Welcome to the third of four quarterly updates of the year!  Here is your round-up of all the fixes and improvements since June 2024. The issues board count has ebbed and flowed from less than 10 bugs to over 30 and, generally, we are finding that new issues are increasingly edge cases and we're seeing good stability in the latest builds.

Bugs aside, we have seen a pretty impressive haul of new features added to GameGuru MAX all thanks to the efforts of community member Preben, who has been very busy on his Patreon page helping users and adding new functionality.  To name the highlights, he created a special lite version of his excellent LOD Generator and this is now part of the Object Preview system to create LOD versions of stock and custom objects. He has added Depth Of Field, Water Caustics and other post-processing features and by no means least, you now get FSR support to give your games a massive performance boost.

The internal team has also been busy too, adding a new video playback gadget to your storyboard screen editor, migrating the old decal animation system to use particles for things like bullet impacts and blood splats and character reactions such as stun to improve general melee combat logic.  The biggest new feature is the Remote Project System that provides the ability to separate your game assets from the stock library and maintain a quite separate folder for all your game project files. This has been a big request for those working on larger game projects and has encouraged more ambitious projects to be created and developed. You can find this feature when you create a new project, with the option to move your project to a location of your choice, even local cloud folders such as DropBox Desktop folders, for instant syncing with the cloud for an excellent backup facility. The remote project system will keep a copy of any stock assets you use and keep your custom content separate in a common location, allowing you to zip up and share your entire project without having to worry about gathering files from different reference locations.

As we pledged a good few updates ago, and despite the impressive functionality additions above, our priority remains on making sure bugs are handled quickly to ensure we have a stable build for making games.  These fixes and improvements are numerous, though we can highlight a few top items such as further improvements to performance, both in terms of game speed and loading times.  Improvements to the new weapon system for more control via scripting and we've fixed the rate of fire issues.  The RPG features have been strengthened to cope with standalone game saves and reloading, ensuring player stats, inventory, and chest contents are perfectly restored, along with zone states, collision and all the other properties that might change as you progress through your levels.  As these bugs generally appear sporadically, and very much on a per-game basis, this work continues in earnest to ensure that the games you publish have great save/load capability, no matter the size of your game world.

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 of your own to the product.

For those interested in the blow-by-blow change lot, here it is, fresh from the GitHub repository:

* Script Improvements by Necrym59 and Guide Updates
* Sped up debug mode by deferring sound ferrment
* Fixed ability to add weapon from script only
* Fixed Rate Of Fire system to work inside Can Fire logic
* Fixed VSYNC coming back from game issue
* Fixed crash issue when adding 10th loot item to characters
* PromptDuration debug string survives game reload for better debugging
* Character heads no longer disappear when apparent size culling working
* Inventory contents survives move from one level to another
* Some small fixes reducing extant bug count to 20
* Added Video Gadget To Screens
* Updated door rotate script with new feature (push/pull)
* Script Fix in player zone behavior to remove debug prompt
* Trigger zones not restoring after a game save now fixed
* Tests of standalone save games
* Now deletes temp files from standalone game to game
* Fixed issue of SetPosition command not working after ResetPosition command
* ResetPosition command now no longer grounds objects to the terrain
* Script improvements to crosshair and toxiczone
* Fixed reloading game save issue with butterflies not animating
* Fixed issue of a crash if encrypted FPEs are loaded as though normal FPEs
* Now correctly restores cloned objects in more scenarios
* Fixed flicker that happens after standalone splash screen
* Inventory now refreshes correctly first time after using chests
* Fixed issue that caused game time to be reset on game save reloads
* All tested states in a level are restored after a game save reload
* Script improvements related to reloading level states
* NOTE: RESTOREMENOW flag for EntityExtra for script writers
* New command set the always active property of an object
* Fixed arrow script to always set the arrow as active
* Fixed TEXTINZONE to work with multiple zones
* Fixed issue of remote project media items not showing in library
* Included more media into remote project creation
* Now includes NEARLY ALL files from remote project folder into standalone creation
* Fix Lens flare do not work in standalone.
* PromptLocalOffset now with 3d coordinates option
* Added Depth of Field
* Added post processing snow/dust shader with many options
* Added underwater caustics. and waveing
* Tidied up standalone export to speed it up and catch more files
* Improved the game save feature to restore more of the in-level game states
* Added GetPlayerFOV LYA command
* Fixed issue with exploding stuff not injuring characters and objects
* Entering the Storyboard Area is now much faster
* Numerous script improvements related to game save restorations
* Fixed issue of some standalones not copying over all the files (related to remote project work)
* Fixed issue of combat music not starting for shooter characters, and now allows to modify combat music duration
* Now transfers sky bank selections and particle selections to the remote project area
* Improved media copying to remote project area
* NOTE: Includes sound, images, video and particles
* Cleanup to remove older grass and terrain system artefacts
* Fixed issue with Low Poly characters not using the correct animation when a weapon is selected.
* Music volume in standalone now works with ambienceinzone (Music Zone)
* Icon specified in storyboard now applies to the final executable
* Fixed issue of shop inventories not restoring after a saved game is reloaded
* Added new LIVES REMAINING to the Storyboard Screen Editor
* Decal Projection not suitable for scorch and blood splatter on animating objects, need another way
* Standalone Save Game Fixes including inventory and shop restoration, and light state restoration
* Blood decal now uses new particle system (together with new newparticle files in decal folders)
* Added new capability for old decals to be replaced with the new particle system (WIP)
* Fixed collision state when loading game save position
* Now allows the first object in a batch conversion to be saved
* Added LUA commands for new particle system
* Added new PARTICLEEFFECT.LUA script that can be assigned to particle game elements
* Updated game loading to fix issue of collision being ignored when a script switches it off (fish issue)
* Added support for block fail animation when player attempts to block but times it badly
* Further work on new project system to handle copying asset files into remote project area
* Made sure terrain height is done, then invalidate everything to get correct height for virtual textures/grass/trees.
* FSR Support
* Add support to bullet polygon collision for triangle list mesh without indices. Where we have more then one mesh in the object.
* lua_setcameradistance now works from lua, great to trigger changes inside indoor levels for improved FPS.
* Player can now block if the weapon supports the animation
* Characters can be react to a player block if they have the STUN animation using Melee Attach
* Updated three of the player voice sounds to present block sound effects
* Changed terms for LOWEST to FASTEST for better clarity
* Fixed crash when specifying animation files that do not exist

Also, remember our monthly live broadcast is a great place to get a look at some of these fixes, so if you want to join in on these extended hour-long Q&A sessions, we host them on the last Saturday of every month at 7PM BST on our YouTube channel - see you there :-)