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TGEA Alpha starter.kits

Name:	Alienforce
Date Posted:	Feb 06, 2007
Rating:	4.8 out of 5
Public:	YES
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Blog post

Hi All,

I have done a "alpha" port of Starter.Fps and Starter.Racing from TGE 1.4.2 to TGEA ms4.2
This is plain port without any TGEA eyecandy features but i think it can be a good starting template
anyways i thought i should share it and please post any issues you might find in the download thread and
i will look into it.

Download

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List:	12/17/07 - How to learn XNA and TorqueX the easy way 02/06/07 - TGEA Alpha starter.kits

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Andy Hawkins (Feb 06, 2007 at 02:43 GMT)

You are a legend! - I was waiting for this. Very generous of you :)

William Todd Scott (Feb 06, 2007 at 03:29 GMT)

Yes, this is great.
Thank you.
Todd

Brian Mayberry (Feb 06, 2007 at 04:40 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Awesome! Downloading now!

Thanks!

Nick Wagner (Feb 06, 2007 at 05:24 GMT) Resource Rating: 4

What!? No space orc?!! *grin*
Thanks.

T Squared (Thanhda Tie) (Feb 06, 2007 at 06:09 GMT)

just replace the player folder with the space orc player folder.

Good job btw.

Michael Hense (Feb 06, 2007 at 15:29 GMT)

no eyecandy!!! whaaaaa... whaaaaaaaa... :)

nice stuff AF... big time thx...

--Mike

Jeff Murray (Feb 06, 2007 at 22:38 GMT)

This is GREAT! I was trying to port over the starter.fps example into TGEA 4.2 but couldn't get terrains working properly ...

I put space orc in mine and it looks great... thanks for sharing this. I totally appreciate it :)

Alienforce (Feb 06, 2007 at 23:33 GMT)

Hi Guys,
Thanks for comments.
I have decided to release a TGEA enhancement addon for the kits which takes advantage of TGEA rendering
possibilitys. It will include the SpaceOrc with his spacegun :) and full rewrite of the materials to support normalmaps etc..
Stay tuned for a eyecandy update really soon ;) and ofcourse updates on the kits.

And please remember this is a alpha release so dont forget to post any issues in the dowload thread.
Edited on Feb 06, 2007 23:34 GMT

T Squared (Thanhda Tie) (Feb 07, 2007 at 00:23 GMT)

also. why doesnt the bloom or DRL/HDR work on these levels.

Alienforce (Feb 07, 2007 at 01:29 GMT)

@T Squared
It works, just Launch the missioneditor find the "Sun" object and under "scene lightning" activate the properties that suit your needs.

Edited on Feb 07, 2007 01:29 GMT

T Squared (Thanhda Tie) (Feb 07, 2007 at 02:02 GMT)

ahhh, so thats where TGEA places there bloom info. thanks! (use to TGE DRL)

James Laker (BurNinG) (Feb 12, 2007 at 09:25 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Nice...

James Brad Barnette (Feb 12, 2007 at 21:16 GMT)

Any news on that eyecandy?

BTW I tried droping the content of the space orc folder into the player folder and I have the space orc but he is all white? so I have to add some code for his shader or something somewhere?

Alienforce (Feb 13, 2007 at 00:10 GMT)

A new version will be out tomorrow :) With lots of eyecandy.

Just copy all of the content of the SpaceOrc folder into the player folder should do the trick.
Just did a recheck with a clean TGEA starter.fps without any changes.

Keep me posted.

James Brad Barnette (Feb 13, 2007 at 15:17 GMT)

yeah I did that but I'm getting a white space orc. Do I need to delete the player content before I place the space orc content in there?

Alienforce (Feb 16, 2007 at 00:37 GMT)

Quick update:
I just downloaded the final TGEA 1.0 version and will ensure that the starter kits works ok.
So the release of the starter kits will be done asap.

Stay tuned.

James Brad Barnette (Feb 16, 2007 at 03:42 GMT)

super sweet
may should try porting the 1.5 starter kits instead of the 1.4.2 ones. they are much nicer starting points.

I can host them if you dont have them

James Brad Barnette (Feb 18, 2007 at 03:58 GMT)

Is atlas going to be enabled?
Edited on Feb 18, 2007 03:59 GMT

Alienforce (Feb 18, 2007 at 10:12 GMT)

New versions will deployed on Monday. Sorry for the delay.
A alpha port of the RTS kit is also in the loop now.

@James
I have ported almost everything in the 1.5 starter kit the only thing is that i dont know how to be able share the 1.5 kit since it contains new art only the costumer who bought the 1.5 upgrade are entitled to.
Working on Atlas :) to be included.

