It’s nearly two weeks since the launch of GameGuru onto Steam Early Access and we’re pleased to say that we’ve released 7 updates in that time, with many, many more to come.  We plan to release small updates  frequently so you can expect GameGuru to continue to go from strength to strength. It is very exciting watching it grow at such a fast rate, and we look forward to continuing to provide GameGuru users with the tools to create excellent games for years to come.

 

From the Galleries.

This excellent beach scene from the GameGuru gallery by M2Designs really showcases GameGuru.

From the Steam galleries, this amazing scene from Tarkus1971 has a wonderful atmosphere.

Store News

Store artist BSP has added to his amazing collection of media with this great new World War 2 pack. Featuring a range of WW2 static guns and a large selection of rubble and ruined buildings make this new pack ideal for all budding game designers.

 

So, what’s new since last week?

V1.00.0014

• Fixed an issue with entity selection after resizing the editor window.
• Fixed an issue that caused GameGuru to fail to start up properly after an update.

V1.00.0015

• New LUA command added: GetInKey() which will return the character string of the key currently pressed.
• New LUA command added: GetScanCode() which will get the scancode of the key currently pressed.

V1.00.0016

• Custom weapons either from the GameGuru Store or user created will now work with Multiplayer Workshop games. So now if you have the weapons made by artist BSP you can create new and exciting Multiplayer levels.

V1.00.0017

• Weapons from the store or user made ones now include the muzzleflash in workshop levels.
• Save Standalone has been improved. It no longer deletes all entities when zone markers with the IFUSED field is filled with text.
• We’ve added extra logging code to detect when save standalone fails to create a destination folder.
• Increased logging file from 2,000 to 5,000 debug slots for improved back-end debugging.
• Changed GUNSPEC maximum line count from 300 to 500.
• Fixed a LUA crash when pressing the backslash key.
• LUA errors now always appear on the top of the display.

In other GameGuru new, Lee Bamber has returned from a successful and fun Game Developers Conference visit and is in high spirits and keen to get back to developing GameGuru. We’ll have more news on his progress throughout the week and of course on his blog where you can read all of the exciting progress as GameGuru leaps forward.

Don’t forget that the development team are still around to join you in multiplayer games throughout the week, so keep an eye out for us in the lobbies.

 

Signing Off

That’s all the latest news, and we we’ll have more of the same next week. Thank you all for your amazing support and for your positive feedback. You are helping us to shape GameGuru into the product you want to use so don’t forget to post all your veiws and feedback either on the Steam boards. or the GameGuru forums.

The GameGuru team

 

 

 

 

It’s been a great opening weekend for the Early Access release of GameGuru on to Steam! Welcome if you’re new to GameGuru, and hello again if you were with us at the start of our journey to this point. For the launch, the whole team was on standby to answer questions and a dedicated support team continues to monitor both the GameGuru board and the Steam boards to answer any questions you may have or help you with any support questions.

We all found time to join GameGuru users in some multiplayer fun, and had a great time doing so. We will continue to jump in and out of multiplayer games as time allows, so keep an eye out for us there.

We’ve also learned a lot about community needs and the areas you feel you’d like us to focus on the most. As we pride ourselves on our community lead development we take great effort to listen to all feedback and take it on board. As a result of this, we were able to produce two new builds since our first release, bringing more stability to the engine and some exciting multiplayer updates.

V1.00.011 Released on Sunday 1st March, included;

• Changed the location of DLLs to “GameGuru\Files\dllbank” to help overcome some virus checkers incorrectly deleting dlls
• When loading non DDS images, GameGuru tried to save DDS each time. This was redundant and so was removed.
• An Enhancement Module DLL was grabbing a PTR to Sound DLL. Again a redundant process and was removed.
• After loading in every test level the editor could crash when clicking on TEST GAME on WAREHOUSE level. This issue was fixed.

V1.00.012 : Released now!

• Fixed the slowdown that would occur in the GameGuru editor if running in Steam Offline mode
• When the host of a Multiplayer game leaves the game, a game over message is sent for clarity, rather than lost connection
• Changed the status bar in the editor to report if there are multiplayer lobbies open to join – ideal if you want to keep an eye open for Multiplayer games opening up, allowing you to jump in and hopefully get into any lobbies being hosted.
• Fixed a crash issue.

We’re aiming to release builds on a regular basis so that GameGuru evolves quickly in-front on your eyes! Next on our radar is fixing the issue of non-stock weapons working in Multiplayer and also adding Team play to Mulitplayer!

Multiplayer level competition part II!

That’s right, we’re launching  a new level design competition, giving all of our talented users new and old a chance to win $200 and 5,000 store points and a chance for your level to be included in a future release of GameGuru!

The Rules

1) You may use any default media that comes with GameGuru.

2) You MAY NOT use any other media, custom scripts, music or audio effects. Just the content that ships with GameGuru.

3) You may only use the default Skyboxes that ship with GameGuru

4) You may only use the default terrains that ship with GameGuru

5) You can create your level for between 2 and 8 players. We’d advise you to avoid making levels too big and also too small.

