Minigolf Mania: Porting to Torque X

I've been working for the past few months on porting Minigolf Mania to the XBox using Torque X. For those who have not heard of Minigolf Mania, it is a minigolf game produced by Top Meadow. My Dad (Kevin Ryan) did most of the programming, and Alex Swanson and Brian Hahn did the artwork. We used TGE and built it off the sphere physics from Marble Blast.

The official site is here: www.topm.com/minigolf/index.php

Here's a screen shot. This hole is called "Firefall" from the "Snowy Fields" course:



So, I've been porting Minigolf to Torque X. Not easy! It's really convenient that a lot of the design and structure of Torque X is similar to TGE, so I could often find the corresponding functions or methodology fairly easy, but there were roadblocks as well. For instance:

1. TorqueScript. Since TorqueScript was altogether taken out from Torque X, I basically had to rewrite all the scripts from scratch. Given how strict C# is, while TorqueScript is about as loose as it gets, and how strongly OO C# as opposed to TorqueScript, it wasn't always easy, to put it lightly.
2. Interiors. In the TGE version of Minigolf the hole geometry (including moving platforms) were all in .DIF format, compile from .MAPs. I had to write a tool that converted the .MAP format into an easily-readable format, then write a Max Script to import that format into 3ds Max (more about these later). Then I exported them as .DTSs. Conversion of assets in general was a pain, but interiors were by far the hardest.
3. Documentation/Resources. Speaking of which, I really have to thank John Kanalakis for all the help he gives to poor confused people who don't know how Torque X works (e.g. myself). I can't even recall the number of times his posts have narrowed down a problem or helped me get through a difficulty. Even with his help, though, it was sometimes difficult to figure out how to do this or that, when the documentation wasn't quite there and I didn't have the Torque X source code. This is especially true of parts specific of Torque X 3D -- TX2D tends to get more attention and hence be more documented. It took me a long time to find the (for my purposes) absolutely vital T3DStaticTSRenderComponent.GetCollisionData, for instance.
4. C#. I've never worked with C# before so it took a little getting used to. Especially the value-type vs. reference distinction (which is a little counter-intuitive for a C/C++ programmer) and the garbage collection. But I'm really liking it as I get used to it. I find it easier to write clean code.

But enough complaining! Now that I'm beginning to understand how it works, I'm also beginning to enjoy working with Torque X. The components, in particular, are fantastic. And I am amazed that I could port nearly the whole of a fairly large and complex game (for an indie game, that is) like Minigolf Mania without needing the Torque X source code at all, except for some minor tweaks near the end. (Of course with the source code I might have gotten stumped less often, but still.) Shows how powerful the system is, I guess.

(I still wonder why interiors were taken out, since after all, even though the XBox 360 is pretty powerful, it's not so powerful that no optimization is needed. Though it is true that the optimization will vary quite a bit depending on what the game is like. Ah well.)

While porting Minigolf I wrote quite a few components that are of more general use, such as a reskinning component, a billboard component, a path component, and others. If I get a chance I may polish some of them up and post them here since they tend to illustrate things about Torque X 3D that I had to figure out more or less by trial and error -- might help others work it out more easily. Not to mention some of them are actually quite useful.

I mentioned earlier that I wrote some tools to convert the Quake .MAPs that Torque uses into .DTS format through 3ds Max. For anyone interested/curious/dying to get a hold of them, here they are:

Map Converter Tool - Binary
Map Converter Tool - Binary & Source

Documentation included. Even if you don't use Max, you may find it useful because it converts the .MAP into an easier format. From there it shouldn't be too hard to import directly into whatever program you do use. And of course, use at your own risk, there may be slight errors or occasional missing geometry, the code is a mess, feel free to redistribute and modify as you please, etc...

So there it is! There are still a few little things to clean up, but we're aiming to submit the game by the end of the week, though we'll spend more time if needed. Once submitted, it will be scrutinized by the other developers on the XBox Creators' Club, (hopefully) be approved, and be available for purchase!

(As a final ramble, let me just mention how amazing profilers are. With the help of the EQUATEC profiler and the CLR profiler, after little more than an hour or two of work, I got my memory allocation rate from about 8.8mb/sec to 7kb/sec, and I increased the efficiency of the sphere physics code by more than fivefold (i.e. it took less than 1/5th the time per call). Literally and without exaggeration.)

A few more screenshots (these are all from the Torque X version running on Windows):

Half Pipe Beach -- note how the text is shifted in from the edges so it doesn't get cropped by the TV.


Merri-Go-Round


Vortex