Absolute Basics
by Tom Darby · in Torque Game Engine · 03/15/2004 (3:47 pm) · 2 replies
Hello, all!
I recently purchased Torque to bring my game, Jardinains, into both the third dimension (3D on a fixed 2D playfield) and the Mac/Linux worlds. Torque struck me as the best bang for my buck by a long shot, and what I've seen from the community thus far reinforces this belief.
Problem is, I'm having some trouble getting to the core of what I want. I'm interested in using only the barest subset of Torque's features--basic player input, drawing shapes to the screen, the GUI tools, and (pretty basic) collision detection. I don't need terrains, missions, clients, servers, networking, advanced AI, vehicles, etc--I'm interested in using the absolute barest of bare bones and going from there. While I've been slogging my way through show, tutorial.base and the other example code sections, I'm having a hard time pinpointing just where one makes a basic "load this shape" and "show this shape" call. I've poured several weeks' worth of free time into this thus far, and I'd really appreciate a nudge in the right direction on the following tasks:
1. Loading a DTS shape into memory. (Also, assigning a pointer to said shape.)
2. Displaying a pre-loaded shape at various different transformations and states of animation. (i.e., I want to load the "gnome" shape once and display it in twenty different places at any given moment, some standing, some tumbling, some waving, some throwing things...)
3. Frame-by-frame animation control
4. Initializing the 3D environment (lighting, camera, etc.) for use as a fixed-frame, "2D-esque" space. No scrolling, no looking around, just plain-vanilla fixed camera, fixed lighting.
If possible, I'd love to be able to do all of this using scripts, so other folks can fiddle with (and learn from) the code to their heart's content.
Anybody with advice on bare-bonesing it with Torque scripts?
Tom Darby
Magic Chopstick Games
www.magicchopstick.com
(Dev environment: scripting and coding using SubEthaEdit and XCode on OS X 10.3, modelling using MilkShape on Windows 2000.)
I recently purchased Torque to bring my game, Jardinains, into both the third dimension (3D on a fixed 2D playfield) and the Mac/Linux worlds. Torque struck me as the best bang for my buck by a long shot, and what I've seen from the community thus far reinforces this belief.
Problem is, I'm having some trouble getting to the core of what I want. I'm interested in using only the barest subset of Torque's features--basic player input, drawing shapes to the screen, the GUI tools, and (pretty basic) collision detection. I don't need terrains, missions, clients, servers, networking, advanced AI, vehicles, etc--I'm interested in using the absolute barest of bare bones and going from there. While I've been slogging my way through show, tutorial.base and the other example code sections, I'm having a hard time pinpointing just where one makes a basic "load this shape" and "show this shape" call. I've poured several weeks' worth of free time into this thus far, and I'd really appreciate a nudge in the right direction on the following tasks:
1. Loading a DTS shape into memory. (Also, assigning a pointer to said shape.)
2. Displaying a pre-loaded shape at various different transformations and states of animation. (i.e., I want to load the "gnome" shape once and display it in twenty different places at any given moment, some standing, some tumbling, some waving, some throwing things...)
3. Frame-by-frame animation control
4. Initializing the 3D environment (lighting, camera, etc.) for use as a fixed-frame, "2D-esque" space. No scrolling, no looking around, just plain-vanilla fixed camera, fixed lighting.
If possible, I'd love to be able to do all of this using scripts, so other folks can fiddle with (and learn from) the code to their heart's content.
Anybody with advice on bare-bonesing it with Torque scripts?
Tom Darby
Magic Chopstick Games
www.magicchopstick.com
(Dev environment: scripting and coding using SubEthaEdit and XCode on OS X 10.3, modelling using MilkShape on Windows 2000.)
Torque Owner Erik Madison