6) You can only use the default weapons that ship with GameGuru. Note that weapons and ammo re-spawn during multi-player games so don’t go crazy placing down lots of weapons and ammo.

7) Please email just the (mapfiles (FPM’s) located in the mapbank folder) to Dave Hawkins at scenecommanderTGC@gmail.com

Ensure you use the format USER – FORUM -COMPETITION4.

e.g thescenecommander-steam-competition4 in the subject line.

Entries that do not meet this criteria will be disqualified.

8) You must include the following information in your email.

• Your real name
• A valid email for an active PayPal account as we cannot offer cash prizes via any other means
• The map file “FPM” (attached to the email). Map files are stored here; Program Files/Steam/Steamapps/Common/Game Guru/Files/Mapbank

9) All entries must be received by midnight GMT 18th March 2015.

10) The competition will be judged by at least two members of TheGamesCreators staff and their decision will be final.

From the GameGuru Store

The GameGuru store has thousands of GameGuru related media for adding that extra detail to your single and multiplayer levels, prices start from a very reasonable FREE! and are rarely more than a few dollars. Check out all the latest releases here.

Nomis3d has recently uploaded this excellent Apartment. Lots of open spaces and stairs ideal for some multi-player mayhem.

Continuing in the building theme, this great bunker from artist Dagored will grace any game from 1900s to a modern day and beyond.

From the Gallery

We’re always impressed by the work of our artists and developers and now that GameGuru is live on Steam we expect some amazing screenshots and videos as we open up to a much large user base.

From the Steam Screenshots, ATTA – my town by gazz caught our eye as an exciting looking development.

From the Steam video galleries, this excellent gameplay video really shows what can be achieved with just a little media and some great level design.

Signing off

Well, that’s it for another week. We hope that you’re all enjoying GameGuru. We’re very excited about our plans for the future and we very much look forward to you joining us as we shape and develop GameGuru into the game and game maker you all want.

Until next week – Happy Gaming!

The GameGuru Team.

 

 

Today we’re celebrating the Early Access release of GameGuru on to Steam! It’s been an amazing journey for all of us to have gotten this far, and yet we know that this is in fact only the beginning. Still it’s an incredible feeling for the whole team and we’ve had a lot of fun as well as we’ve nurtured GameGuru from it’s humble beginnings to it’s current form of a Sandbox game capable of making entertaining and exiting games that can stand up in their own right.

If you’re a previous pledger you will have received your Steam keys already via email and you can access them from your TheGameCreators account in your My Products area. If you’re new to GameGuru and have been looking forward to its release, you can buy it now from Steam at the bargain price of $19.99. If you’re quick, you can also take advantage of a special release discount of an extra 25% for the first few days.

What’s in GameGuru?

• GameGuru
• Modern Day Models
• Horror Models
• Jungle Foliage Models
• Forest Foliage Models
• Medieval Pack
• Cartoon Models
• A Zombie Character Pack

Not only do you get all that great content but included is the rights to sell your finished game, royalty free and the ability to play online games over the Steam servers with other GameGuru users.

And some final notes

• Once you own GameGuru you receive lifetime updates as we evolve and improve the product!
• Make sure you link your Steam account with the GameGuru Website via this link.

 

Welcome to the GameGuru weekly news, just days before we launch as an Early Access title on the Steam store. As you can imagine the entire team has been focused on making sure GameGuru is stable by testing every aspect of the engine.  We spent the weekend hosting a number of multi-player games for a group of alpha testers and these tests we’re very successful. A couple of minor issue were spotted by our eagle eyed test team and we have now fixed them and will be checking the new build as we put the last layers of polish onto the build.

GameGuru will launch on Steam this Friday 27th at 9am PST / 4pm GMT at $19.99. For a short period we’ll even be offering a special launch discount of 25%, so grab it early to snag a bargain! The entire team will be around for the launch to give assistance and offer advice and we’re all looking forward to it very much.

As these last couple of weeks have been about finalising a stable build there has been no new features to report so let’s take a little look ahead to some of the exciting features we see being added to the engine in the months to come. Expanding  multi-player  to cover not just the 8 person death-matches we currently have, but team-play, capture the flag games and a host of other types are already on our radar. We’re having a blast playing the multiplayer maps which were designed by community members!

Another feature is the character creator, this will let you create how you’ll look in your multiplayer games and how enemies and allies in your single player games will look.  With it you can even import your own face image and see your own avatar!

All of these features will be possible through a very easy to use interface, so users starting out with the product will be able to get great results quickly. We won’t be forgetting about our more advanced users either and we will be expanding the already powerful LUA scripting language to allow for more amazing and deeper control over all areas of the game environment.

All in all, the GameGuru development team is very excited about the future and are looking forward to seeing what fantastic games our very talented users design.

Store News

Now for some exciting media from the prolific Valuable Assets who continues to expand his excellent range of buildings which are ideal for single and multi-player games. This media is well complemented by the work of Tazman and Skywriter who have also uploaded an electrical infrastructure pack and a set of great looking pipes respectively. Between them, these artists range is perfect for any modern day or post apocalyptic environment.

