Torque 3D Development - GDC Live Edition

#181 The 24 List is for lazy ppl who hate reading multi post.

Also would other Tidbits.

1) Forest kit is NOT and never will be part of the T3D package since its Sickhead Games Product.

2) There will be no Genre Kits in the release since that would a dumb marketing move.

3) If you want things for free make it your own or venture away from capitalism. BTW "Can I have 20 copies of your first game for free? ...Thought not..."

4) They are still deciding on the future of TDN.

5) There WILL be more documentation.

6) They said the first beta won't have everything but it will have enough to your liking, if not oh well your a prude. After all it's a BETA!


@Russel
LOL Priceless...

Disclaimer: Correct me if I'm wrong and I'll update the original post.

#182 Its my understanding that there will be a improved physics but no actual 3rd party physics, just the hooks for it. So if we want to use Phyx or Havok or Bullet, we have to do that ourselves. Which brings me to the question, and we have been over this before. The demo is obviously not Stock T3D, What is included in the South Pacific Demo that isnt stock. We know the Forest Kit thats in it isnt part of Stock. Will the water phyics presented in the movie be part of stock as well? Or is that part of the planned Physics addon.I keep seeing the Cloth phyics and AI and such all listed as seperate entities. I have to agree with ChristianS, We need a white paper and a similar video with Stock footage. there is alot of speculation, and All we have to go on is the slightly different wording from post to post and Demos that display what its capable of, but not what it actually does.

"There truly is a lot more to come. There's a more in depth look at the World Editor, a focus on the Road and River tools, Gerhard's AI and GPU Cloth, Physics, new demos, genre kits, and more."

#183 @Christian

I'd love to see a white paper too, but I think the Blogs are about as good as GG can do, because the feature set is not "set" in stone. Things are still being worked on, and may not make the ship date. They probably don't have a specific date, but they know roughly when they want to release it, since they are trying to move to a yearly release schedule. In short, date-driven releases. Completely the *opposite* of how things were handled for TSE / TGEA.

It sounds like GG learned a lot from the TSE EA fiasco. Announcing an even *vague* milestone road map bit them in the butt. They have learned from that mistake, and aren't going to repeat it with T3D. Brett is walking a very fine line between meeting expectations of the community, and not oversharing and saying something that will get them slammed later.

Instead, now they seem to be following a more agile date-driven development process, which I *completely* and *wholeheartedly* agree to and applaud. If we get one or two updates throughout the year, and a big update ($$$) yearly in the spring, then this means that what goes into those releases is not what's being worked on, it's what's *ready* to ship.

Ready = Fully implemented + Fully debugged + Fully documented.

Brett can't possibly know what will be "ready" in 1-2 months. Therefore the feature list for T3D is simply not set, and is unlikely to be set until well into Beta. This is the same reason why there haven't been blog entries about the parts of T3D that are still under heavy development; they don't want to give out too much, only to make a significnat change, or even remove the feature.

As a result, the information that is shared needs to be initially vague, and will firm up over time as the ship date draws near. That's really the best way to run things. The days of building software to a detailed spec set 6 months in advance are practically over in most industries, due to the:

Rogers Uncertainty Principle
----------------------------
You can either know what will be in the software, or when it will be "ready", but not both. ;-)

On a related note...

It's unfortunate GG had to start accepting pre-orders without a playable demo, it really is. I'm sure they would have loved to have a downloadable playable demo as well as a open beta to announce (and launch) coincidentally with GDC, and at the same time as accepting pre-orders. But GDC waits for no one...and more improtantly, neither do competitors who undoubtedly would also be making big announcements at GDC (and did).

So while it's unfortunate, they still made the right decision IMO. Clearly it worked, given the sales. ;-) Now they just need to deliver something that meets my definition of "ready" in the next 2 months. It's better than it's "ready", and be a smaller set of features, than to repeat TGEA.

