New Torque Engine and Editors Brain Edit Pro
by Ken Cornett · in Torque Game Engine · 03/02/2005 (6:02 am) · 10 replies
Hello,
I have a couple of quick questions, first off, how can I make the examples that come with the book work with the 1.3 full version, or the RTS Jumpstart version I have as well. Also I wish to use Brain Edit Pro as my editor, for scripting etc.. but I am unclear how I can test my scripts, along with the book, since the book obviously uses something called TGE.exe to test compile the scripts.
Thanks for any and all help, BTW: I finally found the TBE install version, and can use this instead of BEP if that helps, and I was able to compile the 1.3 version using Visual studio 2003, although there were many warnings it did compile, and the example runs, except for the occasional flickering on trees and such.
Any ideas, help, tutorials, or updates for the book installers to make this work, so I can still go through the book, as I am only 100 pages in, and want very much to be able to finish with the book.
Thanks,
Ken Cornett
Ps.
you can email me any suggestions, hints or updates at:
storm3@twlakes.net or storm3@pain-killa.com
My website showing current project in works, and previous game releases
at: http://www.pain-killa.com/
thanks again.
I have a couple of quick questions, first off, how can I make the examples that come with the book work with the 1.3 full version, or the RTS Jumpstart version I have as well. Also I wish to use Brain Edit Pro as my editor, for scripting etc.. but I am unclear how I can test my scripts, along with the book, since the book obviously uses something called TGE.exe to test compile the scripts.
Thanks for any and all help, BTW: I finally found the TBE install version, and can use this instead of BEP if that helps, and I was able to compile the 1.3 version using Visual studio 2003, although there were many warnings it did compile, and the example runs, except for the occasional flickering on trees and such.
Any ideas, help, tutorials, or updates for the book installers to make this work, so I can still go through the book, as I am only 100 pages in, and want very much to be able to finish with the book.
Thanks,
Ken Cornett
Ps.
you can email me any suggestions, hints or updates at:
storm3@twlakes.net or storm3@pain-killa.com
My website showing current project in works, and previous game releases
at: http://www.pain-killa.com/
thanks again.
About the author
#2
Thank you so much, for the quick response, I will definitely do this when I get home. BTW: on a side note, how did you like the book, I am making my way through it, skimming some parts as I am already an avid C++ coder, but refreshing my memory, and noting the diffs between C++ and CScript for Torque.
Also, if you know of any examples showing how to make buildings which can be damaged etc.. Please let me know, that is why I purchased the RTS jumpstart also, I haven't installed that one yet, I was going to wait until I finished the book first, I was just wondering if the rts version of the engine allowed for this kind of thing, like buildings taking on damage and showing it, etc. I want to make it so when units, vehicles etc.. hit the buildings they get damaged, and eventually with particles and chunks of concrete etc.. make them crumble and fall apart to the ground.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Ken
03/02/2005 (9:25 am)
Todd,Thank you so much, for the quick response, I will definitely do this when I get home. BTW: on a side note, how did you like the book, I am making my way through it, skimming some parts as I am already an avid C++ coder, but refreshing my memory, and noting the diffs between C++ and CScript for Torque.
Also, if you know of any examples showing how to make buildings which can be damaged etc.. Please let me know, that is why I purchased the RTS jumpstart also, I haven't installed that one yet, I was going to wait until I finished the book first, I was just wondering if the rts version of the engine allowed for this kind of thing, like buildings taking on damage and showing it, etc. I want to make it so when units, vehicles etc.. hit the buildings they get damaged, and eventually with particles and chunks of concrete etc.. make them crumble and fall apart to the ground.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Ken
#3
It received a positive review up on GameDev.net too.
Thanks for the referral!
:)
03/02/2005 (9:43 am)
@Ken: Thanks for mentioning Brain Editor Professional - it looks interesting, and I was looking for an Editor/IDE that [directly] supported TorqueScript. I've been using TextPad, which I really like for most general editing tasks, but I'm going to check out BEP.It received a positive review up on GameDev.net too.
Thanks for the referral!
:)
#4
I'm liking the book so far. I've mostly skipped to sections that had information pertinent to stuff I was working on.
I don't know any examples of buildings being damaged, but I would check on the RTS Kit boards. I personally don't have the RTS Kit, but I will get it when I get some time to work on some personal projects :). The RTS Kit states that "players can place DTS buildings in real-time, complete with build, idle, and destruction animations", so I imagine it wouldnt be difficult playing an animation on the building when it takes damage.
