Considering the Torque Engine
by Albert "Halorin" Hailey · in Torque Game Engine · 04/01/2005 (1:00 pm) · 2 replies
First I'd like to say hello to everyone reading this post.
A few friends of mine are starting work on a mod for Half-Life 2, but I've always known Torque to be a viable alternative. I have some questions about the capabilities of the Torque Engine to see if its right for what we're trying to accomplish. All help is greatly appreciated.
1. We plan on having large maps (I'd say a square mile) of urban landscape. By this I mean buildings and skyscrapers. I know that Torque is capable of large, open areas, but is something like this possible and will it run smoothly?
2. We plan on having racing going on throughout the city sections as well as street fighting taking place in designated portions of the map. We want to have a player be able to go to a server, choose to set up a street race and wait for opponents while other players can join the server and meet at say, a basketball court to set up a Last Man Standing Street Fight. Is this kind of multiple game mode mentality possible with Torque? Would it strain the networking too much?
3. We also plan on having character stat information saved about players on a database/webserver. Is Torque capable of interacting with the database to allow players to bring their stats to different servers?
4. What are the graphical capabilities of Torque? Do they go beyond what's showcased in the Game Engine Demo? What amounts of polys do you think we'd be able to push per character/car out of the engine?
5. What kind of physics handling comes stock with Torque?
I know these are rather demanding questions, but they'd really help us set the direction of our development. If I'd be better served to send this list of questions to a GarageGames representative, could I be given the address?
Thank you again,
Albert "Halorin" Hailey
A few friends of mine are starting work on a mod for Half-Life 2, but I've always known Torque to be a viable alternative. I have some questions about the capabilities of the Torque Engine to see if its right for what we're trying to accomplish. All help is greatly appreciated.
1. We plan on having large maps (I'd say a square mile) of urban landscape. By this I mean buildings and skyscrapers. I know that Torque is capable of large, open areas, but is something like this possible and will it run smoothly?
2. We plan on having racing going on throughout the city sections as well as street fighting taking place in designated portions of the map. We want to have a player be able to go to a server, choose to set up a street race and wait for opponents while other players can join the server and meet at say, a basketball court to set up a Last Man Standing Street Fight. Is this kind of multiple game mode mentality possible with Torque? Would it strain the networking too much?
3. We also plan on having character stat information saved about players on a database/webserver. Is Torque capable of interacting with the database to allow players to bring their stats to different servers?
4. What are the graphical capabilities of Torque? Do they go beyond what's showcased in the Game Engine Demo? What amounts of polys do you think we'd be able to push per character/car out of the engine?
5. What kind of physics handling comes stock with Torque?
I know these are rather demanding questions, but they'd really help us set the direction of our development. If I'd be better served to send this list of questions to a GarageGames representative, could I be given the address?
Thank you again,
Albert "Halorin" Hailey
#2
Thanks,
Albert "Halorin" Hailey
04/01/2005 (1:25 pm)
Thanks a lot, Robert! I was reading up on the Torque Shader Engine. Buying this is essentially a high-quality rendering add-on to the Game Engine if I have it correct, right? Thanks,
Albert "Halorin" Hailey
Torque Owner Robert Pierce
2) It is possible, I am note entirely sure of the feasibility. It shouldn't be too network taxing.
3) You wouldn't want Torque to interact directly with the database. You can easily use HTTPObject (with PHP files on the server). http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=4085 is an example of what I am talking about
4) With stock TGE (not TSE), you have pretty good graphical capabilities. I would love to be able to describe further, but I am a programmer, not an artist, heh.
5) Torque comes with default Rigid Body physics for vehicles (I think). There are resources to help with integrating ODE with TGE.
Robert