TorqueX equals an incomplete TGEA

#21 It is in the QA queue behind a few other things so we don't have a firm timeline on when it will be out.

#22 Hmmmm...

Is it just me, or is the obvious solution somthing like this:

GG>>> Hey guys, thingy and whatsit are working on a new feature, at this time we are hoping for
x,y,z but unfortunatly cannot promise this will be the result, however with your guys support
we are sure that this project will result in a benift for all of us.. we welcome you ideas and
critisim about this project. PLEASE remember people, things may change, but we hope to
release this project within 3 months (read 6 months programmer time lol)
Negative and non-constructive flaming will simply be ignored, be part of the evolution, not
devolution :)


3 Months later after several posted topics & updates on progress....

GG>> Hi people, well its unfortunate that even with your guys help , thingy & whatsit seem
to have come to an impass in relation to feature x of their project, if anyone has any ideas
or has any experiance in the field of X, and could devote some time to the project, it may
result in a cash bounty for them.
As always we welcome your constructive feedback, and thanks for bareing with us.

3 Moths later

GG>> OK the project thingy & whatsit have been working on, along with the wonderful
help from "torque enthusiast" is finally at a stage where we are going to release with
the next update... we can't give a date on that yet because we would like to make sure
feature / fix A,B,C is completeed first, this may take a while... if I say 2 months, it may be 6 or more.
Again I would like to thank the torque community for their support and patience...
YOU GUYS ROCK



You get the idea ???

#23 We tried something very similar to that for Constructor (go read my posts, blogs, and devshot comments) and it really only made things worse and worse and led to our current policy =(

#24 That really stinks Matt. I really wish those people hadn't ruined it for those of us who could be reasonable/sensible about things.

#25 Matt that is not entirely accurate there was a lot of should be getting something ready in a couple months then hear nothing for 4-6 months. by then the mob had already gotten pretty stirred up. It you lay out a time line to a group then when that time come you gotta be there with an explanation if you are not where you say you will be one a project. I know our customers where I work do at least.

You did give out more information than anyone else at GG but it was just to late. By then many people were just to irritated to ever let cooler head previal. If you are gonna miss a deadline you know before the deadline is even there. The Best thing is to just be honest as soon as possible. But no instead it was lets just ignor them and keep on working. for many many months after what you had told people. When you know you are no gonna be able to deliver immediatly so and tell the customer so they can adjust their plans accordingly. and if you don't know how to fix it say "we don't know what is wrong with it, we will tell you as soon as we know more".

and as for people being negative. Come on man you guys need thicker skin. You gotta take the good with the bad. You also get tons of people telling you how great you guy are when you come thru.

#26

Quote:
and as for people being negative. Come on man you guys need thicker skin. You gotta take the good with the bad. You also get tons of people telling you how great you guy are when you come thru.

It has nothing to do with thick skin or personal feelings--it has to do with market branding, public opinion, viral spread of information and (valid or invalid) perceptions, and several other marketing/pr level issues.

If you look at it from a "far side" perspective, we are currently taking under-promise and over-deliver to the extreme. We'd rather be able to discuss as we go along, and are (as mentioned above) trying it again with Torque X in a small way, but past experiences have shown it to be very difficult and dangerous.

Once again, the very fact that this initial post exists shows that no matter which way we go, we are going to have unhappy people--so we go with what causes the least amount of issues overall.

#27 So let me get this straight since this is not a utopia where everyone is happy with every move you make. your choice is just to shut everyone out? LOL Do you not see how rediculas this sounds?

anyway I'm done with this you guys obviously just don't get it. Your marketing/PR guys ruined this community.

And yes you are gonna have people that are gonna fuss at thing no matter what you do. People are different. What make person A happy might piss off persons B and C. but the next decision will prolly make person C and A happy and piss of guy B. Dude that is just the way of the world. Get over it. Instead you choose to punish everyone. Great decision Excellent marketing! This is turning into apple or Microsoft.

You guys make great products don't get me wrong but your people that are making these decisions suck.

I when to school for marketing and this is not how you handle things.

I guess on this issue we will just have to agree to disagree.

Talk to ya later

JBB

#28 sigh

... and sometimes they just... don't... get it.

#29 Just stop replying and even reading this thread Stephen.. as James put it before, it's falling on deaf ears. I'd challenge James to show me anything he's produced/developed in the commercial world, but it's not worth my time.

#30 As for people beeing unhappy:
We are human and humans are only happy if they can be unhappy and complain about something.
This is really sad and it would be great if people didn't demotivate others in that way but I guess thats the reason that mankind is actually where it is, because "genius heads" were pi**ed and invented stuff to shut them down ...

Its just that happy people tend to cause less of "hot air" than unhappy people.
At least here on the boards.
But the happy people are in the end the ones that will do mouth to mouth propaganda and that will keep the unhappy ones calm, at places out of the reach of your arms and moderators.

