Again i say, man your videos show the world ( because i am from Portugal) 2 things, one is how great ggmax is and second, man you make our life so easy in this stuff because of the excellent way you explain how the engine works in its advanced tools, so again thanks and congrats
Those cracks in the seams look more like folds in the rock than anything else. I did a large cave maze on GG Max before I left on deployment. I will be revisiting it when I get home. Thanks for your great videos and keep up the great work.
Great videos, and awesome to see a new series and a challenging one at that! Although my commitment to bug fixing is very high, my commitment to rewarding excellent MAX content is slightly higher. Next build will have loot drop for all characters, including animals (which are technically characters under the hood). Watch out for the next DEVTEST :)
I got the exact same problem with my cave as well. When i tried to put something to hide those fold, i got the same object leveling 'itself' above the 0 elevation the program seem to believe into. (lol). it is like it has a mind of its own. Thank you so much for your tutorials, they are always great. I share with my friends.
Hmmm. OK. You have been generous in providing this visual insight into your game making adventure, and you have asked for some suggestions, so here are some. There is an old adage which goes "the more realistic it seems, the greater the illusion!". So, so as not to break the illusion, I suggest that you spend some time thinking about how the real world works, in order to make the scenario plausible. A well-crafted game does not have to look photo-realistic, or employ highly realistic looking characters (cartoons, and animated feature films such as "The Lion King", and "A Bug's Life" clearly do not) in order to create a compelling immersive experience, so long as the world they conjure feels real enough, and plausible enough, to allow the uninterrupted suspension of disbelief. When designing a survival genre game such as this one, clearly there needs to be a strong focus on resources. The primary resources that keep the player alive are air, water, and food, in the first instance, followed by things like shelter (staying warm), resources that support the maintenance of health (avoidance of parasites, resistance to disease, exposure to toxins, and wound management), resources that allow protection from belligerent actors (predators, monsters, magic users, and deities), and resources that allow for mitigation against of adverse events and simple bad luck. In places where the cave system is open to the surface, air can get in, and if there is more than one opening, then air can flow through the cave. So, you have a conveyor belt here. You already have a water source which at the moment looks like a pool, but if you were make it dynamic, then it too could provide a conveyor belt. You could do this by turning it into a slow moving stream, or having it rise for a time after rain and then subsiding again. The other conveyor belt that you have is the light that comes in through the holes in the roof of the cave, presumably sufficiently high that the player cannot simply climb out, which delivers a stream of energy. The significance of these streams and conveyer belts is that they are the pathways by which resources can enter the system so as to be harvested. So, the air allows you to breathe, and the water stream allows you to drink. But, how do you get food? It either has to come into the system, or be generated within it. If you have light (and therefore you have energy) and water, then you will have photosynthesis, meaning that simple plants, such as lichen, liverworts and mosses, can grow in lit areas (even dim ones), and other plants which can tolerate low light conditions can produce seeds ... probably not enough to sustain you, but enough to allow bacteria and algae to grow, and small invertebrates can feed off this bacteria and algae, and these in turn will become food for larger predatory invertebrates which are big enough for you to catch and eat. Not only that: but; these food source will attract larger creatures in the food chain who might be occasional visitors to the cave in search of food just like you, and if you can trap one them, or otherwise overcome them, then you might obtain a reasonable meal. All these creatures leave behind waste products and eventually die, the remains of which can serve as food for scavenger and decomposer organisms and, in addition, provide nutrients for fungi including mushrooms which you can harvest. Bats frequent caves and would make a tasty meal, and the guano they leave behind, which contains nitrogen and phosphorus rich fertiliser, together with undigested seeds, would serve as a food source for all kinds of critters and well as various fungi. So, here you have both nutrients and energy travelling along the air conveyor belt into the cave system. Various worms, crustaceans, eels and possibly fish might live in the stream of water, and these could also bring nutrients and energy into the system via a water conveyer belt. There might be driftwood, roots, leaves and sticks that move along the stream and these could be dried out and used for firewood. There might even be place where such material has accumulated in the past and dried out. Using the idea of streams and conveyor belts for energy, nutrients, materials, and organisms gives you a way to decide where to place various things in you game and provide a plausible framework that you can use to make the scenario seem more realistic. You can also add interest to the game by looking at how a disruption of these conveyor belts might impact your circumstances. An increase in volcanic activity is likely to be accompanied by a transient rise in noxious gases like carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide which might require you to flee the area and seek safe haven, perhaps by swimming through the tunnel. Surface rain might cause the water level to rapidly rise, again requiring you to flee and seek safe haven to avoid drowning, or threaten to flood your camp site, and ruin or sweep away your stores, and other creatures might also have to relocate for a time and in so doing either join you or perhaps even guide you to a safe place, if you were to follow them. Their movement might even provide advance warning. The water level could also fall for a time, depriving you of a water source, and requiring you to collect water seeping in from above using fabric as a wick and draining into some kind of container ... the skulls of dead animals, perhaps. And, maybe a larger predator occasionally enters the cave system from time to time seeking refuge, or a place to hibernate, or by falling down a hole, and if you could catch it, and cure the meat then you might be eating jerky for while... that is, until something else steals it while you are asleep! And you might benefit from a fur coat. Information is also a resource. So, you could add another narrative by having rock paintings on the wall which tell the story of people who lived in these caves long, long ago. If you were to study them carefully, you might learn things that help you to survive, or provide crafting instructions, or reveal parts of the cave system that have been made inaccessible due to rock falls, or lie on the other side of the lava pool, giving you a reason to build bridge to get to the other side. Necessity is the mother of invention; and, curiosity killed the cat! www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/07/10/realism-art-and-style-in-video-games/ Have fun!
