UnrealED to Torque convertor - ( Unreal Tournament Editor )

#41 The reason we want to fix this now is so we don't have to face the problem again in the future.

This would be my preferred scenario:

1. Everybody just use Quark as a world editing tool for now. If we want to add to the functionality in order to enhance the Torque features, we do so, and since it is GPL, those features must go back to the Quark community. Since Quark is an editor, its GPL license does not infect the Torque source code, so that is not an issue.

2. Ideally, I would like to have a world editor much more like UnrealEd that makes it easier and cleaner for newbies to get into making games for Torque. This is a much longer process, but is gaining some momentum under David Green's guidance. IMO, this should be a product in which the developers could eventually make money. Maybe this product sells for $50. If it produced data compatible with Quake, Torque, and other engines, I think this could be a big opportunity for the developers. GarageGames is certainly willing to help sell it as long as it is focused on Torque first and the other engines later.

3. Lastly, we need a better modeling/animation tool in which we have the same amount of control and integration. There are several teams looking into this as well. Starting with a GPL product is one solution, but LGPL may be even better so the developers could charge for ther result. Again, I would like to see the product be in the $50-100 range. This tool does not have to be Torque specific either, and I think the more open it is, the better as long as it provides awesome Torque integration first.

On a separate note, I think people will be able to make a living creating games, it's just tha expectations need to change. Maybe you have to create several games so your revenue builds up over time. I have posted numberous times about a plan for how to make a living as an indie game developer.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#42 I personally don't think the editor(s) should be charged for. Indies have a hard enough time as it is, and people doing this for a hobbie really do not want to fork over too much money. If the editor is opensource under the GPL then that means more people will work on it without pay because you are repaying the opensource community for the programs they have given you. If you have never used Opensource software then this does not apply to you as you have not gotten anything from the community. I on the otherhand have gotten lots of great free software from the community (linux, php, mozilla, the gimp, kdevelop, winCVS, and 1000s of other programs on my linux partition.) If you have paid money for every single piece of software you own then I could see how you would want to charge for your time as a programmer. I don't think any torque user falls into this catagory unless you are not using winCVS and removed openAL from the engine.

Sorry for the mini rant but I still stand by the idea of taking Aztec and making an editor that will export both .dif and .dts files. A group project is more likely to get done as we have more people working on it. We will still need some leaders though and probably a CVS as I assume the developers of Aztec are not going to want to develop their product to work for torque for us.

-Tim aka Spock

#43 I'm with Tim on this one.

We're all in this for any number of reasons, but I wasn't under the impression that we were here to take money from one another.

At least two talented programmers - Melv & Masoud (who we interviewed for our Tools Programmer position last night precisely to address this and other issues) - are looking to help out with either the Editor In Potentia, or an undisclosed something which might just be that Editor. With support from other individuals and teams, I don't see why this can't be a free product.

I'm not begrudging anyone their effort or 50.00 to 100.00, it's the principle of the thing.

Additionally I have a hard time imagining sustained and vigorous sales to a demogrpahic that in part scrapped to pay for the SDK - especially when QuArK works.

Mychal McCabe
badlands games

#44 Well, you all know how much I love to go against the grain around here... ;-)

But I would have to disagree with Tim and Mychal in some respects. Perhaps in the case of a "Quark" or "Tribes-IDE" type/level of application I could see not charging any purchase fee.

Even though both of those are open-sourced, they are (AFAIK) written in Pascal. That alone I feel will prevent them from becoming popular tools among developers. I even had a hard time getting through my Pascal courses in college, and much preferred other languages. (edit) and this wasn't because Pascal is difficult, it's not, it's just not my language of choice, that's for sure...

However, what I have in mind is a few steps above either of those forementioned editors (I'm thinking of a marriage of UnrealEd and GMax together).
I would not work on an application of this level for free, nor would I assume that others should as well.
Just because a person calls themselves an "indie" doesn't mean that other people who have the talent to develop the tools, that they will eventually make *some* money off of, should develop them for free.
I agree with Jeff and I see nothing wrong with a $25 to $50 fee for an editor of which I have in mind, and I'm sure 99% of the people here would be willing to pay that as well. I would have been willing to pay $25 to get UnrealEd, and that is as a game player, not a developer, which is what we are talking about here (we are developers here).
Try telling Discreet that you are an indie and that you want GMax for free...

I also feel that the "mesh" modeler and "construct" modeler should be in the same package. Along with a host of other utilities common to game development.

