Hello fellow Developers, I'd like to share some thoughts that have been gathering in my head since the rebranding of FPSCR and, while I'm well aware that there are general discussion threads, I find these to be numerous enough to start a new thread.

Are you with me? Good! So grab a coffee and buckle up because this is going to be a long one.

1. The Name

I've always been in favour of the name change but never expected to like it. GameGuru sounds really solid and fits right in with other engine titles. The thread where we, the community, could suggest names was also a quite entertaining read, to say the least, and I truely hope that the internet-embassy will one day enforce strict laws in how you can and can not name a game engine because some of them where truely horrendous. After all that I was fearing that we would eventually get something as appealing as the recent call of duty subtitle.
GameGuru is all fine and dandy but while its tagline certainly drives the point home that its easy (which FPSC was in a very ironic and masochistic kind of way) It also doesn't sound lofty at all. All in all a good choice though and I hope it will make a name for itself.

2. The Marketing

Something I really need to adress is reloadeds ...errr...gurus marketing. After successfully rebranding FPSCR, that confused many of us for no reason I can discern, they also altered its head-description. GameGuru is now being marketed more as a sandbox-game than a game-engine/ development tool/game maker or whatever you fancy. I can understand the reasoning behind it and something like Garrys Mod certainly has its userbase but...that userbase already has garrys mod. I don't want to hide in any shape or form that I personally dislike this choice but thats not the reason I mention this, the reason I do is that I truely believe that this will horribly backfire. Here is a short essay on what I think:

I've mentioned numerous times befoe that there was a slight dissonance between FPSC's User base and its developers.
I still can't prove it or look in Lees head but I believe FPSC was originally intended to sell to teens as to fill the gap between The 3d Game Maker and the more mature DBPro. However, its uniqueness and ease of use has spawned a dedicated community of talented modders and modelers and it quickly spawned a lot of interesting projects, an absurd amount of free content that you aren't finding on any other engines forums and mods that took it even further. Thanks to TGC's updates and the community content it could somewhat redeem its original impact in the indie scene. However, all of that has still been built on the foundation of a simple "game" for teenagers and eventually crumbled underneath its week foundation. (the latter part is my opinion, an opinion I share with many veteran FPSC users).
The interesting part is that when TGC renewed some elements of its website they still advertised it as game-making for teens. There where many teens in its community but the more constructive members usually where not.

Why tell you that? Well! Because I like to...really... and because I think that a similar sort of dissonance is happening now.

Personally, I prefer game making in editors and don't like the idea of the F9 edit mode but more about that can be read in part 3. I also prefer to work with tools and make games rather than making games with games. There is a reason why there is a distinguishable line between what we call modding and game-developing. I also fear that it will harm sales in the long run. Its low-cost (where I'd think you could really ask 30 to 40 bucks! Alone the models are worth that and I'm sure the prospect of getting our criminally cheap assets will lure many developers from other engines in!)

I don't know what audience this is supposed to appeal to. I know FPSC's audience because I got to know them pretty well throughout the years and here is what I predict these different sorts would think of this:

I do wish to prevent that game-guru sufferst the FPSC trend where people attempted to hide or at least try to veil what software they where using for their project.

Lets start with the younger ones. The teen demographic I'm sure TGC is targetting is likely put off by this. The TGC Forums suffered its fair share of wannabe entrepreneurs below 15 that spammed the boards advertising for their bedroom/basment companies like they are Electronic Arts. They certainly want to use something they can show their friends, parents and the internet that isn't sold as a game itself. Same with more reflected young people. Most of them quite work for the reputation they want to get in indie-development communities and often wish to be perceived as skilled developers. You are having a harder time getting that recognition with a sandbox game. The ones that legitimately want to make a game might still buy Guru over other software but most also want to feel or seem like they are doing some pretty boss gamedevelopment. These are mostly kids we are talking about and the absurd amount of one-kid-studios I have witnessed throughout the years and how they promoted their content certainly reinforces my point. Playing game-studio is also part of making the game which we are now doing with a game!

Young adults usually try the big-name engines, either find their niche (modeler, coder etc.) or give up after a few weeks finding it too hard. Those that are finding reloaded ...err...guru will likely like it and I can't tell how they'd react to the new marketing.

Older users generally come in 3 categories. The ones that want to make a game, small or large because they enjoy it or have the same condition as I do will likely buy guru, those that want to showcase 3d models or other content in an easy to use environment might buy guru but I believe there should be more spotlight on the fact that its really good software for that, and then there are of course the actualy indie or niche (education, simulation, presenation) ..well small developers that are using for a fast way to make their game or prototype one. Again, FPSC offered itself to a few of those while game guru might not catch them as they are going to see "game" first and probably believe that it doesnt have the features they might need. "You can sell what you create with this Game Guru but what will my client think when I make my project in a sandbox game?" People like that might get Skyline, Torque or Leadwerks then as these are also very affordable.

Generally speaking do I believe that the lowered price and marketing it as a game will bring in more initial sales but lose buyers in the long term.

3. The Program and where it is going

GameGurus problems are not unsimilar to the ones that already plagued FPSC. Performance is much better but still not as good as what you get in other engines. Its already superior to what it was a few months ago and whoever demands to retain his framerate after planting a hundred highpoly, transparency laden trees might want to get his head examined. I'm fine with the performance if Lee and the funky bunch keep working on it.

Lightmapping is something fundamentally important to me and I'm worried about how the foundation of using dynamic lighting has been changed so late in development. FPSC's lightmapper was good and easy to use yet it ate away a lot of memory from the dreaded memory cap. Guru now has a bug laden lightmapping system not unsimilar to the static lightmapping in FPSC and the developers already had to invest a lot of time in getting it to work a little. Will we ever get proper selfshadowing and reactions to placed lights or even full global illumination? I can't tell and if we do, how robust will these features be and how will they react to dynamic objects? A lot of improvements have been made here but the final outcome is still unpredictable.