That is what is so great about an annual release cycle with one major release ($$$) and a few smaller (free) updates throughout the year. If something doesn't make it in, it can simply go into the next release.

This is exactly the standard that I'm holding GG to for the first T3D release. They've Talked the Talk with the Blog, now they need to Walk the Talk. If something is not "ready" as per my definition above, and it gets shipped, I'm not going to be happy. Frankly, given the information given in these blogs, there is no reason that should ever happen.

Only time will tell. I hope they succeed, as I really want to, and most likely will, buy T3D. But at the same time, to start accepting pre-orders when:

1) no playable demo
2) no beta
3) active development still under way
4) a loose launch date of "May"

Is definately a tad risky to say the least. By definition, at least some parts of the product are pre-alpha, and it still won't run "on your laptop". So there is definately risk here.

However, I still think GG did the right thing, and that risk is offset by the fact that you can save a couple hundred duckies. A reasonable trade-off.

- Rhino

#184

Quote:
Its my understanding that there will be a improved physics but no actual 3rd party physics, just the hooks for it. So if we want to use Phyx or Havok or Bullet, we have to do that ourselves.

It was my understanding that they're aiming for networked ODE as the reference implementation, and possibly PhysX as well if they can get it to integrate well with the networking.

#185

Quote:Its my understanding that there will be a improved physics but no actual 3rd party physics, just the hooks for it. So if we want to use Phyx or Havok or Bullet, we have to do that ourselves. Which brings me to the question, and we have been over this before. The demo is obviously not Stock T3D, What is included in the South Pacific Demo that isnt stock. We know the Forest Kit thats in it isnt part of Stock. Will the water phyics presented in the movie be part of stock as well? Or is that part of the planned Physics addon.I keep seeing the Cloth phyics and AI and such all listed as seperate entities. I have to agree with ChristianS, We need a white paper and a similar video with Stock footage. there is alot of speculation, and All we have to go on is the slightly different wording from post to post and Demos that display what its capable of, but not what it actually does.

For the third time, Edward, the South Pacific demo is all stock Torque 3D except for the use of the Forest Kit. The "water physics" you see is stock Torque 3D. The single player PhysX implementation you see is stock Torque 3D. For someone so concerned about speculation, I respectfully request that you police your own posts for it.

#186 Hey Russell, when i start a statement with, "its my understanding". Id call that policing my own post. If the water physics, and the pushing of the blocks into the water are all stock physics, then awesome. But there has been a lot of non specifics as stated above.

#187 Can we get a rough estimate on beta... 2-3 weeks?

#188 If beta is out in 2-3 week first, it will be a VERY short beta as they said final to be released in may month.

#189 they said may but not day in may

if it turns out end of may it's one month on beta

wich is what was expected really

#190 To answer someone's question about roads, there are actually two road editors. One, which we used in the South Pacific demo, creates "decal" roads that lie against the terrain (though you could put it on top of other objects) and the other that creates a "mesh" road that has actual geometry (for regular style roads).

#191 May huh ok so i can stop manically refreshing my account page every hour.

#192 I agree with the littlest dragon in terms of gameplay...

Cool looking graphics make for a great first impression but fun, engaging and challenging gameplay makes for an enduring and memorable game. I still sometimes get into games from many years ago, which of course can't hold a candle to the graphics of today, but are still great games.

In addition to being a programmer I am also an artist (2d and 3d) and so I like what I see being added in terms of appearance as well... just not sure how much of it will end up in any game I am trying to put together. It will take a back seat to gameplay functionality etc. if performance becomes an issue.

I am most looking forward to Gerard's AI that has been briefly mentioned. I hope a feature post on that will be coming soon.

And finally as a programmer 'and' 3d modeler I should say to all the complainers that I have looked at a lot of different engines lately and what they can do and what they cost, the size and depth of their communities, etc., etc., and I feel that T3D is where I want to be to do what I want to do right here and now... simple as that.


