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#21 Tower Wars was a great "That's Torque?" moment for me. I'd suggest getting some videos from it's developer.

#22 Steven,

It is indeed a good idea for the video. I will add it to my growing list! You all have been sending me some great stuff. More info will follow soon concerning this set of projects. I have started working some concepts and ideas based on everyone's input. Like I said earlier, this is a community project, so I don't want to be the final voice in this. I will guide the project as best I can, but in the end this will be a true community project.

Thanks again

Ron

#23 Ron, I realize that you do 'what you do' for the community, but I'd pay for the shader work your doing, maybe release as a pack? Just sayin.

#24 Mack,

I am actually developing the shaders as part of my tasks for the Steering Committee. I keep that work completely separate from my own products and such. I knew going into this, that I would probably have to 'give up' some ideas that I was planning to market. However, these are all things that should have been or need to be, stock in order to keep T3D competitive against the other big engines.

One of my first tasks with the committee was creating an engine to engine comparison document that ended up being about 12 pages long. In this I matched feature for feature T3D versus CryEngine 3, Unity, and Unreal. In the summary of this document, features that Torque did not have, or came up short on were voted on by the committee and added. Therefore, each of the shaders I am working on are stock for those other engines.

All of this will make sense once we start getting the features added in. Following this soon to be released bug fix and cleaned up version, I am pretty sure we will start seeing a whole bunch of needed new features being added. In the end, by expanding on T3D, all of us who have commercial products in the works or future plans for them will benefit.

Ron

#25 Tbh Ron I would love getting my hands on that comparison document (I always find thos interesting, and I might find something I can help out with)
Is there anywhere I can access this document or would you be willing to send it privately? :)

#26 Lukas,

Not a bad idea. Let me talk with the other guys on the committee. Maybe we should make that one public. Once I lock in the roadmap, I will see about that as well. I know we all really want to start pulling in a ton of help from the community. It may be a good way to do just that.

Ron

#27 I'd also be very interested to see such a document. I've played with other engines, but never for long enough to get an in-depth feeling for the differences.

#28 @Ron,
I really like the idea of seeing the feature list. However, I don't think we should necessarily add features because other engines have those features. We really should look at how each and every feature helps the developers create a solid game. I would rather have less features that are solid than a ton of features that have issues.

Now, what I think would be really constructive is a feature list after we have decided on a path forward that shows each feature and its status of completion. This could be a separate page at GG to track this. There could be documentation links that link to resources, commercial products, forum topics, and white papers that cover a particular feature. So even a partially completed feature has some docs and resources that the community can use to either complete it, understand it, and or salivate over.

#29 Frank,

I know this is a bit late.... sorry. As we add features, I am trying to keep things in perspective. Features help promote the engine, keeping that in mind....we release features assuming they will help the developers release a fully functional game. Keep in mind we are building a core engine here. I had a bit of trouble separating what I wanted versus, what the core NEEDED when I starting this little venture. However, thanks to the team, I now have a better understanding of what a core engine means.... We are only adding those features that are required. Also, those features will be tested as best we can. This does not mean they will be without errors (we can't possibly test every set up and system) but, we will do our best to make sure everyone as a developer can benefit from the new stuff.

@ everyone... I am going to clean up the comparison document a little bit and make it more 'readable' to the average user. I will then release it to the community. I think you will be impressed by how T3D stacks up. This should be coming soon. (as of 13 December 2012).


Ron

#30

Quote:I had a bit of trouble separating what I wanted versus, what the core NEEDED

I think every software project has this issue.

Yes, features do promote the engine...if they work properly.

Perhaps we can add unit testing to help with ensuring integrity of code additions? I incorporated some simple unit testing in my Python code and in the process I found several bugs before my last release of ScriptT3D. It will take some effort. Honestly I am not sure I understand T3D well enough to know where to start adding tests, but it could help increase the stability of the engine and root out bugs. I think for the most part the unit tests could be written in TS. This might root out issues lurking in the interpreter like the foreach issues someone found a while back.

#31 Frank,

Agreed. Unit testing is a good idea. I will bring it up to the team and see when and where it would be best to implement. I don't understand the system well enough to state anything about it. I leave that up to you code guys.

Ron

#32 @ All,

Everyone, I am currently working a couple of design documents for the demo levels that we will be building. I will send out updates to those that emailed soon. Good Design Docs take a bit of time....

Ron