GameGuru Dev Blog - Something For Easter

I did promise to give you a sneak peek into our plans for later this month, and once again I tease you with far less information than you would like. I can say that when Ravey does his live Twitch Broadcast on Wednesday 4PM GMT (https://www.twitch.tv/gamegurulee) you will be in no doubt what the surprise was about.  In the meantime, I can continue to raise my eyebrow in a knowing way about what is to come, but don't let me make this into something huge, just something that came from the community and we thought was really good for Easter.

In other news, work continues on the core of GameGuru and more updates are winging their way onto you right now, currently being beta tested and I hope to release them to you real soon. For a reason I will not delve into now, I have suddenly found myself with a little more time to dedicate to coding, and I plan to put that into what is now being called the V1.121 update so keep a weather eye out for that release to happen mid to late March.

For those, eagerly awaiting news of the SAVE/LOAD PROGRESS feature, it is now up and running! There are quite a few 'gotcha' data and restoration steps for me to resolve before I can release this feature as complete, but it's being done via LUA script which means you get all the cool micro-commands required to make this whole thing a reality, which in turn gives your game scripts some pretty powerful calls you can make.  The more I externalise mechanisms to LUA script., the more I see the future unfold before my eyes.  A recent change externalised the way in which the player health regeneration system worked, which is now a LUA script command completely externalised.  Here is the script for your amusement:

_{-- GameLoop module}

_{gameloop_RegenTickTime = 0}

_{local gameloop = {}}

_{function gameloop.init()
  -- insert your own inits here
  gameloop_RegenTickTime = 0
end}

_{function gameloop.main()
  -- player handle health
  if g_PlayerHealth > 0 and g_PlayerHealth < g_gameloop_StartHealth and g_PlayerDeadTime == 0 then
    -- dont regen health if dead or at max health
    if g_PlayerLastHitTime > 0 then
      -- handle player health regeneration
      if g_Time > g_PlayerLastHitTime + g_gameloop_RegenDelay then
        if g_Time > gameloop_RegenTickTime then
          gameloop_RegenTickTime = g_Time + g_gameloop_RegenSpeed
          newHealth = g_PlayerHealth + g_gameloop_RegenRate
          if newHealth > g_gameloop_StartHealth then
            newHealth = g_gameloop_StartHealth
          end
          SetPlayerHealth ( newHealth )
        end
      end
    end
  end
-- more externalised mechanics to come..
end}

_{return gameloop}

For the non-scripters out there, and those who just want to have fun making quick games, these cool new LUA scripts will eventually be given non-scripting values that can be adjusted through the editor as a GUI, so definately watch this space as we move to what I affectionately call my LUA GUI system :)