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.