James Brad Barnette (Feb 18, 2007 at 18:42 GMT)

hmm that is a good question. is there a forum that 1.5 customers only have access to? May want to ask GG if it is ok. I mean this is stuff we should be getting with TGEA anyway. Especially since you have been so kind as to to their job for them. I would be happy to host a private Download if needed. anything I can do to help.

These starter kits are legacy terrain right?

James Brad Barnette (Feb 19, 2007 at 21:41 GMT)

these gonna happen today?

Alienforce (Feb 20, 2007 at 15:00 GMT)

likely later on today, my schedule are very tight right now.

James Brad Barnette (Feb 20, 2007 at 15:16 GMT)

cool looking forward to it

Thomas Pederson (Feb 21, 2007 at 02:32 GMT)

Nice I was trying to get this to work and walla here's an excellent resource thanks.

Also I think I noticed somewhere that TGEA had 1.5 integrated with it, I'm just not sure where I read that. Ah right it wasn't 1.5 but it was the lighting kit on the front page of TSE ehm, TGEA here's the link http://tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/Torque/LightingSystem The lighting kit is what the major diffrence is between 1.4 to 1.5. So it kind of looks like you can because TGEA and TGE 1.5 have the same thing, but until I hear different sharing 1.5 contents to TGEA would be against the license agreements. But I have both so thats not too much of a problem for me. :)

James Brad Barnette (Feb 21, 2007 at 15:34 GMT)

Well those are given for you to use in your projects royalty free so.. I don't see how it does.

Gianfranco Barone (Feb 21, 2007 at 16:09 GMT)

Just to talk while waiting for starter kit

James, I agree with you: as the content is licensed royalty free I don't see the problem.

There is just a rescrition: TGE 1.4 owners can't use the content pack shipped with alienforce tgea starter to develop your game. The restriction belongs to 1.4 owners and no to alienforce (by my point of view).
alienforce is entitled (i think) to make the starter kit with all the content for 1.4 e 1.5 owners. But only 1.5 owners are entitled to devolop on this starter (unless 1.4's strip down all not licensed content).
This is like to use content of quake o half-life the same issue.

This homever point me to a second licensing issue related to first:

In Eula there is clearly explained you can't use torque to make game makers, so I think this mean you can't make your game moddable (allow customers of your game to make their own mission). Am I right ?

Follow me:
I make a game with modding features (but without source code and *.cs as license told me)
customer of my game can make his own mission, with his buildings and characters
Customer can sell his mod
If I release the game for free (license allow me to do that), the customers can use my game to make their game (that's as a game maker tool).

OK without sourcecode and *.cs is no easy to do that, if the game is and fps shooter you can't mod to rts, but homever is no a big effort to make another fps shooter.

What do you think about ?

James Brad Barnette (Feb 21, 2007 at 16:37 GMT)

you have to put it is youe eula when you release your game that noone can charge for things they create with it.

Gianfranco Barone (Feb 21, 2007 at 16:49 GMT)

@James

Ah yes, thank for explanation.

Alienforce (Feb 23, 2007 at 20:28 GMT)

Small update:
Since the port of RTS kit seems to take little more time then i have counted for :/
I will release the updated Starter.Fps and Starter.Racing this weekend and hopefully the
RTS starter kit will be out sometime next week.

Stay tuned.

Mark Dimayo (Feb 24, 2007 at 20:10 GMT)

Hello all,

I am new to TGE(A) and am doing a bunch of research on possible RTS engines. So far judging from the screenshots and videos, I am highly impressed with what TGEA has to offer for the cost. I was looking at purchasing TGE 1.4.2 with the RTS starter kit; however, obviously TGEA is the superior engine, but it is lacking the RTS starter kit at this time.

So being a noob to the TGEA scene, is the starter kit that Alienforce plans on releasing going to be free so long as I purchase TGEA?

Also, seeing as how graphics aren't all important in RTS games (my opinion), do you think I would be better off going with 1.4.2 in terms of system resources (think RTS people :) )? It has been my experience that newer engines just eat up system resources. I would value smooth game play over pretty shaders.

Alienforce, will the port you release include all the features of the 1.4.2SK?

Thanks,

Mark

Alienforce (Feb 26, 2007 at 20:43 GMT)

UPDATE:
New versions of Starter.Fps and Starter.Racing available.
Download
Starter.RTS - Will take some more time. 60% done.
Starter.FPS 1.5 - Done, Just dont know how to give users of 1.5 and TGEA access to the files.
Demo 1.5 - 80% done.

