by date
The long overdue blog...
The long overdue blog...
| Name: | Melv May |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Jun 10, 2008 | |
| Rating: |  4.9 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
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| Profile Page: | View profile page for Melv May |
Blog post
So it's been quite a while since I last posted a blog, you may have noticed, you may not.
Either way I've been very busy not only generating code but generating another daughter. So the family has grown to Jessica (4 years old), Emily (8 months old), Dad (too old) and Mum (kill me if I told you). All are well and now that Emily is moving away from baby-hood, life is settling down to something resembling normality.
This blog for me is probably the second most important blog I've ever done here at GG. The reason? Well I'll get to that (eventually) but first I hope you'll let me indulge myself and hopefully you too in a little bit of Torque 2D nostalgia. The reason for the nostalgia? Well first and foremost is that this blog is more than just about the cold development of a product, it's about people who develop it and want to be involved in the development of it.
This is my story...
It was quite a few years ago now when I stumbled across the "GarageGames" web-site. I don't exactly remember how or why I surfed there but a few months later I was glad I did. The site just stood out for me and there seemed to be alot of excitement buzzing around the site. When I signed-up back in 2001 I started looking through the forums and there was an absence of profanity and arguing! That was very refreshing for an Internet forum. Better still there were no trolls and no adverts and there were these Demigods who apparently developed Tribes and they had a message so I sat down and listened, purchased and started learning ... slowly!
A few weeks after hitting the site I was hooked and it was my number one place to visit. It was soon to become my only place to visit because I had very little time to do anything else. The then "V12" engine soon to be renamed "Torque" (was that because of the "engine" association or because Jeff T loves motorcross?) was for me, very complex and poorly documented but it contained a whole world to explore and that's exactly what I did.
Okay so I admit that I'm a complete computer nerd and this kind of stuff got me excited, hell it still does and I really hope it always will. After spending a lot of time really not doing anything useful but learning lots of stuff about GUIs and networking and graphics and resource management and scripting and lots of other stuff, I finally got around to producing something that I could post as a resource to the community.
After doing that I got lots of positive feedback from the community and to be completely honest, for me it was very nice to have a focus for my coding time. Getting positive feedback really motivated me to do more and that's how the "FX" set of resources were born! I jumped from one thing to another producing stuff like the "fxGuiSnooper", "fxFlare", "fxLight", "fxSunlight", "fxFoliageReplicator", "fxShapeReplicator", "fxRenderObject" and modifying the waterblocks etc.
During this period I watched the engine grow from a seed and the community grew and grew and really started to flourish. I personally found lots of friends, ended up owing lots of beers, was owed lots of beers and it was good. I was learning lots of stuff not only about coding in general or about low-level engine details but about producing stuff for a community. I actually got hooked into helping people on the forums and there are lots of people around who do that selflessly today and I have nothing but admiration for them. I personally get quite a buzz from helping people on forums. Some of it is because I see people asking questions that remind me of myself asking that very same question. Indeed I know what's behind someone posting such a question, sometimes hours and hours of frustration!
So over a span of a few years producing "FX" stuff and posting on the forums I ended up getting involved in a project called "Strategem" in 2003.
I won't go into that but I will say that I got into it because there's that longing to make a game that emerges and I fell for it knowing how hard it was to actually complete one! Needless to say that we produced a working prototype that was very promising and for lots of reasons the team fell apart which was a shame but I learned lots from it. So soon after that fell apart I felt like I was in no-mans land. At this point I had all this knowledge and I really didn't feel like producing any more "FX" objects and apart from my involvement in the forums I couldn't think of what to do next. I really wanted to make something that people could use that had some real value.
I don't remember how long after "Strategem" it was but at some point I remember having a shower and having one of those "eureka" moments! The thought suddenly occurred to me, why not build a 2D 'layer' to Torque? I do remember hurrying to my computer room and scribbling some notes. My brain just opened-up and I was so excited by what I was seeing emerge in front of me that I took the next two days off work and being as we didn't have kids then, I isolated myself whilst I put together some ideas on how it would look. Sarah (my wife) didn't worry about this because she'd seen what she called my "mad-professor" moments before.
I've actually still got those original notes and I'm looking through them now as I write this blog. I told you I was indulging in nostalgia! Anyway, it wasn't long before I had what I thought was a good basis to start. Forgot your big detailed plans, this was A4 lined-paper with scribbled developer notes and I was primed and ready! So off I went in my own little world creating the beginnings of the "t2dSceneGraph" and "t2dSceneWindow" and the multi-view capability. Stuff like static-sprites emerged followed by an animated-sprite class. I then started researching tile-maps and got together a plan to achieve that but add a bunch more features. I didn't care about selling this or what alternatives there were I just wanted to create it.
Eventually though, I got the urge to start putting up plans to show the world what I was spending my time on and so I started posting on threads like this and posting up images such as...
I got some amazing feedback and others showed genuine excitement about getting their hands on it so I got more elaborate in my plans and started showing the images and videos that excited me and I got carried away with the whole thing. As sad as some people may think, it became my every waking thought. My work suffered considerably. I dashed home from work, ate, kissed the wife and disappeared into my computer room. It wasn't a problem; she's a book-worm and read books for most of the evening anyway. We were (and still are) very happy and I love her very much for always supporting me. Months of development were poured into it and there was more than a single occasion when I fell asleep at my keyboard.
So after several months of total immersion I was leading towards releasing it for free and I remember proposing a release date on the forums. I even had a name: "Torque Retro 2D"! I don't recall who posted on the forums but someone suggested "T2D" and I liked that!
So sometime during that period when I was making plenty of noise about my new creation, my email box rang and it was from Jeff Tunnell. Holy Cow! One of those Demigods I mentioned earlier had just sent me an email. To most people that probably wouldn't seem like much but I had got an email from the "boss-man demigod" and I'm sure Jeff has had people call him many things but possibly never that!