The whole sandbox and "play to play" kind of idea also spawned some atrocities along the way. I remember a minecraft stile hammer floating around in an earlier version of Gurus construction kit. Yes! Minecraft was a huge hit but its building system was an entirely different context. Copying its style over to a gamemaker is bold yet anyone I know who saw that video disliked it. I don't like the F9 edit mode...I think its counterproductive and I fear that TGC might be banking more on ingame editing rather than in-editor. Another thing that would take the program away from its solid editor roots that allowed for some maps to be made in FPSC that where putting a lot of unity projects to shame.

Iregardless, regardless and horse: Many betatesters, backers and users have asked for toggleable additional viewpoints (as known from modeling software) and I don't think anything in this direction has yet been done. It would allow for more freedom and speed than an ingame edit mode.

I also think bond1 should make a giant war-robot and a helicopter. Thats easy to model and would be a cool feature. Just saying.

With the steam release there is a bunch of new legacy content in-editor. The new medieval buildings are pretty great and I'd really like to know who made them so I could congratulate that person but having John Fletchers weapons in it now? Hey! The man made good models that are well animated but they just don't fit the software yet. After having Bond1's well integrated weapons we now have these that have misplaced textures and an animation that strikes twice while there is only one impact. I'm all for content diversity altough the retail price does in no way justify its absurd amount of stock content, but give the stuff a slight do-over before you drop it in.

Now I generally support guru and TGC and am optimistic about the final outcome of the software. I know this sounds like a lot of whining and complaining but these are simply things I wanted to communicate to the community and see what they think. Thanks for reading and ...what do you think?



-Wolf

I have totally agree, honestly me personally just wanted what i pledged for and after time passed and well
am not really happy with the outcome and not sure if i will finish my current project with GG but that doesnt mean that the Software is not good, it just means that currently it doesnt support the stuff i need and i dont have another year to play around.

But nothing is lost, there plenty of nice models we received and if am not mistaken we can use those in other Engines as well? I hope so, have to get a official statement regarding that.

Errants models would for sure find a nice play in my game nm what engine i finish my project with.

Anyways i understand the reason why TGC did what they did and tbh i cant blame them, they compensated us with 5 Steam Keys and a boat-load of models, foliage is especially a nice one.

Will check from time to time but from the looks of it it will take another year to really use GG.
Congratz to TGC and thank you Lee for letting us get insight in the life of a hardcore coder.

Very constructive and well thought out criticism Wolf. Thankyou!

Talk about long ones I am well experienced in that as you know.

I would agree with Wolf in many areas of his comments and some where maybe I don't personally I can still live with any differences of preference. e.g. the interface : Top down Editor, F9, 4 windows and so on....

I was one of the original persons suggesting a preference for "Real Time" development - specifically relating in the main to an "Accumilative Build" i.e. Map is saved and updated as you go with no need to compile everything from scratch each time you test run or Publish your game, and in editor live Real Time Feedback. I did also at one time long ago suggest Editing in 3D view but that was specifically a reference to an in editor 3D view window at the time which amounts to something of the same thing except I believe we ended up with Two programmes (Windows) running instead of one to achieve the F9 method or something similar. I also suggested allowing end Game Players might be able to edit levels, however I was suggesting at the time providing such a feature as an optional one only for Game Developers Choice to allow this or not in their published Game and not that the Game Developers output's only choice - that is - no choice.....whereas now I am not really sure whether or not there is going to be a choice? given that if I understand things correctly we may not see the developers engine at all but a Game Mod - end of?

Choice is what it is all about and the more you have the more successful the product is bound to be - given all else is equal. No choice in all things imposes complete restriction and gives you - well no choices so wont suit so many people. As apparently TGC have followed a line of asking the users what they want the engine to be and develop into then it seems that such has not been the case at this stage - or should I say the end of Reloaded stage as non of the existing user/pledger users many who have supported the product line development for 10 years or more at that time a few days ago were asked for an opinion even and GG was born overnight not only in name but perhaps in its complete base concept too. Only following GG birth do past pledgers and supporters get to have a say in shaping something to what is now possibly changed to be something entirely different as a product concept.....Now users may only have a chance to influence direction of development of a product that may be an entirely different in concept and not the one they helped shape to that time.

All of that is fair enough TGC have the right to consult user/pledgers as they see fit - they don't have to and that is their right - its their product and they have a responsibility to it and its success for obvious reasons. TGC also have the right to do anything else they want and develop the product forward as they see fit including changing concept, features or anything else they wish without need to consult users at any time and in any way, however that is not what they have and had based development prior to GG on but on listening to users opinion and needs as indie Game Developers....

Whats past is past. Whatever now we are where we are the only thing that matters is where it goes from here and what it becomes further and that is anybodies guess until it happens and as always everyone has to wait and see as many years more as it takes.

I am sure that wherever it goes it will attract some and not others and if end users find it not suitable for their particular needs as either an indie game developer, modder, hobbyist, fun seeker or other then they wont use it. They wont have much choice will they, and they will use something else or give up altogether.

At the end of the day TGC are running a business and the bottom line is that dictates everything they do, not the end user/pledgers. They only have a say where it fits into the plans of TGC and again that's fair enough. Quite often the indie game developer, modder, hoobyist and so on have differing needs, opinions and aspirations and also all might be entirely different from TGC as the developers of the product.

Suffice to say that else users and pledgers have brought us to this stage and not forgetting TGC as its like it or not a partnership - which sometimes does and sometimes does not see eye to eye. When its good it can be good - when its not well its not so good....

