Game Development Community

May be I got it all wrong but...

by Edel · in General Discussion · 03/05/2007 (3:13 pm) · 5 replies

I was a 3d Gamestudio user and found it to be to restrictive when it came down to making levels for my game. After two years I finally got fed up with that engine and moved to Torque. However making levels in Torque was just as bad a nightmare!!! Today at Conitec's website I read this in their 'news' section:

"A7, the successor to the A6 engine, will be released in 2007. A7 uses a new rendering kernel that is based on an Adaptive Binary Tree (ABT). Outdoor levels with a lot of entities render remarkably faster with A7. The ABT offers also other advantages, like an unlimited number of dynamic lights, and unrestricted geometry import in WED. Both WED and MED will support the FBX format for import and export. A7 supports the new lite-C scripting language, but is still able to run A6 projects. An ingame editor and a shader editor are also planned for A7."

Adaptive Binary Tree?? Unrestricted geometry import?? FBX format??

If it would allow me to make my levels in 3dmax or Maya, as apposed to having me wait for 'Constructor'... Which if I'm not mistaken will be another BSP editor? I know we have TSEA (for advanced users) actually, more for advanced 'programmers' But why not improve Torque (for advanced ARTIST)????????? Meaning BSP should be buried and forgotten...

Oh and just going back to Conitec's website... makes me PUKE.... But A7 sounds very appealing! I'll believe it when I see it.

I'm an artist and I'm Just fed up guys... what can I say?
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Employee David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake
#1
03/05/2007 (3:55 pm)
It would be nice to know the particulars, though modern processing power is the most likely reason that they are using an ABT approach. But it is still a binary tree with a culling algorithm. There are a couple of fun algorithms out there for creating ABT solutions. It would also be nice to know how they will be implementing restrictions on their approach to the different license levels (limiting the number of lights or models or some such between the commercial and pro licenses).

If they are still using WED, and I am assuming that it is still as BSP editor since they explicitly mention WED, then the levels will still most likely be CSG-based. You will have a better artflow for getting your detail models into the world, however with FBX import. Constructor definitely needs some way to reference detail models so that we don't have to reconstruct everything in the world editor a second time.

Sounds like some great improvements to the engine. Kudos to the Conitec team. I can't wait to see more information on it.

Torque Owner Tim Heldna
#2
03/05/2007 (5:06 pm)
Try looking at the C4 engine.

It's non BSP, allows you to bring in entire levels from Max/Maya/XSI/Blender etc. You can also use the geometry tools that come with its built in editor. The demo download contains all the tools so you can try them out.

Torque Owner Barry Gallagher
#3
03/05/2007 (5:39 pm)
I actually liked Wed as a map editor.. I hated everything else about gamestudio though.

Torque Owner Tim Heldna
#4
03/05/2007 (5:50 pm)
I agree, Wed is nice. I sometimes still use it to create Torque maps.

Employee David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake
#5
03/05/2007 (9:43 pm)
I like WED, too. One of the most pleasant CSG environments I've worked in.

If you're looking polysoup with culling caveats, look into Beyond Virtual and Unity3D as well.