I thought about posting the email here but I'd be sad to admit that I've still got it ... errr ... which I ... errr ... haven't *ahem*. Anyway, the essence of the email was one of "give your hard work out for free, are you insane?" Now without providing the rest of the email you'd probably think that was just some evil capitalist statement but Jeff continued in the email to discuss how there's a great opportunity here for a product bigger than I had previously imagined. That gave my confidence a huge boost for which I will never be able to repay him. To say I was floating-on-air is an understatement.
That email marks a point in time when T2D was born and an explosion of development happened. Soon after that email arrived I was put in touch with Josh Williams and I can honestly say that then began one of the most enjoyable times I've ever had writing code. I won't get all slushy and start thanking Josh, that's been done and he already knows how well our collaboration went. Good times indeed.
It was during that period when some hard production decisions were made and a whole bunch of my naive design decisions were blown out of the water but just as many held true. Between Josh and me we came up with a bunch of stuff we'd like to see in the first release. Lots of it was pretty complex stuff and although during our messenger chats I tried to "sound" confident in what was being discussed, a part of my brain was saying to me, "don't say yes to that, it sounds really hard"! The thing is I said "yes" and then took each of those chats and produced a bunch of designs and eventually the code for it. It was like tennis with Josh firing stuff at me on a Friday and by Monday I'd done it. It was a wonderful problem solving exercise.
During this period my wife gives birth to our first daughter Jessica and that was wonderful. I'm not sure how I managed it but during the following 8 months it didn't stop the T2D work at all. Any of you that are parents may think that a complete fabrication but I can honestly say that it's the truth. It's always been my problem: if I get my teeth into something I simply can't let go. Never under-estimate a single motivated person with the right tools! Anyway Jessica helped me develop it and as Josh pointed out at the time she did the "random key jabbing and drool QA testing"!
Prior to us releasing it we were considering all sorts of demos because so far we'd only focused on the engine and not how it'd be presented. I did a bunch of things, most of which had programmer art but we had some great help from the community and it was great to actually start making something with what I'd created.
One demo that always comes to mind and I know Josh will kill me for posting this but I got a classic email from Josh where he gave me a rough idea on a design for a Pachinko style demo...
WTH? Well my coding wasn't much better...
I think I actually swore that I'd delete that image during a chat with Josh. Well, I did delete it but then promptly recovered it from the trash-can so I techincally kept my bargin. Sorry Josh, you know I love you bud. ;)
Luckily we got some great help from the community, specifically Craig Fortune and Nauris Krauze and ended up with a better looking design that ended up being nothing like a Pachinko style game...
So after spending nearly 18 months of coding from the beginning, T2D was ready for release. I will never forget that time. We had packaged up the release and the web-site was being prepped for the download. It was very late (about 2am GMT-0) and I was getting email from various GG folks saying that it's about to go live! I got chatting with Dan MacDonald and the two things I remember vividly about that time was the moment T2D went live and the chat with Dan. We had a discussion along the lines of "you always remember your first product release!"
Finally I got an email from a bunch of people at GG saying "Woot, the sucker is live!!!" To say that it was like the birth of your first child wouldn't be correct but it was similar in that it was a moment where I was simultaneously excited and full of dread!
So that was it ... out in the wild. I was blown away by the response and to be honest, just by how many people wanted to get hold of it. The thing is that although I'm being awfully self indulgent now, at the time I was so humble that I was being allowed to release a product and actually accept any cash for it but that's what was happening. I honestly didn't care about the sales, I just wanted people to be kind and say that it was worth buying!
I dreaded people saying that "I purchased T2D and that it was rubbish." I don't think I really expected that kind of feedback but it was a latent fear. The response was better than I could have even hoped for but as with any product there were those who wanted more and I was only too happy to accomodate them so T2D grew and grew. There were a few that dinted my pride a few times but taking criticism is all part of the game. If you can't do that then you need to do something else. A friend took a particularly funny Dilbert cartoon and modified it and that brought me back from the brink one time.
The great thing was that people were throwing prototypes and games together at such a rate it was hard to keep up. Nothing was ever going to be a million-seller but people were using it and having fun and it was awesome to watch...
So since that time we've had a number of releases and many features added and bugs fixed but importantly, part the way through that, we ended up developing the product into Torque Game Builder.
During the initial stages of the game builder I was actively involved in it but as time went on I was less and less involved and some very capable people at GG took that over and did a much better job than I ever could have achieved. I'm not a GUI tools guy, something inside me won't let me be! So for a long time, whilst the game-builder was going from good to great to excellent, I wasn't involved much in the product. This wasn't due to GG in any way, I think I was burned-out due to it. I'd spent so much time and energy in an almost never ending period of over 2-3 years. Beside, there were very capable people at GG to do alot of that work.
After a while I ended up coming back to it and fixing things here and there and adding features like tick-based physics but I always missed those early days. Over the last year we had our second child Emily...
She's adorable in every respect and Jessica had grown to nearly four years old...
... now I'm starting to feel old. So, as I said at the beginning of this admittedly extended plan, Emily has now come out of baby-hood and life is settling down again. My work has also enabled me to spend more time at home and I'm finding I have plenty of useful free-time. I purchased a decent telescope (Celestron CPC 11" Schmitt Cassegrain) and started spending time looking at the night sky, something I did when I was really young and, weather permitting, I enjoy it more so now. There's something to be said about the solitude and quiet under a dark night-sky.
Anyway, earlier this year I started looking at how TGB has evolved and the itch came back like a ton of bricks. I did a whole bunch of work fixing up the physics that had become quite broken and started establishing some regular chats and communications with the new GG team. Boy has GG changed!
So what does the future hold? For me I've pretty much dedicated a majority of my free time to TGB now. What does this mean for you? Well for a start I'm spending much more time on the forums trying to do my very best to help people. On top of that I'm monitoring bugs and entering them up on the GG bug tracking system and posting bug reference numbers but all this is small-fry.
