Please God allow us to search the Constructor forums

#1 Haha, thats a way to put it.

#2 Agreed. this isn't the first time this has been requested. it's very agrivating to find things, and a lot of double/triple/etc-posts are happening because of the lack of a good search.

#3 I'm deeply aggravated about this. Is it not a matter of flipping a switch on that Google search box, more or less?

It's like they don't give a damn.

#4 Hmm

Let me remeber , YOU GOT THIS FOR FREE!!!!


DID ANY of you post Garage and say thank YOU?

I think on the next release of FREE constructor i will volunteer to write a TROJAN

to deactivate the accounts of all ungratefull people FORCING you to buy 3dsMAX

oh wait u probbly torrented that DIDNT YOU !

#5 I think it's a bit much to threaten with TROJANS.

#6 Ok ok

NOT

Trojans then

but definitely the bunch from "300"

#7 Constructor might be free. But it's a piece of kit to support a licensed - albeit remarkably inexpensive - software package. I don't think that a request to ease the process of searching the forums is unreasonable. It'd improve the end-user experience massively, being able to actually find information on the forums. Would have thought that would be a good thing for everyone.

Giving away supporting software for free doesn't justify a haphazard forum. Saying so doesn't justify getting threatened or accussed of torrenting.

#8 Im pretty sure Garage are aware of the problem

im also pretty sure that due to the nature of business its not high in the list
of priorities

Im also pretty sure that MAYBE a polite mail to Garage with a OFFER to help out
would be greatly appreciated by them, thats the whole point of TDN

My post was aimed at people who take something for granted and then climb onto
the company's website and complain about somthing given to them for free, almost
as if they had a right to do so.....

My comment about torrent is that these same type of people think all software is "free"
and happily torrent all stuff they dont feel like paying for

#9 Mark, to answer your question, yes I did thank GG, more than once, for releasing Constructor. I think they are very nice people. Search my posts and you will see this.

Which is why I don't understand their unwillingness to do this thing, or explain why not.

Also, in all I've personally dropped a couple grand on GG. It's not free. Thats how I can tell the difference--free stuff I don't spend thousands of dollars on.

Oh wait..Constructor is "free". It just happens to be the only tool that will let very much of the non-free stuff actually work.

Oh yeah, and I shouldn't be the least bit frustrated almost six months after release that I can't search for information in the forums on it. I did ask politely, more than once, as have many others. And I shouldn't express my frustration, even in a fairly civil fashion.

Bah.

#10 Then i humbly stand corrected and apologise for "letting u have it" ;)

Your's was the first post in this "whinge" and i didnt see any previous comments

(some posts go back to 2000)

As u could no doubt guess from my tone, i have every little time for the type of people

as mentioned above .

I hope they sort it out soon then

Ps u think u spent money? (i paid 7 times more that adv price becuase of our xchange rate)

#11 Just to add some logic to Mark Jordaan's type of argument;

Lets say you get a free car, under the advertised assumption that it drove and operated great even better then all the other cars that one must pay money for. Now soon after you start driving this car, all the fuel leaks out because of faulty construction and the car explodes, harming many people. (Not that Constructor is going to kill anyone- but it will suck away many hours of your life and never offer anything in return..)

Who is at fault here?
Well, it must be the person that accepted the free car, using Mark Jordaan's logic, (and other threads here in the Torque Constructor forums). Not the persons giving away faulty cars. I guess it would be different if the car came with a disclaimer stating that the car may leak fuel and explode possibly harming people. But Constructor do not have any disclaimer stating that it is still in BETA and do not work as advertised.

Just because something is free do not give it right to be faulty.

What Torque owners should be very upset about is the fact that Torque have been around for many years now, and there are still NO good art content exporters that support everything that Torque advertise as supported features, DIF and DTS.

There are many options for creating Torque art content, but one must still use an exporter to get that art into Torque. No place on the Torque product page do it mention what Torque support and what the exporters support are not the same. Its not feature if one can not use it.

