Garage Games & OpenGL
by T. John Laird · in General Discussion · 01/24/2008 (12:10 pm) · 78 replies
Does garage games have any serious interest in supporting OpenGL in their engines in the future? From what I can tell there isn't support for OpenGL in TGEA. What about Torque 2? Will it have OpenGL support? I'm just trying to figure out which direction garage games is going in.
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#42
@Alex, you well say:
and I obviously agree, but have two comments about it. First of all, I was not talking about writing code once and run it on my cell phone, my PC and on PS3, I think you would get my point without specifying that- You will still have to work on it anyway, however, is the same technology base, as Torque is at a different level, on his different versions. And I neither was saying that OpenGL support on Torque will make dev easier on plataforms not supported by Torque. I was enumerating general advantages of OpenGL, as the discussion allowed it.
and as a second comment, a quote from http://www.khronos.org/opengles/:
@Pat, this discussion was coming easy before your unfortunate aproach to the conversation. As you guys always ask us to be polite, you should also be, dont you think?
If the thread is tiresome to you, is your option to not read it. But you posted, pretending us to change the subject? Maybe you could see it from a different angle and analize why this happen. Also, as Josh well said, your suggestion only "might be interesting to a GFX API programmer".
This time there were no rants, no boys asking for game-o-matic system, there were recognized community members on a civil discussion, asking and debating about the support for a graphics API layer. What would be the right way to do such thing in your opinion?
C'mon people why everybody get so nervous abou it?
01/31/2008 (6:28 pm)
@Trenton, is weird what you say... I will NOT tell my potential customers "install Windows or get lost". Are you saying GG should say that to us?@Alex, you well say:
Quote:cellphones and consoles do not use the OpenGL we all know and love (or tolerate). Cellphones use OpenGL ES 1.0/1.1, the Wii uses it's own crazy OpenGL variant, and the PS3 uses "PSGL", which is essentially OpenGL ES 2.0 with Cg instead of GLSL. OpenGL support is not going to make cellphone, Wii, or PS3 support any easier.
and I obviously agree, but have two comments about it. First of all, I was not talking about writing code once and run it on my cell phone, my PC and on PS3, I think you would get my point without specifying that- You will still have to work on it anyway, however, is the same technology base, as Torque is at a different level, on his different versions. And I neither was saying that OpenGL support on Torque will make dev easier on plataforms not supported by Torque. I was enumerating general advantages of OpenGL, as the discussion allowed it.
and as a second comment, a quote from http://www.khronos.org/opengles/:
Quote:Because OpenGL ES is based on OpenGL, there are numerous relevant books, and a great deal of relevant sample code, making information about OpenGL ES inexpensive and easy to find. With the introduction of OpenGL ES, a developer can now write basically the same code for cell phones to supercomputers.
@Pat, this discussion was coming easy before your unfortunate aproach to the conversation. As you guys always ask us to be polite, you should also be, dont you think?
If the thread is tiresome to you, is your option to not read it. But you posted, pretending us to change the subject? Maybe you could see it from a different angle and analize why this happen. Also, as Josh well said, your suggestion only "might be interesting to a GFX API programmer".
This time there were no rants, no boys asking for game-o-matic system, there were recognized community members on a civil discussion, asking and debating about the support for a graphics API layer. What would be the right way to do such thing in your opinion?
C'mon people why everybody get so nervous abou it?
#43
01/31/2008 (7:14 pm)
I think i understand your concern here. windows's market has too many big players. to withstand their onslaught we have to set foot at the area less interested by them in order to survive
#44
01/31/2008 (8:55 pm)
@Novack: No point arguing semantics, my apologies. I just wanted to make it clear that OpenGL doesn't run on cellphones or consoles, OpenGL ES does, and they are two different APIs.
#45
Every one of us here is an Indie developer working on a small budget. If we were a AAA title developer we would be licensing the Unreal or ID engine (interestingly, the ID engines all support OpenGL, BTW), or some other high-end expensive engine.