What I'm really "here" for today is for your help and in no small way is this just me asking this, it's the folks at GG. What I'm going to do is pick your brains about the existing TGB product and how we can turn it into a product for the future. To do this we're going to put together some structured stuff like a survery which I'd love for you to grab a coffee and spend a few minutes of your time filling out. On top of this I want to enter into an open discussion and see what you folks would like, need or would drink a bottle of cooking-oil for. ;)
I don't want to limit this discussion to only minor changes to existing features. Open your mind to radical changes if you wish. If it's "you need to completely rewrite XXXX" then great, but if you can also tell me what you want in its place it'd be so much more useful. You can start by posting on this blog but it'd probably be better if you start posting in the TGB Suggestion Forum. I don't care if it's a list of disjoint features, whether it's a comprehensive breakdown of how you'd want a 2D engine working or just a simple post saying "make XXX work like this please."
If you haven't got time at the moment to do that then don't worry. I'm going to be making lots of noise around here in the coming weeks so you'll get your chance, but if you do get a moment then come back and post your thoughts. I don't care if you've been using TGB for 3 years or 3 minutes, all comments are welcome, none will be ignored.
Don't expect me to commit to a timeline of when any of the requested features may be implemented but do expect me to get involved in a discussion on how such a feature request might happen. For the moment though I'm trying to get a good "view" of what the community wants from the product. I may be able to provide more insight into the direction we personally want to take this product but for the moment, here is your opportunity to have your say and be heard.
In my next blog soon I'll be posting up a survey and gathering my thoughts into a more concise blog than this one turned out to be. I'm genuinely excited to be doing this and I really hope you can find some time to join in too.
Let the ideas commence...
Melv.
Either way I've been very busy not only generating code but generating another daughter. So the family has grown to Jessica (4 years old), Emily (8 months old), Dad (too old) and Mum (kill me if I told you). All are well and now that Emily is moving away from baby-hood, life is settling down to something resembling normality.
This blog for me is probably the second most important blog I've ever done here at GG. The reason? Well I'll get to that (eventually) but first I hope you'll let me indulge myself and hopefully you too in a little bit of Torque 2D nostalgia. The reason for the nostalgia? Well first and foremost is that this blog is more than just about the cold development of a product, it's about people who develop it and want to be involved in the development of it.
This is my story...
It was quite a few years ago now when I stumbled across the "GarageGames" web-site. I don't exactly remember how or why I surfed there but a few months later I was glad I did. The site just stood out for me and there seemed to be alot of excitement buzzing around the site. When I signed-up back in 2001 I started looking through the forums and there was an absence of profanity and arguing! That was very refreshing for an Internet forum. Better still there were no trolls and no adverts and there were these Demigods who apparently developed Tribes and they had a message so I sat down and listened, purchased and started learning ... slowly!
A few weeks after hitting the site I was hooked and it was my number one place to visit. It was soon to become my only place to visit because I had very little time to do anything else. The then "V12" engine soon to be renamed "Torque" (was that because of the "engine" association or because Jeff T loves motorcross?) was for me, very complex and poorly documented but it contained a whole world to explore and that's exactly what I did.
Okay so I admit that I'm a complete computer nerd and this kind of stuff got me excited, hell it still does and I really hope it always will. After spending a lot of time really not doing anything useful but learning lots of stuff about GUIs and networking and graphics and resource management and scripting and lots of other stuff, I finally got around to producing something that I could post as a resource to the community.
After doing that I got lots of positive feedback from the community and to be completely honest, for me it was very nice to have a focus for my coding time. Getting positive feedback really motivated me to do more and that's how the "FX" set of resources were born! I jumped from one thing to another producing stuff like the "fxGuiSnooper", "fxFlare", "fxLight", "fxSunlight", "fxFoliageReplicator", "fxShapeReplicator", "fxRenderObject" and modifying the waterblocks etc.
During this period I watched the engine grow from a seed and the community grew and grew and really started to flourish. I personally found lots of friends, ended up owing lots of beers, was owed lots of beers and it was good. I was learning lots of stuff not only about coding in general or about low-level engine details but about producing stuff for a community. I actually got hooked into helping people on the forums and there are lots of people around who do that selflessly today and I have nothing but admiration for them. I personally get quite a buzz from helping people on forums. Some of it is because I see people asking questions that remind me of myself asking that very same question. Indeed I know what's behind someone posting such a question, sometimes hours and hours of frustration!
So over a span of a few years producing "FX" stuff and posting on the forums I ended up getting involved in a project called "Strategem" in 2003.
I won't go into that but I will say that I got into it because there's that longing to make a game that emerges and I fell for it knowing how hard it was to actually complete one! Needless to say that we produced a working prototype that was very promising and for lots of reasons the team fell apart which was a shame but I learned lots from it. So soon after that fell apart I felt like I was in no-mans land. At this point I had all this knowledge and I really didn't feel like producing any more "FX" objects and apart from my involvement in the forums I couldn't think of what to do next. I really wanted to make something that people could use that had some real value.
I don't remember how long after "Strategem" it was but at some point I remember having a shower and having one of those "eureka" moments! The thought suddenly occurred to me, why not build a 2D 'layer' to Torque? I do remember hurrying to my computer room and scribbling some notes. My brain just opened-up and I was so excited by what I was seeing emerge in front of me that I took the next two days off work and being as we didn't have kids then, I isolated myself whilst I put together some ideas on how it would look. Sarah (my wife) didn't worry about this because she'd seen what she called my "mad-professor" moments before.
I've actually still got those original notes and I'm looking through them now as I write this blog. I told you I was indulging in nostalgia! Anyway, it wasn't long before I had what I thought was a good basis to start. Forgot your big detailed plans, this was A4 lined-paper with scribbled developer notes and I was primed and ready! So off I went in my own little world creating the beginnings of the "t2dSceneGraph" and "t2dSceneWindow" and the multi-view capability. Stuff like static-sprites emerged followed by an animated-sprite class. I then started researching tile-maps and got together a plan to achieve that but add a bunch more features. I didn't care about selling this or what alternatives there were I just wanted to create it.