#12 That being said, before Constructor and TGEA, I could never, ever make a dif like the bathtub pictured here:


Sure, it needs some work, but there would have been a ton of missing faces before.

Point being, Contructor --> regular Save as DIF --> TGEA is the ONLY Torque path that something this complex works. Thus I need Constructor for my project--and though I am actually delighted that it can be done at all, I do need Constructor resources.

I'm actually starting to think it's malicious on GG's part--they're annoyed with all the whining about Constructor and passive aggressively taking it out on us.

#13 Yes, its odd how i cant seem to get even the most simple of geometry to export out of Constructor, and NOT be full of errors. Not to mention something as complex as what you have there... It may be that im using a heavy modified version of TGE4.22, and Constructor is aimed for the 1.5+ crowd.

Here is something i often use to TEST different DIF exporters from QUARK, this is TGE map2dif+, not sure what version as there are number of them...


As you can see texturing is ugly, as QUARK have some very gimp texture placement ability. But for old map2dif lightmaps, they seem very smooth....



EDIT:
"I'm actually starting to think it's malicious on GG's part--they're annoyed with all the whining about Constructor and passive aggressively taking it out on us."

About this part, sure there are allot of people NOT so happy with Constructor. But a good company would take criticism and turn it into a better product, not get emotional about it. A good company would have fixed the most pressing bugs as soon as possible. Its understandable Constructor is still very young, but allot of times young programs come out with fresh bug fixes every few weeks, as they evolve and get better. So far every new Constructor is NOT actually an improvement over the last Constructor... But who knows how many people are actually programing on Constructor, and how much time they actually get to work on Constructor, or IF Constructor is actually actively being bug fixed right now.....

#14 Caylo: How the heck did you even get that into TGE? I haven't been able to get anything even close to that (or my tub) except into TGEA.

Things like that _are_ going in quite smoothly via the path I specified. Mind you, I'm kinda the Ed Wood of video games (sans the cross dressing). My standards are kinda low! :-) I am falling back in love with TSE/TGEA now. I decided to port (back) to it when I realized I absolutely must have multiple water and terrain blocks with the ability to place and configure them trivially.

#15 As i mentioned, i have many different versions of map2dif, some are the OLD classic map2dif, some are debug builds, some are from forum threads where people have posted versions of map2dif they them selfs had made. I often export multiple times, useing the diffrent map2dif, untill i find one that perfectly fits.

Its a hassle, but the same go for DTS shapes. I have not found any ONE exporter that 100% works.

#16 I hear ya. Multiple map2dif's is for the birds. So far, Constructor --> TGEA has been vedy vedy good to me.

One I got the hang of it, though, Milkshape --> map2difplus has been just fine for me, though. Even if I'm working in another app, I bring it there for portability's sake.

#17 I'm a bit late in getting back here, but I too want to defend my right to post a complaint. Sure, I could sit here and wine and dine GG on the fantastic features of Constructor (texturing being one of them), but does it do any good to stroke the ego that way? If it's said in the way of "I love this feature, and would appreciate if we could get this feature," then that is much better than simpling saying "you guys rock." What/Who does that help? However, when something is absolutely broken, and nothing seems to be done about it with numerous comments/complaints, then this post is extremely valid. As for your comment above, Mark...

Quote:Then i humbly stand corrected and apologise for "letting u have it" ;)

Your's was the first post in this "whinge" and i didnt see any previous comments

...it was completely uncalled for and much more unprofessional than many of the complaints that are out there. I have posted many complaints and/or wish-list type things to help this product get better. It is obvious that WE are the QA Department to an extent, and a QA Bug report will [u]never[/u] say "we found a bug, but since it's a free tool, we won't report it."

