Newbie Question.
by Terry Lugviel · in Torque Game Engine · 07/15/2004 (5:31 pm) · 6 replies
Okay, first, I haven't used Torque. I have bought the 3D Game Prog All-In-One book, more as an intro to all the different stages of game development as opposed to wanting to speciffically learn Torque. I may or may not use Torque in the future, I'll see what I can make the engine do and go from there. Right now its just a first step.
Anyway, my question is this: What specific types of rendering options are available with Torque? I want to (eventually) build 3 or 4 specific types of games, each with it's own specific style of play. While Torque looks like it's primarily suited to 1st/3rd person action, I wonder if it could, say, be used to create games that use pre-rendered backgrounds (ala Resident Evil or Silent Hill)? It would be nice to be able to do it all with one engine (but that's usually never the case).
Either way, if I like Torque it will probably cover most of my needs as an engine but I'll have to find a similar alternative for the types that Torque isn't well suited for (without extensive code modification anyways).
Anyway, my question is this: What specific types of rendering options are available with Torque? I want to (eventually) build 3 or 4 specific types of games, each with it's own specific style of play. While Torque looks like it's primarily suited to 1st/3rd person action, I wonder if it could, say, be used to create games that use pre-rendered backgrounds (ala Resident Evil or Silent Hill)? It would be nice to be able to do it all with one engine (but that's usually never the case).
Either way, if I like Torque it will probably cover most of my needs as an engine but I'll have to find a similar alternative for the types that Torque isn't well suited for (without extensive code modification anyways).
#2
Now I know that is probably beyond the basic scope of Torque, but I would certainly believe it is possible. I'm just wondering how much of a chore it would be to make it happen. If anyone knows any specific details of how it could be done it would really be helpful as this is more of the style of game I'd like to make first.
07/15/2004 (6:16 pm)
Well, that's one way of doing it I have already thought of but that doesn't seem to be exactly what I want. Like in the game engine used by Nocturne you create your level in a 3d prog like 3DSMax and export it to a RAW (still not quite sure what that means) format. The game engine then loads that into itself prerendered for optimal visual quality (obviously). However, I guess much of the 3D data is still there because your collision boundries are still there and you character can walk in front or behind objects that are included in the RAW file without having to add anything to make it do that.Now I know that is probably beyond the basic scope of Torque, but I would certainly believe it is possible. I'm just wondering how much of a chore it would be to make it happen. If anyone knows any specific details of how it could be done it would really be helpful as this is more of the style of game I'd like to make first.
#3
07/15/2004 (7:53 pm)
It is entirely possible. You need two things - first, information about where the player can walk, and second, depth information (or a z channel or a z buffer, it goes by several names). You'd have to write your own scene rendering code (to get the depth info to the screen - basically a glorified bitblt) and modify the player class to move around the scene properly. I can't imagine that it would take more than a week to implement this sort of functionality, if you knew what you were doing. :)
#4
So you are saying you can prerender areas of a scene that the player will not interact with? E.g. walking down a street, and over the other side of a fence is a cool looking house that is prerendered that you cannot get to?
When I -eventually- purchase the license this is certainly something I'd be interested in looking into. Any idea where I could find more information about this sort of procedure ... or at least some good topic-words I can google? :)
07/15/2004 (9:10 pm)
Hmm, this sounds interesting.So you are saying you can prerender areas of a scene that the player will not interact with? E.g. walking down a street, and over the other side of a fence is a cool looking house that is prerendered that you cannot get to?
When I -eventually- purchase the license this is certainly something I'd be interested in looking into. Any idea where I could find more information about this sort of procedure ... or at least some good topic-words I can google? :)
#5
07/17/2004 (11:31 am)
Look for "billboarding" or "billboard". It's basically a single plane 3D model with a texture on it. You don't even need the license to try that out, you can put one into the demo if you want to see it. 
Torque Owner Westy
im not sure how RE/SL do their scenery. But i assume you mean rendering a high poly scen to an image and renderingthat in a flat/low poly surface. If so thats very easily acomplished.