Reloaded had presumably done quite well as a product due to the partnership to the date prior to GG. That seems to be gone and we have a new approach and thinking on the part of TGC for whatever reasons. The partnership is gone and new partners and new friends are joining the scheme of things.

That's all fine and one hopes that the success to the date of GG birth can and will continue to benefit all supporters both old and new and yet to come....

There seems to have been a sea change in all things for some reason and hopefully that wont be to the detriment of the product as a tool and all of its users old and new but perhaps that's very unlikely. As always some will be happy and get just what they want and others wont. I doubt it matters to TGC as a commercial enterprise just who get to be happy and who don't as long as the product achieves commercial success whatever it does and for whom. That's the bottom line.

As I posted recently somewhere else success can be short lived when something becomes a victim of its own success.

Down the road who knows GG may end up being just what you are looking for on the other hand it might not.

At the moment I have to admit I don't quite know exactly what it is supposed to be now or is intended to become?

One thing I would say is if it is not to be of benefit to indie game makers as a game making tool (apart form anything else it may do) and the legacy and long road of the concept of an easy to use indie game engine is dead then that would be a sad day indeed. I guess that's not the case but clearly there is some concern for some I am sure that they will be able to continue to use GG as they did prior products to make their dream game as they have always done. Single Palyer Game, MP Game or Game MOD. Nothing wrong with all options and hopefully more will be added and not less.

@Wolf

I agree with you on most points but there are some where I couldn't disagree more.


Yes! GameGuru is a great name. The shorthand is easy and enjoys the same acronym as the ubiquitous gamer's double entendre of Good Game or Get Good. I also appreciate that it isn't a lofty name, as you say. As to the tagline... I'm all about "easy". I like easy. Everyone likes easy. But "Game Maker" has a negative connotation to it in serious minds. Which brings me to another thing I agree with...


The positioning of this product is awful. Simply. Awful. Want to be instantly discredited as an indie developer? Easy. Use a game maker. I'm not saying that it's fair to discredit a person's effort or skills or creativity on such criteria but it's a reality. Plenty of x9 veterans who wished for a name change were wanting to get away from "Creator" in the name for these exact same reasons. One could argue that Creator vs. Maker vs. Engine is simply semantic nitpicking. But it's more than that. It's an ideological fight for now-GG developers to remain relevant. It's the difference of an educational institution not having to explain to the funding board why they are purchasing games. It's the difference in tax scrutiny of business software and entertainment software should a developer face an expenses audit.


Remember... There are many "adults" who have their heads in the clouds too. And let us not forget it was teens who brought us things like Airmod and Phoenix Mod. Without which, Classic would have teetered off much sooner.


This is where I will have to disagree



While I do completely agree on the importance of lighting, I am all for the move towards more and better dynamic lighting. Static lighting can look nice in a screenshot but in a moving, breathing game it is, for the most part, abysmal. People have made some beautiful scenes with light maps but to me they are dead and sterile still-lifes. There's still a lot of work to be done on the lighting system and eventually, I'll touch back on this in a bit.


Completely disagree here. F9 mode is a godsend. F9 is love. F9 is life.
Editor mode is fine for roughing out a scent but for detailing, F9 is vastly superior. If anything, it needs to be more full features with grid snaps (both horiz and vert!), full entity selection and so on. The precision in placement, rotation and terrain sculpting is so much better in F9. If you are doing terrain sculpting it can't be beat since you can immediately test your edits for player collision and such. More features and Co-Op editing would make this style of editing the preferred method for many, I think. I did about 85% of the "Devil's Hill" map in F9 mode. It made a believer out of me.


This is actually a huge gripe with me. And the worst part is that I can't really fault TGC for this. There is a large contingent of this community who are very focused on content over substance. This will be the reason TGC will waste early development time on things like ConKit, Character Creator, etc. rather than using the time to shore up core systems like lighting, terrain management, weapon system, multiplayer security, etc. This is the reason we have hardcoded status panel nonsense, awful flashlights, etc.

@Uman



Completely true. Given any outcome, I believe most of us will stick with the product and with TGC. The devs are a good group of people even though we might not think their decisions are good all of the time. That said, I honestly believe that those of us who have been passionately disagreeing are often those who want to see them succeed the most.

Wolf, Yes I agree with you on these matters. I find the "F9" edit mode the hardest to get a handle on.
Maybe I'm too old or just to used to Classic? Either way its a pain.
best

For a second I thought I was reading my own post :p

Speaking my mind pretty clearly Wolf, through and through.

Agree and disagree with many of the points above.

First off the sudden marketing direction is a showstopper for me, those of us who pledged our cash and support for this product to be developed aren't the teenage market being aimed at with a game mod tool. I thought I was lending my support to a game creation tool and engine aimed at Indie developers. It leaves me with a sour taste to see it offered up to Steam users as a 'game' where I and others funded it and at a far higher pledge amount than it is now sold for, particularly since it has been such a long haul and I stuck with it and believed in it.
I have no interest in further promoting a kids sandbox game and should have been informed of this intention from the start. If you seriously believe that this market will bring in more revenue through store sales you are wrong, media is only likely to be purchased by more serious Indie developers not teenagers wanting to create stock maps to share with their friends.
Promoting GG as is just now may bring in a lot of initial sales but will kill any chance of it being taken seriously by game developers in future.