Eventually though, I got the urge to start putting up plans to show the world what I was spending my time on and so I started posting on threads like this and posting up images such as...
I got some amazing feedback and others showed genuine excitement about getting their hands on it so I got more elaborate in my plans and started showing the images and videos that excited me and I got carried away with the whole thing. As sad as some people may think, it became my every waking thought. My work suffered considerably. I dashed home from work, ate, kissed the wife and disappeared into my computer room. It wasn't a problem; she's a book-worm and read books for most of the evening anyway. We were (and still are) very happy and I love her very much for always supporting me. Months of development were poured into it and there was more than a single occasion when I fell asleep at my keyboard.
So after several months of total immersion I was leading towards releasing it for free and I remember proposing a release date on the forums. I even had a name: "Torque Retro 2D"! I don't recall who posted on the forums but someone suggested "T2D" and I liked that!
So sometime during that period when I was making plenty of noise about my new creation, my email box rang and it was from Jeff Tunnell. Holy Cow! One of those Demigods I mentioned earlier had just sent me an email. To most people that probably wouldn't seem like much but I had got an email from the "boss-man demigod" and I'm sure Jeff has had people call him many things but possibly never that!
I thought about posting the email here but I'd be sad to admit that I've still got it ... errr ... which I ... errr ... haven't *ahem*. Anyway, the essence of the email was one of "give your hard work out for free, are you insane?" Now without providing the rest of the email you'd probably think that was just some evil capitalist statement but Jeff continued in the email to discuss how there's a great opportunity here for a product bigger than I had previously imagined. That gave my confidence a huge boost for which I will never be able to repay him. To say I was floating-on-air is an understatement.
That email marks a point in time when T2D was born and an explosion of development happened. Soon after that email arrived I was put in touch with Josh Williams and I can honestly say that then began one of the most enjoyable times I've ever had writing code. I won't get all slushy and start thanking Josh, that's been done and he already knows how well our collaboration went. Good times indeed.
It was during that period when some hard production decisions were made and a whole bunch of my naive design decisions were blown out of the water but just as many held true. Between Josh and me we came up with a bunch of stuff we'd like to see in the first release. Lots of it was pretty complex stuff and although during our messenger chats I tried to "sound" confident in what was being discussed, a part of my brain was saying to me, "don't say yes to that, it sounds really hard"! The thing is I said "yes" and then took each of those chats and produced a bunch of designs and eventually the code for it. It was like tennis with Josh firing stuff at me on a Friday and by Monday I'd done it. It was a wonderful problem solving exercise.
During this period my wife gives birth to our first daughter Jessica and that was wonderful. I'm not sure how I managed it but during the following 8 months it didn't stop the T2D work at all. Any of you that are parents may think that a complete fabrication but I can honestly say that it's the truth. It's always been my problem: if I get my teeth into something I simply can't let go. Never under-estimate a single motivated person with the right tools! Anyway Jessica helped me develop it and as Josh pointed out at the time she did the "random key jabbing and drool QA testing"!
Prior to us releasing it we were considering all sorts of demos because so far we'd only focused on the engine and not how it'd be presented. I did a bunch of things, most of which had programmer art but we had some great help from the community and it was great to actually start making something with what I'd created.
One demo that always comes to mind and I know Josh will kill me for posting this but I got a classic email from Josh where he gave me a rough idea on a design for a Pachinko style demo...
WTH? Well my coding wasn't much better...
I think I actually swore that I'd delete that image during a chat with Josh. Well, I did delete it but then promptly recovered it from the trash-can so I techincally kept my bargin. Sorry Josh, you know I love you bud. ;)
Luckily we got some great help from the community, specifically Craig Fortune and Nauris Krauze and ended up with a better looking design that ended up being nothing like a Pachinko style game...
So after spending nearly 18 months of coding from the beginning, T2D was ready for release. I will never forget that time. We had packaged up the release and the web-site was being prepped for the download. It was very late (about 2am GMT-0) and I was getting email from various GG folks saying that it's about to go live! I got chatting with Dan MacDonald and the two things I remember vividly about that time was the moment T2D went live and the chat with Dan. We had a discussion along the lines of "you always remember your first product release!"
Finally I got an email from a bunch of people at GG saying "Woot, the sucker is live!!!" To say that it was like the birth of your first child wouldn't be correct but it was similar in that it was a moment where I was simultaneously excited and full of dread!
So that was it ... out in the wild. I was blown away by the response and to be honest, just by how many people wanted to get hold of it. The thing is that although I'm being awfully self indulgent now, at the time I was so humble that I was being allowed to release a product and actually accept any cash for it but that's what was happening. I honestly didn't care about the sales, I just wanted people to be kind and say that it was worth buying!
I dreaded people saying that "I purchased T2D and that it was rubbish." I don't think I really expected that kind of feedback but it was a latent fear. The response was better than I could have even hoped for but as with any product there were those who wanted more and I was only too happy to accomodate them so T2D grew and grew. There were a few that dinted my pride a few times but taking criticism is all part of the game. If you can't do that then you need to do something else. A friend took a particularly funny Dilbert cartoon and modified it and that brought me back from the brink one time.
The great thing was that people were throwing prototypes and games together at such a rate it was hard to keep up. Nothing was ever going to be a million-seller but people were using it and having fun and it was awesome to watch...
So since that time we've had a number of releases and many features added and bugs fixed but importantly, part the way through that, we ended up developing the product into Torque Game Builder.
During the initial stages of the game builder I was actively involved in it but as time went on I was less and less involved and some very capable people at GG took that over and did a much better job than I ever could have achieved. I'm not a GUI tools guy, something inside me won't let me be! So for a long time, whilst the game-builder was going from good to great to excellent, I wasn't involved much in the product. This wasn't due to GG in any way, I think I was burned-out due to it. I'd spent so much time and energy in an almost never ending period of over 2-3 years. Beside, there were very capable people at GG to do alot of that work.
After a while I ended up coming back to it and fixing things here and there and adding features like tick-based physics but I always missed those early days. Over the last year we had our second child Emily...
