Torque 2

#21 Hey there,
IMHO Polysoup is the way forward as most modern "high end" games (such as Oblivion) use it.

The levels of detail a model can contain are much greater than BSP.
Complicated assets can be created and merged with a pipeline more efficiently as the industry supports modelling to a much greater level.

Now only if i could get 60fps with Oblivion........

#22 I don't think that I'm alone in my insane excitment about the future of GarageGames and Torque!!

#23 Hehehe, nice thread Stephen. I'm one of those that are a bit afraid of changes once I get the hang of something, but I can't help but think this is interesting.

I know you guys have a ton to do but if you see this message and find a minute or two, I'd like to know if SFX will be a Torque2 exclusive or if it will make its way into Torque at some point?

#24 @Stephen - So is TGEA/TSE dead? I'm pretty upset with the state of TSE and it appears it isn't going to get any real attention from this point on.

#25 @Marcus

Quote:None of the products we currently have are "dead"--in fact, if you are planning on publishing a game any time in the next 12-20 months, the existing products are your primary options, and will continue to be the most appropriate. As always, you'll want to select the engine option based on your game type, and most importantly target hardware market.

there you go :)

#26 ^ That quote doesn't really say anything about these engines getting proper updates in the next 12-20 months.

#27 Personally I'm really happy that those engine-dev cycle and then game-dev cycle times seem to over at GG and now there's enough people (or will be) to do both at the same time. And that's bloody awesome. Really. I mean think for a moment what Stephen said - they are not announcing something that _will_ be developed some day in the future, they _already_ worked a lot of time on this. So this would obviously be also the reason where Brian, Pat and Ben went to. I bet they work on this and made fantastic progress. Btw: Would be a good time for those guys to blog again. Ben and Brians last blogs are... uhm... old? :-)

Btw: There's one person that I miss in all these statements: Where the hell is Mark Frohnmayer? I mean Tim Gift is known for not beeing "the public guy", but what about Mark?

#28 @metalliandy - I agree with Nikhil. That quote tells me nothing.

#29 Well it tells you that TGEA is not dead, so therefore its reasonable to assume a live product still being developed right? :P

#30 I remember that during Round Table someone from GG told something like "we are not going to forget about current engines" and "we have resources (human) to support it".
Was watching it on stream, and I believe the videos still available at ustream.

#31 Let's face it, like Stephen said above we are all not exactly going to really believe in what anyone says until we start seeing the results.

This is what I feel about the current "situation" (that's right, in quotes):
- IC/IAC/UAC.. whatever. They don't concern us over here and we shouldn't be worried about them since they are only interested in gaming and I don't see them just going around kicking us out of here :P

- Torque 2 sounds good. But it's going to take a long time to be ready for what majority want.

- Now most of us don't really care about T2 or IAC. We are concerned about updates to current engines only (no, docs don't count.. they should've been there in the first place). Now that GG guys are properly setup (for a long time now) we should hopefully be seeing some upgrades for age old engine like TGE at least (seriously, TGE is NOT for casual games.. which basically means retarded puzzle games). I have been looking at C4 development for a while and it's amazing how fast the updates are rolling for that engine (it looks ten times better than TGE/TGEA already). But it lacks proper terrain system (not for long though) and MP support I am sticking with TGE. Also, TGE has a lot of free resources and a bigger community behind it as well.


So anyway, it's highly unlikely that GG will lie to any of us and run away laughing madly into the night as the screams echo.. err, I mean they hopefully will release some kickass updates in next few weeks not 3-4 months considering they have been working with IAC for a long time now. That's all. Peace.

*waits for the updates.. anytime now*

#32 What I like about the news is that they seem to have a complete team again. From what mentioned in a TGEA board thread, they lost their "head of R&D" which was mentioned as the reason why TGEA went into de facto sleep even thought it still is not up its advertised features 8 months past release.

As I know as TGB owner, that GG actually can ship something very usefull if they focus on it, I hope this now starts to roll into the TGEA world as well. TGE is already quite well developed and just face the truth: OpenGL isn't suited for Windows and DX7 like graphical capabilities aren't for 2007 ...

#33

Quote:TGE is already quite well developed and just face the truth: OpenGL isn't suited for Windows and DX7 like graphical capabilities aren't for 2007

Wait. So what about games like Doom3 and upcoming Rage (which looks godly btw) from iD software using OpenGL? I think you meant that TGE needs serious updating in graphics department instead of ditching OpenGL (what about 3.0?) which helps when porting to Linux or Mac..

#34 That won't make the driver problems on Windows any better.
If you are not planning to make a game to NVidia user as main base and ATI as aditional base and dropping most of the potential market for non AAA titles, OpenGL is just of secondary importance on Windows.

I agree that it is needed for OSX.

Linux on the other hand is of zero interest for me. I develop for 1 OS, not 1 OS per user due to X different kernels, drivers etc. Its already hard enough to get current gen technics run on different Driver - GPU combinations.
I already had me bad half year experience making a 3D game that much multiplatform, that it worked correctly on Linux. In the end, the project was cancelled as too much time was lost when targetting this damned platform or better the little fact that even between our 4 test systems incosistencies showed up even though their windows behavior was consistent. And that even thought they had similar hardware and drivers, just different distributions and theirfor different desktop systems and kernel versions.
Never again.