Anyway, I've been trying to enlist the aid of a couple of experienced programmers, I'll let the community know what we decide. If we go ahead on an editor, hopefully everyone here will be happy with it. :-)

David

#45 I would easily pay $25-50, and even upwards of a couple hundred dollars for a good modelling and animation tool. Something akin to WorldCraft or QERadiant plus Milkshape with better slightly better animation capabilities and a great API for creating exporters and nice native torque support.

There is, unfortunately, a rather larger gap between the Milkshapes and the Mayas of the world -- both in price but also in features. Milkshape doesn't have everything I want, Maya has a lot more than I need, I can't deal with Blender's lack of even a basic usable undo and horrible UI (this actually goes for a number of other free and Open Source packages I've tried, not just Blender, but that's the most well known).

It would be nice if that gap were filled (OTOH I'm afraid I'm too busy with other stuff to help fill it, beyond being willing to shell out cash for it when its done)

#46 My views on discreet have been well documented elsewhere: In short, I hope they metaphorically choke on their lack of creativity and die of financial thirst for a community more voluminous than the one they actually support.

I don't see how anyone could possibly describe the act of charging people for something as going against the grain.

Each time this issue comes up I'm presented with a nightmare vision of us pulling out our Visa Cards to pay for a really Cool & Useful Code Snippet.

David, I wish you luck with your project. I'll encourage our developers to help in anyway they can.

#47 Mychal,

I agree that I hope the community does continue to provide each other with various Torque snippets, and that developers don't get overly protective of all of their cool little features they develop.
Along this thread, I messed around with creating a few textures and scripts for some cool particle effects, which I still have to get around to posting here. These types of Torque-related things should be shared among the licensed community.

However, I do feel that an application that combines full 3D editing oriented towards game engines** with a host of other features is a much more intensive collection of work than a code snippet, and likewise should come with a small fee (no more than $50 and preferably only $25).
If designed properly, I fail to see why this application could not be used by other developers with other engines, and the authors can then license the editor out to others.

** Note here that I would not expect this application to be a 3DSMax-level application as far as overall 3D power, mainly because using Max (or Maya etc.) is akin to lighting your cigarette with a volcano... unnecessary power.

David

#48 Money is the incentive, and what could lead to better resources and thus a better editor. I don't think it's very productive to suggest we are here to make money off one another if we make tools and charge for them.
"For the betterment of the community" is all fine and good, but I'm not sure that is as real as it sounds. If it were, why is QuArK so hard to work with? Gamers, modders, and mapmakers worldwide should be champing at the bit to help create the perfect game software. Discreet and Maya shouldn't even be in the running, in theory!
Don't get me wrong... it would be neat if that were to happen. It would also be neat if the GG gang could give the Torque code out for free, but they can't. Nor, should they. And who is to say that free is ALWAYS the best way? Say this week that ten devs license the TGE @ $100 ea. Of that $1000, the GG team decides to spend $250 for an ad in the "Game Developer" mag next month. Now, because of that advertising they have more interested devs to buy the engine--and more interested artists, programmers, and so on who want to work with someone. Now GG has more money coming in, which could be used for R&D, buying technology (such as a sound engine, for example, or modeling program) and who benefits from this? You guessed it: You do. The "community".
If you (the community) don't like it, the answer is easy... prove me wrong! :-)

Eric

#49 dave, please dont "go anywhere". youre a coder who's expressed interest in working on a project i think vital to torque's future, so i want to hear all your thoughts on the subject. just because you are the only one on a side of an argument doesnt mean youre wrong, yes?

all the talk about licensing is the cart so far ahead of the horse i want to shout. not to mention the fact that the licensing can easily be worded to allow all the things everyone above has suggested in one document. make it so some people pay, others dont. some can use the source, others cant.

i suggested the ingame thing myself about ten minutes ago on another thread, but now i have another idea. torque is an app for programmers, right? well, why not make torque's sister app, Traction, for artists. isnt that the logical extension? it would do everything, like david suggests, but you could release free 'lite' versions if you want. it would have and sdk so you could write plugins, exporters, new functionality. the 'lite' would be for clowning around, the full app for a hundred bucks or so, would be a full featured content creation platform.

[edit i worded this funny the first time]

incidentally, i think gg should consider making torque available for free to people who intend to code for it. what if bjorn decides he wants to port wings 3d to torque, but cant w/o source? that would suck for a reason not to.