I love your tutorials. I am working on a survival game. How can I get my camp fire to boost health? I can get it to affect a user defined global but not health. Please keep the tutorials coming - without them I might have given up by now!
@@SuperConfidentman Ooh good point, I hadn't considered that. Unfortunately Health Remaining isn't the same kind of global as a user defined global, so I don't think there's a way to do what you're after.
@@bloodmooninteractive Indeed. This is the very issue I encountered. I can't figure out how to get elements (such as zones, particles, ifused objects, etc.) to stick with the item if the player relocates it. They just stay where they were placed in the map. It's hard to see how a survival game can be created with this limitation. In general, the Behaviors are very lacking in functionality; most of them need greatly expanding and the library needs to be much larger with many more scripts geared toward survival mechanics.
Again i say, man your videos show the world ( because i am from Portugal) 2 things, one is how great ggmax is and second, man you make our life so easy in this stuff because of the excellent way you explain how the engine works in its advanced tools, so again thanks and congrats
Those cracks in the seams look more like folds in the rock than anything else. I did a large cave maze on GG Max before I left on deployment. I will be revisiting it when I get home. Thanks for your great videos and keep up the great work.
Great videos, and awesome to see a new series and a challenging one at that! Although my commitment to bug fixing is very high, my commitment to rewarding excellent MAX content is slightly higher. Next build will have loot drop for all characters, including animals (which are technically characters under the hood). Watch out for the next DEVTEST :)
That's awesome Lee thank you. It'll really help bring together some of the planned features for the game.
I got the exact same problem with my cave as well. When i tried to put something to hide those fold, i got the same object leveling 'itself' above the 0 elevation the program seem to believe into. (lol). it is like it has a mind of its own. Thank you so much for your tutorials, they are always great. I share with my friends.
Try locking the objects once you've placed them. I've been doing that this time and it seems to help
Hmmm. OK. You have been generous in providing this visual insight into your game making adventure, and you have asked for some suggestions, so here are some.
There is an old adage which goes "the more realistic it seems, the greater the illusion!". So, so as not to break the illusion, I suggest that you spend some time thinking about how the real world works, in order to make the scenario plausible. A well-crafted game does not have to look photo-realistic, or employ highly realistic looking characters (cartoons, and animated feature films such as "The Lion King", and "A Bug's Life" clearly do not) in order to create a compelling immersive experience, so long as the world they conjure feels real enough, and plausible enough, to allow the uninterrupted suspension of disbelief.
When designing a survival genre game such as this one, clearly there needs to be a strong focus on resources. The primary resources that keep the player alive are air, water, and food, in the first instance, followed by things like shelter (staying warm), resources that support the maintenance of health (avoidance of parasites, resistance to disease, exposure to toxins, and wound management), resources that allow protection from belligerent actors (predators, monsters, magic users, and deities), and resources that allow for mitigation against of adverse events and simple bad luck.
In places where the cave system is open to the surface, air can get in, and if there is more than one opening, then air can flow through the cave. So, you have a conveyor belt here. You already have a water source which at the moment looks like a pool, but if you were make it dynamic, then it too could provide a conveyor belt. You could do this by turning it into a slow moving stream, or having it rise for a time after rain and then subsiding again. The other conveyor belt that you have is the light that comes in through the holes in the roof of the cave, presumably sufficiently high that the player cannot simply climb out, which delivers a stream of energy.
