TGE Progress and Accomplishments

It's been about two weeks since Tim Aste gave me the link to download TGE 1.5, so I thought I would take a few moments to document my progress so far. Most of my "accomplishments" will probably sound like baby steps to most of you, but considering the fact that this is the first time I've seen any of the material, I feel like I'm making leaps and bounds!

The first day I got Torque, I mostly just explored around, trying to identify the important files, scripts, and objects. Although most of what I did was just messing around, I still wanted to be able to feel like I had done something meaningful. So I jumped into the scripts and started altering things.

After some initial exploring inside the scripts, the first thing I did was to move the max camera distance (in 3rd person view) further away from Kork. After more exploring, I messed around with the projectile explosion particle settings and made the explosions much more impressive. I made them bigger, fuller, and changed the colors around a little bit. Later, I changed the projectile's ballistics setting to "true," so that it would fly more like a real arrow. The velocity setting was a bit too powerful, so I turned it down. I also messed with the gravity settings, but the arrow flight still didn't "feel" right. I messed with it for a while, but I never did get the "feel" I was looking for.

Over the next few days I created my first successful .dts model (a bow), and switched out Kork's default crossbow, putting my new bow model in its place (I also switched out the projectile).
The arrow sits off to one side of the bow, but that is temporary.

Aim...
FIRE!
I still haven't gotten the animations for my bow to work, but I'm not too worried about that at this point. I think it's just a matter of changing the animation names. I am wondering how to make separate .dsq animations... And also how to make .dif models.

After messing around with the explosion particle settings, I decided to take them out all together. I didn't think that exploding arrows were very realistic. I also took out the projectile particle trails. I was a little diappointed though, because without the particle trails, the projectile quickly disappears from sight after you shoot it. I was wondering if there was a way to keep the projectile visible without putting the particles back.

I've created my first map. It's a simple Island with a volcano (although the lava looks more like blood than lava).
My map has two holes... I don't how they got there or how to get rid of them.
Kork jumps into the lava and dies. >=)

Besides messing with Torque, I've been planning my first game project. The game design is still in the works, but coming soon... The name of the game will be ICBM: Island Cannon Blaster Mania!

I've also come up with a name for my "game company:"
(NYFTI = Nifty spelled "creatively.")

In the world of programming, there is a big difference between "modding" existing code and writing your own. Getting to the threshold of being able to write your own code requires a deeper understanding of the code. Well, recently I reached the very beginnings of that threshold (sort of).
I changed this portion of script:

//----------------------------------------------------------------------------
function Player::playDeathAnimation(%this)
{
   if (%this.deathIdx++ > 11)
      %this.deathIdx = 1;
   %this.setActionThread("Death" @ %this.deathIdx);
}
//----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To this:

//----------------------------------------------------------------------------
function Player::playDeathAnimation(%this)
{
   if (%this.deathIdx++ > [b]0[/b])
      %this.deathIdx = [b]getRandom(1,11)[/b];
   %this.setActionThread("Death" @ %this.deathIdx);
}
//----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although I was still working with existing code, I added something that wasn't there before. =) This change makes it so that the game chooses a random death animation every time Kork dies.

As I stated at the beginning of this blog, these accomplishments are only baby steps, but I'm hoping my "stride" will grow longer as I gain momentum... =P

All comments and crits are welcome.