TGEA Demo - where is Getting Started pdf?

#1 The documentation isn't great.

The editor is a real-time editor, therefore you must have a mission running to use it. The editor does not contain an orthographic view, everything is done from the perspective viewport. Hitting F10 will raise the GUI editor.

The demo is as it says, a fully functional copy of TGEA, minus the source code.

Unless you really know what you're doing, TGEA isn't the most intuitive engine around. Most people have come from a TGE background which is how they survive using TGEA (the engines are very similar aside from obvious rendering differences).

#2 Tim made a good point. You can start by downloading TGE and follow its tutorials and gettingStarted.pdf tutorial. The only new stuff you'll have to learn for TGEA includes shader creation, Atlas generation and implementation, and any new rendering code you have to implement.

Other than that, the editors, game play, and scripting are relatively the the same.

#3 Thanks for your reply Tim.

I'm new to Torque as of yesterday. When I went to the GG website it sold me on the advantages of TGEA, so I downloaded the 30-day trial. But with no documentation AT ALL in the download, it leaves me with an awful lot of questions.

As I said above, it's going to be difficult to do a serious evaluation without knowing what I'm buying, and the source code and related forums and documentation is what I'm buying.

GG sure aren't making it easy for a new user to choose TGEA over TGE.

#4 Michael, thanks for your post as well.

I actually did eventually download the TGE 1.5.1 demo, but it doesn't ship with that gettingStarted.pdf (or any PDF files at all) either.

The only documentation I can find is a ReadMe.html in the "Torque Game Engine 1.5.1 Demo" folder.

Is there another download I need to do to get the documentation?

#5 I'd start with TGE, advertising of TGEA is a little over glamorized.

There are several books available that cover the scripting language used by TGE (some of it still applies to TGEA) however there really isn't much that covers the actual source code. There are resources and user contributed code snippets though. The rest of the information you might need is spread throughout this website, its forums and TDN. For the most part it's thorough, but hard to find or outdated. If you're expecting a complete guide to ship with the engine, you won't get one. I've been around since 2004 and back then Garage Games were promising official documentation in the form of a book with an accompanying CD, which would be available for purchase for around $30 - still waiting for that one. Most people here that I respect and that have a sound knowledge of the engine have taken around two years to get there, by means of self learning.

Back to my point, start with TGE. If only for the fact that it is more stable.

P.S. The demo won't expire in 30 days - I know it says that on the download page however that is not the case.

#6 Another point, you might want to follow the tutorials and documentation I'll be uploading over the next few months (first post was yesterday, the next two will be on Wednesday and Sunday). They cover the basics of scripting and making a game of tag using weapons

Ed Johnson will also be posting tutorials giving an "eagle eye" perspective of the Torque engine, as well as asset creation and exportation.

#7 Thanks again Tim. You make a convincing argument for TGE.

I still wish GG would provide more documentation with their "evaluation" downloads though. Their absense makes it very difficult to get started with Torque, in any flavor.

I feel like I have to actually buy the program in order to seriously evaluate it. That's not how an evaluation is supposed to work...

#8 @Michael: I had already reviewed your blog during my forum travels. Thanks for providing your guidance to the community! I will keep my eye out for further beginner tutorials.

#9 .

#10 @Berserk: actually there is no PDF of any kind in the TGE demo or in the TGEA demo. I think this is a huge problem for new users.

#11 .

#12 @Berserk: it's a simple test. Go download the demo zip and see for yourself. I promise, there's no PDF of any sort in the package, unless they've changed it in the last couple of days. Maybe there was at one time in the past, but no longer.