Grow up and realize that we all want the same thing here... a working product to the extent (and above) what it was advertised for. Personally, I have wasted countless hours in Constructor to only have my things not export correctly, or export and not work within the engine (Collision, Lighting, etc) correctly. Going back to the original purpose of this post, and replying to your comment above, you obviously haven't read ALL of the posts, because I have mentioned it more than once that the form is not available to find/search correctly. It may be that someone has had (and possibly fixed or gotten a responce from GG) about a certain problem that you or I may be having, but if we can't find that responce, this forum isn't as complete as it could be.

Everyone person here is using Constructor when possible. That in and of itself is showing that there is not only an interest, but a desire to use what has the potential to be a great DIF model building program. So stop wasting everyone's time and posting useless words where you don't belong. Nicolas and Caylo have stated it perfectly ... just because something was given away as "free" doesn't mean it shouldn't have support. It's true that as a business, income is important and some Constructor things may be put on hold while generating revenue. That is understandable. But, as a tool, it is also in GG's best interst to be able to boast about having the best DIF builder out there, to supliment and help sell their for-profit engines.

#18 If we don't have the tools to make games, GG cannot leverage us as a revenue stream on the console side of life.

I'm actually starting to feel a little personally offended about this forum searching thing, though. And the lack of a response from anyone at GG about it. Because I know that at least one employee reads all the forum posts, and they've chosen to ignore this.

I mean, is there a technical problem? Did the wrong guy quit and take the admin password with him? What?

#19 They haven't answered because they can't find this post. :-) j/k

#20 Forum searching has been a topic for years, and we don't have any new information to share. The request has been recognized, passed to the appropriate people, and is being factored in to all of the other web tasks and will be addressed when it's priority dictates. That very well could be tomorrow, or it could be 4 months from now.

Here is the fundamental breakdown between the positions each of you describe, and the position of GarageGames as a whole:

Just about by definition, all of your comments, questions, and issues are "top priority" for you...but that does not make them "top priority" for us. That isn't arrogance on my or GG's part, it's simple fact--there is almost always a bigger picture to take into account when assigning resources, and the solution is almost never "hire someone (else) to fix this now!".

Let's give an example: right now, Matt Fairfax is transitioning into being the Community Manager for these forums. Matt Fairfax is also the lead developer on Constructor (it's always been his initiative). Currently, your latest posts are related to Lee being "personally offended" because no one has replied recently, which implies two things:

--Lee feels that a response to his personal question is more important than everything else, including the possibility that the person doing the responding might just be working on things that are actually more important to him
--Lee, and others, feel that community management is in many ways more important than the products themselves.

Let me be blatantly up front here: I personally agree with that last in many ways. I was hired in June of 2005 with one of my top 3 job responsibilities being community management. For the record, at the same time I set up not only the Commercial Support Division and the Training Division, but was also the single provider for both of those services.

Let me also be brutally honest: a combination of infrastructure decisions, available resources, GG decisions regarding information flow, and a community full of both reasonable (and in some cases) unreasonable expectations makes community management currently quite difficult and inefficient. This is a known issue, and one of high importance to us, because as I imply above, those most capable of providing accurate, timely, and high quality community management are also in many cases those most qualified to do even more important jobs in the company as well--and that's not an easy resource challenge to manage in any company.

Has this post been read? Many, many, many times.

Has it been discussed internally? Almost daily, as well as being included on the weekly community manager report of "hot/important topics".

Is it being factored into decisions to fix the issues I mention in the paragraph above? You betcha.

Is it going to be fixed in the short term? Almost certainly not.

Did I just spend 30 minutes answering this post that I could have spent in a more valuable way? There are different positions of course, but yes, pretty much.

Are there going to be at least 1 or 2 people that are frustrated/offended by my response? Most probably, and that's unfortunate :(

Later Edit: I realized after re-reading my own post that I set up an implication that Matt is currently working on Constructor. I want to clear this up: while Matt is almost certainly thinking about the remaining issues in Constructor, I'm reasonably certain he is not currently tasked with Constructor related development. He is however working on some very fundamentally important tasks that we cannot currently discuss publicly.