The significance of these streams and conveyer belts is that they are the pathways by which resources can enter the system so as to be harvested. So, the air allows you to breathe, and the water stream allows you to drink. But, how do you get food? It either has to come into the system, or be generated within it.
If you have light (and therefore you have energy) and water, then you will have photosynthesis, meaning that simple plants, such as lichen, liverworts and mosses, can grow in lit areas (even dim ones), and other plants which can tolerate low light conditions can produce seeds ... probably not enough to sustain you, but enough to allow bacteria and algae to grow, and small invertebrates can feed off this bacteria and algae, and these in turn will become food for larger predatory invertebrates which are big enough for you to catch and eat. Not only that: but; these food source will attract larger creatures in the food chain who might be occasional visitors to the cave in search of food just like you, and if you can trap one them, or otherwise overcome them, then you might obtain a reasonable meal. All these creatures leave behind waste products and eventually die, the remains of which can serve as food for scavenger and decomposer organisms and, in addition, provide nutrients for fungi including mushrooms which you can harvest.
Bats frequent caves and would make a tasty meal, and the guano they leave behind, which contains nitrogen and phosphorus rich fertiliser, together with undigested seeds, would serve as a food source for all kinds of critters and well as various fungi. So, here you have both nutrients and energy travelling along the air conveyor belt into the cave system.
Various worms, crustaceans, eels and possibly fish might live in the stream of water, and these could also bring nutrients and energy into the system via a water conveyer belt. There might be driftwood, roots, leaves and sticks that move along the stream and these could be dried out and used for firewood. There might even be place where such material has accumulated in the past and dried out.
Using the idea of streams and conveyor belts for energy, nutrients, materials, and organisms gives you a way to decide where to place various things in you game and provide a plausible framework that you can use to make the scenario seem more realistic.
You can also add interest to the game by looking at how a disruption of these conveyor belts might impact your circumstances. An increase in volcanic activity is likely to be accompanied by a transient rise in noxious gases like carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide which might require you to flee the area and seek safe haven, perhaps by swimming through the tunnel.
Surface rain might cause the water level to rapidly rise, again requiring you to flee and seek safe haven to avoid drowning, or threaten to flood your camp site, and ruin or sweep away your stores, and other creatures might also have to relocate for a time and in so doing either join you or perhaps even guide you to a safe place, if you were to follow them. Their movement might even provide advance warning.
The water level could also fall for a time, depriving you of a water source, and requiring you to collect water seeping in from above using fabric as a wick and draining into some kind of container ... the skulls of dead animals, perhaps. And, maybe a larger predator occasionally enters the cave system from time to time seeking refuge, or a place to hibernate, or by falling down a hole, and if you could catch it, and cure the meat then you might be eating jerky for while... that is, until something else steals it while you are asleep! And you might benefit from a fur coat.
Information is also a resource. So, you could add another narrative by having rock paintings on the wall which tell the story of people who lived in these caves long, long ago. If you were to study them carefully, you might learn things that help you to survive, or provide crafting instructions, or reveal parts of the cave system that have been made inaccessible due to rock falls, or lie on the other side of the lava pool, giving you a reason to build bridge to get to the other side.
Necessity is the mother of invention; and, curiosity killed the cat!
www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/07/10/realism-art-and-style-in-video-games/
Have fun!
I love your tutorials. I am working on a survival game. How can I get my camp fire to boost health? I can get it to affect a user defined global but not health. Please keep the tutorials coming - without them I might have given up by now!
Well just like in my campfire video I used a zone underneath to make the player cold, we could activate a zone to make the player healthier. Try that
How do you make the zone stick with the camp fire when the player picks it up and drops it elsewhere?
@@SuperConfidentman Ooh good point, I hadn't considered that. Unfortunately Health Remaining isn't the same kind of global as a user defined global, so I don't think there's a way to do what you're after.
@ You could do it by editing the Lua script but I try to avoid that as my Lua skills are scant.
@@bloodmooninteractive Indeed. This is the very issue I encountered. I can't figure out how to get elements (such as zones, particles, ifused objects, etc.) to stick with the item if the player relocates it. They just stay where they were placed in the map. It's hard to see how a survival game can be created with this limitation. In general, the Behaviors are very lacking in functionality; most of them need greatly expanding and the library needs to be much larger with many more scripts geared toward survival mechanics.