She's adorable in every respect and Jessica had grown to nearly four years old...
... now I'm starting to feel old. So, as I said at the beginning of this admittedly extended plan, Emily has now come out of baby-hood and life is settling down again. My work has also enabled me to spend more time at home and I'm finding I have plenty of useful free-time. I purchased a decent telescope (Celestron CPC 11" Schmitt Cassegrain) and started spending time looking at the night sky, something I did when I was really young and, weather permitting, I enjoy it more so now. There's something to be said about the solitude and quiet under a dark night-sky.
Anyway, earlier this year I started looking at how TGB has evolved and the itch came back like a ton of bricks. I did a whole bunch of work fixing up the physics that had become quite broken and started establishing some regular chats and communications with the new GG team. Boy has GG changed!
So what does the future hold? For me I've pretty much dedicated a majority of my free time to TGB now. What does this mean for you? Well for a start I'm spending much more time on the forums trying to do my very best to help people. On top of that I'm monitoring bugs and entering them up on the GG bug tracking system and posting bug reference numbers but all this is small-fry.
What I'm really "here" for today is for your help and in no small way is this just me asking this, it's the folks at GG. What I'm going to do is pick your brains about the existing TGB product and how we can turn it into a product for the future. To do this we're going to put together some structured stuff like a survery which I'd love for you to grab a coffee and spend a few minutes of your time filling out. On top of this I want to enter into an open discussion and see what you folks would like, need or would drink a bottle of cooking-oil for. ;)
I don't want to limit this discussion to only minor changes to existing features. Open your mind to radical changes if you wish. If it's "you need to completely rewrite XXXX" then great, but if you can also tell me what you want in its place it'd be so much more useful. You can start by posting on this blog but it'd probably be better if you start posting in the TGB Suggestion Forum. I don't care if it's a list of disjoint features, whether it's a comprehensive breakdown of how you'd want a 2D engine working or just a simple post saying "make XXX work like this please."
If you haven't got time at the moment to do that then don't worry. I'm going to be making lots of noise around here in the coming weeks so you'll get your chance, but if you do get a moment then come back and post your thoughts. I don't care if you've been using TGB for 3 years or 3 minutes, all comments are welcome, none will be ignored.
Don't expect me to commit to a timeline of when any of the requested features may be implemented but do expect me to get involved in a discussion on how such a feature request might happen. For the moment though I'm trying to get a good "view" of what the community wants from the product. I may be able to provide more insight into the direction we personally want to take this product but for the moment, here is your opportunity to have your say and be heard.
In my next blog soon I'll be posting up a survey and gathering my thoughts into a more concise blog than this one turned out to be. I'm genuinely excited to be doing this and I really hope you can find some time to join in too.
Let the ideas commence...
Melv.
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 06/10/08 - The long overdue blog... 10/24/07 - New Baby Girl... 03/19/06 - The GG Journey... 03/05/06 - Just arrived in Eugene... 11/18/05 - Plan for Melv May 10/10/05 - Plan for Melv May 09/01/05 - Plan for Melv May 07/27/05 - Plan for Melv May |
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Submit your own resources!| Michael Perry (Jun 10, 2008 at 12:32 GMT) |
The dangerous level of awesomeness for this .plan is being monitored
On a slightly more serious note, blogs like this open up a window into a person's life. It really adds to the human factor of the GG community.
Maybe it's just me, but I think that is an extremely important virtue.
Kudos on all the work you've done over the years! =)
edit - Your kids are adorable. Not the most manly thing I can say, but who cares.
Edited on Jun 10, 2008 12:42 GMT
| Brian Wilson (Jun 10, 2008 at 12:41 GMT) |
And, wewt for my T2D contribution:
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=28823
| Paul Dana (Jun 10, 2008 at 12:48 GMT) |
Long time no post! Great to hear from you again. It was awesome to hear the story of your journey.
As for features - only one thing comes to mind. This may be something that has already been fixed a while ago, so forgive me if this is an old problem:
Is the physics deterministic yet?
I did some contract work for GG on the Rack 'em Up Road Trip product that used TGB and I was tasked to do the prediction arrows. I modified the physics system to implement the prediction part and I discovered that TGB was frame rate dependent - not deterministic. I know a lot of work has been done to the engine since that time, so if this is already fixed - forgive my ignorance.
I have always loved TGB. I don't know why ( probably nostalgia for the quarter pumping days ) but TGB inspired me more than TGEA even. I am super happy to hear you are back on the job!
Edited on Jun 10, 2008 12:49 GMT
| Gary Preston (Jun 10, 2008 at 14:37 GMT) |
Quote:
I purchased a decent telescope (Celestron CPC 11" Schmitt Cassegrain) and started spending time looking at the night sky, something I did when I was really young and, weather permitting, I enjoy it more so now. There's something to be said about the solitude and quiet under a dark night-sky.
I bought an 8" Meade LX90 back in 2002, just about the limits of what I'm able to carry outside and set-up for the night. I think it's one of the most enjoyable purchases I've made, and probably one of the most expensive hobbies I've gotten into.
Once you've started viewing deep sky objects, you then get the bug of wanting to show everyone else, and short of dragging everyone you know to the eyepiece (which doesn't work too well on the really cold clear winter nights ;) you end up buying CCD imaging gear and then starts the cash drain :)
Awesome fun and truly awesome sights to been seen though, there really is no substitute for seeing the look on peoples faces when they look through the eye-peice and see the rings around Saturn for the first time. Even the moon becomes an impressive sight through a good scope :)
If you haven't already done so, get a good selection of eyepieces, they really make a difference and are worth spending a little extra on.
Shameless Astronomy Blog Plug
Quote:
What I'm going to do is pick your brains about the existing TGB product and how we can turn it into a product for the future.
One feature request that seems to crop up quite often is full networking support. I'm sure there's plenty of reasons why this feature never made it in beyond RPC calls, but I'd love to see this supported in a future TGB.
