I strongly agree with you, what other tool you recommend for Windows?

I think Conitec is trying to improve the tool-set, but they should improve or rewrite WED first. It's very annoying that after the engine close from full screen, the texture in WED disappear and refresh views not work!

Yeah , Torque has definately left gamestudio way behind. The torque engine , it's tool set , and it's many diff engines , including the torque XNA , are all far superior than gamestudio's outdated A7. If Conitec doesn't get on the ball , I dont really see GameStudio surviving much longer , it's almost irrational to use it at this point , there's just so many superior alternatives which are sometimes even cheaper. I've grown used to using gamestudio , and i'm very familiar with it's interface , so I still use my A6 for development , however , I dont plan on ever getting A7 , as when I get some free money I will more than likely be buying TGEA. And it's not just the engine , it's its GarageGames comitement to it's software , when you go to Graragegames website , it's full of content , they have a couple of different engine editions , tools , content packs (from models to music and snd fx , ect...), Torque books , and even games , they will actually publish your game if it's good.

Gamestudio still has it's horrible homepage page with A7 , and thats it. It's the same as it's always been , and so is the engine , a completely outdated pile of crap. Sure there's the AU Resources , but name one thing other than scrips thats usable from there ? I honestly dont see any reason to even use gamestudio anymore , other than because i've grown accustomed to it over the years , but if I was getting into game development , I would have to be insane to choose gamestudio over torque. I dont know , I've used gamestudio for about 5 years , and have always loved it , and in fact always prefered it over torque , but recently it really seems like the Torque people are really pushing their technology , making it better , more user friendly , and reaching out to higher demografics , allowing you to publish for PC , Mac , and now even Xbox360 , while with gamestudio you still can only publish for Windows and A7 actually become much less user friendly than A6 was , I dont know , but it almost looks like Conitec doesnt really care for Gamestudio anymore, I dont see any desire from them to push it above it's competition , it's like they just kinda keep it alive and resell it with a couple of upgrades here and there every couple of years.I can almost assure you , that unless gamestudio makes some major changes , In the near future , it's going to be left forgotten in the past.

Now on to the changes , HERE IS WHAT GAMESTUDIO NEEDS (Lite-C wasnt it)

In-game Editing - the ability to move stuff around , change parameters , edit scripts , behaviours , lights ,ect... , in real time , and have be saved into your level.

Shader Editor - with precoded shaders , for all the common shaders (normals mapping, parallax , bloom , bump mapping , ect...). All shaders should have fallbacks , this is such an important feature thats lacking , the current gamestudio shaders are unusable as they will only work on a handfull of cards.

Post Processing FX - Precoded post processing fx , which you can just add through interface and tweak through sliders.

Usable Templates - Templates that arent a pile of turds , templates that are actually usable , something you can use in a game , and can tweak through UI. The current gamestudio templlates are a joke , they are useless , I dont even know why they include them , they dont work , they are a complete mess. Having a set of good templates is invaluable to an indie developer who doesnt have the time and recources to sit down and script everything from scratch.

Usable AI- Ai that actually works , Ai you can just plug and play , why isnt this already implemented ? Gamestudio has been around for like 10 years , why hasnt decent AI been implemented into it ?

Shadows - We need good Dynamic shadows that work properly.(not sure if this has been fixed in A7)

Content - A decent model pack , texture pack , music pack , and sound fx pack. Why is it so impossible for Conitec to provide the bare basics to start making a small generic game with GameStudio. This models they include , they are something else , They are so outdated it's insane. The sound fx, the textures , it's all a pile garbage , it's useless , it makes the engine look bad , and it makes u feel like you will never be able to make a decent game with the engine once u run a level made with the provided models,textures,sounds, and templates. The engine should come with some decent usable media to get you started, or at least provide you with some good gamestudio ready packs , kind of like what the torque people have going. I didnt mind the warlock model when i first got into gamestudio , but it's been 5 years and the new model included in A6 was cyberbabe , LOL , what a joke.

