GameGuru MAX News

If you have been following GameGuru MAX's progress on Discord or through the activity on GitHub, or are tuning into our weekly live broadcast, you will know about all the fixes and features we've added since December 2022.  For those who prefer to wait for the official public builds on Steam, here is a complete run-down of what has been happening over the last three months since the last public update to GameGuru MAX.

Custom HUD Screens

In 2022 you only had the ability to modify existing HUD screens such as title menus, loading screens and in-game option screens. In this latest update you now have the ability to create new HUD screens and place your own gadgets, perfect for games in the RPG genre that require many more screens for mechanics like inventories, map views and player progression control. As this is part of the ongoing RPG game mechanics work, expect more gadgets to follow with simple templates and guides to get you started quickly with this cool new feature.

Alternative Textures

A much-requested feature has been the ability to change or animate a texture in-game, and with this update, you will find a new behavior called Change Texture that provides the functionality for both. You will be pleased to learn that this ability has been communicated to community artists so expect future third-party DLC that include this additional visual effect.

RPG Progress and Weapon Hot Keys

As the RPG genre has a large scope, it was not possible to deliver a complete example for this update, but you are able to test out the completed elements such as the Inventory system and Hot Keys panel. These work with the existing weapon system so you now have the option of seeing what weapons you have collected in your game, organising them in your inventory, and choosing which weapons are assigned to your in-game hotkeys.

Project Media and Hot Swapping

A feature requested by the art community has also been included to enable better management of assets that are highly game-project-specific. Instead of placing such assets in the GameGuru MAX root library system, you can place them inside their designated project files folder, and they will still be discoverable via the Library windows when browsing. Only when you are editing a specific project will those project-specific media files show.

We also threw in the notion of 'hot swapping media', enabling GameGuru MAX to instantly check whether a specific model file has been modified and, if it has, replace that model in the level editor with the most recent version. This allows artists and avid creators to immediately try out their changes without having to relaunch the editor. This is particularly impressive when editing buildings in the Building Editor, a built-in tool for making simple structures, and giving the user the power to instantly shift the position of the door or window in less than 5 seconds!

Bug Squashing Time

No doubt many of you will have a shortlist of your most hated bugs, and the team has been busy making sure the worst offenders are caught and squished. Since our re-focus on the issues board (standing at 475 in January) we are now down to 367 at the time of writing, and will probably be even lower when this update goes out the door. To avoid a five-page update blog, we have cherry-picked some of the ex-bugs below:

• The importer can now specify the collision shape of the model loaded
  
• Multiple particle effects can now co-exist in a confined space
  
• Added Parallax Occlusion Mapping to create depth detail on flat surfaces
  
• Added weapon choices back into the built-in Character Creator
  
• Multiple standalone game fixes as we get closer to the V1 release and splash removal
  
• Improvements to texture seams and crash fixes in the built-in Building Editor system
  
• Many new behaviors added to the Behavior Library - much kudos to Necrym59!
  
• Improved nav mesh and character pathfinding to handle door blockers when closed
  

For the curious, the complete list can be viewed by going to our issues board and selecting items that match the filters "is:closed is:issue label:Max label:bug", though be warned, it has been three months so expect a LOT of ex-bugs to show up. If you find any new ones in our March update, we encourage you to post them on our issues board.

For those who have just joined our news section, you can check out GameGuru MAX right now for FREE by visiting the Steam page and downloading the free trial version here.

NEW! Offworld Station Booster Pack Released!

It's a harsh and dangerous world on the off-world colonies and the brand new Offworld Station Booster DLC offers over 160 assets to create your own off-world base. It includes corridors, rooms, machines, boxes & crates for storage, monitors and a selection of furniture and props.

This great new booster pack also introduces the first animated textures assets, adding life and depth to your games. Designed with ease of use in mind, it's easy to swap the provided textures with your own via the intuitive native behaviour now available in GameGuru MAX.

So, whether you're planning a full working base, an abandoned station, or a mix of both, you'll find what you need in this great DLC.

The Offworld Station Booster Pack includes:

• Several pre-made corridors, including straights, corners and T-junctions
  
• A number of pre-made rooms
  
• A collection of interconnecting animated doors
  
• Connecting stairs and ramps
  
• Multiple parts for corridor and room construction - easy to design your own rooms and corridors!
  
• 4 new types of Sci-Fi inspired crates
  
• A collection of office furniture, including desks, communicators, screens and monitors
  
• An animated alien blob!
  
• Plus lots more....
  

To check out this DLC in more detail and take advantage of a 15% launch discount visit the Steam product page here: Offworld Station Booster Pack DLC:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2236140/GameGuru_MAX_Offworld_Station_Booster_Pack/

For those familiar with the latest development work, you will be aware of the conversion work to bring GameGuru MAX up to the latest version of the Wicked Engine, which was last synced over a year ago.  We revealed some of our progress in recent live broadcasts and have made further progress in this area since. Some aspects went very well and other areas are taking considerably longer than we anticipated, to the degree that it may start to impact our ability to stay on top of issues reported with the current public version.

