We are very pleased to introduce a new feature, oft-requested by the community, the ability to create a completely empty level, that is, no terrain, no water, nothing much of anything except some night sky and a start marker. This ability to create a purely empty level is ideal for creating indoor scenes that contain a lot of detail where terrain and water are not required and provide a fast experience for players. You will find it in the Terrain Generator in the top-right labeled "Completely Empty Level".
We also received an update from community magician Necrym59 who updated the Crafting Table logic to include the detection of class types, so you can now differentiate between crafting food on campfires and potions on magic tables, and he also threw in a player experience level logic so you can control how powerful your player needs to be before they can craft there!
This update also includes the ability to switch off all nav mesh generation at creation time, perfect for levels where only the player is roaming about and does not need extra metadata for characters to walk about. We restored the smooth camera mode (just use the arrow keys), ideal for making slick video footage of your games.
Plenty of functionality improvements and fixes when it comes to particles, and you only need to check out Preben's excellent Patreon page to learn just how far down the rabbit hole you can go when it comes to particle creation and effects. Here is a link to learn more: https://www.patreon.com/c/plemsoft/posts
New LUA commands have been added to further your scripting ambitions, including greater control of the clouds above you, more accurate positioning of sounds, new math conversion commands, finer HUD control, and we upped the DLUA variable count to 40 to support truly massive behavior logic when you need it. We also upped the storyboard screen limit from 50 to 150, so we dare you to make your game that massive!
Finally, a lot of time was spent cleaning up and optimizing areas of the editor and engine, so for example larger levels will now use GBs less memory as your object count goes up, and adding new assets live has been sped up 400%! Performance tuning is an ongoing process, and very edge-specific, so if you find something you feel could be faster, do let us know.
Remember, you have full access to the GameGuru MAX source code on our GitHub repository and you are more than welcome to clone a copy and even contribute fixes and features to the product.
For those interested in the blow-by-blow changelog, here it is, fresh from the GitHub repository:
- Added ability to switch off Nav Mesh Generation in Terrain Generator
- Fixed issue of smooth camera mode not being able to mouselook
- Updated the drafting table behaviour to allow class types and player experience level detection
- Fixed issue of cloned characters adopting a changed logic state from a character that has already transitioned a script
- Expanded the Completely Empty Level Mode from 5K to 50K area
- Added COMPLETELY EMPTY Level Mode to skip any terrain work if required
- Bug Fix - Allow particles to be activated/deactivated
- Bug Fix - Grass tab was reloading some images all the time
- Added 2 new lua commands - SetTreeWind(val) - val = GetTreeWind() - "val = 0.0 to 1.0"
- Added - Animated Trees with "tree wind" slider
- Wicked Particles - Support for custom impact and max default explosion
- Fix - missing files in standalone
- Fix - DX11 Errors reported from debug layer.
- New LUA Command: GetCloudDensity() -- val = GetCloudDensity(), Get Cloud Density
- New LUA Command: SetCloudDensity(val) -- SetCloudDensity(val), Set Cloud Density
- New LUA Command: GetCloudCoverage() -- val = GetCloudCoverage(), Get Cloud Coverage
- New LUA Command: SetCloudCoverage(val) -- SetCloudCoverage(val), Set Cloud Coverage
- New LUA Command: GetCloudHeight() -- val = GetCloudHeight(), Get Cloud Height
- New LUA Command: SetCloudHeight(val) -- SetCloudHeight(val), Set Cloud Height
- New LUA Command: GetCloudThickness() -- val = GetCloudThickness(), Get Cloud Thickness
- New LUA Command: SetCloudThickness(val) -- SetCloudThickness(val), Set Cloud Thickness
- New LUA Command: GetCloudSpeed() -- val = GetCloudSpeed(), Get Cloud Speed
- New LUA Command: SetCloudSpeed(val) -- SetCloudSpeed(val), Set Cloud Speed
- Bug Fix - Disable caustic on terrain when water disabled
- Expand cstr max string size for some functions, and expand ringbuffer size
- Mem - Save 100+mb removing unused storyboard structs
- Bug Fix - TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo#5920
- Bug Fix - prevent more exceptions even if they have catch
- Bug Fix - Reset wicked particle effects between standalone levels
- Added New Cover Zone to game elements, and new Follow Cover Zone behavior for characters
- Bug Fix - weapons added to projects. ( TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo#5910 )
- Bug Fix - When creating new project, would contain g_collectionList from prev. loaded project
- Bug Fix - above would add those wepons to the new project (TheGameCreators/GameGuruRepo#5851)
- Wicked Particle System updates
- Bug Fix - in standalone skybox got copied to docwrite folder with _e_
- New Wicked Particle Commands documented in globals.lua
- Bug Fix - Cleanup of wicked particle effects
- Fix for custom terrain textures
- Bug Fix - Cleanup of wicked particle effects
- Further EPIC Fix - correct DLL copied over
- Added Fix for EPIC Standalone Saving
- January 2025 - Optimizing / New features / Bug Fixing
- New LUA command - PositionSound(Entity,Slot,X,Y,Z)
- Added - Quest Type "Activate" (4 Necrym59)
- Added - DLUA - -- DESCRIPTION: [@SELECTED_INTERACTION$=-1(0=InterActionWeaponList)] (4 Necrym59)
- Added - DLUA - -- DESCRIPTION: [@ListQuests=1(0=QuestList)] (4 Necrym59)
- Added Wicked Particle System (LUA only for now)
- New LUA commands Convert2DTo3D, Convert3DTo2D, ScreenCordsToPercent
- New lua commands - DisableBoundHudKeys() and EnableBoundHudKeys() ( 4 AmenMoses )
- Optimizing - terrain/trees/veg will now only load textures when used, 5 sec. faster startup & saved 0.5gb
- Storyboard max screens increased from 50 to 150, max widgets from 50 to 100.
- Optimizing - cStr - changed to use ringbuffer instead of temp storage
- Above save tons of memory, levels with 3000 object = 1gb. memory saved
- Added log vram usage to Guru-MapEditor.log
- Bug Fix - When using load game or when died and weapon already loaded.
- Bug Fix - Weapon animations was not parsed symptoms: "Gun with stretched arms."
- Optimizing - DLUA now use less memory
- Added more DLUA variables now 40 available (4 Necrym59)
- Added DLUA error if script do not have any "newlines"
- Optimizing - max startup - adding all media to assets lists now 400% faster.
- Bug Fix - restore position of lua moved particles
- Added to setup.ini - "editorvsync" option, my gpu is burning and my electric bill is high, there are cheaper ways to heat a room :)
- Added weapon slot 11 to be used for interactions ONLY, can't be used with any weapons using ammo (4 Necrym59)
- Bug Fix - only one delete/add quest button per behavior
- Better object error messages
- Improvement to zone spawning logic for when standalone levels are saved and restored
- HUD Interface can now show a HUD when player enters a zone
- Added new LUA command to get HUD screen name and updated HUD interface script
- Improved WinZone can now be activated remotely
- Fixed decal disappear issue
Also, we have a huge resource of game-making videos going back over ten years on our YouTube channel so feel free to spool through on your tea break! Until the next update, stay creative and happy game-making!
Changed files in this update