Thanks

#193 [The condensed version of this novealla post follows...you can skip this version unless you disagree..if you do come back and read this version so I can convince you ;-)]

This is what I'm hoping we will see, and I see no reason why we can't get it.

- CLOSED alpha release, for T3D pre-ordered customers only, ASAP. People need to understand that this is a moving target, feature incomplete, yada yada yaday. It's part of being an EA. No biggie...people understand this, AND only those that have already plunked down the hard earned cash get it anyway. Therefore: zero risk for GG!

- CLOSED beta, for T3D pre-ordered customers only, in late April or even early to mid May *after* all new feature development has stopped (ie all shipping features in beta), and *after* a good chunk of runtime optimization has been finished. This leaves the later beta period for what it should be: testing, responding to user issues, fixing, and and increasing the overall stability, robustness, and performance of the engine. New features should NOT be implemented and integrated in a one month beta to launch window!!!

- At the same time the BETA is launched, a PSEUDO-PUBLIC playable demo(s) are added, clearly marked as based on the BETA build (which, remember, is feature complete). Only TGEA licensees would have access to this beta demo(s) until launch (GG website already has this capability to hide/show resources depending on licenses owend). These would be playable via the website (embedded), and also downloadable. It needn't be the entire SDK...just a demo or two (South Pacific being nice of course). Once T3D ships, the demo can be updated with the final build, and be made available to ALL potential customers, not just existing TGEA owners.

- Pre-orders are left up for at least one week into the BETA / demo period, allowing those of us like myself who are TGEA customers who are waiting to get our hands on a playable demo to evaulate it before plunking down hard earned money, but also at the same time giving us a small evaluation window whereby we can save the $200 still. I think that's *more* than fair.

If GG does this, it shows their faith in the engine, and it's ability to sell itself on it's *own* merits, not on the merits of blog entries and discount prices that disappear before one can get their hands on the actual technology, even if only in beta-level demo form.

If GG will not do this (allow publically playable beta demos before pre-order period expires), I can't wait to read the reason as to why. ;-)

In short: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. It's great to say that this won't be another TGEA. It's quite another to prove it.

Therefore I believe it is in GG's best interest to do this. Why?

- A single early feature-incomplete beta is virtually *worthless*. The final beta should be feature complete. Maybe not bug-free, or fully optimized, but the feature set should be set in stone, and for the most part save a few bugs here and there, work. Therefore I think there should be a alpha *real soon now*, and a beta in a few weeks once the main code stream is feature complete.

- If the demo built off this late beta can't impress, then the engine is not ready for late beta. It's really that simple. Wait until things are close enough to done before pushing the late beta and the demo.

- If it still turns off sales because it can't impress, and is released anyway, then guess what? You just recreated TSE/TGEA. Nice.

In short, the shipping date should dictate the feature set contained within the product. The shipping date should NEVER dictate the quality of the feature set contained within the product.

If it is impossible to create a demo that will convince people to by the product in a late beta state, then there are bigger problems at hand.

So GG...which is it going to be? Can you publically put a stake in the ground that there will be a feature-complete (if not completely polished) demos of the late beta build that allow (at a minimum) TGEA customers to at least get their hands on a playable demo, before the pre-order window expires?

I'm not saying that this pre-order window after late beta launch has to be very long. Heck, it could be based on RC1 and be only a short week or so between when it is offered and the product goes live, thereby ending the pre-order period. But at long as as it's a few days at least, that will be enough, especially if an email is sent out to all TGEA owners.

And there isn't really much overhead, as all of the content that has to go live on the website has to be done for launch anyway. All I'm suggesting is push it live, but make it only accessible to TGEA owners during the late beta period. If anything that's a good thing as it gives you a chance to work on the kinks in the demos with a larger user base, but not 100% public userbase.

Any reason why we can't see something like this?

- Rhino

#194 To summarize for those who don't like reading my novellas, I suggest that GG, with respect to remaining T3D development and release schedule:

- have a closed early alpha ASAP for T3D pre-purchasers. ASAP = any day now. The engine is *not* necessarily feature complete, optimized, and may be riddled with bugs in areas.

