Re-writing the "Show Tool"
by John Vanderbeck · in Torque Game Engine · 04/16/2004 (11:22 am) · 32 replies
Disclaimer: Bear with me as this post may drift a bit here and there, as I just got off the can (My best thinking place!) and my thoughts aren't all that collected.
I was scamnning through the Project Manager for Torque to see if there was any bugs/tasks that I could pick up to help the engine out a bit, and would be something i'd have to do eventually for Mayhem 2090 anyways. I found an entry about environment mapping in the show tool, and since we make extensive use of that tool I figured i'd pick that up. I've felt that my understanding of the engine has matrued quite well as of late and I shouldn't have any great difficulties doing this.
So I started digging around in the show tool script code to get a feel for how it worked. I expected it was pretty much just a "mini-game" and would use the basic interface and features that any script side game would use. Made sense.
What I found was defintly not what i'd expected. In fact the Show Tool has pretty much nothing in common with a Torque game. It is really a huge sidetep AROUND that standard interface, using C++ side hooks to bypass the whole "game" interface and directly load and render shapes.
This isn't neccesarily "BAD" it just isn't what I expected. It is essentially a completely seperate program of its own with no relation to a Torque Game.
As I said, this isn't neccesarily bad, but it seems to me that if the Show Tool was in fact a "mini-game" meaning it used the exact same interface a regular Torque game would use, that it would be ab;e to more easily take advantage of everything the user's game might such as shadows, mapping, special whoozits, whatever. Automaticly.
I'd like to see what other peopel think about this. What i'm doing is volunteering my time to write a completely new Show Tool along this concept. It would basically use the exact same interface as a Torque Game, though it would still only be a shape viewer. It wouldn't "be" a game, just use the same concepts. I'd like to expand it a bit anyhow for our own uses, so might as well do it right. This way I can make it do DTS, DIF, 3DS, whatever the engine supports for in games. Shadows, environment mappings, Collision (This was a beef about the Show Tool for me.. no way for our modellers to easily test collision outside of the game itself), etc, etc. It would also be pretty easy to expand this once TSE is out to support not only viewing Shaders, but applying them as well (Since TSE claims to allow shader effects to be applied via script, this re-written Show Tool could easily be used to apply script shader effects to see how they look.
So i'm volunteering my time and skills to do this, what do you all think?
I was scamnning through the Project Manager for Torque to see if there was any bugs/tasks that I could pick up to help the engine out a bit, and would be something i'd have to do eventually for Mayhem 2090 anyways. I found an entry about environment mapping in the show tool, and since we make extensive use of that tool I figured i'd pick that up. I've felt that my understanding of the engine has matrued quite well as of late and I shouldn't have any great difficulties doing this.
So I started digging around in the show tool script code to get a feel for how it worked. I expected it was pretty much just a "mini-game" and would use the basic interface and features that any script side game would use. Made sense.
What I found was defintly not what i'd expected. In fact the Show Tool has pretty much nothing in common with a Torque game. It is really a huge sidetep AROUND that standard interface, using C++ side hooks to bypass the whole "game" interface and directly load and render shapes.
This isn't neccesarily "BAD" it just isn't what I expected. It is essentially a completely seperate program of its own with no relation to a Torque Game.
As I said, this isn't neccesarily bad, but it seems to me that if the Show Tool was in fact a "mini-game" meaning it used the exact same interface a regular Torque game would use, that it would be ab;e to more easily take advantage of everything the user's game might such as shadows, mapping, special whoozits, whatever. Automaticly.
I'd like to see what other peopel think about this. What i'm doing is volunteering my time to write a completely new Show Tool along this concept. It would basically use the exact same interface as a Torque Game, though it would still only be a shape viewer. It wouldn't "be" a game, just use the same concepts. I'd like to expand it a bit anyhow for our own uses, so might as well do it right. This way I can make it do DTS, DIF, 3DS, whatever the engine supports for in games. Shadows, environment mappings, Collision (This was a beef about the Show Tool for me.. no way for our modellers to easily test collision outside of the game itself), etc, etc. It would also be pretty easy to expand this once TSE is out to support not only viewing Shaders, but applying them as well (Since TSE claims to allow shader effects to be applied via script, this re-written Show Tool could easily be used to apply script shader effects to see how they look.
So i'm volunteering my time and skills to do this, what do you all think?
#22
Do you have any objections to my somehwat mimicing this interface style? I think it looks very clean, and I like it but I don't want to mimic it without permission.
04/19/2004 (9:44 am)
Dave,Do you have any objections to my somehwat mimicing this interface style? I think it looks very clean, and I like it but I don't want to mimic it without permission.
#23
Sure, you may use my GUI as a template/reference. I've actually borrowed the style from LightWave so it's certainly not unique to me.
- LightWave Dave
04/19/2004 (12:53 pm)
John,Sure, you may use my GUI as a template/reference. I've actually borrowed the style from LightWave so it's certainly not unique to me.
- LightWave Dave
#24
Now that that's out of the way, here's a few screenies to entice :)
In this shot you can see the environment mapping and shadows working on the object.
Transparent texture. This was really just a test, but I thought it was cool. We have a cube with 6 different textures (1 per face) as an engine DTS test object.
The load dialog.
04/19/2004 (7:28 pm)
Let me first say, as a little disclaimer, that this is still in the very early stages. The UI is almost non existant and only the very basic of functionality is currently in place. Mainly all the basics are now done.Now that that's out of the way, here's a few screenies to entice :)
In this shot you can see the environment mapping and shadows working on the object.Transparent texture. This was really just a test, but I thought it was cool. We have a cube with 6 different textures (1 per face) as an engine DTS test object.The load dialog. 
#25
04/19/2004 (9:57 pm)
Sweeeeeeeeeet. :D
#26
Are you planning on releasing this.
Ben
04/20/2004 (4:16 am)
Hmm.. thats cool.! I like the shadows. Are you planning on releasing this.
Ben
#27
That cube makes me think of an Psychology
class i once had...
04/20/2004 (4:42 am)
I agree... this would be cool...That cube makes me think of an Psychology
class i once had...
#28
04/20/2004 (5:13 am)
Yes it will be released at some point. A note on the shadows: They won't show up in a stock Torque because they are broken. Bugged. This is running against one of my own executables where I fixed that bug. Basically this new show tool loads an object in the exact same way a game will. That means that any enhancements or fixes you put into the executable, such as ficing shadows, will automaticly translate into the tool.
#29
Thanks for letting me know. Are you going to contribute the shadow fix back to GG. I am really looking forward to seeing your path. Hopefully, GG will incorperate it into Torque.
Ben
04/20/2004 (5:48 am)
Hello John, Thanks for letting me know. Are you going to contribute the shadow fix back to GG. I am really looking forward to seeing your path. Hopefully, GG will incorperate it into Torque.
Ben
#31
04/20/2004 (6:24 am)
Isn't that fixed already? Or am i imagening things?
#32
Only 2 more days until my new motherboard and Athlon XP 2500 arrives woohoo!
04/20/2004 (6:39 am)
For those concerned with speed. On my crappy machine (900mhz Duron) it takes about 6 seconds from double clicking the icon to complete load and able to interact with the tool. About 4 seconds of that is just Torque itself starting up. The tool itself only takes about 2-3 seconds.Only 2 more days until my new motherboard and Athlon XP 2500 arrives woohoo!
Torque Owner Ben Woodhead
Sounds like a great idea. I would love to see that. I actually started learning torque by looking at the show tool since it was small. I soon found out that it may have been a bad idea. I am looking forward to seeing a version more like a mini-game. I think it would help a lot of people..
Later, Ben