In other store news, we’ve updated the store to allow for the use of Steam wallet to complete your purchases and converted the points system into a real world currency, so you can clearly see what great value the models are. You can of course still use any points you have on your account to purchase media.

Work In Progress

This impressive WIP caught our eye this week, from the forum user Grooovy. His game The Terrible Truth is showing signs of excellent progress and we are looking forward to watching him develop it.  You can follow his development thread here.

 SIGNING OFF

That’s it for this week, now it’s back to our final rounds of testing before going live on Steam. We hope to see you all there on Friday!

Thanks to all of our pledgers who have helped us to get this far, you’re Steam keys will be sent out just before the release on Friday.

The GameGuru Team.

This is a very exciting time here at TheGameCreators. The countdown to the Steam release continues with less than 2 weeks to go and we are all 100% focused on an awesome early access launch on Monday March 2nd @ 9am PST.

In development news, we are working on the final tweaks and fixes and it’s great to watch these items get ticked off the list. All of these items are very minor, and it’s enabled the team to spend time on some fun additions such as adding lots of exciting media, including a large amount of medieval and cartoon assets:

Medieval Town

 

Cartoon Antics

 

We are also finalising some great demo levels, both single and multi-player maps that users can expand or just study to learn more about making games with GameGuru.

We also continue to add the final details to the multiplayer system. We’ve mainly been stress testing the system and handed out the first wave of Steam keys to our alpha testers and are very pleased to say that things have gone very smoothly. We will continue to fine tune during the next few days and aim to push the servers hard near the end of the week as a final round of testing aimed at ensuring that come the Steam release you all have a stable and enjoyable experience.

The multiplayer system makes great use of the Steam server infrastructure. With a click of a button you can host one of your games maps and have your friends join you in the level you designed! If you use all stock media only the small map file has to be transmitted to the other players which happens in seconds. If you have used new media from the store or media you have imported yourself then GameGuru will create a Steam Workshop item of your level and then let you host that map. Other players who join your hosted game are automatically subscribed to the Workshop level and all the extra media is sent to them so they can play the game. It’s all done under-the-hood so you don’t need to worry how it all works.

From the Store

The store continues to grow and there are now 1000’s of items live with more being added daily. Valuable Assets has once again added to his range of media with some excellent new abandoned buildings.

 

Ideal for any modern day or post apocalyptic games, these models would be a great addition to any media collection.

Signing Off

That’s it for this week. We’ll have more news next week but for now it’s back to the development caves to ensure everything is finely tuned for release.

Thanks as always for your amazing support.

The GameGuru Team

The Game Creators today announced the release of GameGuru, their new game which allows users to create, share, play and sell their games in a virtual 3D world. The free roaming, realistic environment allows users to sculpt terrains, populate them with buildings, game objects and characters and then play their game with the click of a mouse.

With GameGuru, budding game designers can make their first game designs in minutes and then expand and improve them, making their dreams a reality.

The multi-player game creation tool makes sharing for up to 8 players easy and comes with 10 ready to play games including modern day warfare, horror, medieval fantasy, kids and multiplayer maps. Users can then see what games can be made, and use GameGuru to adapt them into their own creations, making the game unique to you.
Priced for mass market appeal – it’s a lot of power and game content for only $19.99. Plus, its royalty free, so any revenue you generate is yours to keep.
GameGuru officially launches at GDC and will be available via Early Access on STEAM on 2nd March 2015 which means that the easy to use, game creation tool for beginners, hobbyists and Indies alike will be available on the largest digital store in the world.
GameGuru can be previewed from 12th February on Steam’s ‘Coming Soon’ page

The Game Creators CEO, Lee Bamber, who is featured on the Intel stand with GameGuru at GDC, said “If you’re looking for a great value game maker that takes minutes to learn, is powerful enough to deliver a modern gaming experience and allows you to sell what you make royalty free, then it has to be GameGuru. With its powerful graphics engine, built-in asset libraries, example levels, instant multi-player game sharing mode and friendly community, you’ll find creating and sharing your games both rewarding and lots of fun.”

The Game Creators Development Director, Rick Vanner, said “We’ve developed GameGuru with the help and feedback of our amazing community. They have driven the project’s direction, guiding us to produce a product that’s easy to use, powerful, and accessible by all and hugely entertaining!”

The GameGuru official website can be found at www.game-guru.com

—–

About The Game Creators
The Game Creators, a privately owned UK company, are developers and publishers of affordable game development tools. Established in 1999, their brands include DarkBASIC, The 3D Gamemaker, AppGameKit, FPS Creator, DarkBASIC Professional and DarkGDK. They are official Intel Black Belt Developers with a driving focus of bringing game making tools software to the masses.

Learn more about games creation and join a thriving game making community at:
www.thegamecreators.com

Press contact:
Meash Meakin
The Game Creators Ltd
07900 262000
meash@thegamecreators.com