News

They often say you can work hard, or you can work smart, both achieving the same result but one will take a lot less time. Today felt like something of a smart day, in that a rather bland and methodical approach produced some very cool long-term code for the way GameGuru will handle loading and recreating a game scene.  It came about from the need to have a loading menu on both the main game menu and also the in-game menu, so two ways to get the game loading back in and really did not want to have to duplicate code.  The solution involved the rather nifty 'require' keyword that LUA provides to import functionality from a common script, to serve multiple purposes. Right now the latest version only saves and restores the players position and viewing angle, but it does this very well and cleanly from both the first and second menus.  Adding more things to save and restore becomes a lot easier from here on in.

On our visit to Stoke College Game Jam, we had the opportunity to speak with some lovely journalists from Stoke Sentinel and talk a little about the games industry, and more specifically, about the volume of work Stoke College Game Jam students could get through in just three days.  We had a great time checking out the final games and entertaining presentations and look forward to attending more Game Jams in the future.

We have just released the latest version 1.12 of GameGuru on Steam, which includes many fixes to the core product and introduces new content to those users who own the Fantasy DLC Pack (http://store.steampowered.com/app/365530/).  Thanks to the feedback over Christmas and the first few months of 2016, we collected a list of fixes you wanted to see ahead of any new features and decided to make this the subject of the current update.  Here is a complete list of the changes:

Fixed lightmapper to match same texture models better (dummy limb issue) Lightmapper can no longer duplicate polygons of first mesh in batching process Fixed issue causing character entities to rotate to player when enter unfreeze range Fixed issue with character entities not updating the 'angley' field LOCK now added to grouped entity menu Locking entities now prevents entity movement when editing terrain Fixed 'musicplaytrackX.lua' scripts to use correct full 100 volume Fixed GetTimer(e) so it reports zero immediately after using StartTimer(e) Fixed issue of entities spawning 50 units above ground, now just 30 units above NOTE: Make sure if your model has more than 60 bones, use CPUANIMS=1 and entity_basic.fx Added SETLIMBINDEX, ROTATELIMBX, ROTATELIMBY and ROTATELIMBZ as LUA commands Fixed transportinzone.lua to play sound as non-3D for louder replay Added new ai_viewanimations.lua to allow quick view of all model animations Changed the way dynamic lights calculate range to workaround NVIDIA 361 flicker bug Updated several decal textures to improve quality and looping sequence Fixed legacy behaviour whereby ISIMMOBILE FPE entities CAN lose health (but only to 1) Added 'LUA Scripting Advice' to the HELP menu The LUA command HIDEHUDS no longer hides the TAB TAB menus or metrics panel Added TITLE, OPTIONS, INGAME, SAVE, LOAD, GFX and SFX option pages under LUA scripts Added WIN, LOSE, NEXTLEVEL and more advanced loading page LUA script Added 'resolutions.lua' and usd require to use common resolution finding code in LUA Fixed issue of previous level cleanup deleting character creator heads for new level Camera Y Offset now if more than twice the camera distance, camera collision disables Removed SAVE and LOAD pages to bring forward the V1.12 release (above tweaks) Fixed g_Inkey and g_Scancode which stopped working with the recent beta update Really added new ai_viewanimations.lua to allow quick view of all model animations Updated Abandoned building meshes from Death Valley DLC (minor geometry fixes) Fixed issue of sinking characters, due to quick-physics boxes for unchanged terrain Fixed issue with occlusion hiding entities at a distance greater than 12000 Fixed issue with how entity sizes are calculated for the occluder, now less flicker Fixed issue of Inkey returning key press inside speech marks Fixed issue with flickering occlusion caused by threshold not scaling with distance Added new scriptbank\stories\HealthTypes scripts and sample level (shields!!) Corrected mask texture of Archer in Fantasy DLC - shoe tint issue resolved Added SCIFI PACK to More Media menu as prompted - good catch! Added support for View Range in Fantasy Character/Creature script (both Core and DLC) Prevented F11 menu from being blocked if HIDEHUD is in force Prevented standalone executables from using any HUDs (TABTAB and F11 menus) Standardised terrain brush size to be same size in both editor and F9 mode Added support for g_MouseWheel in DeactivateMouse() mode (absolute not relative) Corrected description in global.lua - GetImageWidth() is percentage not pixel Both GetImageWidth() and GetImageHeight() now return as float values Fixed issue of splash image being off center when set OS font > 100%

As you can see, we did take the opportunity to add some new LUA commands and additional in-game functionality to keep you on your toes. The next update will focus on the top voted feature you have requested which is the ability to save and load your progress in a standalone game, plus your usual grab bag of additional tweaks and additions.

If you had been wondering where your beloved dev blogs disappeared to, they followed Lee all the way to Stoke-On-Trent to spend the morning with an enterprising group of students who used GameGuru to create games for their Game Jam. I was treated to a brief chat with the teams followed by live presentations of the games.  Given the extremely short deadline all teams produced some excellent designs and we even got a few giggles as we watched the play-throughs during the presentation part of the day.

In order to give you all one last safety net, I have released the latest version as a Public Preview so you can see what is coming in the final official update release. If a critical issue emerges, we will have time to fix it before the final release, and perhaps even make a build available which lets you step back to V1.112 Christmas Build if this is requested by the community.  I have started a forum thread called V1.12 Public Preview so you can post your findings there, which also includes instructions on how you can get the Public Preview through your Steam system. Now that we have a finished version which solves many issues including the NVIDIA flicker issue, the Fantasy DLC Update and a host of tweak requests from the last 50 days, I can start back on the Save/Load Progress feature, which has it's UI in place, but now needs the meat that will save and load the game progress to and from a file.  This next update, V1.13, will also be accompanied by a few more functionality improvements as well as a grab bag full of tweaks as they pour in from the forums, email and reviews.