- closed late beta (nearly if not RC1) for T3D pre-purchases. This period should ideally run at least a week. The engine is *feature complete* at this point.

- web-live and downlodable demos on GG site, launched with closed late beta, and (at a minimum) available to TGEA licenses, if not everybody.

- keep pre-order $200 discount up until product officially launches.

I like it. A lot. Here's why:

Existing T3D EA's get something: they can get the alpha and beta, and create their own demo's, real soon. This is an advantage of adopting early.

Existing TGEA customers get something: they can evaulate demos based on the late beta / RC1. They don't have to wait until launch, and therefore can still partake in the $200 discount, but feel a little more assured in doing so since they've at least played a demo.

Is this too much to ask for? If so, why?

- Rhino

#195 We are talking a lot about releasing some mid-Beta demos that people who haven't pre-ordered yet can play with and decide if it is worth getting while the discount (and t-shirt =) are still in effect.

These demos do need to be fairly polished since it will the be the first "public" demonstration of Torque 3D so we will wait until we are happy with the look and performance of Torque 3D before we would consider releasing them.

Keep in mind that this isn't a promise that there will be demos before Torque 3D releases but we do recognize the value of doing them and would very much like to make it happen!

#196 I would appreciate a demo before any possible purchase. Hope it happens :)

#197 Great Stuff...Keep up the hard work...

#198

Quote:
3)Did you change this lighting system? Like do they have photometric light effect. Or presets for 40 watt, 75 watt, street lights, stadium lights?

Our lighting system parameters are far more rooted in rendering techniques (like number of splits in the shadowmap hierarchy) than in "real world" equivalents (like wattage).

Advanced Lighting is a completely new lighting system with very little in common with the previous lighting systems in Torque. This is one area that will require a little effort on your part to port your older games to.

Quote:
4)So if its all dynamic now, if I made a DIF Shed without portals and walk in it. Will I still see a shadow of my character on the ground even though the shed blocks the sun rays from my character?

If the only light in your scene is the sun and your character is being blocked from the sun by something (like the shed) then you will only see the sheds shadow and not the character's shadow (technically since they should be the same color/darkness, even if the characters shadow did render it would be "covered" by the shed's shadow). In other words, it'll work like you'd expect from real life (within reason).

Quote:
5)Will there be a thumb preview of the objects for the create tab? Because I seem to forget what asset I'm about to place down. (wall corner_a, wallcorner_c)

Not with this version of the editor. When thinking about thumbnail images there are a few issues that have to be addressed. First, who creates the thumbnail and when do they create it? If it is the engine then it can add significant time to the loading of the editor as it processes the assets and generates the images. Even with a cached system, you could still take a significant hit when you are dealing with art assets that change fairly often. Then there is also the issue of the fact that the editor doesn't know what a "good" thumbnail looks like versus a "bad" thumbnail. You *could* offload the thumbnail creation to the artists but this can get pretty tedious, pretty fast with a lot of art assets and it is hard to explain to a new artist what the procedure is. Finally, the larger issue is that a lot of thumbnail bitmaps loaded into memory can significantly increase the amount of memory that the editor uses. TGB actually suffers from this pretty badly if you start loading a lot of sprites. There are ways to mitigate this (only show previews for the open folder/group and unload the rest) but it isn't a trivial problem to fix and there is still plenty of ways to get in trouble.

Quote:
Are the organizing of objects better like the creation of object groups. I know if I did something slightly wrong with the drag and drop that my item might go into the wrong group folder.

As far as the Asset Library goes, we are sticking with reflecting the folder structure that you've used to organize the assets on your hard drive. It would be nice to add additional organizational tools on top of this (tagging for example) but it isn't something we are doing for this editor.

#199

Quote:
6)Are these multi-textural?

Currently the roads use a single Material.