No TGEA "eyecandy" included, these are straight ports from TGE 1.4.2 to TGEA
I have decided to port the "Kits" just as they are in their current version on TGE
but i will do "expansion" packs to add if wanted.

More updates in the next couple of days.

James Brad Barnette (Feb 27, 2007 at 22:21 GMT)

can you email me calmasacow@yahoo.com I would like to work out a way to get that 1.5 kit from you. and I can host a download for ya or something if you need.

Emmanuel Nwankwo (Feb 28, 2007 at 18:03 GMT)

sorry for being a novice, but how do you get this kit to work, I copied it to the same directory that the demo is in (that is the example dir), then edited the main.cs file with $defaultGame = "starter.racing"
in place of the existing water demo and this should work, but instead it does not even load up. The water demo works fine.

I am using TGEA 1.0

Matthew Jessick (Feb 28, 2007 at 18:44 GMT)

Copy the format of the line you replaced carefully:
$defaultGame = "starter.racing";

You may have forgotten the semi-colon at the end of the line.

Emmanuel Nwankwo (Feb 28, 2007 at 19:30 GMT)

many thanks

Vince McMullin (Mar 03, 2007 at 21:40 GMT)

I own 1.5 and I would like your 1.5 kit.

Please email it. vamman@gmail.com

Sean Darling (Mar 15, 2007 at 11:40 GMT)

Thankyou, I just got TGEA and I found loading that demo to access the world builder etc annoying as hell! This has everything I wanted, fantastic :)

James Brad Barnette (Mar 31, 2007 at 21:47 GMT)

Just wonderning do you think that you could do the Flying Starter Kit too?

http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=12287
Edited on Mar 31, 2007 21:49 GMT

James Laker (BurNinG) (Apr 01, 2007 at 17:42 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

James, The Space starterkit shouldn't take u more than 30min to do even with the old code. It's mostly the same.

James Brad Barnette (Apr 01, 2007 at 19:44 GMT)

ehh I know squat about programming I'm an artist. I took C++ in school but that was a loooong time ago.
Unless one of you chaps wanna help me I have a pretty good game Idea worked out. I think it could be completed farley quickly as it dances around all of the weak points in the art pipeline.

anyone interested email me.

calmasacow@yahoo.com
Edited on Apr 01, 2007 19:47 GMT

Alienforce (Apr 02, 2007 at 05:00 GMT)

Sorry for my late response guys, I just came back from the US.
Sure James i can do a port of it :)
I will post some updates/progress reports later on this week.

James Brad Barnette (Apr 02, 2007 at 15:27 GMT)

Dude you rule!

__Peter__ (Apr 08, 2007 at 03:57 GMT)

Hi guys

I am thinking of creating a game that requires features from the RTS Starter kit with the latest TGEA. However, the RTS Starter kit is based on TGE 1.3. There are many changes in TGEA since 1.3.

Shouldn't the RTS starter kit be constantly updated to the latest version so that whoever buys it can get started immediately, instead of trying to manipulate the engine code.

I see that there is an alpha port of the RTS starter kit to TGEA from earlier posts. Wonder when will it be ready and how can I get it? Thanks.

Jonathon Stevens (Apr 08, 2007 at 04:03 GMT)

IIRC RTS Starter Kit is no longer supported and will get no more official updates. It's also worth pointing out that it was made for TGE 1.3, not TGEA. Best news I can give unfortunately.

James Brad Barnette (Apr 14, 2007 at 03:42 GMT)

any update on that port?

Alienforce (Apr 14, 2007 at 20:08 GMT)

After the weekend :) Sorry for the delay.

Emmanuel Nwankwo (Apr 16, 2007 at 11:40 GMT)

James, if you are still getting a white space orc after replacing the contents of the player folder with the contents of the space orc folder, then you will need to change all references to "SpaceOrc" with "player" in materials.cs (which is in the player folder). This will enable the space orc materials to be found

James Brad Barnette (Apr 17, 2007 at 14:08 GMT)

ok cool thanx

James Brad Barnette (May 02, 2007 at 02:20 GMT)

any news?

Alienforce (May 03, 2007 at 13:56 GMT)

RTS conversion to TGEA takes longer time then i expected :/
My intention is to release the starter.kits in a couple of days.

James Brad Barnette (May 03, 2007 at 22:44 GMT)

cool I will keep an eye out.

Alienforce (May 19, 2007 at 17:28 GMT)

New release (TGEA Starter.Kits RC1) + Bonus will be online 25 May.
All based on latest version of TGEA.
Stay tuned for more info.

Gianfranco Barone (May 19, 2007 at 18:17 GMT)

Great !

