Torque 3D Development - Matt Langley and the Torque Launcher

#21 The only function i would plead! for is the ability to script a button to open all my work programs at once, even the mp3player if its in the script. It could be a 'Open all Project Tools at once' button, but knowing Matt the function is probably already there.

#22 Yeah... it'd be nice to have some scripting functionality in buttons.

But anyway, it looks great guys! I like the idea a lot, and it seems pretty logical. I much prefer this to the system of drilling down through folders until you find the file you want to open every new day.


Oh, I guess an important question would be ... is Torsion/a script editor going to become standard with Torque 3D? If you're not prepared to reveal that yet, I'll understand. Bunches of things could change from now until then, but I think it'd be nice to have that tool "included".

#23 I actually think Garage Games should pay for the rights and put the Torsion editor into Torque 3D. This looks very nice but I think I will wait till the actual screens of Torque 3D are out before I pass a verdict.

#24 Hey I just wanted to give a huge pat on the back to Brett and the other developers for something incredibly important that they might not realize how important it is - you actually READ users comments! I can tell! That is SOOOO awesome and very lacking in todays game market unfortunately. I'm reminded of The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell when he says the number one skill that a game designer needs (or in this case an engine designer) isn't creativity or logic, it's the ability to listen. Kudos and keep it up! Torque 3d is looking great.

#25 Just a thought. I hope those editor quick links are customizable, since a lot of users might not use those programs (for example, I use Paint Shop Pro instead of Photoshop - if you think that's bad you probably haven't used both programs as extensively as me).

#26 Torque ToolBox gets my vote :)

One question - will the packager be intelligent so it only packages assets that the game uses?

#27 Re: Are the quick links customizable?



@Matt Fairfax: "Front Launcher" *shudders*...


@Caylo:

"The only function i would plead! for is the ability to script a button to open all my work programs at once, even the mp3player if its in the script. It could be a 'Open all Project Tools at once' button, but knowing Matt the function is probably already there."

Hmm, very interesting idea :)


@Andy Hubbard:

Not sure on that one. There are quite a bit of tool improvements that we are trying to get accomplished (I get to figure out how to fit all of them into a realistic time frame). I would really like to go down that road (can't say I haven't wanted to add that for years now), though there are other things that take priority. In the end I have to prioritize what is more needed by all over what I would like.

#28 How about Garage Toolbox? Since it's supposed to hold all your spanners and wrenches for game dev?

Looking good guys, when turning on to game dev I always run through opening Visual Studio, Torsion, Game folder, etc so a 1 click button would be great.

#29 Looking great! every torque 3d blog post makes me get even more excited for the arrivable for Torque 3D!

I am also looking forward to the upgraded FPS.Starter, especially considering that Apparatus is working on the art for it :)

From Max

Ps. Can an estimate of when abouts it will be availible (eg. late 2009, mid 2010?)

#30 well i know they have said it will be out in 2009 but i don't think they can give a real good date as to when in 2009. not only that things can happen to even push there date back more so i don't even think they can tell you really when. its months away so i don't think we should care as to the date not at this point. they don't know allot of stuff there self's ether its why they made posts that we can post in to what we would like to see in t3d they makeing a engine for us not them. i have read allot on t3d anything i can find i not always right as i get mixed up on things i try to help as much as i can when i can at lest till i buy the engine tgea then i might be to busy to keep up with info.

#31 Love the concept.

A coouple things I would like to see. Since we don't all work together on Adellion (in fact the nearest person to me is about 240 mi. away) I'd like to see a couple more buttons...

One to upload your changes to a cvs/svn system (basically the capability to specify the upload so I don't have to jump out to TortoiseSVN), or the hooks so I could add it myself.

Some improved project management tools, to establish timelines, track projects, and assignments, and assist with art asset tracking. Either than or, you guessed it, the ability to hook to another tool just as you now hook to Photoshop.

So the first two basically boil down to being able to add your own hooks or to add buttons to jump to a program and pass along the info you want to work on.

And finally, I'd like it to be a LOT more interactive for the TEAM across the Internet.

For example, the Torque Collaboration Tool is wonderful for our artists to work jointly on getting our game world the way we want it, but we don't have access to source so we can't add things like Green-Ear (so we could talk and not just type messages), or BG Cliffs or SSAO (so we can enhance the main engine we can see our changes) - I'd like to see this tool be able to do that.

#32 Now this is more like it! These post's get better and better over time.

Garage Toolbox is good (among some other suggestions). How about Torque Toolbox/Torque Launcher Toolbox?

#33 Nice job guys .

Torque 3d will be Great Engine I love Garage Games and everything about Torque can't wait for post #10 and release day !!!! :)

#34 To throw my 2cents in the discussion,

I like the direction of the app, be great to have an organizer or project manager or whatever you end up calling it. I do like the ring of torque toolbox, i would also throw the word "workshop" out , as it kind of reminds me of that.

As far as feature requests (feel free to ignore if they are crazy or too much), I would echo the desire to have the ability to connect with a source code control system, be it SVN, CVS, Sourcesafe, or whatever. Making it easy to perform daily would be a good way to promote best practices, and a button that fires a script to do all the daily source control would be great.

I would love to see a nice way to manage a list of notes. I find myself often making a to do list for task management, and it would be nice to have a little box in the UI for that purpose. A list of entries, each entry like a little email message, with subject line and a lot of little details in its body. Add in a multimedia mouseover tootip capability, where I can drag and drop text and pics that appear in a popup tooltip, and I would be in heaven heh. Be nice to export the list and notes to a printer or for emailing too.