Lightmapping:
I completely agree that lightmapping should be improved and dynamic lights also need a lot of work, however static lightmapping is required, you cant show more than 6-8 dynamic lights in range at a time and no way I know of to get around it. So with a more open scene you are going to get dynamic lights turning off and on as you go through it. I don't have problems with my scenes when I move the camera around and they are far from static, one view, pretty screenshots.....why?....because you need to stop relying on the skylight providing lighting and place enough lights around the scene to make up for 'dark' areas. The skylight in a night scene should only be used to flood the area with moonlight just as in the 'real' world.
Where I get itchy is when I want an entirely enclosed indoor scene which has the skylight lighting up opposite walls which should be in darkness and the only light from this streaming in the windows. I have taken to creating a huge box to block this out of my indoor levels, but then you run into problems with characters and weapons not lighting properly and not casting shadows onto anything other than non-existent terrain.
The lightmapping resolution is a horrible splodge of shadow with no discernible detail so it really needs a great deal of work done on it and as Errant has stated can be horrible with smoothing groups.
On a smaller note the lightrays colour forces the design palette into reds and greens if used with it's yellow cast, I had to desaturate the lightrays texture to use it in a night scene (the moon does NOT cast yellow light in arty land) which means I at least have a more neutral colour to work with, though I may need to change it if wanting to create a level for sci fi or whatever which I am not sure will be throughout a final built multi level game, little niggly things that forced me to dig deeper to fix it.

For outdoor scenes it pretty much works as it should using enough static lights and the dynamic skylight, it looks well enough lit as I removed most of the lightrays and lit the areas iaround the level enough to give it an overall balance. The only thing 'static' about this scene is lack of AI characters, which, accepted are abysmal in any setting other than outdoor terrain:


For indoor scenes you need to fight with it and avoid lightrays altogether:

This is media which I believe could create an awesome challenging multi player map and not a single dynamic light in the scene. It looks the same from any position in the map, pretty much work in progress but as more platforms and ramps,pillars etc are added these would be lit too so break up the scene more and light areas which need it rather than use a lot of ambience and surface colour.


In a nutshell I don't agree that a scene can't be uniformly lit using static lightmapping it just takes an extraordinary amount of work to do it, but hasn't that always been the case with any engine. I do agree however that it sucks as is and needs a lot more attention.

Performance:
It goes without saying that performance leaps when terrain is removed, the terrain is still there but the shader is taken out of the mix and fps increase is huge so it isn't the polycount or the physics at the root of this. It has also been the trend from the very start to use high resolution textures (TGC insisted on it for store items) and I see many models with outrageous and unnecessary polycounts and texture sizes, which, when thrown into a level in abundance are obviously going to have an impact. Believe it or not but most games produced these days aren't doing this, they use smaller texture sizes, even getting as small as 256x256, some are even 64x64 and rely on the normal mapping/uv repetition and tesselation for detail. This requires multi materials (note I didn't say multi textures) You might get a kid dropping a model into GG and going ooooh! at the lovely texture but that will wear off when he realises his memory is running out and his game runs like treacle when he tries to build anything with it. A default setting to halve these textures in setup.ini is no solution since these huge resolutions shouldn't be required in the first place. The whole cave scene above uses a single 512x512 texture and looks pretty darn good up close.

F9 Edit mode:
I can't work with it and simply ignore it, might be ok for terrain editing but I find I cant place any objects accurately at all with it is simply too cumbersome and frustrating.

To sum up, this software was heading in the right direction but I am concerned it just took a wrong turn and yet again we are being left with something which won't stand up for the more serious Indie developer. I suspect the sales will be high for a few but it isn't going to sustain itself long term with a market of young folk who wont want to shell out for models from the store which will essentially kill it long term. It is the more serious developer who is going to buy that stuff and more likely to turn out to be users of other engines who hop on over for the cheap media available.

I know TGC say they intend to develop this further but you just set the bar for the future in my view.

I don't doubt that they look great from any angle. There's no disputing that. But a three-dimensional still life remains a still life. By older standards, this would be enough and the way it would be done. Looking forward towards the future is a different matter. Sure, we have a restricted number of dynamic lights available to us at the moment. But this is directly related to being anchored to DX9. Sure, there are also situations where static lighting is all that's needed but the tradeoff is almost always going to be in interactivity.

As a player, I want to be able to interact with my world and that includes the lighting. I want to be able to knock over a lantern, shoot out a lightbulb or use a proper flashlight. If I'm feeling passive, I want to be able to experience the changes as the sun sets and the moon rises and back again or be enchanted by a flickering shadow . A world composed of only static objects and static lighting can not fulfill those desires.

I completely agree Errant but it is a balance between static and dynamic, only those objects you want to use dynamically should require it. In fact for lit objects you want to throw around or knock over it would be better to use an emmissive material or your going to have to find a way to attach that light to the model. I also agree that a higher DX should be used. As you say it is all looking a bit dated now. I don't feel at all that as it is any Indie developers will even glance at it.

Dynamic lights can still be used in any lightmapped level, you arent restricted to only one or the other main problem for me is that dynamic lights will 'wash' out any lightmapped shadows nearby completely and like the skylight do not cast any shadows on indoor entity's.
You can lightmap using static lights then change some of 'em to dynamic for a more 'natural' lighting effect, I would recommend lightmapping first then adding or changing to dynamic as sometimes the lightmapper gets funky with any dynamic lights in scene during the process.

Yes. We really deserve to be seeing grouped/compound dynamic objects in GG. And shadows from light sources other than the sky. I think that's a given in these discussions. My personal fear is that with something like the re-introduction of lightmapping... everyone oohs and ahhhs... and then TGC pat themselves on the back and proudly proclaim, "Our work here is done!" before moving on to something else. Maybe I'm just paranoid

Perhaps my greatest frustration is that at this early stage of development we should be seeing more in the way of systems and fundamentals and less in the way of free media and what not. Hopefully a lot of this is just a phase to placate the masses so that they have time to focus on the important backend stuff.

Hopefully, it is perhaps a knee jerk reaction to what is going down right now, but let's face it TGC just threw it out there in an unexpected way for me at least. At first I was confident with it, now not so sure I have bought into the right project.

