Let's Play Name that Engine
by Alan James · 05/03/2006 (4:32 am) · 65 comments
Ok, here's a few screenshots to help you out...
Got it? Good, but still not bad for TGE, huh? Here are the resources that you *have* to have for TGE:
Dynamic Range Lighting
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=10232
TGE Water Upgrade
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=10357
Torque Lighting Kit for TGE
www.garagegames.com/products/36
TGE w/ Bumpmapped Interiors (using the CG runtime)
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=6431
*NOTE* this hopefully will be superceeded by Alex "Delerium" Scarborough's GLSL implementation in the near future
We're still plugging away at Code Name: Monster Island, and still hoping to have another beta test for early this summer, that's if I can stay away from coding and start building some real content. We have lots of pieces of the puzzzle, dozens of partial levels and now it's just a matter of starting to weed out what is necessary and what isn't. You wouldn't have thought building and populating even a relatively small island would be so much work!
Anyway Alex "Delerium" Scarborough and Manoel Neto deserve some major kudos from the community. Their work is giving some real legs to TGE, along with John Kabus for his help in all this.
-Alan
Really Really Good Things Studio
www.reallyreallygoodthings.com
Got it? Good, but still not bad for TGE, huh? Here are the resources that you *have* to have for TGE:
Dynamic Range Lighting
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=10232
TGE Water Upgrade
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=10357
Torque Lighting Kit for TGE
www.garagegames.com/products/36
TGE w/ Bumpmapped Interiors (using the CG runtime)
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=6431
*NOTE* this hopefully will be superceeded by Alex "Delerium" Scarborough's GLSL implementation in the near future
We're still plugging away at Code Name: Monster Island, and still hoping to have another beta test for early this summer, that's if I can stay away from coding and start building some real content. We have lots of pieces of the puzzzle, dozens of partial levels and now it's just a matter of starting to weed out what is necessary and what isn't. You wouldn't have thought building and populating even a relatively small island would be so much work!
Anyway Alex "Delerium" Scarborough and Manoel Neto deserve some major kudos from the community. Their work is giving some real legs to TGE, along with John Kabus for his help in all this.
-Alan
Really Really Good Things Studio
www.reallyreallygoodthings.com
About the author
#22
Anyway, Alan - good job, man
05/03/2006 (3:24 pm)
Dang! Water! - that's all I need to create the Oblivion clone! ;)Anyway, Alan - good job, man
#24
@John K. (and Stephen) Sounds like a plan, I'll try to post a resource on Thursday (that's my day off from the real world). And thanks again for all your help.
@Blake L. My numbers are similar to Alex's, allthough I think I'm doing a bit better on the outdoor scenes with everything turned on, only chug under 20fps if I have a lot of foliage and stuff in view, but with some culling tweaking it hangs 25-35 fps, and my interiors are 35-55fps (again with everything turned on).
3.2ghz P4 H/T, 768mb ram, BFG 7300GS 256mb
@Matt V. Yes, I have it working right, but like I noted to Stephen above, not sure what will happen on an ATI card. Alex's Torque Modernization Kit (aka GLSL integrated for Torque) will no doubt be a much better option than my hack, but I'll still post it as a TLK private resource, so watch those forums.
@Alan H. Nothing for the open area levels, interiors I use 3D World Studio (version 5.43, 'cause 5.44 & 5.45 are broken in regards towards Torque/Map2Dif Plus...at least they were up to a week ago, haven't checked the forums over at www.leadwerks.com lately).
@Alex S. Have a question for you, can the original DRL 1.0 be modified so the brightness/contrast of the scene adjusting updates properly with the TGE Water Resource? I know it sounds weird but I kind of like the control that was available with the original resource. With 2.0 I seem to be fighting the lighting quite a bit more than I did originally, even with locking the setDRLSkipTime and/or setChangeRates. No big deal, and I'm sure I can figure out what settings work best, just a thought. (BTW, loading the setDRLSkipTime and/or setChangeRates seems to be erratic in the .mis files. It's in the "new ScriptObject(MissionInfo)" is that where I should be loading it from, right?
Anyways, I can always take a look at what I've done before:
Thanks again to everyone for the encouragement,
- Alan
Really Really Good Things Studio
05/03/2006 (4:42 pm)
Ok, thanks everyone...here come all the @'s@John K. (and Stephen) Sounds like a plan, I'll try to post a resource on Thursday (that's my day off from the real world). And thanks again for all your help.
