Doors and Lifts yet? (2nd Look @ Torque)
by Chad Shepard · in Torque Game Engine · 05/28/2006 (7:17 pm) · 13 replies
I've been away from Torque for a while. I abandoned it about three years ago for a few reasons:
(A) It would not do doors and lifts
(B) Too many hoops to jump through in order to accomplish even simple tasks (many wasted hours)
(C) 3D Studio Max is too expensive for a lone developer, like myself, and the Milkshape exporter was unreliable at best (I spent days designing and animating a player model, only to have it show up in Torque twisted in on itself)
I got an email today from GarageGames that suggested I take another look at Torque. I just have one question:
Have any of these problems been fixed?
Forgive me if I seem a little bit ill, but to someone who is not a professional developer, $100 is a lot of money to flush down the toilet for a "state-of-the-art" engine whose usability falls sadly short of Quake 1.
Chad
(A) It would not do doors and lifts
(B) Too many hoops to jump through in order to accomplish even simple tasks (many wasted hours)
(C) 3D Studio Max is too expensive for a lone developer, like myself, and the Milkshape exporter was unreliable at best (I spent days designing and animating a player model, only to have it show up in Torque twisted in on itself)
I got an email today from GarageGames that suggested I take another look at Torque. I just have one question:
Have any of these problems been fixed?
Forgive me if I seem a little bit ill, but to someone who is not a professional developer, $100 is a lot of money to flush down the toilet for a "state-of-the-art" engine whose usability falls sadly short of Quake 1.
Chad
About the author
#2
B) If you're making an FPS, then it's very easy. Other types are easy-to-hard, depending on what you need. All in all, though, it's come a long way in 3 years.
C) The milkshape exporter is working well now. In addition, there are other exporters available as well (like for blender, etc)
05/28/2006 (8:00 pm)
A) Not really. There are resources, but none are perfect, and you'll need to integrate them. (If I ever finish my "Quake 3 interior" resource...)B) If you're making an FPS, then it's very easy. Other types are easy-to-hard, depending on what you need. All in all, though, it's come a long way in 3 years.
C) The milkshape exporter is working well now. In addition, there are other exporters available as well (like for blender, etc)
#3
05/28/2006 (8:16 pm)
No doors and no lifts yet. guess you should probably just stick with quake1 engine. 
#4
2. This one is entirely too general to answer. What tasks do you find simple but inconvenient?
3. Max, Maya, and Lightwave are still expensive, but Blender is free. And it sounds like the right price for you. Free is good.
Your Quake comparison seems to insinuate that you expected TGE to be the same engine but better. It should have the featureset of Quake and then more. Quake could use a little work in the terrain and netcode department. In fact, it has gotten it by a number of dedicated teams since the GPL release. So has Q2. Q3 hasn't really been out long enough to get the kind of love that 1 and 2 have garnered. But TGE is not Quake, even if the original engine was a FPS. It was a completely different kind of FPS than Quake. It was scaled for large environments and a large number of players shooting at each other. Quake happened to deal with small environments and the trappings of close-quarters strategy with a small number of players shooting each other. It's not apples to oranged, but it is why some people like grapefruit juice over orange when it comes to the citrus family.
05/28/2006 (8:49 pm)
1. Doors as DTs's work very well. Lifts work with the pathed interior resource, though you'll have to tweak to taste. Depending on your needs (say, blocks the move in and out for the player to jump on ala 99% of all platformers), DTS's can be used like with doors. But again, it depends on your implementation.2. This one is entirely too general to answer. What tasks do you find simple but inconvenient?
3. Max, Maya, and Lightwave are still expensive, but Blender is free. And it sounds like the right price for you. Free is good.
Your Quake comparison seems to insinuate that you expected TGE to be the same engine but better. It should have the featureset of Quake and then more. Quake could use a little work in the terrain and netcode department. In fact, it has gotten it by a number of dedicated teams since the GPL release. So has Q2. Q3 hasn't really been out long enough to get the kind of love that 1 and 2 have garnered. But TGE is not Quake, even if the original engine was a FPS. It was a completely different kind of FPS than Quake. It was scaled for large environments and a large number of players shooting at each other. Quake happened to deal with small environments and the trappings of close-quarters strategy with a small number of players shooting each other. It's not apples to oranged, but it is why some people like grapefruit juice over orange when it comes to the citrus family.