Wolf i really have to say. You are right on every point. I think as backers of this project TGC should give us the Respect. And should no drive in wrong directions. I was really confused when i saw whats happend. I really dont like where Gameguru is going. Just as Rolfy saying. I begin to get thoughtful if i have really backed the right project.

Teabone your points are pretty much the same what i was thinking.
I hope TGC Will not disapoint us Advanced backers, and get the wanted faetures in, or im out as Teabone says.

I Hope i my englisch grammer is Understandable.

Grabs popcorn,....,.....but seriously, this is the most important thread ever to appear on these boards,
and I agree with a lot of what has been said,.....for me, I just hate the name Game Guru, but it would
appear I am in the minority,.......I just feel that the Unity, Unreal crowd etc will never take this engine
seriously with a name like that,.......and I know it is not easy to come up with a new name, but I was
not expecting anything like Game Guru ,.......oh well, at the end of the day I will ignore the name
for now,......however, I have a nasty feeling that TGC may well have shot themselves in the foot,.......
but I really hope I am wrong.
I love the ease of use of this software,.......and that is TGC,s unique selling point,......and if you have
one of those, you are half way there,.......I just hope that TGC can deliver on the other half,......time
will tell.
After classic and X 10,..it's third time lucky for TGC,....and I think they know that now,......I really wish
them all the best,.......I really do.

I didn't want to say anything, everybody else seemed to like it! I thought I was the odd man out. LOL, I don't care for it either. I agree with the overall sentiment of this thread. I've never been too hung on the game maker/ game engine semantics thing, but now I'm beginning to see what a world of difference it really is. If I really wanted a toy, I would have bought Gary's Mod. I've looked at it many times, and it looks like it might be fun to play with. However, now I don't need it. I have Game Guru! Back to studying Blueprint while I wait and see what pans out here!

Truth be told,i have been fallowing the development of Reloaded/Game Guru since day one.I remember being excited that day when i discovered that TGC is going to make an improved version of Fpsc Classic.But i'm concerned now with the direction that TGC is taking with Game Guru.

I do love the idea on expanding from the FPS genre ,but....As stated i don't like the idea of making it an "Easy Game Maker".I have used numerous game engines ,including:Unity,UDK,UE4 and etc...But the reason why i loved TGC products is because they were taking game development out of the box.But i never liked the idea of their products being marketed specifically to Teen's. (Excluding AGK and DarkBasic) As stated, i was following the development of Reloaded/Game Guru since the start and i expected a game engine not a "game".

I think the guys at TGC are great developers ,no doubt.But i think they should decide is it a "game engine" or a "game".And if you want my honest opinion i think ,it is really early for a Steam release,but i guess that's just me.

I think TGC should recognize that, some of us here are to work on serious projects.Some of us are:Coders,modelers,concept artists and etc.Who know that no matter what ,you need to make custom media if you want your game to feel more personal.But there are some people who think that they can make millions over the night by making levels with almost zero effort put in it.

Now my humble opinion of what i think should be improved:

What i want to be improved in Game Guru is performance...In the moment the performance is okay ,not good nor bad,but there is a lot of room for improvement here.

The other thing that i want to be improved is the editor...I love the editor but i think there should be more freedom with it.I think that is kinda limited when it comes to designing levels,i really want to see a 3D edit mode.While the F9 option is a really good alternative for this (At least for me) ,but as stated it feels like you are playing Minecraft and i think there should be a separate 3D view in the editor it self.

The lightmapping is okay...But it lacks in a lot of areas.We still don't have a proper shadow system and interior lighting.And i expect in later versions the lightmapping to be improved.But for now let us just stick to improving performance first.

And i apologize deeply for my grammar mistakes and my English.

I share similar sentiments about the new direction TGC is taking with Reloaded/GameGuru. GG is being promoted as a zero-skill, create any world in minutes and battle your friends online, game maker, with TGC classifying GG as a game itself. This echoes the promotional material used for other teen-oriented click-and-play style products put out by TGC in the past, notably The 3D Gamemaker, which I don't think was well received even by the target demographic due to its limitations.

Although the strategy of selling it for less than a typical game and promoting it as an effortless game maker may be beneficial to TGC in the short-term as more will try it out especially kids, I am concerned that it will grow stagnant over time and the games the users do produce will all be more or less the same. It was also a bold move for TGC to rebrand this as a multi-genre game creator so early on, knowing its limitations even with regard to FPS games currently. It is said on the Steam page that "you won't be held up by learning strange alien languages" but to achieve anything but the most remedial form of a FPS shooter you will need to get your hands dirty with Lua and I don't see that changing anytime soon. I see posts on Steam with people asking if it can be used to make different types of games, stuff like Minecraft, Skyrim etc. From the outset it sounds like such a feat may be possible until the user really takes a stab at it in GG and sees not really.

The original intent by TGC was to focus exclusively on single player until it was fully refined before considering multiplayer. I understand this plan changed after the app was greenlit and the Steam SDK was reviewed, but there is still so much missing from the engine for single player. Looking back at the Kickstarter, so many features listed would be wonderful to have but we still do not.



I just hate that without having the site bookmarked I often go to the wrong domain since gameguru.com is taken by someone else. I am not a fan of domains with dashes... The name is somewhat generic in that it is used by many different people and organizations so that creates a lot of noise.

This is what i was afraid of...Some people don't know the limitations of the software and they will feel disappointed when they discover that they cant make games like, Skyrim or Minecraft at this point.

I also think a big mistake was fracturing the community. I didn't like it when they moved the forums away from the rest of TGC. All their other products can be accessed in one place and I don't think this move was the right one.