Quote:
7)Are these multi-textural? Can i make the density of the water so thick that it's like walking on moving jello? (weird ass question I know lol)

The river uses the standard Water Shaders. You can increase the density of the water but it probably won't quite act like what you are describing since the Player class tends to think of itself as in or out of the water but not partially in.

Quote:
8)Dose the ground-cover only work for billboards or can it include trees, bushes or skull meshes.

You can do either billboarded sprites or meshes with GroundCover (just like in TGEA).

Quote:
10) Is it still a sky box? because from the videos it looks like a single panoramic image where some how it auto blended to the next sky image. Is it an image at all?

We are making some tweaks to the sky system to help improve the rendering performance but the "old" Sky system will still be available.

Quote:
12)Are these preset fractal like in Vue where you have options for spikes, bumpy, crater

I don't believe it is nearly as fine-grained as that. TGE and TGEA (some) had a full fractal terrain generation tool with a *ton* of options and people pretty much never used it except to quickly add some "noise" to their terrain. Since this code was complex and difficult to keep up to date and was largely unused we decided to move to a simpler "noise" brush that allows you to quickly paint some fractal noise onto the terrain.

Quote:
13)I heard he said in a video that he tried to make it like photoshop user ability, dose this include custom brush patterns?

I am not sure of exactly what the state of this is. This is a lower priority item that may get reduced before launch.

Quote:
14)What is PostFX.

It is a system that allows you to apply fullscreen shaders/effects to your rendering after the scene is done rendering. Think of things like motion blur, depth of field, night vision, etc).

Quote:
17)Are these cloth simulations for static objects only or can it be integrated into a character models cloths?

I have seen videos of the cloth being used as characters' clothes (those videos might still be on Gerhard's blog?). The cloth system is under *heavy* development right now and may not make it into the final release of Torque 3D.

#200

Quote:
18)I would love you if I could see this effect in the south pacific demo, during the day.

That would be cool =) We are still trying to figure out the best way to expose "wetness" in Torque 3D.

Quote:
19)Flash enabled how? As in buttons or just a flash player for movie playback?

Both buttons and movie playback. Again, the integrated web browser is a lower priority item that may have to wait till a post release.

Quote:
20)When swimming in the current engine I notice i can swim to the end of the water even though i know my character can stand in 4 feet of water. Is the code for the swimming more accurate? If I jump into the water will i get a splash and nipples off the water?

At the moment the swimming code isn't any more "accurate". You will get a splash if you jump into the water but we don't have ripples hooked up at this point.

Quote:
21)Would this require the user to still have the needed user specs to play the game even though its streamed via internet?

Yes. You are still playing the game on your system so your system will need to meet the system requirements of the game. The game itself is just embedded into the webpage and can talk to and listen to the webpage via Javascript.

Quote:
22)Can collada be used for characters? Should it be used for characters? Would it be a good alternative to using DTS or DIFs?

You can use Collada for characters but it can be a little tricky to get the hierarchy correct since it doesn't have a config file for masking out certain nodes. It is a good alternative to using DTSs and DIFs.

Quote:
23)The install wizard. Can it be configured for CD/DVD/Blue-Ray deployment? IE breaks the burnable files up into sections. Also dose it make them into .ISOs?

The Installer Wizard will help you to make a ZIP version, a Nullsoft installer version, or a web installer version. It won't help with splitting the files up and it doesn't create ISOs.

Quote:
24) Can i make a waterfall effect with partials that reflect? Can i place a emitter on the wall and have it project a O O O O pattern in 3D space or is the partial emitters still in a billboard pattern where the partial still looks at me as i move around it.

The particles are still billboarded sprites. We may allow you to apply shaders to particles in general but, again, this is a lower priority for the initial release.

Quote:
PS: I can make my own characters back flip off walls and do a matrix walk :P MUAHHAHAHA. ... COUGH ...

If you add the animations and the physics code for it...sure =)