One of the major platforms for Indies to target is the Mac platform because big game companies are generally ignoring this market. Linux is second after that, but supporting Linux and Mac OS is very similar at this point.
I'm wondering why GG couldn't spare a few bucks from the 50 million to add OpenGL support to TGEA (as advertised) given that TGEA is the engine we are told to use until T2.
01/31/2008 (9:17 pm)
@Pat Wilson: I'm surprised you guys haven't figured out why the OpenGL discussions pop up over and over (it's very similar to the reason every new buyer complains about the docs). I'll just lay it out for you, that's what we, the customer, want and thought that Torque would provide. We want OpenGL support. OpenGL support was one of the things that drew me to Torque. I want to build cross-platform games and OpenGL is required to do that. TGE was supposed to support both OpenGL and DirectX, but the DirectX support is broken.Every one of us here is an Indie developer working on a small budget. If we were a AAA title developer we would be licensing the Unreal or ID engine (interestingly, the ID engines all support OpenGL, BTW), or some other high-end expensive engine.
One of the major platforms for Indies to target is the Mac platform because big game companies are generally ignoring this market. Linux is second after that, but supporting Linux and Mac OS is very similar at this point.
I'm wondering why GG couldn't spare a few bucks from the 50 million to add OpenGL support to TGEA (as advertised) given that TGEA is the engine we are told to use until T2.
#46
what i really dont understand is why directx was chosen for tgea in the first place.
01/31/2008 (10:59 pm)
Quote:
If its that easy then why don't you get off your ass, do what Garage Games promised, and port the engine to OpenGL. You could save us a lot of trouble. Frankly I'm sick of your company's attitude. You consistently make promises you know you will not keep, you do not make regular updates to TGE or TGEA, you provide absolutely no documentation (incomplete documentation is provided by the user community), and when a CUSTOMER complains you either ignore it or make some smart ass comment.
what i really dont understand is why directx was chosen for tgea in the first place.
#47
Because they wanted to ship on Xbox.
02/01/2008 (6:05 am)
Quote:
what i really dont understand is why directx was chosen for tgea in the first place.
Because they wanted to ship on Xbox.
#48
for a properly abstracted render system, there would be practically 0 difference between GLES and OpenGL
I have written a couple, and of course not all functionality is available in ES all the important stuff is there.
note that when you have an abstracted render system it does not matter who uses the data.
you do not have your data system married to the renderer
02/01/2008 (9:39 am)
Just to clarify,for a properly abstracted render system, there would be practically 0 difference between GLES and OpenGL
I have written a couple, and of course not all functionality is available in ES all the important stuff is there.
note that when you have an abstracted render system it does not matter who uses the data.
you do not have your data system married to the renderer
#49
One of the big arguments against OpenGL support is always, "Well, the OpenGL drivers suck too bad." Compared to what? Direct3D? Haven't they been sucking majorly for about a year or so since Vista was released, and are just now actually somewhat stable? If Microsoft didn't muscle vendors into shipping Vista instead of Windows XP since Vista's release, then the game industry wouldn't have suffered for a year with crap Direct3D drivers, and nVidia and ATI wouldn't have had to spend so many man-hours on them, rather than supporting their OpenGL drivers (is there proof that they've been sucking worse than Direct3D on Vista?). Of course, Microsoft doesn't want OpenGL to succeed, or they'd ditch the proprietary D3D crap and focus on OpenGL like the rest of the OS vendors.
Anyway, it takes a huge number of man-hours already just to get your game running in TGE (with its mostly working OpenGL implementation, etc.). Throw in D3D mode and you'll be spending 2-3x the man-hours trying to get your game to work anywhere near as well as it did with OpenGL. A small Indie dev team with a few programmers can't possibly hope to try to make that all work, and still make their game. Heck, if you even enable D3D mode at all in TGE (i.e. you don't disable it completely), your game will appear to "phone home" to crl.microsoft.com due to the DirectX certificate revocation check. When you're trying to sell a game, without a big brand name behind you, people just don't stand for that kind of stuff any more... they'll just delete your demo and move on.
