Very interested in Torque Engine, but...

#1 Best course of action I could suggest is go down to your local borders or barnes and noble. Pick up the 3d game programming all in one and have a seat and read a chapter or 2. It explains alot of whats needed to make a basic game.

I recommend if you are uncertain that you should read a chapter before purchasing the book. It does come with a compiled engine in it version 1.2 and no you cannot make a commercial game with it, nor do you get the source

#2

Quote:How hard is the scripting/programming for Torque? Can someone who is only a hobbyist programmer wannabe with basic programming skills (C, some assembler and some scripting) figure this stuff out?

if youre experienced, i would say scripting for torque is not difficult at all. coding is as simple and intuitive as any other current scripting or programming language. the problem with torque is finding descriptive documentation for the numerous objects and object properties the engine supports. another problem is the organization of script files and functionality which takes time to get used to. if you decide to purchase the engine, from what i hear, the C++ source code is huge and would take a long time to learn.

and i second davids recommendation to pick up 3d programming all in one.

#3 It's not the coding, per se, that I found challenging when I started. Despite Torque being a very well organized code base, it is still difficult to figure out the workings of the EXISTING code and script. Your ability to read and understand code will be more challenged than your ability to write it.

The only solution to this, of course, is to do your research, and dive right in. Make some fun little games and start small. Good luck!

#4 Let me clarify though about picking up the book, I meant it as a please feel free to read a chapter or so in the store before you purchase it. Most book stores have tables for just that reason so you can be sure it's the book you want.

Also note that the engine is extensive as others have noted, and there are alot of resources as well as the SDK portions of the forum. Most questions to there get answered as quickly and friendly as here just to give you a feel on the community portion of things.

#5 I have the book and am learning alot... I still haven't understood the code, but I genereally get the idea of everything. Once I am done reading I plan to go back to re reading the chapters on coding as I am sure I'll get it alot more clearly the second time. Highly recommend the book though if you are at all interested in TGE.

#6 I'm spoiled on Neverwinter Nights scripting and the community, because of the incredible resources available (the nwnlexicon covers in detail every function in the game with examples - nwnlexicon.com), and Lilac Soul's Script Generator, where you tell it what you want to do in the game, such as "I want to cast a spell, which generates some cool effects, all the time waving my arms in the air, then a balor appears in front of me, has a conversation, then leaves but not before dropping off a +6 Horn of Combustion", and it generates the scripts for you.

Still, I write many of my own scripts for NWN, so it's not all automated so I have some understanding of how it works. Thanks for the replies.
John

#7 @john, if you know C and assember, then programming in torquescript will be 100 times easier. It's nicely integrated with the engine and Torque overall really enables you to hit the ground running. Just take the FPS game or the Driving game examples, and modify away.

#8 I'm just rounding the learning curve of TGE right now.

I'd say that none of it has been difficult at all, there has just been a lot of it. It's well organized, the scripting is easy to use and very forgiving (it tends to ignore errors rather than crashing). There is feature for nearly everything FPS related and sufficient features that the engine can be extended into non-FPS games.

The tough part of it is that there is a feature for absolutely everything. When you start you'll be presented with a million things.

The difficulty of NWN is probably a good approximation of how difficult TGE is. The community for NWN is probably a bit more focused on the original ruleset and is probably more helpful for that reason. But the community here is quite capable, including many professionals who have posted tons of resources.

#9 Alex and lance: Thanks for the replies!

#10 John,
I just purchased TGE about 3weeks ago, I figured I would spend 100 bucks on a few lunches anyway so
why not just spend it on something i can have some fun with. :)

Anyway, i found the scripting language "extremly" easy, i think with the basic knowledge that you say you
have, you should have no problem with the scripting side of things, i think the only part you might have
trouble with is modiying the main engine source code and folks around here are more than helpful about
helping out, resources etc.

I didnt find really anything in the engine that was rocket science, not that it is programming 101 stuff but
i think the time it saves in making this stuff yourself is worth more than 100 bucks of my time and i must
say the way they implemented openGL im very very impressed great speed.

Not sure if that helps you with your problem or not but I can tell you (having owned other engines) this is
by far the most bang for the buck.