I'm pretty disappointed with the direction that's been taken, and have stopped using the software I was really excited for. I don't ever seeing it being what was advertised at the start. I'll continue to follow the development for the time being, but I'm pretty disillusioned at this point.

Post removed.

I wouldnt sign that. Something very similar to Skyrim CAN be done, but not without two dozens of dedicated team members.

And as much as I can live with the new name, the tagline is horrible, it´s almost a death sentence to the project.

GameGuru is a 3D Game Engine with LUA framework capabilities in Beta state, which is absolutely fine as long as the ongoign development ticks of the right boxes.

To make something unique, it is FAR FROM BEING EASY, and, hell, it is NOT A GAME MAKER.

My 2p worth, I have played for hours using this software and 1 thing stands out to me F9 Mode SUCKS

1, I can never get it to select an entity I want. when you press E you are only give the same entity you
last selected outside of F9 mode no other entity options.

2. Since installing GG after removing Reloaded the software is now worse than it was with Reloaded, half of the
things I could do with Reloaded i.e use my bought entities properly like go inside buildings that worked in
reloaded but now they don't.

3. In Editor Mode you can: Look left, Look right, Move forward, Move back, Zoom in closer to the
entities you are trying to place on the map, But the 1 option that is most definitely needed ASAP is
Look at the entities straight on as if you were standing in the game. So that when you want to
move items up/down/place higher/lower and also scale correctly, as it is this is not good as it stands.

4. WARNING.... If you have installed GG from steam and you add you extra entities or scripts
like I did, and because of an error with Steam Link would not work until I uninstalled Steam & Reinstalled steam
I found out the hard way that Uninstalling steam will DELETE everything you have in the Seam GG version and I do
mean EVERYTHING. I lost loads of my work because I had been at it 13 Hours straight trying to Link my account to steam
I forgot to make a copy of the Steam Entities Folder so lost the lot.

5. Finally when everyone pledged Gold Pledge instead of offering extra Steam keys i thing we should have been given
an option of extra keys or extra entities FREE, who apart from us pledges will even use the keys so guess maybe
the Top Dogs of this software can maybe rethink the extra keys and offer an alternative.

There is a lot good about this software but to be honest as it stands I would never even begin making a game to
sell with this software in its current state, as If you sold them on steam because of the bad response that will most
likely receive it would be the 1 and only game you would ever sell.

Moving forward with this software, things need doing faster now it has been put on early release lets hope that
some more development, like Lifts, Proper Transporters, Driving Cars, Flying Aircraft, Speed Boats, Space (Planets Exploraion) will be on the agenda... And dare I say a Building Mods Toolbox and Character Creator Built In Game.

Well I will leave it there but hope things improve as I would like to see a return on the £400 I have spent so far
on Pledge and store items purchased.

I hope Lee we will answer to this post as soon as possible, so we can get sure.
What will happen to this Game/Game Engine. What we call now Gameguru or what ever.

(Obviously, all of the following are simply my opinions.)

1. This is true and good: "GameGuru is a 3D Game Engine with LUA framework capabilities".

2. These are necessary improvements.
2.1 More FPS.
2.2 3rd person, Lua controllable camera.
2.3 3d view in editor
2.4 Entity properties panel (including position, rotation, ...)

3. These are highly desirable but not critical.
3.1 FPSC-classic style of building interiors.
3.2 Capability to import models in other-than-x formats.
3.3 Lua keyboard input functions (actually this is also critical, but we already have OmegaCore).

4. I find graphics OK, but I have zero knowldge and small interest in graphics. I hear graphics-oriented people complain and my guess is they have legitimate gripes.

5. I don't complain but I am not holding my breath either. I invested 30 Euros or so and I got my money's worth (and then some) but GG is still not good enough to put me in development mode.

I guess you are right at this one, something similar can be done like Skyrim with a good team of coders and modelers,but the biggest limitation to this is the world size ,but i guess it is to early to ask for a bigger world size at this point.The reason being as i stated in my upper post, we are still kinda limited when it comes to performance.

Finally I found you guys!
(take that as a comment about "fracturing the community")

According to my Steam profile I've been testing GG for 12 hours now and I am very close to say 'thanks TCG', adapt the models to work with FPSC and return to the no-nonsense editor that no one's ashamed to actually call one.

14.99 for the whole package is ridiculously low (the models alone are a steal and I got a FULL license to market my own games) and I don't regret spending the money a second but I think I'll regret putting another couple of years work into this engine.

GG has its merits and I actually would LOVE to create a huge zombie infested city just for the fun of it - but TCGs attitude on the Steam forums is starting to kill it for me and it gets worse every 24 hours.

Every time a poster mentions a bug, tells about a flaw, asks for a (minor) feature its "blabla..in the pipeline...blabla...high on the list...blabla..keep the feedback coming...blabla.... in the meantime the community will/has come up with something.....blabla.... WAIT, WHAT? THE COMMUNITY????

The community has shouldered the development for FPSC for it's last years. Engine tweaks, whole mods, lighting, shaders, scripts - you name it, the community did it. But back then we where some hundred people doing most of the work simply for our own projects and along the way for each other.

And now that GG is on Steam with several million users passing by each day they STILL rely on the community? I've already been scripting with LUA for the Legend of Grimrock project of some bedroom devs I know from NWN, and I was eager to start working LUA scripting for GG. But I'll be honest, I have no intention to do TCGs work this time. In the past I did it for me, for us, for the some hundred FPSC users on the forums and I still provide all my FPSC stuff in my blog where people download them each day.

But I will not do stuff for the Steam crowd because with the considerable amount of sales TCG will get there, they should be able to speed up development considerably.

And what bugs me the most is the Jedi-talk about the decision to market GG as a game in the games section instead of labeling it as software just like AGF or RPG Maker (which I use both). That's just ridiculous.