03/24/2008 (4:46 pm)
Obviously, the people who wonder why we keep bringing up the OpenGL topic haven't attempted to run their TGE-based game via the Direct3D mode in TGE. It is severely borked, not to mention 20% as fast as the normal OpenGL mode. If we ditch the existing TGE rendering codebase for one that is all Direct3D based, we not only lose Mac and Linux sales possibilities, but we also give up the "AAA Battle-Hardened Game Engine That Has Been Used In Successful Commercial Games That Made Millions" (or something along those lines) for a codebase that isn't even completely finished/working yet (i.e. TGEA or another flavor). How many successful games (sales-wise - 10,000 units maybe) have been made with TGEA anyway, hmmmm? I doubt there is a single one... after 3+ years of TGEA development and early access releases, etc.?One of the big arguments against OpenGL support is always, "Well, the OpenGL drivers suck too bad." Compared to what? Direct3D? Haven't they been sucking majorly for about a year or so since Vista was released, and are just now actually somewhat stable? If Microsoft didn't muscle vendors into shipping Vista instead of Windows XP since Vista's release, then the game industry wouldn't have suffered for a year with crap Direct3D drivers, and nVidia and ATI wouldn't have had to spend so many man-hours on them, rather than supporting their OpenGL drivers (is there proof that they've been sucking worse than Direct3D on Vista?). Of course, Microsoft doesn't want OpenGL to succeed, or they'd ditch the proprietary D3D crap and focus on OpenGL like the rest of the OS vendors.
Anyway, it takes a huge number of man-hours already just to get your game running in TGE (with its mostly working OpenGL implementation, etc.). Throw in D3D mode and you'll be spending 2-3x the man-hours trying to get your game to work anywhere near as well as it did with OpenGL. A small Indie dev team with a few programmers can't possibly hope to try to make that all work, and still make their game. Heck, if you even enable D3D mode at all in TGE (i.e. you don't disable it completely), your game will appear to "phone home" to crl.microsoft.com due to the DirectX certificate revocation check. When you're trying to sell a game, without a big brand name behind you, people just don't stand for that kind of stuff any more... they'll just delete your demo and move on.
#50
But they see they can get stuff done fast, and are blinded to the bigger picture. It's hard to blame them, really. The bigger picture is usually not their job.
I've faced this issue at several companies. But I think the recent issue EddyRay brought up are very valid and may herald and end to this madness.
That, plus the fact that Mac's are becoming more popular.
03/24/2008 (4:50 pm)
I really think the problem is that developers basically love Microsoft's development tools. This is probably because they are hands down best in the business, warts and all. But they see they can get stuff done fast, and are blinded to the bigger picture. It's hard to blame them, really. The bigger picture is usually not their job.
I've faced this issue at several companies. But I think the recent issue EddyRay brought up are very valid and may herald and end to this madness.
That, plus the fact that Mac's are becoming more popular.
#51
MBU alone sold more than 15 times "10,000" units.
TGEA has shipped 3 console platform games, is effectively (now that the TGEA 1.7 beta is out--they are using a slightly older version of the underlying internal codebase than even you, our customers now have access to) being used for Fallen Empire:Legions, and has quite a few more games coming down the pike than even I am aware of.
Quite a few people gave GG a very hard time back when the IAC merger was announced, with all sorts of doomsaying and negative thoughts regarding the benefits to our community here after the merger.
Since that time, we've pushed out more high quality, major feature engine updates than in the previous two years combined, not to mention the entire InstantAction.com enterprise...and this is just the first major wave.
Patience all--for most of the life of TGEA, electing not to implement an OpenGL GFX device was a business decision--not enough resources to perform the task when the expected return on investment had very little margin. I'm not guaranteeing or promising anything at all, but now that we as a company have more breathing room, we're keeping all options open as much as possible.