Isometric support would be nice to see too. Especially if it's provided as an engine resource which can be dropped in as opposed to bulking the engine out with tons of features that are pretty genre specific.
Quote:
I have always loved TGB. I don't know why ( probably nostalgia for the quarter pumping days ) but TGB inspired me more than TGEA even. I am super happy to hear you are back on the job!
I credit T2D for finally getting my head around TGE. For a few months after buying TGE I was pretty overwhelmed by it, then came along T2D and the entry level was lowered. Made learning Torque Script a snap and provided an easy intro to the engine.
| Michael Perry (Jun 10, 2008 at 14:44 GMT) |
I'm still relatively new to the engine, so it's hard for me to make a feature request. Built in isometric support would be pretty sweet, so I'm stealing Gary's suggestion =)
| Tom Eastman (Eastbeast314) (Jun 10, 2008 at 14:51 GMT) |
TGB is a wonderful thing.
| Sam Redfern (Jun 10, 2008 at 15:01 GMT) |
Anyway... it may seem like sanity is returning with your daughter at age 4, but wait until you have to spend half your spare time ferrying them to social and sporting activities!
| jydog (Jun 10, 2008 at 15:43 GMT) |
Nice post.
| Pat Wilson (Jun 10, 2008 at 16:30 GMT) |
That modified Dilbert is amazing. :)
| David Montgomery-Blake (Jun 10, 2008 at 20:38 GMT) |
| Kevin James (Jun 10, 2008 at 20:42 GMT) |
It is definitely good to have the T2D master ninja back on the scene! Your renewed presence on the forums has been appreciated by me and the rest of the community I'm sure.
I won't lie; I've been very disenchanted with TGB in the past, but those periods of ignorance last only but a day or so, and the awesome part is that TGB is flexible enough that there are script work-arounds 99% of the time.
I even crossed over to the dark side once and tried Game Maker. I promptly started to appreciate the power of TGB again and happily returned to developing games.
The truth is that without T2D I probably wouldn't know anything about programming. I am learning so much from creating games in TGB. The $100 I spent on the early adopter was probably the wisest transaction I have ever made.
| Craig Fortune (Jun 10, 2008 at 23:33 GMT) |
Great to see you visibly active around GG again and I'm looking forward to future .plans etc ;)
| Mike Rowley (Jun 10, 2008 at 23:54 GMT) |
Melv, this blog is superb. Your daughters are gorgous. I've never used t2d, (tried to get my head around the builder, but...not being an artist...never got beyond looking) I love the lighting kit you made tho. :-)
| Dan MacDonald (Jun 11, 2008 at 01:45 GMT) |
Welcome back Melv.
*waves*
| Gary "ChunkyKs" Briggs (Jun 11, 2008 at 01:45 GMT) |
Oh, plus, awesome! There's a screenshot of my old jugglemaster stuff in this blog, therefore I'm famous by association with Melv!
Gary (-;
| Drew -Gaiiden- Sikora (Jun 11, 2008 at 01:53 GMT) |
| Steven S (Jun 11, 2008 at 02:36 GMT) |
| Michael Chew (Jun 11, 2008 at 04:01 GMT) |
| Matthew Langley (Jun 11, 2008 at 04:13 GMT) |
| Ben Garney (Jun 11, 2008 at 04:23 GMT) |
And way more people succeeded making fun 2d games than make AAA 3d games. I think if you were gonna measure all the GG engines by "people who got a game done" TGB would be the absolute winner.
Pretty cool legacy. I'm excited to see you getting more involved again, Melv!
| Edward Smith (Jun 11, 2008 at 10:07 GMT) |
| Benjamin L. Grauer (Jun 11, 2008 at 12:37 GMT) |
Really interesting ^^
About the future of TGB... Hum... some months ago I begun developing some tools for getting code into the builder, and animating things ala flash. Maybe you've seen what I call d6event, as I already gave a beta version to GG some times ago.
hum... cheesy french dialogues :P
I think this is the future for torque, live programming into the builder (right now I seriously lack live typo checking like in TorqueDev and it needs some work to integrate within behaviors).
To see farther, the next logical step would be to make a 3d version of TGB, with the same (or alike) tools, and the same ability to make any game with 100% script and little to no source modification. I would be more than happy if it happens, as I'm a way better 3d artist than 2d (yeah that's strange, I know xD).
PS: About IceWolf, it is pretty much frozen (ironically fitting for the name).
Technically it was somehow good, but too much of a generic random game (both gameplay-wise and art-wise), and it could never quite run smoothly with so much high res textures. Plus I had way too much of a hard time getting any high res art done (it wasn't me who've done the animated sprites).
Right now I'm going for another project, a little bit more ambitious gameplay-wise, more peronnal in it's design (and with less intense arts, that I could do entirely myself and not relying on other artists).
So, I think I could also use some more time for helping designing tools if there is any interest.
Edit: maybe I'd better make a .plan for all these things too ^^'
Edited on Jun 11, 2008 12:59 GMT
| Nauris Krauze (Jun 11, 2008 at 15:47 GMT) |
| Casey Weidner (Jun 11, 2008 at 18:36 GMT) |
| Josh Williams (Jun 11, 2008 at 22:19 GMT) |
| Melv May (Jun 12, 2008 at 08:56 GMT) |
@Josh: Hi bud. I can't tell a lie ... err ... the demons in my basement made me post your "dev design" image! You are going to give up your current role and come back as 3rd party-dev manager just so we can collaborate again right? ;)
Melv.
Edited on Jun 12, 2008 08:57 GMT
| Anton Bursch (Jun 12, 2008 at 10:38 GMT) |
Our studio uses TGB. We love it. We are using it for bio-feedback mini-games. Also a full sport game. You have made me and my brother a lot of money in the last year and a half because we knew how to make games with TGB. We are thankful for all your hard work and innovation.
Your story was great. In my opinion... you are one of the demigods.
| Melv May (Jun 12, 2008 at 11:21 GMT) |
I just had to say that I sincerely appreciate your post. I don't get to see much of the positive effect that TGB has had on people so your post means alot.