I agree with 90% of the criticism from most of you guys, the F9 thing is one of the few I'm still torn.

"The Community" by and large now probably refers to "The Steam Community".

Not sure that anyone is likely to be paying any attention to whats being posted here at all.

It's full Steam Ahead me thinks!

That is untrue Uman. We are monitoring and answering both boards.

Pleased to hear that.

We certainly are, and we are encouraging Steam users to come and join in with the experienced community over here, there are users here that are very valuable to the wider community and a wide range of media and resources. Which is what has always been key with TGC products, TGC really care about the community and what they think, every dev reads these boards even if they are too busy to post.

Not to mention that the Steam forums are awful and all the staff are finding that out

Your views are all listened to but not everything can be done all at once, to continue development a larger audience was needed, the funds to continue without it simply were not in place. Steam is good for everyone more users means more money in the project and quicker development, possibly even more members of the dev team.

It may feel as if the developers are focusing on Steam right now and ignoring you. That is not true, they are focusing on creating a product everyone will want to use just right now they have made a big decision to launch on a new platform and that takes a lot of time away from posting here. Yes there are bugs, yes there are core features missing, but you all knew that when you pledged. The dev team really care about this project and all of us have given up our weekend to launch on Steam and reply to as many threads as we can. A patch was released to fix critical issues and without Steam that would never have been possible, due to how hard it was to release before using the TGC system.

We are happy to leave these threads here for people to discuss ideas and air complaints as that is what the development process is about. However there is a stage that constructive discussions turn into useless complaining at which point any threads will be locked. So please try to be constructive with the suggestions.

Please all of you that have been with TGC all along the way stick with us the product will be what you always wanted.

You can do that, click on the object to get the widget and select 'Properties'. You can now click and hold the right mouse button to look around the object, use the arrow keys to move it, mouse wheel to zoom in and out and 'Page up' & 'Page down' to move it up and down.

I going to reserve judgment, TGC have now committed themselves. Before, with Classic, it was sold through their website, now, through Steam it's a much, much wider audience so if they screw this up they're not going to get out of it easily.

I miss hearing from Lee.

Dave

I'm sure Lee will be full of information, once he returns from GDC.

After spending a total time of 50 minutes last night with this software, it was uninstalled just as fast. I won't say what we found to be "show stoppers" for us at this time, since I also know this is still in its early "infancy" and hopefully it will work out in the end for those wanting to use it. Perhaps down the road I can re-evaluate and see if it will fit our goals and needs.

However there are a couple things that seem to be slipping by the wayside during all this "transition" time. And since comments have been made in relation to these things, I'll mention here.



Can you clarify which both boards refers to? Because I'm still waiting for an answer to my question I asked on the old board which has now gone ignored for a week (22-Feb-2015). Mind you, that is the Classic board and it will help to augment this...



... meaning had the forums all been under one roof, I most likely would have been answered sooner and I would not have to come to the Guru thread to get an actual answer. Which leads me to ask the question... Do I have to drop my old software and switch entirely to this software just to get a support question answered? Do we even have a "support" person that can answer question(s) raised on the old forum site? Have he/she/they been assigned to Reloaded- er Guru only? I've sent emails- ignored. I've posted my question twice in a thread and it has been a week with not one reply.



Since you mention this, perhaps one can also take into account that people will not always follow the norm and they have their opinion. While I understand that you want it to be constructive criticism, I'd like to offer that members from the community refrain from needless and tasteless name calling when people post their negative reviews. It may not be pretty and you may not like it, but you have to take the bad with the good to affect change, not pick and choose.

@BlackFox, I don't think there is any official support for FPSC X9/X10 anymore by TGC and hasn't been for a very long time. So for FPSC discussions you are right to stick to the main TheGameCreators forum but it is really only the community that may be able to help as TGC has moved to GameGuru. I do agree with the fragmentation issue. I always enjoyed goind directly to the TGC boards and it allowed me to quickly scroll through all the forums and review new posts, now I have that one, this one, and two steam ones to try and monitor for TGC products.

@ xCept,

Yes, I realize there is no official support for x9 any longer. As a matter of fact, that was stated in the thread in question. However, after trying to solve the issue and it did not resolve for others in the discussion, I raised a question and there has been no reply. While I believe the solve I presented may only work for us, I want to address it in our source so that the next time in two years time I don't have to rely on "being ignored" or the "no support" clause, which would destroy a deployed game already out.

It just is disheartening when these "little" things go on and we just end up falling in the cracks, which is unfortunate considering all the work we have done/accomplished and continue to do so with the classic products. I am trying to remain positive and perhaps one day we may make the "switch", but right now what is the point. I feel that either a "select group" get the time of day or my Canadian money is no longer any good given the state of our dollar. Which also makes both my wife and I wonder why the product is in Canadian currency... LOL

I would have thought support flows both ways...

Sure (since Uman mentioned the Steam Boards); by that I mean these very boards, and the Steam Boards.

It is not possible to air my complaints about the software that you sold me, or I backed, because you have discontinued it and it's forum. I have nothing constructive to add to your discussion of GameGuru because I did not back it and do not want it. I've read claim after claim that what you're making now is the same as you were making then, only better. I've read time and again that this development is community driven and "you're listening" to me. Please direct me to my post requesting this change. Please direct me to any post requesting that a standalone FPS Creator Engine be turned into a STEAM game. Please raise your hand if you think that only the name was changed. Anyone? I agree that it's "useless complaining" at this point to talk about Reloaded. You've done away with it and that's that. I really did want an actual game engine for developers.

If this change was on the up-and-up and better for us all, why was it made in the dark of night? Why not let your backers know your intentions if they're good? I can only guess that (and you've hinted that) your decision was based on financial considerations. Progress was weak even more than a year beyond expected release date. You now have more backing and time to make something of this. I think your salesman got you in trouble again, but it seems to be a business model that works for you.

