Gameguru, my thoughts.

I have been taking a break from 3D modeling to actually prototype some game concepts that I have been thinking about. This was brought about by the Humble bundle and all those awesome tools my friend pointed out to me! I may even enter that 2015 contest, I certainly am making some good progress towards that end. That is not to say I am giving up those other projects, in fact one seems to be coming along quite well. The other is still really big an a distant thing but it has a lot of potential.

Anyways without further ado on to Gameguru the easy game maker and some screenshots of what I have managed to create so far:

This is an overview of my level so far. We have a cave, two towns and some ruins. I opted for trying to make a seamless game with less loading times.

Some shots of the cave area. I opted to sculpt it and most of my level out of terrain due to various AI issues. Basically the default AI can have a lot of issues with objects that are not terrain (mainly not liking to walk on or around them very well). Seeing as I have very little experience with programming I have had to design around what gameguru gives me to work with for now. Also, due to the limited time frame I have to work with if I want to enter the contest most of the content I made is going to use sound zones with my voice driving the story.

I decided to take gameguru at its word, and see what I could throw together with what I got in the packs for it. Something to consider is that since it was originally a fps creator, that is what the default settings are at. As such, melee weapons have to be treated like really short range guns, aka damage is done at the center of the cross hairs; you don't really have a cone or frontal area effect you would expect of most melee weapons. The player collisions are actually very well done, so moving around should be a breeze. However this has a downside: the player can get some very interesting places if you are not extremely careful with level design, especially terrain. Your best bet if in doubt is to make it so the player falls to their death or something if they are going somewhere you might not want them to go.

On to the default ai: Gameguru's default ai needs some work. My advice is to try some models/animations and see if they work for your game concept. Some hit boxes can be odd and very counter intuitive making some mobs seem invincible. Some mobs fall through the world very easily or get stuck worse than others. Damage can be kind of wonky too, even by tweaking settings I still have certain mobs one or two shot me. Again, experiment to see what default models/ai seem feasible. Most humanoid or close to human size creatures work fairly well.


Finally lets look at the models. I have to hand it to them, most look pretty dang good. No real complaints with them except the default AI issues. Some animations look a bit stiff or weird, but the texture maps seem fairly good.

Whew that was a book hah. Sorry about writing so much. If you have any other questions about my experiences with gameguru let me know and I will try to help. They also have a great community to fall back on if you are having trouble.

Too long to read version:
pros:
gameguru seems good for throwing together something with a fps type perspective.
terrain and models are quick to create/throw in and use.
you can create some enemies that move around and attack quickly.
trigger zones allow one to make events or play sounds easily
models look fairly good
simple interface

cons:
without programming experience you are very limited in what you can do on your own
can be hard to limit player movement (no invisible walls)
enemies can easily get stuck or glitched.
with a simple interface comes many limitations (positioning objects can be tough sometimes for example).
load times can be pretty long with multiple levels.