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Early adoption of new technologies can be very exciting and fun. Playing with new toys injects dopamine into your system and you can become a convert or even an apostle; spouting the good news to your social circle.
You invest time and money in the new toy and remind yourself that the negatives that you notice will surely be ironed out, and eventually the mass market will rush in and join you in your new world of tech delight.
Unfortunately, the road doesn’t always lead to Damascus. Many times, the road just ends……and you are left with obsolete and abandoned tech.
The recent demise of Google’s Stadia is one such technological dead-end. It’s likely the adoption numbers didn’t reach their estimated goals and the commercial hammer came down to stop the party.
Microsoft and NVIDIA still offer streaming game services and it’s highly likely that they will succeed when the infrastructure works worldwide to support it. Netflix are also looking at this space to see if they can expand their reach.
We think streaming will have its day in the future but, for now, it’s still a case of download, install and run!
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In GameGuru Classic land we gave all remaining bugs no quarter and reduced the count back to single digits. Some of the issues resulted from our recent upgrade of the engine to 64-bit, including the distortion on some weapons. Other bugs did not touch everyone, such as the texture choice panel disappearing sometimes. The issue of floating active characters seems to be resolved, but as with all issues reported please do check back on anything you report so you can confirm the fixes from the updates we release.
If you do have an issue on the GitHub Issues Board and we have marked it "Help Wanted" please add some additional information, as we need the additional info in order to deal with the bug – and get that GameGuru Classic bug count right down to zero, something not many software applications can claim to do!
In our live broadcasts we recently hinted at a wholesale improvement to the GameGuru Classic Sky System and very much look forward to revealing that before too long. We also have some DLC in the works as well, so plenty to look forward to for GameGuru Classic users.
And talking of our live broadcast – you can join us every Wednesday at 7pm GMT/2pm EST/10am PST for the latest news and chat about both the Classic and MAX universes on our YouTube live broadcast
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We had a few big announcements in the last month with the release of the brand new GameGuru MAX Building Editor and the addition of custom terrain textures. The building editor enables you to quickly create your own simple buildings and texture them either with your own textures or textures provided with the tool. Buildings can be multi-storey, very large, divided up by complex room designs, and as you might expect, includes the ability to attach doors, windows and staircases.
These attachments are taken directly from your GameGuru MAX object library so the collection can be expanded over time to create more unique constructions. It did not feel right to us to add custom textures to buildings without enabling support for the same for your terrain, so from the same update anyone with texture creation skills can now assign a new terrain texture folder to use when painting your terrains. The combination of custom terrain and custom buildings gives you the ability to create scenes that look like no other GameGuru MAX creation and opens the door for truly unique games to be made.
We also had a fun spooky time with our Halloween Screenshot competition and the release of a FREE Halloween-themed Mini-Kit with some spooky assets to get you in the spirit of the thing. Check out our news feed for the results of the screenshot competition!
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This month we catch up with Dan aka Monkey Frog – ‘frog’ to his friends and ‘frunky’ if they're in a funky mood ?
Dan is a 2D/3D artist who's been working as a freelancer for more than 20 years now and, whilst Monkey Frog is the name he is using for his game studio, most of his clients know him from Argent Arts.
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When it comes to game design, Dan’s journey started way back with 3DGameStudio and DarkBASIC Pro, although he confesses to not doing much with DBP. He’s enjoyed a fairly long, though loose, relationship with TheGameCreators for quite some time and tinkered a bit with GameGuru Classic - until the advent of GameGuru MAX and that got him hooked ?
Dan takes up the tale: “I've mostly been creating various parts and pieces in GameGuru MAX in order to test and push the system, but I do have a game project that I intend to do in GameGuru MAX once V1 is live. I'm currently in the stages of completing the design doc, gathering reference material, creating sketches, and starting to build level elements for the game. It's working title is "Habitat" and it would fit in the FPS sci-fi horror genre – but I’m keeping the detail under wraps until I get a little further down the road with it.
Creating Habitat will probably take me a good two years once development actually starts but after that - who knows!? I do have several game ideas I'd love to bring to life and I sincerely hope that GameGuru MAX evolves into the tool I will use for all of them ?
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For now, I am content to push and test GameGuru MAX, report bugs and make requests for GameGuru MAX on GitHub, and generally be there to help with GameGuru MAX-related art stuff (level design, PBR materials and the like). I’m also omnipresent on the live YouTube broadcasts each Wednesday and I’m an active member of the community.”
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