Please do not think that I'm angry as I type this... I am not. I have no more investment in the project (financial or otherwise) and I would have stayed out of this altogether if certain statements and attitudes had not been put forth by the new TGC personnel. It didn't take long to figure out who TGC put on the payroll. You're going to loose the majority of your developers but I'm sure you know this and you're counting on the new blood to make up for it. Again, it's a business model for some companies (especially service providers) to push people into the front of the bus faster than they are falling out the back. Eventually, even the most die-hard fanboys wake up. I don't use that term in a derogatory way. I was one too.

So no, nothing constructive to say about GameGuru. I have no desire to help you fix it. It's all yours.

Brian.

I really hope this whole "easy game maker" marketing is just a way to pull in more people. To bring in those with no experience in game developing; While still having all the pro tools and features the experienced developers are looking for.

I agree the performance is a problem I think special for people who are using older computer systems. The problem I have with performance is with a lot of characters in game wil give a frame drop. I tried the medieval game in guru and getting a framerate 13 - 21 fps which is to slow. The framerate of 13 fps I am getting while visiting the church in game some entities in the church are causing this frame drop I am using the F9 editing to modify and reparing the landscape which is not easy,
for entities it is a disaster working with. I think there will be a future for GameGuru with a better performance more possibilities and you cannot compare it with the most commercial game engines which costs a tons of dollars.
The tool TGC created is worth the price to buy for if you see what you get.

vrg.... I personally have a beast pc, but still have problems with weird fps. I have many frame drops, games run bad.

To the theme now. I am also not pleased how this game creation tool is evolving. I pledged GOLD more than a year ago - also with shipping(I am a student at university, and students don't have so much money ... but i pledged),, when this tool was already(don't know how many months) in development. I knew it was beta. But after 1 year and 1 month we have still the same product with so little changes, that makes me cry. I expected that after a year, we will have at least:

1. some form of CONkit - i was suggesting something like UDK - people who got their hands on this tool, they know how easy was to make building and texture it. Till now, we don't have anything.

2. better editor tools/ terraintools - we can make hills, or holes, smooth them and we can make a ramp..nothing more. And we can place entities. I expected maybe more views, more terrain shape editing tools, more textures that can be applied on the terrain, changing levels of water, maybe turn off some blocks of water, so water don't need to be under whole terrain..and much more. Sorry but in this way was done very little.

3. better AI - sorry, characters run like with pain in the ass and act really bad. Take a look on this video. This is game Soldier of fortune, which I played so many times. This game is from year 2000 and animations still look better than in GameGuru. Also enviroment amd textures are almost that good as in GameGuru.
VIDEO

4. MUCH better performance - sorry but with my pc I still dont have stable fps, and some drops are insane. Then I launch far cry 4, new Wolfenstein or Crysis 3 and have stable fps with scenes that are breathtaking. Not a simple objects in graphics that can't match any of this games.

I can go on with list(Cutscene editor, better graphics, physics, ragdoll....). But this are main features, that I expected to be here after a year and month of waiting. So, for me it is a dissapointment and GameGuru looks now like software for kids, not for a Indie developer.

And that price... you set the price too low. People who pledged a lot more money maybe expected more and have the same as people who buy it for 20 dollars? I pledged about 100 euro..which is much more than a 20 dollars.

SorrowCrown

Thanks Madlad for that it turns out I am in error on that 1, that does work with a properly configured mouse
LOL. Thanks for the help on that setting

Sorrocrown, with cheap product I mean the price of 14.90 euro is not expensive , I also was Gold pledger and I hope it will be a solid product for the future with a lot of features and fps. What is the alternative for Gameguru : 3D gamestudio, Blender , Unity, 3DRad etc.

VRG

Yeah.. 14,90 euro is not much . I was saying that we, who pledged about 100 euro for gold, have the same as people who buy it from steam for 14,90 euro .


Best - UDK, Unity for sure. Maybe Leadwerks.

Regarding performance don't forget that GameGuru uses only 1 core of your CPU right now, so performance isn't to shabby for 1 core, especially on some of the simply awful CPUs some users here have.

There are plans within the next few months to spend time making everything in the engine multicore to give a big boost to performance. Performance as long as it is playable is not a key issue right now and when multi-core is done it is best it is done right.

As for GameGuru becoming too much like a sandbox game, that is not the aim at all it is simply the first stage in the multiplayer development. The ability to create standalone games, customize totally and then sell still remains totally intact. The multiplayer will also eventually be available in standalone, it is all about the journey towards that and having multiplayer to test with now while features are added is better than nothing.

Having read most of Lee's blog during development I am confident that Lee will deliver
what I want.. but it will take a long time..

I think this GG-Steam is just a pit-stop to take on fresh supplies..
A time for Lee to chill-out at GDC and come back refreshed for the next big push..

I would be even more inclined to give Lee his head.. and let him take us to the vision he has..
I think it is always the case with a single developer ... you have to let him get his vision on the
screen.. software by committee never comes close to the vision of the original developer...
The more experienced the developer.. the clearer their vision is.. and reading Lee's blog
I detect a burning ambition to produce the best thing he has ever done..
and we all know he has done some amazing things..

In Lee I trust.. and in his skill to achieve that blog vision..

@SorrowCrown -
Gold pledgers got the horror and vegetation packs, I'm not sure that new buyers get this (I hope not ). Even if they do, gold pledgers get a further two model packs later this year, so it all balances out.
edit - and the legacy pack, too.

I got an email from unreal today announcing they have made the entire ue4 free for all. As a past paid member I got $30 credit for assets too. I assume they still take 5% or so of commercial games released through it but that does shake things up a bit.