Andy Hawkins (May 20, 2007 at 00:51 GMT)

I tried to switch on bloom as mentioned above, but I don't see it and a lot of the check boxes are half-checked. Games with bloom (commercial) do show bloom on my video card, so what else could be the problem?

Alienforce (May 25, 2007 at 10:32 GMT)

Update:
I am holding back the releases until 30 May to sort out some bugs and issues.
(Like and Andys problem) Sorry for the delay but i really want to make 100% working.

TSK (Jun 01, 2007 at 07:23 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Waiting for new release...

Andy Hawkins (Jun 01, 2007 at 10:33 GMT)

@Alienforce - I fixed the bloom ...
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=62018

and the patchy terrain...
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=62019

Alienforce (Jun 01, 2007 at 16:42 GMT)

Release will be up this weekend. Have been doing business abroad and have had no time to finalize the kits.
Thanks all for your patience.

John Adams (Jun 03, 2007 at 13:04 GMT) Resource Rating: 4

I have added some eyecandy, I'm working on a tutorial.
let me know what you think....

Edited on Jun 03, 2007 13:05 GMT

James Brad Barnette (Jun 03, 2007 at 16:19 GMT)

looks lke there is some kinda bump mapping on the stone wals and the ceiling but it looks very flat. Still better than what was already there I guess. have you tried the parallax or reliefe shaders for those?

John Adams (Jun 03, 2007 at 17:03 GMT) Resource Rating: 4

Yes, this was a Normal map. I think the Parallax map looks alot better, I'm still playing with it.
You can adjust the look in the alpha channel of the Normal map.

Edited on Jun 03, 2007 17:21 GMT

Alienforce (Jun 03, 2007 at 18:49 GMT)

I have found some weird issues in the kits i am currently try to pin down so the kits will not be online for 1-2 days. I want to have them 100% working as the orignal kits for TGE.
Stay tuned. I have devoted the next upcomming days just to get these kits ready.

Jonathon Stevens (Jun 03, 2007 at 22:21 GMT)

good news alien. I'd rather have a fully functional bug free version than a rushed one. We're all excited to see you finished, but we're more excited to see a finished product ;)

Eikon Games (Jun 04, 2007 at 08:06 GMT) Resource Rating: 4

Totally agree with him (points up)... Good look pinning down the issues - can't wait to see the result. I think I speak for the entire TGEA community when I see your hard work on this is greatly appreciated.

Adam Beer (Jun 09, 2007 at 19:51 GMT)

Any updates on this?

James Brad Barnette (Jun 09, 2007 at 23:04 GMT)

Yeah, hey man I know that you are prolly busy but could "if you are not already getting ready to post them" tell what is left to fix before they are released?

Keep up the great work though.

Alienforce (Jun 10, 2007 at 16:28 GMT)

Hmmm.... To much sun :) Beach... cold drinks... has been the main hickup right now.
But for the tech stuff. I have been stuck with issues with transparence material bugs and max exporter issues with the "sort mesh" not supported by TGEA :/ also i am working get the HUD working with starter.racing and DTS ShapeReplicator 100% working and get rid off any non orginal kits behaviors :)
My goal is to release starter.fps (1.4.2 and 1.5.2), starter.racing and starter.rts (1.0) at the same time.
There will be two versions of every kit, one exported exactly as the orginal kit and the other with "eyecandy" features enabled to showoff TGEA.

More news later on....

James Brad Barnette (Jun 10, 2007 at 17:28 GMT)

cool
well if you need any art help let me know.

JoZ (Jun 11, 2007 at 21:38 GMT)

@ Alienforce:

Hi, I'm experimenting a lot of problems with transparencies in TGEA, can I ask you if you find some docs usefull to post some links to them? Yet searched a lot but nothing usefull found by now...

Tnx,
JoZ

James Brad Barnette (Jun 20, 2007 at 20:02 GMT)

@ Alienforce:
Is this still gonna happen man?

Deception Games (Jun 21, 2007 at 04:41 GMT)

Been having the same issues with the transparencies also.

http://tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/TSE/Materials/Translucency

Tried this and works for a few but not all my transparencies

new Material()
{
   mapTo = ;
   baseTex[0] = "";
   translucent = true;
   translucentBlendOp = LerpAlpha;
   translucentZWrite = true;
   alphaRef = 20;

Shayne Uhr (Jun 27, 2007 at 03:01 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

I had some trouble with transparency as well. The TDN says that you can use .tga files with alpha channels for transparency but I did not have any luck using them for GUI images. In the end, I was forced to use .png files which makes me very sad.

