Rather than a long-winded rant of text, I would like to announce some new features which will be released next week. We have a new interactive tutorial mode which will help new users learn how to load a level, add and edit an entity, test a game and finally create a standalone game.
Even veteran Game Guru users can check out the new levels that have been prepared to get you started quickly. No more blank maps for you, you can start your game in the middle of a freshly loaded wilderness!
Another cool feature is the third person control system which has been added to the core along with a rather hot fireball weapon. The character needed for third person controls require extra animations so we have decided to wrap it all up in a new DLC which provides all the content you might expect from a basic third person game. Watch out for news on this next week, but for those who like to dabble there will be a way to create your own characters and flag them as third person control compatible.
Perhaps the longest awaited feature has been the Character Creator, which makes its debut next week. It comes complete with a selection of bodies, heads, hats, hairs and tweaks and there is plenty of room for expansion too. I believe character creator body parts will be a hugely successful part of the game guru store moving forward, and of course we will continue to drop in new free content as the builds roll on.
Other news from this week is mostly monotone with most of it involving testing and tweaking, but I did find time to snapshot the Fantasy level as I worked through it's creation (yes I actually made this one).
Had a lot of fun with the fantasy art work, and as much as my imagination was bursting with ideas to email the artist, I practiced great restraint and made good use of the available tree, roots and vines.
My latest fantasy shot is from the final version of my level which shows a small patch of earth where a goblin used to live (I blew it up with a fireball), strewn with the leftovers of what was probably the last adventurer to walk this way.
The plan this weekend is to continue testing to make sure the build is solid, as this is going to be a huge release week for us. Next week will be more of the same, responding quickly after the release as I am sure a few bugs will get through, despite our efforts.
Overall, I think the Early Access has been a great success. When we first launched on Steam, we had no idea what would happen as we trialed the Steam multiplayer API for the first time live or what would happen when a lot more people started using the product and feeding back. As it transpired, the release went very well and we smoothly settled into a normal trend of small builds and fixes, with the occasional large build to shake things up. It is this trend of small builds and an occasional large build which has promoted us to upgrade our version number status. The next build would have been build 30 (it's full name being V1.00.030) but as this release introduces so much new stuff, we have decided to use up one of our 'minor' counter and reset the 'iteration' counter. The new version number for the next build will be V1.01.00 and marks the release of interactive tutorials, third person play and customizable characters.
It will be exciting to see what V1.02.00 brings to the table, and I fancy it may have something to do with aquatics, but I shall say no more about it for fear my words will be forged into a pointy object and used to nail me to a wall. On a general note I'm very happy with what we've created so far and pleased with the direction it's going. I also want to thank the internal testers who helped us test an impossible amount of stuff these last two weeks. When you see what we have planned for you, it will all become clear!
Until next week, have a great weekend and I'll be back posting on Monday via the Game Guru websites daily blog at: https://www.game-guru.com/devblog/