#5
05/28/2006 (9:23 pm)
Grapefruits are delicious.
#7
Thanx,
Chad
05/29/2006 (5:18 pm)
Thanks for your input. From doing an "easy search," I found "innumerable results" for functioning doors and lifts that require hours of work-around coding. If I was being paid by the hour to develop games, I would definitely use Torque.Thanx,
Chad
#8
05/29/2006 (5:36 pm)
I know having a powerful and quickly executable scripting language that lets you prototype and tweak code on the fly certainly wastes hours of my time. Quake 1? Even Unreal and it's millions of dollars of licencsing doesn't have that. But your aspiration is to make Elevator Action 3 apparentley, I'm sure Quake will be great for that.
#9
No matter what engine you look at you will never get anything handed to you on a plate, posts like yours just irritate me and I am happy if you dont chose to work with torque, one less whinger on the forums.
05/29/2006 (6:16 pm)
Geez chad, i think you need to realise that when it comes to making a game, hard work is what is required. No matter what engine you look at you will never get anything handed to you on a plate, posts like yours just irritate me and I am happy if you dont chose to work with torque, one less whinger on the forums.
#10
To the nonprogrammers, it really sounds like you're gonna get everything you need to make a game.
Most people are like "$100 is nothing, try spending $250,000 and you'll get that, it's easy enough just to add it yourself".
But on a positive side, Doors are easy as heck to implement. There's a few example floating around, even one i did.
Lifts are another story. i'm pretty discouraged by the lack of resources for this that work properly.
However i could easily see this resource working just fine for that.
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=9093
Simply attach the player to the lift, and move the lift. that player moves with it.
as far as "too many hoops...." I'm sure that's a reality no matter what engine you choose.
and there are several "free" modeling apps out there.... Not good enough for you? what do you expect for free then?
05/29/2006 (6:30 pm)
I honestly feel GarageGames overhypes exactly what you get when you purchase the engine.To the nonprogrammers, it really sounds like you're gonna get everything you need to make a game.
Most people are like "$100 is nothing, try spending $250,000 and you'll get that, it's easy enough just to add it yourself".
But on a positive side, Doors are easy as heck to implement. There's a few example floating around, even one i did.
Lifts are another story. i'm pretty discouraged by the lack of resources for this that work properly.
However i could easily see this resource working just fine for that.
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=9093
Simply attach the player to the lift, and move the lift. that player moves with it.
as far as "too many hoops...." I'm sure that's a reality no matter what engine you choose.
and there are several "free" modeling apps out there.... Not good enough for you? what do you expect for free then?
#11
hehe, Sorry I cannot resist.
I have to ask, door's, lift's and ladders make the difference between Quake 1 and Torque?
that is just Crazy talk my friend.
as for the 100 bones, that could be had mowing lawns in no more than a few afternoon's.
so Anyone should be able to have a chance here.
The difference between Quake 1 and Torque, you need to look beyond the simple entities that could be coded up by a noob' such as door's lift's and ladder's.
05/29/2006 (6:37 pm)
Quote:Forgive me if I seem a little bit ill, but to someone who is not a professional developer, $100 is a lot of money to flush down the toilet for a "state-of-the-art" engine whose usability falls sadly short of Quake 1.
hehe, Sorry I cannot resist.
I have to ask, door's, lift's and ladders make the difference between Quake 1 and Torque?
that is just Crazy talk my friend.
as for the 100 bones, that could be had mowing lawns in no more than a few afternoon's.
so Anyone should be able to have a chance here.
The difference between Quake 1 and Torque, you need to look beyond the simple entities that could be coded up by a noob' such as door's lift's and ladder's.
#12
05/29/2006 (6:49 pm)
Well, I suppose some things "require hours of work-around coding" if you have no idea what you're doing. No game engine will help you there.
#13
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=10200
-Keith
05/29/2006 (8:39 pm)
I found this little tidbit on doors while searching the other day; though I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for:www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=10200
-Keith
Torque Owner Chris Byars
Ion Productions
B. Simple tasks have simple ways of achieving them.
C. The Milkshape exporters are perfect as far as I've used them.