[what i meant to say was "provide torque for free to good programmers who only want to use torque to extend the engine, not make their own game. sort of a gpl version, but you cant make games with it, just extend functionality of the core" /edit]

then again, for all i know, they do. its not like you'd need to advertise, just shoot him a copy if he asks.

#50 GPL opensource project

* Any developer that wants to contribute code can.
* Down the road some of the developers decide they no longer want to work on the project..no problem its open source and widely available.
* A Garagegames member but not a torque licenser makes an engine and decides they would like to modify the editor and use it for their project. Perfectly fine.
* May not be as important to some but it gives back to the community that has made lots avialable to you.
* One person cannot get pissed off and shutdown the project or decide that their product is better than 3d studio max and raise the price to $1500 bucks to get the attention of the big boys.

closed license / closed source
* Closed group of developers working to get it finished.
* Group of developers can get paid once it "ships"
* Source code could also be sold to develop off shoots of the product. i.e. Microsoft's version of Open source software.

In a business since the second is better due to the fact that you get more money. What everyone needs to think of is are we doing this for the money or are we doing it to help the community. If you are worried that you'll put in all this effort and get nothing in return then set up a pay pal account where people can make donations to the project instead of selling the product. This way people who can afford it can donate to the cause as well as choose how much they want to donate.

This discussion is not just a big debate here but its a big debate all over the software market. The biggest one being between Microsoft and the Opensource Community. Microsoft refered to the GPL as a virus and their Open source policy is they will share certain code to people who pay for it. They do this because it makes business sense to them as they get Money but they Also Control their products...which is the biggest thing for them. Why does Media Player, MSN Messenger, and IE come pre installed in windows? Its because Microsoft likes having control on how things go. When you have control you can predict things.

If you want to make a closed source /license product and sell it then that is your perogative and I'm glad to see someone take the initiative. But, if you are not going to be able to deliver the goods then people need to know this. We could wait 6 Months on your editor and you never produce anything...and we may never see anything ever. But with an Open source project if someone does find that they have to abandon it then at least their are other people too keep it going.

If you think you can truly do this then I fully support you. Personally I straddle the fence on Opensource vs. closed source. I think Opensource is good for somethings but bad business practice for others.

Note: If anyone would like to discuss this in realtime with me feel free to in IRC...click the Chat(irc) link in the upper right corner and it will tell you how to get there.

-Tim aka Spock

#51 Tim N.,

I totally agree with you.
Are you surprised? ;-)

I'm not looking at this as a "us programmers who work on this own it exclusively". I've always been the sharing type. Over a decade ago I had a large 32-bit assembler library that I had written that included an extensive game library, I let a small company develop an educational application and charged them nothing for the use of the code.

I'm looking at being with GG for a while, and I don't see why any current or future persons who would like to get aboard developing this shouldn't be stopped from doing so.
Personally, I do feel that a project with a set group of programmers with a good set of collaborative ideals and a proper documented and outlined goal, will produce better results than having people willy-nilly throwing code at the project.
I hope you follow that.

I'm not thinking of closed-source a la Microsoft, I'm thinking of a dedicated and product-targeted team. It would be up to the team collectively if they decided to release the code to GG during or at the end of the project, or whether the code belonged "to the group" with a decided limitation on each person's rights within the project.

However, I am a bit against GPL style products, as I feel that while they have their place, I don't believe they usually produce as solid a product.

David

#52 Like I said..if you think you can pull it off I fully support you. Ive seen a lot of projects with good initiative and become nothing....and since they were closed source then they were never heard of again. Hopefully that can be prevented.

-Tim aka Spock

#53 Hi Tim,

I feel "if you think you can pull it off..." is a bit misdirected.

A project such as this would be difficult for one person to produce in any reasonable period of time. The other persons who sign up to work on it would/should be as accountable.

I have only been trying to start something like this rolling since last August. It would have to be a team effort if it is to succeed.
Making it open source won't guarantee that either, otherwise someone else should have started an open source editor long ago.

And even though I've been going through the forums trying to express my feeling on the necessity of an editor for eight months now, no one else has as of yet stepped forward to do the same, and now that it has become a hot topic, the majority of the comments are not moving towards obtaining a useful goal.

If it is felt that an associate is best suited to lead this, then I will gladly step aside.

David

#54 What I meant by "you" is you leading a group of people as I thought you were volunteering to head something like this. I hope your not getting the feeling that I want to lead this...In my very first post I put in the disclaimer that I do not want to lead this, I'm just trying to get people inspired and working on it.