Seameless tie of Wed and Sed , into 1 editor. Would be very nice if you could have these 2 in one editor , where u could open sed inside wed through a panel or something.

Well , I think i'll stop there , theres more stuff that can be added , but I think those are the main things which would help breathe some life into this aging and dying beast. Many of this things have been asked for in the past , and none of them were part of the big A7 update. I really feel like these are the things that would make gamestudio great , it would make it feel fresh , updated , and with those things included , gamestudio would still be in my opinion the best 3d indie game engine. I just hope conitec looks around at how the torque people are handling business and what the gamestudio users are asking for , and gets the hint , because lately it's felt like the community has been talking to def ears , and many of us are starting to lean more and more towards other alternatives.

GS will not disappear I believe.

In fact they created a new language, that is what other all in one tools not done before.

Most other company with good tool-set like real-time world editor, terrain editor, shader editor, etc. are come out less then a decade, at that time GS has thousands of users.

So I think if Conitec should trash the WED and MED to create something more competitive.

Otherwise we will see a cheaper GS in future and GS will survive

I absolutely agree with the last few posts, especially with Broozar and WhyDoIDie. Just ask a random artist to import a model into A7 and apply a decent shader plus tweaking the material until it looks good. He will fail.

So what remains? A bunch of Lite-C fans. Did you read the website from Conitec? They advertise Lite-C as something similar like C++ but call it a bit more easy. They admit that it almost became C++. So an ambitious programmer could also use the little remaining step and program Ogre, Irrlicht, TV3D (very easy to code) or C4.

I agree with you (fogman, William and more) if you say: "It can be done in A7". I know that. I know about plugins like Sphere, Ventilators tool and more. I know about custom shaders more or less useful.
But this is not my point. With the same amount of coding you can integrate all that into Irrlicht, Ogre, TV3D or C4. You could even make it with notepad, OpenGL and a free compiler.

The excuses like "give me the artwork, and I'll do" are somewhat funny. There are many artworks available at 3drt, TS, Gamebeep, Dexsoft and more. Many of them are even free. And if somebody starts with a promising project, then I am willing to sponsor more free stuff.
So just do it. No more excuses. Start and make it!

This is not true. Blitzbasic did the same way before. Conitec could have learned from their failures.
They created an object oriented modern language called "BlitzMax" for their game-engine and it failed. Why should a user learn a complex new island language if there are others like C#, Java, Delphi or C++ available?

Let us think about it more deeply. What is our goal? We want to render nice contents at the screen added with good music, sounds and effects. So what will our customer see? Graphics. What else? Customer will listen to music, sound and will try to control through keyboard, mouse or gamepad.

So what is important for the final result? Rendering, sound playing, input of control data. The programming language is only a develeper tool. It could be exchanged with everything else like C#, LUA or Angelscript.
The best compiler with super optimized code will not help you to make a competetive product if your renderer is weak.

Didn't read all posts, so I just comment my own 2 cents.

The gameplay is okay, it seems that there is nothing new. The artwork is great, the shaders are great.

The shadows are not real time. The whole thing might not be realtime!

I'm not impressed. It doesn't show nothing more than "Look I know how to use great shaders and put nice artwork and call it a game!".

They re-created this scene with own textures and models. They made tons of good normalmaps, some of them even from high poly models.
They created and animated a new character model.

Probably you have no idea how much work this is.

I could say the same about your works if I would be that ignorant or arrogant. But I know that programming, modelling and animating are jobs and all of them need a good amount of work and much time.

frank, you should be able to create such levels already with your skills. appying shaders is not the problem, those are already in the a7 library

That's the expected reaction when I post

In fact I haven't state that the new language is an advantage, just "all-in-one" tools not done before. BlitzMax only come with a text editor and without 3D engine.

And C# is not exist yet at that time when Conitec create lite-C I think.

I agree all post before, and I already stated that, user friendly tool-set, high performance and easy to use engine is the key to success. Programming language factor is not play so important role nowadays I think.