In order to provide you with an improved experience on the current version we have decided to place extra resources and time on reducing the issues board backlog and push the conversion to the latest Wicked Engine until after we release V1.  This will not jeopardize any of the features you currently have, but simply push some features that exist in the latest Wicked Engine down the line.

From conversations on socials and from dialog with users reporting issues, we are confident that the decision is the right one and will benefit the most users in the short term.

To give our team even more time to spend on crushing bugs and issues, we have also made the decision to push back the features yet to be implemented, so that bugs take top priority over enhancements.  Naturally, work on these forthcoming features will continue organically and we already have community involvement to expand the capabilities for RPG gaming, such as the excellent work by Necrym59 to be released in a series of updates after the Christmas break.

We have in fact been in this mode for some time, and already have a decent list of fixes and additions to share with you before Christmas, and if you have Steam auto-updates enabled, you will find the following improvements to the latest public version:

• Re-instated last good DX11.1 games and graphics engine for build for more stability
  
• Resolved issues with some early AMD cards, no longer random crashes from above
  
• Added three new LUA commands to control object texture and texture UVs
  
• Updated Screen Editor to enable changing of in-game HUD gadgets
  
• Added Flashlight collectible and new flashlight LUA commands
  
• Fixed issue with play animation not respecting built-in anims
  
• Fixed issue of buildings and other objects killing navmesh generation
  

For more information on the current state of all reported issues, you can view them on our issues board.

For those who have just joined our news section, you can check out GameGuru MAX right now for FREE by visiting the Steam page and downloading the free trial version here.

Welcome Wasteland Wanderers!

Are you looking for something to populate your dream post-apocalyptic landscape? Well you're in luck as we've teamed up with some great 3D artists to produce a new wave of exciting DLC's for GameGuru MAX. First off are two top quality booster packs, ideal for wastelands, dystopian futures, zombies fests, shanty towns and more.



WASTELAND WORKSHOP BOOSTER PACK

As any good Wasteland Explorer will tell you, things break down, and need repairing. So, where do they go? To the Wasteland Workshop! - featuring over 200 objects in various states of repair. Included in the DLC you'll find workshop furniture, tools, batteries, scrap metal, work sheds, fuel pumps, junk, signs, a few weaponized tools and a host of other items to bring your levels to life. Almost all objects come with clean, worn and rusty texture variants, so the pack is ideal for your needs, whatever state you imagine it to be in.

WASTELAND WEAPONS BOOSTER PACK

We all know that the wasteland is a dangerous place, so a sensible wanderer will be looking for something to protect themselves with. Thankfully, the Wasteland Weapons' DLC has arrived. Featuring 10 unique improvised melee weapons' with 2 texture variants, providing 20 weapons in total. All weapons are fully animated and can be equipped by the player, or even given to characters.

Whatever your melee defense needs, this DLC has it! Looking for a spiked club, an improved spear, or just a heavy cement club? This DLC has it! Add to that several blades, a hammer, an axe, a knuckleduster and a rusty pipe -  we've got it all :-)

A big thank you to everyone who submitted a screenshot for our spooktacular Halloween competition and, as always, the community came through with some cool entries and gave the judges a hard time picking winners! 

We asked you to create an amazing Halloween screenshot with extra spookiness and these are the worthy five:

James - First Place - $100
This was our top pick. Great visuals, very spooky and plenty of pumpkins. The scene is very well stagedand includes lots of subtle details to keep your eye moving over the shot.  The bright windows in the foreground and fogged lights in the distance are a nice touch too! Congratulations!

Fabio - Second Place - $75
You will remember Fabio from the last competition, a great one for setting the scene.  Excellent use of subdued lighting and color to create a hollow and desolate scene with spooky gravestones for any would-be player to venture through.

Paul - Third Place - $50
You have to look twice to realise this is a screenshot from GameGuru MAX and it really shows what happens when you go all in on custom assets and spend plenty of time on scene staging.  The colours and lighting are great and including a pretty scary clown made this shot instantly spooky.

Pek - Fourth Place - $20
We really like the detail in this scene - and the strong silhouetting of the pumpkin and the skull. The stage, a spooky old house and a creepy old painting was a great touch.

Aaron - Joint Fifth Place - $20

Martin - Joint Fifth Place - $20

We just could not decide between these two - so chose to award them both joint fifth place - they both aim for that spooky atmosphere we looked for. The first populated by ghosts we can see, and the second populated by ghosts we must imagine.  Both show great visual touches using fog and haze to give the scene a realistic feel.

We also want to give a massive thanks to everyone who entered the competition - it is never easy to judge, but we hope you like the screenshots above, and for those starting out with GameGuru MAX, a glimpse at the things you can create if you put some time in.

We have more competitions coming up but, in the meantime, we hope you enjoy using the FREE Halloween Mini-Kit that we released on Steam. We will keep it active for all GameGuru MAX users so you can access it any time during the year, not just on Halloween.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2190600/GameGuru_MAX_Halloween_MiniKit/

Congratulations to everyone and to stay up to date with product news, special offers, and details of the next competition sign up for our monthly newsletter!