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Documentation on how to start game folder from scratch

by dkah · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 10/02/2007 (2:46 am) · 3 replies

Hello

I need some documentation / tutorials how to set up the whole game structure, all the folders, the main.cs and pref.cs scripts etc. Has anybody a link please ?

Too clarify : I can program, no problem compiling the engine, I have got the art into dts thingy, the level into dif stuff, haven't done terrain yet, but seems plausible.
I mean I knew from reviews that the documentation was not good, but it is worse than I thought. Without my prior knowledge how this stuff works in other engines and how a game has to work internally, I would probably be totally lost by now and not just mildly disoriented and slightly frustrated.

I want to set up a game, from scratch, with minimum of copy and paste. Without all the demo stuff. With a GUIBuilder, a mission builder and all the important control stuff. I do not know what may be important, because I didn't find a list about this stuff.

I would like to know how multi-level stuff is supposed to work ? Can somebody point out some documentation please. There is a lot of starting things. But I want to make a game. So is there any documentation on how to get the framework up ? I do not need help in scripting at the moment, the principle is clear. But what scripts TGEA expects, where to put them and how to structure everything to get a game and not a demo level.
I can find out this stuff by going through the examples. But I bought an engine to speed things up, not having to puzzle out everything myself. Probably I just missed it, trying to sift through too many documentation fragments.

--- Warning : begin of a mild rant of someone slightly frustrated, if you have influence at GG please read on and tell them

I played around with the demo, got frustrated that some of the stuff in my example folder does not work, why is it there then. Searched and tried to find the easy seeming tutorial demo of TGE, failed. Got really frustrated to only get the water demo and the stupid interactive demo level, which is actually not really a nice starting point, to much click and waiting time.
I puzzeled out, how to get the simple demo stuff that is scattered in the ressources to work, thanks to the person who posted about the opengl to d3d stuff. And my luck that I stumbled upon it.

But please people at GG. Can you make a nice example, where I can get into the misson editor with a minimum of fuss ? No water, no funny orc dances. Just simple start and everything is ready to try out the various things.
And GG you got bought I heard, invest in documentation. Real one. Not some wiki with some stuff here, some resource listings there, some funny engine document with only locally helpful stuff there. And huge empty spaces in between. It would really, really help to sell your engine.
First people would hear how easy it is and flock to you. And second there would be more finished games in a shorter amount of time, you could show potential new customers.
I have dealt with engines with worse documentation, much worse and much more expensive. But I never thought that the argument, others are no better is a reason to not make it at least usable.
And yes I saw the book. The one with Torque in its name. But I do not need a book to explain me how games work, I need just a reference how TGEA framework works . Not in easy digestable tutorial pieces, but in one complete reference document.
GG you actually have a good product, but at the moment it is really frustrating to find things out. I would at this point not recommend TGEA to anybody as an easy or fast option and I would so much like to.
Thank you for listening, end of rant ...

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#1
10/02/2007 (6:41 am)
Have no time for a full fledged answer but unless you alter the engine code, make sure that you don't remove the terrainwater demo folder. Atlas actually references the stuff in there.
#2
10/02/2007 (11:01 am)
I will post all my further findings in this thread, so if someone else has the same question, they can find possible answers here.
After reading the above comment I searched through the engine source code. It needs the shaders in the example/shaders folder, haven't found any other dependencies yet, but I will keep that in mind.
Found this little docu fragment on script folders for TGE tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/Torque/DirectoryStructure . Looks roughly compatible to all the demo folders I looked at.
Ok I see a little clearer now.
It is a little bit like a easter egg hunt, isn't it ? Wash out the little nugget of gold from the sand of information. Oh well back to reading through the forums, resources and all the various wiki pages on all the various engines, you live to learn.
#3
10/02/2007 (12:09 pm)
Theres this for tge that might help you out... shouldn't be much difference besides the shaders folder, but I don't have it in front of me atm.

www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=12721