@Blake L. My numbers are similar to Alex's, allthough I think I'm doing a bit better on the outdoor scenes with everything turned on, only chug under 20fps if I have a lot of foliage and stuff in view, but with some culling tweaking it hangs 25-35 fps, and my interiors are 35-55fps (again with everything turned on).
3.2ghz P4 H/T, 768mb ram, BFG 7300GS 256mb
@Matt V. Yes, I have it working right, but like I noted to Stephen above, not sure what will happen on an ATI card. Alex's Torque Modernization Kit (aka GLSL integrated for Torque) will no doubt be a much better option than my hack, but I'll still post it as a TLK private resource, so watch those forums.
@Alan H. Nothing for the open area levels, interiors I use 3D World Studio (version 5.43, 'cause 5.44 & 5.45 are broken in regards towards Torque/Map2Dif Plus...at least they were up to a week ago, haven't checked the forums over at www.leadwerks.com lately).
@Alex S. Have a question for you, can the original DRL 1.0 be modified so the brightness/contrast of the scene adjusting updates properly with the TGE Water Resource? I know it sounds weird but I kind of like the control that was available with the original resource. With 2.0 I seem to be fighting the lighting quite a bit more than I did originally, even with locking the setDRLSkipTime and/or setChangeRates. No big deal, and I'm sure I can figure out what settings work best, just a thought. (BTW, loading the setDRLSkipTime and/or setChangeRates seems to be erratic in the .mis files. It's in the "new ScriptObject(MissionInfo)" is that where I should be loading it from, right?
Anyways, I can always take a look at what I've done before:
Thanks again to everyone for the encouragement,
- Alan
Really Really Good Things Studio
#25
Nice to see how you maintain complete working directory trees of all the progress so that you can WinMerge against earlier versions at all times. Wonder how many others do it this way? It's amazing how quickly the good work can slip away unless you do this. I'd rather buy another hard drive than delete one of those folders.
05/03/2006 (4:50 pm)
Really Really Good Work Alan.Nice to see how you maintain complete working directory trees of all the progress so that you can WinMerge against earlier versions at all times. Wonder how many others do it this way? It's amazing how quickly the good work can slip away unless you do this. I'd rather buy another hard drive than delete one of those folders.
#26
Though remember, this stuff doesnt make you a poor man's TSE, it's just some very select stuff written to run the shaders in specific spots
Eitherway, the results are fantastic, and i cant wait to see more.
05/03/2006 (4:52 pm)
Daaaang, thems some smexy shots : DThough remember, this stuff doesnt make you a poor man's TSE, it's just some very select stuff written to run the shaders in specific spots
Eitherway, the results are fantastic, and i cant wait to see more.
#27
Yep that's a big ten four on the gulf between TGE and TSE, own both but I'm in *WAY* to deep to port over "Code Name: Monster Island" to TSE (and certain things I need won't be ready for a while), so I figured I'd make the transition smoother when the sequel "Return to Monster Island" comes out on TSE. Which of course preceeds "Monster Planet" for XBox 360... =P
@Tim Hutcheson
Yeah, my take on back up directories is similar to what I tell my kids about taking a coat with you. You can take it off if you don't need it, but you can't put it on if you don't have it. But that's just dad talk.
- Alan
05/03/2006 (5:01 pm)
@Jeff,Yep that's a big ten four on the gulf between TGE and TSE, own both but I'm in *WAY* to deep to port over "Code Name: Monster Island" to TSE (and certain things I need won't be ready for a while), so I figured I'd make the transition smoother when the sequel "Return to Monster Island" comes out on TSE. Which of course preceeds "Monster Planet" for XBox 360... =P
@Tim Hutcheson
Yeah, my take on back up directories is similar to what I tell my kids about taking a coat with you. You can take it off if you don't need it, but you can't put it on if you don't have it. But that's just dad talk.
- Alan
#28
05/03/2006 (5:18 pm)
Wow!
#29
Mine x800GTO/256Mb renders similar or more complex scenes with 70+ fps (based on Far Cry/Quake/Oblivion)... Obviously, the water/bump shaders are not running in software, so they shouldnt be a performance hit... A huge volume of shadered water from Ogre3D demo runs at 80+ fps on the same video card.