Also, I'll just say that although I did the motherload of coding on the underlying API, a bunch of people at GG were involved in developing the TGB editor, offering support to me and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Kudos to them all, they know who they are but Matt Langley, Justin Dujardin, Adam Larson, Josh Williams and many others come to mind.
Thanks again Anton.
Melv.
EDIT: Felt compelled to add Adam. *resists urge to add other names in fear of sounding like an acceptance speech*
Edited on Jun 12, 2008 11:23 GMT
| Melv May (Jun 12, 2008 at 14:05 GMT) |
You should definately put your stuff in a plan!
Melv.
| Adib Murad (Jun 12, 2008 at 16:29 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
"And way more people succeeded making fun 2d games than make AAA 3d games. I think if you were gonna measure all the GG engines by 'people who got a game done' TGB would be the absolute winner."
It's because TGB is "the" GG game development product. TGE SDK is game engine raw material, that requires a lot of low-level programming to work. TGB licensees can focus in game coding, TGE ones can't. TGB was made as Torque's 2D counterpart, but I think GG would have a TGB's 3D counterpart now: it doesn't need tons of features, rather modern componentized architecture, features that really work, smooth art pipeline, a decent set of tools.
So, to focus on Melv's request (rather than bugging you all):
- Keep the core engine apart from the features. No one wants an army knife of zillion features piled over, none of them working 100%, one breaking another at each maintenance. Adopt a componentized, pluggable architecture. Don't mean to sound as if I knew it better than you guys, wich I surely don't, just trying to manifest my worries hoping you get the point.
- I thought this list would have other dashes, but it's pretty much it. Put an effort on a sustainable and long-living engine architecture, this is my request.
P.S.: Melv, I showed Emily's picture to my wife and she just fell in love. What a beautiful child! Congrats on both babies.
| Melv May (Jun 12, 2008 at 20:22 GMT) |
Thanks!
Emily is beautiful until you try to get here to wear a Marble Blast Ultra cap...
... but she does like to look cool ...
... and the moral of the tale is never talk to a parent about their kids because they may just get their familiy picture album out and then you're in trouble. ;)
Melv.
| Adib Murad (Jun 12, 2008 at 21:02 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
But I'm not showing these to Gabi, or she'll start to have some ideas... then I'll REALLY be in trouble.
EDIT: Hey, daddy, don't forget about my request as well!! :P
Edited on Jun 12, 2008 21:04 GMT
| Adib Murad (Jun 13, 2008 at 11:58 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
- Provide a plugin system, making the engine all modular. There would be the core and everything else would be plugins attached to it thru a documented interface. Subsystems like the particle system would be plugins you can replace by your own, respecting the interface's contract. Then I should attach and detach the bells and whistles I need for my game.
Hope it helps.
| Melv May (Jun 14, 2008 at 09:58 GMT) |
@Michael: Thanks!
@Brian: TGB wouldn't work without catch-nets like yourself! Thanks!
@Paul: It should be. We're running off the back of ITickable and all random number generation is from a single generator. We're also interpolating movement (ITickable again) but that's obviously just for smoother movement and doesn't affect the physics. It's really cool that TGB has given people a foot-in-the-door for bigger and better things!
@Gary: Oh man, don't start me on spending. I got the CPC1100 and it's a wonderful scope and oh my, what a money sink! Although I got some of this before I got the scope, I've accumulated a bunch of filters (too many to list but darn expensive), new Williams Optics 2" quartz dielectric star-diagonal , Baader Hyperion 8-24mm zoom (casual viewing), feather touch microfocuser (awesome), celestron dew-sheild, celestron power-tank 17ah, ring-powering power-tank 40ah, Kentrick DigiFire 7 digital dew controller, a bunch of dew-strips, vibration suppression pads, 15x70 binocs + tripod, 11" scope sun-filter, toughbook laptop + starry night pro plus (and Redshift 6 but don't like it so much), Damian Peaches DVD on Planetary Imaging, Sky@Night subscription for a few years, Red-Torch, Pocket-heaters, North-Face McMurdo Parka ..... the list goes on. I've stopped short of purchasing a CCD but that's going to happen sometime this year. I do X-Ray imaging for a living (write software to process it) and I've got my eye on a real expensive (and soon to be deprecated) CCD at work that's got a nice big sensor and deep imaging well. It's even got a cooling unit. Nice web-site BTW!
Networking support is something that's been on the books for a while but knowing how to pitch it whilst not getting in the way can be hard. The thoughts on the ground are that it'll have to form part of future development, sooner rather than later. I know you've heard that before but its time has come. Iso support is definately an essential ingredient that we'd be remiss in ignoring. TGB being a great intro is something that's sort of the prime directive! The initial learning curve has to be shallow and TorqueScript doesn't help that in some cases.
@Michael: That's great to hear!
@Tom: Thanks!
@Sam: I know but let me indulge myself in blissful ignorance of the fact that I'll become a taxi driver for my daughters in the coming years! ;)
@jydog: Thanks!
@Pat: Yeah, that one really helped back in the day. Makes me chuckle even now.
@David: Thanks!
@Kevin: Thanks! The fact that you came back seems to mean that we did alot correct but I admit we did alot incorrect. The improvements over the years haven't been as deep as we could have but we're approaching a bigger stepping stone and so this is why the gathering of thoughts is important, most importantly that people be honest about what went wrong.
@Craig: Please tell! What ya' working on?
@Mike: *blushes* I'm still having a problem come to terms with the fact that I'm a dad. Demigod? Oh I'm not sure I can take that one on-board. ;)
@Dan: A little secret (soon to not be a secret) ... I seem to have what's called a eidetic memory, had it from a very young age. For some reason it didn't make me a great student, think I just got bored with stuff too easily. Stuff just seems to stick there whereas some stuff just disappears. I can recite in great detail something I read in a book years ago and recall in detail conversations I had in the same way. I struggle though to remember the date of my mother-in-laws birthday. Go figure! Now that I'm getting older I find that for every page of a book I can recite I seem to forget something. Old age I guess. I do remember however our conversation (in great detail); it was a great moment in time for me! Cheers. :)
@Gary: I had to add in JuggleMaster as it opened my eyes to adding a more sophisticated thrid-party physics engine. Glad it helped Gary. :)
@Drew: Thanks!