I would like to have improved searching capabilities, say of all the different places I might search for answers regarding torque development, integrated into one place. I often search the forums, the docs online, some PDF docs from Maurina's books, the WIKI, etc etc. Often I have a keyword and I want any info from all sources to pick thru it and figure out what I need to do to finish my work. Also throwing in a way to manage general file searches thru directory trees would be useful too.

Thanks again for all the hard work and sharing the direction of the tools with the community while the tools are still being written. Appreciate the community spirit :).

#35 RE: "Toolbox"
Actually I brought that up when a few of us were trying to brainstorm ideas. Toolbox is catchy and explains itself, though I feared it might be a little too "cheesy"... Anyone else get that vibe from it?

@Andy:
"Looking good guys, when turning on to game dev I always run through opening Visual Studio, Torsion, Game folder, etc so a 1 click button would be great."

Caylo mentioned a similar idea. I like the idea of a button that just triggers multiple other entries, simple enough. We'll have to see :)


@Max:
"Ps. Can an estimate of when abouts it will be availible (eg. late 2009, mid 2010?) "

Somewhere between 2009 and 3009 :) In all seriousness we are trying to be extremely careful and good about not giving false dates. Software development is a very unpredictable thing (especially game tech), so we want to resist the urge to say a date we can't follow up on. All part of us trying to be better at communicating, rather than just communicating 'stuff' we want to make sure we communicate accurate 'stuff'.

#36 @David:
Some great suggestions. The more feedback the better. Even if it doesn't make it into Torque 3D it is great to know (and log) this info for future use. I am dedicated to logging practically every single suggestion for tools into our project management software, including things we'll never get to, so I can put good notes by why or why not we are or arent doing things, for future reference.

"One to upload your changes to a cvs/svn system (basically the capability to specify the upload so I don't have to jump out to TortoiseSVN), or the hooks so I could add it myself."

With the ability to add custom buttons this should be trivial, just add an button pointing to the svn.exe and set up the appropriate args (the picture I showed above doesn't include a way to add arguments passed, but that will be added in a simple way.

"Some improved project management tools, to establish timelines, track projects, and assignments, and assist with art asset tracking. Either than or, you guessed it, the ability to hook to another tool just as you now hook to Photoshop.

So the first two basically boil down to being able to add your own hooks or to add buttons to jump to a program and pass along the info you want to work on. "

Another good suggestion, a lot of that is out of scope of what we can do for now (though nice suggestion potentially for the future). Though as you hit on, all of the quick links are completely customizable, you can add as many or as few as you want linking to any applications and can specify arguments. I am hoping to do the same with web links as well, though since it isn't in a working state now I'll have to officially say "we'll see" on the web link side. Again check the images in my previous post to get an idea of the editor support for adding custom quick links.

"And finally, I'd like it to be a LOT more interactive for the TEAM across the Internet.

For example, the Torque Collaboration Tool is wonderful for our artists to work jointly on getting our game world the way we want it, but we don't have access to source so we can't add things like Green-Ear (so we could talk and not just type messages), or BG Cliffs or SSAO (so we can enhance the main engine we can see our changes) - I'd like to see this tool be able to do that. "

Those comments definitely spark up my imagination. Many of those type of features would be beyond the scope of what is being planned and/or worked on now; however, I can say I have already talked and thought about such things for the future. What could be done now is the Torque Launcher .xml files that store all of the customizable data (like project notes and editor quick links) could be stored in an Source control repo (like SVN or CVS) so those can be shared across teams, the notes could especially be useful to track eachother's progress. We'll have to see about anything further though :)

#37 @Blake:
"I do like the ring of torque toolbox, i would also throw the word "workshop" out , as it kind of reminds me of that. "

I do like the ring of "workshop." Might have to keep that in mind for future use (if it doesn't come into play now).

"As far as feature requests (feel free to ignore if they are crazy or too much), I would echo the desire to have the ability to connect with a source code control system, be it SVN, CVS, Sourcesafe, or whatever. Making it easy to perform daily would be a good way to promote best practices, and a button that fires a script to do all the daily source control would be great. "

(As mentioned above in response to others) You can see the images I posted of the interface to customize the quick links. Make it so you can group app references makes a lot of sense to me. Potentially the idea of referencing a .bat file (on windows) or a mac command file comes to mind as well.

"I would love to see a nice way to manage a list of notes. I find myself often making a to do list for task management, and it would be nice to have a little box in the UI for that purpose. A list of entries, each entry like a little email message, with subject line and a lot of little details in its body. Add in a multimedia mouseover tootip capability, where I can drag and drop text and pics that appear in a popup tooltip, and I would be in heaven heh. Be nice to export the list and notes to a printer or for emailing too. "

Thanks for sharing such detailed thoughts. I can't say any of those will make it in there (minus basic notes), though I really like those ideas.

#38 @Matthew

Being a shade tree mechanic, I have to say nope, doesn't sound cheesy too me. Sometimes being different makes you stand out in a crowd:)

#39

Quote:
Actually I brought that up when a few of us were trying to brainstorm ideas. Toolbox is catchy and explains itself, though I feared it might be a little too "cheesy"... Anyone else get that vibe from it?

Yeah, I thought it might be a little gimmicky too, but some people like gimmicky, so I figured I'd throw it out there anyway :p

Torque Launcher is a bit uninspired though. Maybe give it a little help, Torque Power Launcher, or something like that would be a little better.

#40 Speaking of "uninspired" I was leaning more toward "Torque Power Launcher Ultimate Toolbox: Basic Home Premium Edition" (TPLUT: BHPE for short)

Seriously though...sounds like Toolbox might be the winner.