@Evan
I tried out BEP and had real problems getting its debugging to work. The breakpoints would work, but when you flipped back to BEP you couldn't tell which breakpoint fired because it didnt set the screen to what current line you were on. Then if you told it to go to the next statement the highlighted line never moved so I couldn't tell what line I was on. So my initial impressions weren't that great. I'm going to try to mess with it somemore today and seem if I can get it work for me.
03/02/2005 (10:27 am)
@KenI'm liking the book so far. I've mostly skipped to sections that had information pertinent to stuff I was working on.
I don't know any examples of buildings being damaged, but I would check on the RTS Kit boards. I personally don't have the RTS Kit, but I will get it when I get some time to work on some personal projects :). The RTS Kit states that "players can place DTS buildings in real-time, complete with build, idle, and destruction animations", so I imagine it wouldnt be difficult playing an animation on the building when it takes damage.
@Evan
I tried out BEP and had real problems getting its debugging to work. The breakpoints would work, but when you flipped back to BEP you couldn't tell which breakpoint fired because it didnt set the screen to what current line you were on. Then if you told it to go to the next statement the highlighted line never moved so I couldn't tell what line I was on. So my initial impressions weren't that great. I'm going to try to mess with it somemore today and seem if I can get it work for me.
#5
I like this community already, it's active and friendly, a good combination, when you are doing this stuff indie.
Oh also Todd, about the debugger, I just remembered something, did you set it up the way it said to, with the local host address, 127.0.0.1 etc.. ?
Just a thought, there are directions for setting up the debugger to make it work with torque, and he also has a more updated torque commands / keywords etc.. help file, you can get from the forums, or if you are a registered user, from the download page as well.
Ken
03/02/2005 (12:01 pm)
Hey Todd, What version were you trying out ? He has improved alot of stuff, and if you explain to me what your talking about, and maybe give me a screen shot or two, I can get it fixed for you, since I am a beta tester for him, and have already gotten him to fix the Dark Basic Pro context sensitive help stuff up, and to make it easier to import different help files, etc.. So I am sure Nordvall will be more than happy to implement any changes / fixes we need for it, he always seemed open minded to all the suggestions I made so far.I like this community already, it's active and friendly, a good combination, when you are doing this stuff indie.
Oh also Todd, about the debugger, I just remembered something, did you set it up the way it said to, with the local host address, 127.0.0.1 etc.. ?
Just a thought, there are directions for setting up the debugger to make it work with torque, and he also has a more updated torque commands / keywords etc.. help file, you can get from the forums, or if you are a registered user, from the download page as well.
Ken
#6
03/03/2005 (8:35 am)
@Todd: Aside from the debugging aspects, how is it as an editor?
#7
I am using version 1.0.6b Demo. Getting torque connected to BEP isn't the issue, that actually worked quite easily.
Here is the start of a debug session. I have the cursor on the commented out onLeaveMissionArea line (the yellow line) with a breakpoint inside the new onLeaveMissionArea (the red line).
Here is me stopped at a break point. The current line you are on isnt set to this breakpoint, as you can see by the yellow line. This makes it very hard to determine where the execution stopped if you have multiple breakpoints. Basically you have to look at the output window for what line number it stopped on.
Maybe I am not understanding what pressing the "Step over to next sourceline" button should do. To me it should step over the current line and to the next line of the script. For me it seems to partially work. It will step over a line once and then just jump to some other line that isnt next in the script.
@Evan
As an editor it is alright compared to other editors with debuggers. Nothing seems to work flawlessly but if you must interactively debug something you could use this or just get TIDE. The code jumper is very useful for finding functions and datablocks. The variables section is pretty worthless as it lists all variables and without some sort of context it is pretty meaningless. If it grouped local variables under their appropriate functions, etc and then had a section for global variables all grouped together it would be more useful.
Being able to add code templates is nice and the output window when connected to the debugger is great to have. Also the command help window is pretty useful.
I couldn't get the todo list to work. Whenever I went to add or edit an entry I would get an error stating the parameter is incorrect. It would also be nice if the todo list was a tabbed entry along the bottom where the watch and output panes are located.
The mouse wheel support for the output window does not seem to work, but it works fine in the code window.
The editor does not remember the size of the command help window when you exit and restart the editor, so you have to reset it each time.
You can't drag variables into the watch window, you have to manually add varaible names by clciking debug then add watch from the main menu for each variable.
I have gotten some other weird errors and having the game crash while trying to debug some things in a stock Torque build, but became tired of trying to figure out the issues as it was eating up my whole day.
