengths should remain in a solid IDE and a coding environment and moves towards making it a more visual tool are a mistake in my book.

AGK is one of the last pure game making coding environment tools around and it's popular for that very reason. To mould it into a more visual based system would just kill off what it's become popular for, an easy to use code based environment.

Build on the strengths of what it is, make the IDE rock solid and enhance the language and features. Please, PLEASE do not keep pushing into the realms of Unity, Godot, Unreal etc... AppGameKit can not compete with that. It's strengths are firmly as an easy to use coding environment. Stick with that and keep improving.

I believe that AppGameKit popularity lays not in strict coding environment, but easy to understand scripting language and easy to use code functions. Making it more visual will not kill its popularity in my opinion. On contrary, it will attract more users, because no matter how easy to program is in AppGameKit, placing and manipulating 3D objects is still tedious (blindfolded) and repetitive work. For example, I want more to focus on my game logic and mechanic, and not spending so much time in tweaking where is my object in 3D space. Demand for making things(games) done faster and easier have never been more important in game industry as it is now.

A GG bundle is a good way to do it.
An official editor is a cool idea and surely useful to many users, but it kinda needs to be optional and not a part of the core systems, otherwise we are also making life much harder for many people or even restricting what can be done.
At the moment AppGameKit is extremely flexible and has a ton of power under the hood that you can tap into. If someone is aiming for higher quality they need to write an own ingame editor because all their basic systems (lighting, post, visibility, LOD, foliage, terrain, procedural systems, etc) will be custom. So whatever the base editor systems will be, they shouldn't get in the way of that.
My bet would be on a GG style addon with an own editor or an include you can hook into. Use it or not. If you don't, it doesn't impact you.

Agree Qube_ and c0d3r9. I'm all for providing common tools such as the 2D scene editor and later a 3D scene editor to allow easier designing of game areas in a standardized way (meaning AGKS users can all become experienced and share that experience and tips n tricks with each other which doesn't happen when everyone is using their own custom solutions).

But that's it. Focus on the api and engine itself. There are many things that can be added such as 2D sprite pinning and many other things asked for over the years. I agree there's no sense in trying to expand into visual programming or prefabs and other things like that. If people want that kind of development environment as you said why not just go use any of the many game engines that work that way?

The whole appeal of AppGameKit to me was that it did NOT work the way Unity and other more non-programmer oriented engines work. Keep that. That is the biggest strength I think. Just focus on making the api the richest possible.

In terms of visual programming I would only like to have something like a FlowGraph in Leadwerks. It's a visual representation of functions as nodes that you can connect/activate by linking them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9oHRpDk44o

I think TGC would like those people and you to stay and that is why they decided to work on Studio. There is less and less people out there especially among indies who do prefer coding over a visual tool at least I think this is the reason Studio is under development to make those people stay otherwise TGC could have just release AppGameKit 3 with the new Vulkan renderer and save the trouble of developing a new IDE and 2D level editor and promise to also develop a 3D editor in case the 2D editor will be a success.

I guess everyone has their own reason to like AGK.
The reason I like it is the easy scripting in Tier1.
The code once and deploy everywhere solution that is the ONLY real solution if you want to target multiple platforms with a single codebase. All other engines out there do require you to change your code to a certain degree for each platform.
Broadcasting, the ability to preview my project over wifi right on the devices I am about to target without need to compile, copy and install on the device and I can do this even with multiple devices simultaneously if I want to is huge. No other engine offer such feature, even Xamarin decided to no longer develop their mobile Player that worked similar.
Finally, no 3rd party SDK and library configuration required just download->code->deploy to all platforms with a click of a button.
This is what I personally love about AGK.

But I also like it and I do prefer the workflow in Godot, GameMaker Studio, Unity and Leadwerks with the object oriented/component based approach, the visual tools and content management system that allow me to setup my game, the levels and content inside an editor with a few clicks and code only the actual gameplay and don't worry about that how to manage everything in the background.

Of course no one argue the benefits of being able to control how to load assets and when to get rid of them, when to switch buffer and when to render it and so on but the average indie game developer don't want to worry about all this and TGC have realized this in my opinion and Studio is going in to that direction. The only question is if people want to borrow features from GG using some sort of integration going on between the two product or prefer Studio to be stand alone and have it own features buil-in.

It is not to say that Studio will no longer going to allow you to dig deep and do everything in code if you want to. I am certain it is not going to change and all of you going to be able to ignore all the visual editors and content management if you want to and going to able to code everything from scratch just like now. I am certain it is not going to change but in my opinion it doesn't hurt to also offer visual editing solution and content management for those who prefer to focus on the gameplay only and forget about everything else, not to compete with Unity, not to make Unity users switch to Studio, but to make Studio users stay with Studio once they get to know it well because it works and does get the job done just as good as Unity and they already know how to use it so no point to switch.

I surely don't mind additional "layers" being available like some kind of Blueprints/FlowGraph visual programming system being available in general for AGKS. I do think the more traditional programmeer oriented and non oop / flat model api aspects of AppGameKit make it unique. It is very easy and fast to develop in for the most part. With the biggest obstacles probably being scene / world management.

I think there are many other things that can be done that would make the engine much better and more appealing. Things people have mentioned such as sprite pinning, easy 2D lighting, easy access to working with a model vertexes and faces and so forth without all of the memblocks stuff and just many more things that would make a huge difference overall.

The dev staff I think is tiny so they can only take on so much work. Unless they contract it all out. So that's the main reason I (and I'd guess some others) aren't super supportive of things like Visual Programming. I'd like to see the internals become super good first. Flesh out the engine and api. Make it such a rich feature set and api that it allows us to easily do most anything we want to do from 2D lighting to sprite pinning to 3D object creation and realtime deformation etc. Complete these 2D and 3D scene editors. Then with that foundation sure look at things like Visual Programming.

I'dd love to see a 3d scene/placement editor incorporated into Studio.
As long as it wouldn't completely take over AppGameKit I do not see any harm in it, actually more likely to win over new audiences.

Right now for object placement you have to write your own placement editor or put things in blindfolded. Basically a trial and error practice.
Nothing wrong with that, but if everybody needs to do that, we are all re-inventing the wheel every time and thus wasting time imho.

Seconded!

What I could imagine, are some more EXAMPLES showing, how to load maybe a GameGuru Level or only the Objects of GameGuru.

Or showing, what can be done with the Open Source First Person Shooter Creator (Classic) models and model packs.

Some examples for a JSON 3D objects in place loaded, maybe a plane, a cube, a soldier, if there is no other mascot at TGC and how to move them arround like the Ragdoll example. I guess, there are some good examples, but some hints here and there for a little bit more complex 3D stuff would be also nice.
Since we have this scene editor in 2D with layers, maybe it would be possible, to script a plugin for that and maybe change the output. E.g. not a 2D sprite on position X, Y, but a 3D model object instance on X, Z and Y is the same. Depends, if you want to create a sidescroller plattformer, top down Diablo like 3D game or an EGO shooter with a FPS camera.
I guess, it would be possible, to have some good and not to complex examples also for 3D. I also guess, that was the Retro game competition for, where we all didn't send in a finished game