Kattemaksu Online #1

I have spent many months researching/purchasing game engines looking for the best engine for my project. IN my search, I have looked at and purchased the following Game Engines:

1. The Game Creators: Game Studio - I may look into this one more later one, but I don't think the basic language or this engine will satisfy my ultimate desire to complete a project. I still plan on playing with it and see what I can come up with.
2. Realm Crafter Standard and Pro - (Standard created with Blitz and only supports DirectX 7. Pro is still in Beta development and is hard coded in C++ (scripting language yet to be released)). With the lack of any real rendering capabilities of standard, I don't think this engine will be anything I end up using. Pro is/will be using DirectX 9 and PhysX so I may still work with something on this one also.
3. Leadwerks - Actually a very good rendering engine with built in Physics, DirectX 9 and PhysX, but the lack of tools sets and having to hard code everything in C++ makes this one at this time not for me, althought as I get better at C++, I may try to create some tool sets for it using BlitzMax or Lua.
4. This brings me to Torque and TGEA - While the capabilities look very promising the tool sets built into TGEA are not very user friendly, and have a steep learning curve(of course I am always up to a challenge), the tools sets and rendering of Torque3D looks very good, and I may upgrade. So far overall, I am happiest with this purchase.

Before I start, I would like to mention, that GG has done a great job supporting their customers, and providing them with support. I can't say the same for some of the developers of the 3rd party plugins, which really has no reflect on GG. PlasticGames has still YET to respond to any of my forum posts or emails regarding their product and the installation instructions. Derek Bronson with GG specifically went through their installation instructions and agreed they are outdated, and revised it for me. Thank you Derek, a big kudos to you, and I am going to post the update here.
This is only an update the the current one. Replace the step numbers here with the current instruction included in the kit:

In the PlasticTweakerRelease/scripts folder you will find two folders, one named TGE and the other named TGEA. Rename the TGEA one to plastic
 
1) Place the plastic folder from the included zip file, in your project’s tools folder (YOURGAMEPROJECT/game/tools).
 
2) Add the following script code to the top of main.cs from the project’s root folder. (YOURGAMEPROJECT/game/main.cs)
 
3) Now we will execute the server side files only on the server. In YOURGAMEPROJECT/game/scriptsAndAssets/server/scripts/game.cs in the onServerCreated() function add the following script code before any other files get executed. 

Note: Its right after the comment "Load up all datablocks, objects etc. This function is called when a server is constructed"

5) We have to declare an interface to reload the states on the ShapeBaseImageData state machine.  In YOURGAMEPROJECT/Source Files/T3D/shapebase.h at the bottom (line 364) of the ShapebaseImageData class add

6) Define reloadStates and expose it as a console function. In T3D/shapeimage.ccp after ShapeBaseImageData::~ShapeBaseImageData(){} (found on line 167) add

7) Perform a Full Rebuild compile to complete the process.

You should already have the code tidbits, so I will not post those.

At this point I purchased TGEA, AFX, ISK and Plastic Tweaker. I am not very happy with ISK, as I was hoping for more of a tool set to build on the GUI's and they broke the AFX camera system that I liked so well, so I will probably stick with the AFX kit, and build on it. I am currently looking at adding a character screen GUI, Inventory GUI, and Spell Book GUI. Step one is to figure out where to start. :)

I will be posting more as I progress through this probably simple project for some. :)