With that all said, I think it has some potential, if you are just looking to snag an editor I would get TextPad. I think when some of the UI issues get taken care of this has potential to be a great alternative for editing. But for now, it just doesn't suit my needs.
03/03/2005 (12:44 pm)
@KenI am using version 1.0.6b Demo. Getting torque connected to BEP isn't the issue, that actually worked quite easily.
Here is the start of a debug session. I have the cursor on the commented out onLeaveMissionArea line (the yellow line) with a breakpoint inside the new onLeaveMissionArea (the red line).
Here is me stopped at a break point. The current line you are on isnt set to this breakpoint, as you can see by the yellow line. This makes it very hard to determine where the execution stopped if you have multiple breakpoints. Basically you have to look at the output window for what line number it stopped on.
Maybe I am not understanding what pressing the "Step over to next sourceline" button should do. To me it should step over the current line and to the next line of the script. For me it seems to partially work. It will step over a line once and then just jump to some other line that isnt next in the script.
@Evan
As an editor it is alright compared to other editors with debuggers. Nothing seems to work flawlessly but if you must interactively debug something you could use this or just get TIDE. The code jumper is very useful for finding functions and datablocks. The variables section is pretty worthless as it lists all variables and without some sort of context it is pretty meaningless. If it grouped local variables under their appropriate functions, etc and then had a section for global variables all grouped together it would be more useful.
Being able to add code templates is nice and the output window when connected to the debugger is great to have. Also the command help window is pretty useful.
I couldn't get the todo list to work. Whenever I went to add or edit an entry I would get an error stating the parameter is incorrect. It would also be nice if the todo list was a tabbed entry along the bottom where the watch and output panes are located.
The mouse wheel support for the output window does not seem to work, but it works fine in the code window.
The editor does not remember the size of the command help window when you exit and restart the editor, so you have to reset it each time.
You can't drag variables into the watch window, you have to manually add varaible names by clciking debug then add watch from the main menu for each variable.
I have gotten some other weird errors and having the game crash while trying to debug some things in a stock Torque build, but became tired of trying to figure out the issues as it was eating up my whole day.
With that all said, I think it has some potential, if you are just looking to snag an editor I would get TextPad. I think when some of the UI issues get taken care of this has potential to be a great alternative for editing. But for now, it just doesn't suit my needs.
#8
Thank you for the feedback I will definitely get this over to Nordvall tonight. I would right now, but I am currently at work, and thanks for adding the screenies also, he always asks for that, no matter what the issue for some reason.. hehehe anyways I hope he jumps on this like he has done the rest of my suggestions.
Ken
03/04/2005 (10:35 am)
Todd,Thank you for the feedback I will definitely get this over to Nordvall tonight. I would right now, but I am currently at work, and thanks for adding the screenies also, he always asks for that, no matter what the issue for some reason.. hehehe anyways I hope he jumps on this like he has done the rest of my suggestions.
Ken
#9
The only thing I can think of is that the file (in your case player.cs) is mixed with another player.cs file. Brain Editor Pro uses the result from the output window (the one you get when using step over) together with the path for File To Run (Options->Configuration) to locate the file. Maybe it has located wrong file, could that be the reason?
You got some points. I'll look more into your thoughts and see what I can do. To begin with, the bug with the todo list is now fixed and it is placed beside the watch list (will be included in next update).
03/05/2005 (8:14 am)
@Todd, the cursor should be moved to the next line when pressing F4 or press "Step Over". I've tested it with the Torque Demo and it works for me which makes it hard to confirm.The only thing I can think of is that the file (in your case player.cs) is mixed with another player.cs file. Brain Editor Pro uses the result from the output window (the one you get when using step over) together with the path for File To Run (Options->Configuration) to locate the file. Maybe it has located wrong file, could that be the reason?
You got some points. I'll look more into your thoughts and see what I can do. To begin with, the bug with the todo list is now fixed and it is placed beside the watch list (will be included in next update).
#10
Thanks for the info Todd, I hope you enjoy the editor, and continue to use it.
03/06/2005 (8:13 pm)
See guys, told you he was fast, and very very helpful, he actually posted to the forums on his site, that he will be also adding the C++ support to the next version of BEP along with fixing some other stuff.Thanks for the info Todd, I hope you enjoy the editor, and continue to use it.
Torque Owner Todd D. Degani
The book uses the executable of a build of the Torque engine, that is what the TGE.exe file is. FYI, the engine version used for the book was an 'out-of-the-box' 1.2 release, as noted here .