@Steven: Thanks!
@Michael: Thanks!
@Matthew: Thanks. I just we'd had more time to chat when I visited. Out of all the people I wanted to chat to it was you. We'd spent so much time collaborating on T2D/TGB via the forums that I wished I'd had more time to chat with you. Next time I'm there I'll rectify that most certainly!! Big thanks to you bud. :)
@Ben: Yes, I never saw the behind-the-scenes with Josh, just experienced the chats but the funniest moment was when Josh and myself were getting into a real complicated discussion on how sophisticated we should do the physics and the chat went "quiet" on Joshs end. Hmm, damn Internet dropping out again. So I waited and waited and pinged and shouted ... nothing. Then, a few random keystrokes ... hmm? WTH? The next day he sent me a post saying sorry but he fell asleep at the keyboard. I laughed my arse off about that one. Looking forward to this development now. So shall we take bets on who'll be falling asleep at the keyboard this time? Deborah? Matthew? ;)
@Edward: Thanks!
@Benjamin: Benjamin my friend! I feel somewhat responsible for the shelving of IceWolf but I did try my absolute best (as you know) in trying to resolve some of the issues you faced. I think it was a total of like 100 hours work or something! That's ignoring dragging a 21" CRT monitor home as it was the only CRT I could get my hands on so allow me to run @ 100Hz.
In-editor code editting is something that I'd personally love to see. We spend so much time talking about in-game immersion that sometimes we forget and development immersion. Loosing your train of thought because you're constantly switching, at least for me, breaks that. In terms of using 100% script then it's obviously possible but it obviously depends on how sophisticated the stock set of classes are that TGB provides and just how much "crunching" you need to do. Being able to link to languages other than TorqueScript will help this as there are much faster ones out there. TS can be pig slow at certain tasks and the constant string manipulation doesn't help.
As I said before, please do make a plan!!!!
@Nauris: Yep, if you can't make it good make it shiny. To a software developer that can only draw enough to amuse his kids, you're a demigod. Your stuff is awesome!
@Casey: Yes, 4 years, oh my! Nows the time to think about generating another legacy for the next 4-5 years. :)
@Josh: Your name is vaguely familar. ;) You've done really well for yourself man and don't forget that I've still got your jacket! Hope to see you sooner rather than later.
@Melv: Oh that's me. Get on and stop slacking.
@Anton: Most of the money I earned apart from a few exceptions has gone into a fund for my children so in some ways my children (when they're older) will come to this site and thank the community in some way for their education! It's great to hear your studio is using this hard-core!
@Adib: I couldn't agree with you more. For the future, I'm going to try my absolute best to make sure that the 2D "layer" stands on its own and that it isn't feature driven or simply there to facilitate the GUI builder. We're going to have much tighter control and to be honest, we've got experience on our side. We made the mistakes so we've got a benchmark now. Pluggable architecture is the way forward and is the current mindset underpinning our plans. This is the way forward for all of GGs engines! :)
Thanks for the comments on the kids. Emily has such a wonderful nature, smiles all the time and even better, sleeps through the night!
Phew!
@All: Survey and more stuff coming up soon.
Melv.
Edited on Jun 14, 2008 13:41 GMT
| Craig Fortune (Jun 14, 2008 at 13:29 GMT) |
Wow that was probably the biggest single comment (without code etc) I've ever seen on a .plan :)
I can't go into specifics but I'm working with a company who do educational games. I'll likely be getting together a little build with TGE with TGB stuff together. Theres 3D and 2D elements to the game and the GUI stuff in TGE just doesn't cut the mustard.
| Michael Hartlef (Jun 15, 2008 at 14:49 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
On the game feature site I would like to see more AI related stuff. The buildin A* algo is great, but I would like to see Dykstra also.
| Ronny Bangsund (Jun 20, 2008 at 08:38 GMT) |
I'd love to see that implemented in a near-future release of TGB. Even my boss is excited.
Now, are any brainiacs working on an iPhone TGB port? :)
| Conor O Kane (Jun 21, 2008 at 09:12 GMT) |
2 years ago I was a frustrated artist with a game idea and I couldn't find a programmer to help me make a prototype. A friend suggested I should just make it myself with Torque Game Builder. So I canceled my Eve Online account (so I'd have some free time again!), downloaded TGB and was instantly hooked. I did all the tutorials and read all the source code for the scrolling shooter demo and gradually taught myself programming.
Since then I have made...
DroneSwarm: youtube.com/watch?v=92PoS1NBwHE
Harpooned: youtube.com/watch?v=nR4KN6EfX6M
Go Beryllium: youtube.com/watch?v=TEMdCySSZ2I
and quite a few unfinished prototypes: youtube.com/watch?v=APtvts8fpEs
youtube.com/watch?v=hDZdgHFKXTo
And just recently I've gone back to that original game idea I had 2 years ago and started making it myself. So thanks Melv and Garage Games. I've had a lot of fun, and been very creative because of TGB!
Edited on Jun 21, 2008 09:13 GMT
| Melv May (Jun 21, 2008 at 14:06 GMT) |
@Michael: I'm not sure at the moment about the direction of the AI but I do believe that its inclusion in TGB is a good start.
@Ronny: I'm also eager to see what Benjamin comes up with. By the looks of it, it'll only help the community.
@Conor: It's your kind of post which quite honestly motivates me more than anything else. The very fact that you admit you had little programming knowledge but rolled up your sleeves, learned this stuff and produced what you just demonstrated is very impressive and I salute you sir!
Melv.
| Warthog (Jul 03, 2008 at 13:04 GMT) |
Shawn
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