James Brad Barnette (Jun 27, 2007 at 16:06 GMT)

yeah this is very annorying as photoshop doen't read png's alpha channel properly it read it as a lingle unlocked layer with transparency.

Alienforce (Jun 27, 2007 at 17:14 GMT)

There is a bug with "sort mesh" function with tgea. I am working on it right now :)

James Brad Barnette (Jul 05, 2007 at 20:56 GMT)

Update?

Alienforce (Jul 06, 2007 at 16:15 GMT)

I will continue working on it next week. Right now i am working on the starter.RTS port again :/

Alienforce (Jul 13, 2007 at 02:13 GMT)

I have some trouble with my ISP right now... :/

James Brad Barnette (Jul 13, 2007 at 12:19 GMT)

if you want I can host the files for you.

email me calmasacow@yahoo.com

Alienforce (Jul 16, 2007 at 23:48 GMT)

ISP problem solved. Alpha sort bug on export not... but soon i hope :/ working on it.
Also having a huge problem with getting a good looking Atlas2 terrain of the stronghold.
Looks great from far away like most of the screenshots of Atlas terrains :) but in fps/3ps worldview it looks not good at all. Have been trying to rewrite/modify the legacy terrain insteed to support larger textures and have used 512x512, 1024x1024 and even a 2048x2048 just for fun. The problem is when using larger terrain textures they get very "fuzzy and blurry" and i havent found any way to get them sharp yet.

Alienforce (Jul 19, 2007 at 15:39 GMT)

I going to do these conversion/porting in new way that will speed up things.
To get you up and running faster.

There will be a fresh update in a couple days :)

Stay tuned!

Alienforce (Jul 24, 2007 at 19:36 GMT)

I will wait for TGEA 1.02. before i release the updates.

Alienforce (Jul 24, 2007 at 21:19 GMT)

:/ Ok i have to misread another thread ... Sorry about that...
i will NOT wait for the 1.02 release... :) Updates will soon arrive.

!

Adam Beer (Aug 04, 2007 at 00:34 GMT)

Any updates on this? =) I cant wait!

Alienforce (Aug 25, 2007 at 00:44 GMT)

I have new versions ready. (TGEA 1.0.2)
They will be online after some final tests during the week end.

Nicholas Irvin (Aug 26, 2007 at 21:21 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Question, Are these the starter.fps (1.4.2 and 1.5.2), starter.racing and starter.rts (1.0) you talked about above with the two versions. Oh and thanks for all your hard work on these kits, its much appreciated.

Andy Hawkins (Aug 28, 2007 at 23:49 GMT)

Nice work. I await with anci..........pation!

Alienforce (Sep 01, 2007 at 06:26 GMT)

Doing final tests using TGEA 1.0.3

Adam Beer (Sep 01, 2007 at 06:30 GMT)

YAY!! :D

Stefan *Shaderman* Greven (Sep 01, 2007 at 06:33 GMT)

Cool!
Edited on Sep 01, 2007 06:33 GMT

James Brad Barnette (Sep 03, 2007 at 19:05 GMT)

will you be releasing the RTS kit port? if you need hosting I can help you. contact me if you need me to post it and I can give you the links to add in the appropriate forums.

calmasacow@yahoo.com

James Brad Barnette (Sep 07, 2007 at 01:01 GMT)

hello?

Alienforce (Sep 07, 2007 at 11:08 GMT)

Hello :)

its ready really soon now.

Jonathon Stevens (Sep 07, 2007 at 13:31 GMT)

Not to sound like a stickler or anything, but if indeed these packs are being released as free, how about letting some of us help you finish them as 'ready really soon now' is becoming a common saying ;)

I'm sure several others besides myself would be willing to help iron out any remaining problems so everyone could get their hands on this before the next TGEA update comes out ;)

Alienforce (Sep 08, 2007 at 16:17 GMT)

You have a excellent tutorial over here by Joseph Helm how to do the port from TGE 1.5 to TGEA 1.0.3

Link:
http://garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=13534

No need for wait for my ports :)

Jonathan (Dec 09, 2007 at 16:37 GMT)

this will make my day!

Alienforce (Dec 09, 2007 at 17:40 GMT)

After finisihing some other projects.
I am back working on this kits finaly again :) and also doing ports for Torque X.
Smaller updates will follow and the finals beginning of Jan.

metalliandy (Dec 09, 2007 at 17:44 GMT)

Great News!

I am eagerly awaiting your next release :)

Do you have any idea on a time-scale?

Alienforce (Dec 09, 2007 at 18:08 GMT)

Some minor updates under December and finals beginning January.

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