T3D Beta - Initial Impressions, Level Editing

Well, the T3D beta is upon us, as I'm sure everyone knows. Like all the other pre-order Torquers, I opened up the Warrior Camp and Physics demos and "oohed" and "ahhed" at the shiny. But last night was the first real opportunity I had to sit down and play with T3D so I decided to start at the beginning and create a level from scratch. Shiny is nice, but how does the new engine "feel"?

Luckily, the answer is "slick". :) I'll post up my initial impressions here.

First off, the Toolbox doodad is actually quite helpful. When I initially heard about it I wasn't amazingly interested, I can navigate around my folder structure, this app would be nice when I eventually wanted to publish but I didn't think I'd have much call to use it, day-to-day. I was wrong, having a central launchpad for anything you could want to do just makes things quicker. Having it sit in your toolbar while deving, ready to launch any app you need, is handy.

The first thing that you notice with T3D is how much quicker it loads. MUCH quicker. No more browsing the net while I wait for stage entry. :)

On to world editing. I created a new project, deleted the basic level objects (ground plane, skybox etc) and began to add stuff in one-by-one.

The most obvious thing to comment on is how pretty it all is. T3D is visually on par with any other engine now, no more snide comments from developers using other engines about how outdated Torques graphics are! :D The new shadows and lighting are fantastic, crisp and detailed without being too crisp, completely dynamic, updating instantly in real time. The real time updates make playing with the lighting of your level SO much easier and more time-efficient.

Speaking of real time updates, object properties update as you change them, no more needing to hit "apply". Yay!

World editing is a more subtle change. A few people have said something along the lines of "well, that doesn't look much different to the old way!". But it's all about "flow". There are lots of subtle changes which add up to a much better work flow, and pretty much eliminate that feeling that the editor is trying it's hardest to fight you. Things like the new toolbars, the brush sliders and the snap toggles mean you spend much less time navigating multi-level menus and more time painting the level. Small changes like the splitting of the scene browser and the asset library out into 2 tabs allow you to quickly switch back and forth from creating to editing without losing your place in the navigation tree. The hints that show whenever you edit an object property, explaining function and indicating the variable type. Small changes that add up to a much nicer vibe. :)

It's clear a good deal of thought has been given to how to make the experience more friendly. The addition of waterplanes is a good example of this, simple but at the same time a godsend. Every coastal level I've made in TGEA I've had to plonk down a water block, fly around stretching it out, adjust until the player can't see the edge of the block, etc etc. Small addition but a nice time saver.

Anyway, it's very early beta still but I'm thoroughly impressed. In the end, I'm left facing one question : How can I go back to TGEA after playing with this beauty? Man, but I hope porting my code is relatively painless!

I'll end off with some shots of the level I made, a little island. Just playing around, all basic assets and textures from the warrior camp example level, nothing custom. All credit to Apparatus for the cool meshes, I'm SO poaching some of those for SoW. :)