Final thoughts on TorqueX

Since I don't have a lot of time to test anything else out before Monday, I thought I'd post my final thoughts on the TorqueX beta. My only reqret is that I wish I had more time to play with the source, run it through some performance analyzers, etc. but my schedule's full until Wednesday.

Possible Bug:
In the split screen demo app, one player can push the other off the edge of the map. Since the documentation states: "Each player will collide with the edges of the background image", you may want to fix the problem or the documentation.

Parting thoughts: (Getting on the soap box...)
1. TorqueX is a great start of an engine. The speed with which you guys have rolled this out is great, especially considering how long some of the other engines and tools are taking. I imagine some of that is because you are leveraging XNA and C#. I just hope you continue to add features as quickly after Torque X is released.

2. The GUI classes and starter kits help out a lot. It would be great to see the larger set of options in the TGB options dialog in one of the TorqueX starter kits. (Like assigning buttons to specific actions for example)

3. I hope the goal is that the Torque X documentation and tools eventually approach the quality of the TGB documentation and tools.
a. The starter kit documentation is a great start. Tutorials like the TGB ones that show how to make the games from scratch would also be very helpful. It would also be great to have one 5 minute flash demo you post on You Tube or something that people can watch on how to make a simple game in TGBX.
b. The API documentation needs examples. Just a couple lines of code in the /// tag would be good enough to figure out where and how a class and it's methods are used.

4. At some point, it would be nice to be able to build simple games without ANY coding. It would also greatly increase the target market for TGBX. For those who do have the coding skills, like myself, it would still greatly ease the ability to add base functionality that I could then modify in the 30 minutes a day I to devote being an Indy developer.
I think the one way to do this would be to add a larger set of attributes that users can assign to an object in the TGBX editor. The attributes would be common events that objects could trigger and respond to like 'Die after taking X damage', 'switch object bitmap to Y after taking X damage', and default AI functionality like 'find and shoot player'. In the engine, the attribute classes would would setup the appropriate delegates and properties to the objects when they were constructed from the .txscene file. It would also be great if people could submit assemblies & code to a common place where these attribute classes could be collected, modified, and added upon.

5. With all the Marble Blast 3D screen shots on the TorqueX page, it would be nice to have a starter game that also has 3D. Since you've already demoed part of marble blast in the engine, it might be really easy just to show a character that can walk/roll on terrain. I think this would really great way to get people excited at the TorqueX launch about it's 3D potential, even if it's that basic. (Hopefully it wouldn't take more than an hour or two of quick mods on the existing Marble 3D demo.)

(Getting off the soap box...)

Overall, Great Work. I'm looking forward to the future of Torque X and TGBX!!!