GameGuru MAX News

TheGameCreators have today launched V1 of their new, easy-to-use 3D game-maker GameGuru MAX.

GameGuru MAX leaves Steam Early Access today and we extend a massive thank you to all Steam users who helped us test and refine the product over the last 12 months.

GameGuru MAX requires no coding knowledge and, with its intuitive tools and features, makes the creation of video games simple, quick, and easy!

With the tools and assets provided in GameGuru MAX, it’s possible to build games in just minutes, and for those who want to go deeper and spend more time on their creation, it features a high degree of customizability to make something unique!

Lee Bamber, CEO of TheGameCreators, said, “GameGuru MAX is the best game maker we've ever worked on and we could not have done it without our amazing team and an awesome community. Having developed game-making software for over 30 years, it remains my hope that GameGuru MAX will open up the world of making games to many more people and that the journey is both fun and rewarding.”

We look forward to seeing what you create with GameGuru MAX!  Happy Game Making!

TheGameCreators latest easy-to-use 3D game-maker GameGuru MAX leaves Early Access today and transitions into the Release Candidate testing phase in anticipation of the official V1 launch.

We would like to extend a massive thank you to all the Steam users who helped us test and refine the product over the last 12 months of Early Access, and we are summoning our amazing community once more for final testing.

The Release Candidate Phase means that during the run-up to V1 release, the present feature set will be frozen, and only small functional additions will be possible to expand specific capabilities when considered absolutely essential to the core.  The majority of the work will be in testing and bug fixing, and at the time of writing, we have around 60 issues to address.  We have also introduced a new GitHub issues board tag called 'showstopper' that will be used to ensure we don't release until GameGuru MAX is stable enough for widespread use.

To view current issues, go to the GameGuru MAX GitHub repository and use this filter to get the shortlist: is:open is:issue label:Max label:bug label:High -label:"Fixed but need confirmation."

Here, you can track our progress and contribute new issues if you find them.  We are testing everything now, and as a recap here are the headline features currently available to you:

• FPS, RPG, and PUZZLE Genres
  
• 18 Demo Games and Built-in Tutorials
  
• Storyboard Editor and Customizable Game Screens
  
• Terrain Generator and Terrain Heightmap Importer
  
• Level Editor and Environmental Effects
  
• Character Creator
  
• Building Editor
  
• Particle Editor
  
• Game Asset Libraries
  
• Enemy and Ally AI with Visual Logic System
  
• 3D Model Importer
  
• Export Standalone Games
  
• Virtual Reality Support
  
• Asset Store Integration
  
• 237-page User Manual
  

GameGuru MAX is the culmination of over 20 years of game-making tools experience and we believe it's now one of the best ways to get started in the world of game-making and an ideal first tool if you are not familiar with scripting, programming or game development in general. 

GameGuru MAX fits into a unique place in the market. It is not intended to replace more established industry tools, but to provide an easy to use, off the shelf solution to quality, commercial game development, suited to all users, regardless of your experience.

We look forward to seeing what you create with GameGuru MAX!  Happy Game Making!

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.