#35

Quote:
I mean think for a moment what Stephen said - they are not announcing something that _will_ be developed some day in the future, they _already_ worked a lot of time on this. So this would obviously be also the reason where Brian, Pat and Ben went to. I bet they work on this and made fantastic progress.

I, honestly, would prefer that the products they have be finished, and up to par with what was advertised or announced previously. Its all nice and great, but with the steaming pile that TGE-A has turned out to be, compared to what was promoted for the past year or more, I won't be holding my breath on Torque 2 until it is out in 1.0. I imagine there will be early adopter releases and milestones, just like every other engine product, but as we've seen.. those mean absolutely nothing.

I will be excited to see a new, fresh code base though, instead of a rehashed old one.

I do welcome the idea of "transparent development", but since that existed at some point previously, although maybe not on such a "large" scale, I will be very curious to watch it play out and develop.

#36 Oh man, I'm getting so excited about this news. It just keeps getting better and better. I think I'm gonna run out and buy some stock in IAC. wOOt!

#37 Ok, trying to catch up on some various points that were asked, and give as much information as we have available at this time, so bear with me!

Quote:
How do games play in a browser, but be technology-neutral? Obviously C++ games need to work in it?

Gary (-;

Fair question, and points to me that a quick phrase answer doesn't do full justice to the question. By the statement "IA is technology neutral", what I mean is that IA in and of itself is not dependent on which engine/technology the game is developed within--for example, roughly one third of our current in development games for IA are with Torque in some flavor--the rest are other engines, or engine-less. I'm not 100% sure on the answer regarding "c++ only?" but as far as I am aware it simply requires the ability to link to the IA API and interact with the modules.

Quote:
(BSP vs Poly Soup)

Without spending tons of time explaining the differences, in general a BSP representation of a geometry is going to always be faster (rendering and collision) and probably more highly optimized (culling, via portals) than a free poly/poly soup representation. That being said, Torque 2 is a forward looking engine, and the power of the average game computer has progressed rapidly enough that the optimizations of BSP geometry representations are not necessarily as critical as they have been in the past. For this reason, and all of the flexibility advantages free poly representations provide, our primary internal representation will be free poly for Torque 2.

Of course, given the modular system and component based architecture of Torque 2, if, as an engine consumer, you determine that BSP is mandatory for your development, switching back and forth will be very flexible, and any implementations will be highly re-usable.

Quote:
I'd like to know if SFX will be a Torque2 exclusive or if it will make its way into Torque at some point?
(as well as various questions regarding current product lines and their expectations)

Another fair question, but not a simple one to answer. First, let me say two things right up front:

--our existing product lines will continue to receive active support from now until the time where it makes sense for the community as a whole to transition to Torque 2 (which will be well in to the future).

--Torque 2 is in such an early stage of development that it doesn't make sense for us to immediately start working on productizing the underlying engine technology with documentation, tools, tutorials, or other supplemental material. Therefore, we are currently carefully evaluating ways that we can apply resources to existing products (as well as internal R&D technology, such as a possibility of SFX becoming available "early" in some form) to benefit everyone.

I am going to be brutally up front however--there is going to come a time in the future where it makes more sense for everyone (you, us, the community as a whole) to transition productization efforts to Torque 2. We've literally spent more than 2 resource-years evaluating just about every possible path result for optimal benefit, evaluating past weaknesses in the productization of previous engines, and carefully scoping out the time and resources needed to make Torque 2 as effective and appropriate to the community as possible, and it's important to all of us that when it makes the most sense, we begin to focus efforts more and more on future technology.

We are fundamentally aware that we won't please everyone. It's also extremely important to us as a team, and a company, to do the best we can to both support our existing products, as well as effectively and smartly transition to Torque 2 when it makes the most sense for everyone.

Quote:
I do welcome the idea of "transparent development", but since that existed at some point previously, although maybe not on such a "large" scale, I will be very curious to watch it play out and develop.

Us too yeeehah! It's going to take time to come up to speed however--fundamentally important infrastructure implementations have to take place before this is smoothly running, so please don't expect it next week--I am however doing everything possible to make sure it comes as quickly as can be--after all, I don't want to be re-typing and/or migrating information all over the place for an extended period of time!

#38 Is Torque2 gonna be written in C# like TorqueX?

Oh, and really looking forward to the transparent development. Sounds great to me. I for one really appreaciate the open-ness.

#39 Is Torque2 gonna be written in C# like TorqueX?

Oh, and really looking forward to the transparent development. Sounds great to me. I for one really appreaciate the open-ness.

#40

Quote:
Is Torque2 gonna be written in C# like TorqueX?

No, not at all. It's C++ (and in some cases supporting languages such as assembly, PHP, etc. when most appropriate).

TorqueX is a very effective insight into some of the core architecture and design of Torque 2, but they are unrelated in every way in regards to actual implementation.