-Tim aka Spock

#55 Hi Tim,

If the concensus was for me to help coordinate efforts, then I am more than willing, however, I am not looking at being a project leader on this.
I am suggesting that if there are a few other programmers out their who are interested in cooperating on this equally to their ability, then I'm in.
I have a lot of years of application development experience, and I'm a decent interface designer and document'er, but I feel this would be the team's project -- I wouldn't even dare to be head programmer.

I started on another Torque utility back in August, and also started drafting some guidelines for what I see would be great in an editor. That is as far as my "leading" would go on this at this time.
I would submit my ideas and gui design to the team, and we would all decide on the best way we could develop this to the benefit of the TGE community, and possibly eventually for other engines.


Almost forgot to address a few things you mentioned. :-)

I, or any other programmer who happens to work on this project, if it gets going, will not exclusively own the entire project, so he/she can't get upset and shut it down. I don't want to own this project, nor do I feel I have the right to. If the team decided they want to go this way, then I'm out...

Also, any "pay if you like" stuff doesn't work. One other indie developer I saw who wrote a free utility (and a pretty nice one at that) has/is trying the PayPal method, and he's received a whopping $12 in about 1.5 years -- hardly worth the time to set up the PayPal account.


Anyway, back to the topic, I really don't want people to think I'm planning on being a project leader who wants all rights to the software etc., I'm only trying to rouse up support for a good development team targetted at getting the best quality application that we can, in aid to the community.

David

#56 Jeff H.

Good comments.

Also, "Traction" is a pretty cool idea for a name. :-)

I also agree that it should be a separate app, and that a lite version could be offered, free to all Torque users (or any GG engine licensees, bundled with their purchase). This could have a subset of the mesh and construct modeling sections.
Since Jeff T. and the guys at GG have also stated elsewhere that the TGE is just a beginning for GG and that additional engines could be in order for the future, then "Traction" as I see it should be developed to be engine-independant, which is exactly what I had personally drafted up as an in-house wish-item last year when I first got involved here.

Making the TGE available with source free could be a problem. Perhaps a generic engine build that is "script-as-you-like" only may be a possibility for a lesser price, but I think for the $100 right now, it's difficult to beat.

One other comment I would like to make about open-source... Torque is not IMHO true open-source, which is why I believe the engine will do better in the long run than those that are GPL etc. I feel that this is because with the small price tag you are usually going to attract only those that are a bit more serious.

David

#57 I am a huge supporter of the open source movement, but I still think there should be a way for a dedicated team to make some money from an effort as big as developing these editors. Even Milkshape costs $20. That said, I can understand the reasoning behind both models of development. If the Torque were free though, GG couldn't be here, so figuring out how to charge enough to at least cover the bandwidth costs is very important.

There are a couple of camps here, but I think there is room for all involved. First, I think the idea of a GPL open source modeler is totally viable. Next, we have Quark for interiors, and some people may wish to work on improving that product. Finally, we have the Traction initiative, which is personally my favorite because it will really help newbies and other not so technical people access to making games.

The first two are free and the third can be a pay product. People in the community can decide if they want to pay for something that provides additional functionality or ease of use.

My observation is that we now have a bunch of talented people willing to look into these issues. At least we are discussing this now, and that is a good thing. When I first brought it up, there was very little interest.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#58 it is funny how all of a sudden this is on everyones mind?

ive got some good news, i found some low cost and free animation tools to compliment wings 3d

first, check out this page, its from flip code and has some very juicy links

flipcode links

heres some highlights.

CharacterFX

Cal3d

The Expression Toolkit

#59 the character fx page has some errors, i think on the dl page, but it downloaded fine.

character fx is $15, and the other two are open source. i dont know why i didnt find them earlier, i kind of stumbled onto the flipcode page last night at 2am. (8P i dont know if these progs are mentioned elsewhere on gg, but if so i missed that too :)

isnt this pretty much all we need? write some plugins and exporters, and were in business!

i think the first phase of this project, before we plan any further, should be a thorough evaluation of these apps, and wings 3d and aztec or whatever else looks good.
after we all evaluate and pick the best choice, we work on making everything torque friendly.

#60 does anyone know how plugins for max work? are they compiled or just maxscript? in other words, would it be a simple task to buy a plugin for max then port the plugin to 'traction'?

i guess theyre compiled, if they are rereleased for different versions of max. damn. anyone know how you would go about cracking a plugin to port it?