I am not talking of feeding monkeys as well, that does not help anyone.
But it would be nice to know whats generally going on.

And if the releases would be split into 2 types:
Fixes and feature additions/replacements
I think its not really acceptable if people have to collect the fixes on the board for months just because a bugfix release like 1.01 took by far to long to be completed after 1.00 was rushed bugged (and known bugged, not by accident) out of the door.

Fixes: should be done on monthly base, could be done by a bytepatcher if you insist on the installer system instead of offering those patched files as zip downloads with the .cc / .h files which I would prefer

Feature addition / replacement: 3+ months, as stuff needs time to be fully implemented and ironed out. It doesn't help anyone if it has to be replaced twice until it works as initially planned. Just will make people move away as they have to ask themself how far the rest of the engine might be prethought and be broken at a later date and if they will be able to get their project done in time and with the planned human ressources.

#31 www.lukefisher.com/war-room.wav

--Mike

#32 For what it's worth; I've been in the "hot-seat" in game development and sometimes there isn't a clear choice / easy choice to make. Some companies fire people because of some of their choices either during development or during a patch release or just because they found something they said on a board somewhere that wasn't 100% (or even 80%) to the companies liking as a whole. Sometimes because someone said something that went against policies as far as what information can be talked about before release and what subjects are hands-off. I can't fault GG for their decisions. They aren't easy to make.
The fact that some of their staff actually get onto the boards and try to help resolve issues with people / for people is so insanely nice I don't know what else to say about it; other than GOOD JOB!

Anyone who is happy with the engine should keep the faith and resolve that if it's not fixed, fork the code path and continue with your development. Add the features you want on top of what's already there or re-factor the pieces yourselves. If your write your additions cleanly you shouldn't have many problems when GG releases an update or new major version, etc. If your code is clean you shouldn't have to change hardly anything when these new patches / updates are released.

Video game development / engine development isn't always the easiest programming to complete on time or not. There are too many factor's in what can go wrong, especially with Windows. There is also a wealth of knowledge that goes into these engines that most people can't even come close to understanding.

It's not 100% guaranteed that when a company releases a piece of software it's going to work without failure on every system or setup out there. Sometimes driver companies are involved in this and there is nothing the engine creators can do about it, etc. Sometimes the hardware itself is faulty. There are too many factors in the systems all of this runs on. It's remarkable that the PC even still runs with M$ in control of it.

I do appreciate the work GG has done with Torque and all of it's products. I reviewed the engine and decided on that if I was going to want to undertake this as the basis for any project. There are pros and cons to everything. I just found that I like the company, I like the technology used and the solutions are more along the lines of what I would have done then I've ever seen before. I like the community too, but instead of getting frustrated at GG because they had to make a business choice for Pr. Just agree to disagree and move on.

If your new to video game programming / development then please don't take your frustrations out on everyone else; there is a lot to learn and there are others willing to help, you just need to ask them for it in a civil way. The community for this company / engine tech is second to none from what I've seen since I've purchased it. I admit I don't help out much on the forums but I'm mostly strained for time. Everyone helps as much as they can..

What more can you really ask for.

@GG: Thanks for the time and effort you guys have put into this technology. I appreciate it as I know a ton of others do as well.

#33 Well said, Scott. More people like you need to speak up more often. That way the employees at GG will know that there are more like you.

#34 I agree on that Scott, well said.
Thats why I actually bought TGE and TGEA after owning TGB (T2D) from mid EA afterwards ... although I already would have owned some powerfull languages with engines (DBP, GDK, B3D and B3DSDK) for smaller indie projects and prototyping.

#35 Hmm... would just like to post this link to a developers blog.
The guys name is David Haywood, and he's on the dev team of the M.A.M.E.
project.

I'm posting it because I feel the way he deals with WIP is simply awesome
haze.mameworld.info/

#36 .

#37 TX is both 3D and 2D. Tools exist for 2D at this point in time and 3D pipeline and tools are in development.

#38 .

#39 Even if a lot of the work spent on TGB/TX etc benefits TGEA in some way I hope it's clear that if the resources would be spent on TGEA in the first place it would benefit TGEA a lot more. Now I understand from a business pov that it's somewhat beneficial to have a lot of products that target diffrent segments, however, I think you'd get a lot better rep and thereby more customers if you wouldn't spread yourselves so thin and not diversify until you have at least 1 very solid product.

One of the reason for a lot of the complaints is because TGEA has a lot of flaws in a lot of areas. I'm now for example sitting here looking at the ~4000 lines long player class and can't help but thinking that the engine needs a lot of refactoring in a lot of areas. Don't get me wrong though, I still think the engine is worth it for the current price tag even in its flawed state, but it could be so much better.

#40 Keep in mind that those "end-user" classes like Player, and all the Vehicles are to be taken as examples of how to implement. I don't think GG ever intended them to be a "read to go for any game you want to make." Pretty much everything from ShapeBase down in the object hierarchy should (IMO) be re-examined for your individual game's needs.