05/03/2006 (5:37 pm)
@Alan J.: you have a good video card, and the framerates you got are suspiciosly low... do you have a lot of triangles/faces or huge textures in your scene? Is it post-processing of the video buffer of the whole screen?Mine x800GTO/256Mb renders similar or more complex scenes with 70+ fps (based on Far Cry/Quake/Oblivion)... Obviously, the water/bump shaders are not running in software, so they shouldnt be a performance hit... A huge volume of shadered water from Ogre3D demo runs at 80+ fps on the same video card.
#30
At this point *Nothing* has been optimized for gameplay. I still have some texture files as high as 1024x1024, view distances are set *Way* out, no fog, culling on foliage replication hasn't been optimized, etc., etc...
Yeah I've messed with the OGRE demo & the SDK. With this resource in Torque, if I go and stand looking only at the water my framerates run in this range:
Can't speak for the other games what kind of difference there would be/is. My son has Oblivion, but we haven't tried it on my system since the new video card.
But I do know I've got tons of optimization to go...but that's how it goes... =)
- Alan
05/03/2006 (6:04 pm)
@Alex GAt this point *Nothing* has been optimized for gameplay. I still have some texture files as high as 1024x1024, view distances are set *Way* out, no fog, culling on foliage replication hasn't been optimized, etc., etc...
Yeah I've messed with the OGRE demo & the SDK. With this resource in Torque, if I go and stand looking only at the water my framerates run in this range:
Can't speak for the other games what kind of difference there would be/is. My son has Oblivion, but we haven't tried it on my system since the new video card.
But I do know I've got tons of optimization to go...but that's how it goes... =)
- Alan
#31
BTW, do you need a tester? I would like to test your demo on various video cards including Intel Extream 900/950 chipsets (as very used because of Dell).
05/03/2006 (6:29 pm)
@Alan J.: As I can see, it goes pretty well! :) I see now why you had low framerates. Good luck with your projec! You have a customer already ;)BTW, do you need a tester? I would like to test your demo on various video cards including Intel Extream 900/950 chipsets (as very used because of Dell).
#33
yeah, TGE+TLK+enhancements are great stuff!
since first release of DLR I can't find time to play with it... hope today/tomorrow I can take my hands on that.. ;)
05/03/2006 (7:40 pm)
Alan, what is the settings of sky in mission on you last screen (visibleDistance and fogDistance)?yeah, TGE+TLK+enhancements are great stuff!
since first release of DLR I can't find time to play with it... hope today/tomorrow I can take my hands on that.. ;)
#34
05/03/2006 (9:22 pm)
Wow, very impressive screens, people have done an awesome job modifying TGE !
#35
05/03/2006 (9:41 pm)
if all of it (including game logic) can run at a decent frame rate.... WOW!
#36
@Clint - Those FPS numbers are from release. Couple of things to keep in mind: My 9600 is pretty watered down. I don't have exact numbers on it yet, but suffice it to say that a lot of stuff has been cut out. Also, I tend to not reboot for long periods of time and have a ton of apps open.
05/03/2006 (10:53 pm)
@Alan - The fix in the DRL2.0 resource comments works with the original release as well. Also, just a bit of advice, you can set the skip time and change rate the same way everything else is set in the DRL2.0 integration tutorial. And if you call setOverexposureIntercept(0.0); and setUnderexposureWhiteOffset(0.0); in DRL2.0, it becomes essentially the same as DRL1.0 in terms of feature set, except with all of the nice bug fixes.@Clint - Those FPS numbers are from release. Couple of things to keep in mind: My 9600 is pretty watered down. I don't have exact numbers on it yet, but suffice it to say that a lot of stuff has been cut out. Also, I tend to not reboot for long periods of time and have a ton of apps open.
#37
05/03/2006 (11:44 pm)
Does the CG bump thingy work with TGE 1.4 ????
#38
05/03/2006 (11:47 pm)
@Alienforce - You have to hand merge it, which is a bit of a pain since not quite all of the changes are marked, and it has issues on ATi cards, but yes, it does work with TGE 1.4. The GLSL port will come integrated into 1.4, with all changes marked.
#39
Great! Time to do some merging then. BTW: Whats the timeframe for the GLSL port ??
05/03/2006 (11:55 pm)
thanks for your reply Alex.Great! Time to do some merging then. BTW: Whats the timeframe for the GLSL port ??
#40
05/04/2006 (12:01 am)
@Alienforce - The TGE version is in final testing now. The TLK version needs just a little bit of tweaking and some more testing and it should be good to go.
Torque Owner Alan H