03/24/2008 (5:07 pm)
Quote:
but we also give up the "AAA Battle-Hardened Game Engine That Has Been Used In Successful Commercial Games That Made Millions" (or something along those lines) for a codebase that isn't even completely finished/working yet (i.e. TGEA or another flavor). How many successful games (sales-wise - 10,000 units maybe) have been made with TGEA anyway, hmmmm? I doubt there is a single one... after 3+ years of TGEA development and early access releases, etc.?
MBU alone sold more than 15 times "10,000" units.
TGEA has shipped 3 console platform games, is effectively (now that the TGEA 1.7 beta is out--they are using a slightly older version of the underlying internal codebase than even you, our customers now have access to) being used for Fallen Empire:Legions, and has quite a few more games coming down the pike than even I am aware of.
Quite a few people gave GG a very hard time back when the IAC merger was announced, with all sorts of doomsaying and negative thoughts regarding the benefits to our community here after the merger.
Since that time, we've pushed out more high quality, major feature engine updates than in the previous two years combined, not to mention the entire InstantAction.com enterprise...and this is just the first major wave.
Patience all--for most of the life of TGEA, electing not to implement an OpenGL GFX device was a business decision--not enough resources to perform the task when the expected return on investment had very little margin. I'm not guaranteeing or promising anything at all, but now that we as a company have more breathing room, we're keeping all options open as much as possible.
#52
The GG "business decisions" to not support OpenGL in TGEA are likely temporary, dependent on a number of factors - like Lee mentioned, Mac TGEA demand could turn things around. Also, I'm suprised that GG doesn't just pay someone (maybe Alex or others who have added some GLSL features to TGE) to take the TGEA source code and integrate an OpenGL renderer, and then let the TGEA community help hone it into shape... but GG must have a good reason for not doing that or they would have already done it. It's a no-brainer... new platform support for TGEA without much of an investment.
Logically speaking, Legions has GG staff/resources devoted to it and seems to be essentially developed "by GG" from what I can tell. Also, Legions is headed for the FPS market, which true "Indies" likely won't target, for obvious reasons. Maybe GG can pull it off and make some big cash... maybe not. Regardless, GG sales of GG products helps GG. We can all (potentially) benefit somewhat from that (i.e. TGEA is not quite up to snuff for a retail PC game release yet, but after Legions it might be)... assuming GG puts in the extra effort to give the results back to the TGE/TGEA community as timely and well-thought-out updates to their core products and customers.
In general, I think the term "Indie" (in the TGE case) refers to those of us who purchased an Indie license of TGE and are making a game alone or with the help of other individuals (who are not associated with GG). We have different motivations and markets (as mentioned earlier). We're not making the next "Bioshock" or "Crysis" (certainly not with TGE and likely not with TGEA any time soon). Is that what GG wants? To somehow "show them all" that they can make the next FPS with TGEA, and have it run on any run-o-the-mill Dual nVidia 8800GTX or Radeon HD2900XT Crossfire setup? Unfortunately, that's not where your "Indie developer" customers are headed. Do you want to try to convince them that they should shoot for that kind of mark?
"$295 and a Dream - You Can Create the Next *Crysis*"
I don't think that is very realistic, for 99.9% of your customers at least. ;-) I would guess that many of GG's age-ole TGE customers already avoid TGEA because of the $295 price tag, lack of features they wanted, end-user system requirements that put TGEA-based games into a "niche" that Indies don't necessarily want to get put into if they want to make some money, new rendering engine that doesn't have many titles worth of end-user support under its belt, etc., etc.
Interesting... does MBU use TGEA? Did MB sell 150,000 units of the TGEA build of the game, or does that include all versions of MB that were previously just TGE-based (however, even that was a significantly modified TGE that is not what we have now in 1.5.X)...? Those are impressive numbers for any 3D TGE-based game regardless. But it is an exception - what have Indie devs (that are not affiliated in any way with GG) done in terms of sales with a TGE-based game? TGEA? Ever wonder why that is? Why aren't there more "hot-selling" TGE 3D titles out there? The bottom-line answer(s) are not simple, but devs that have been working with TGE for years already have a pretty good idea. We can't completely fault GG for this - look at just about any "game engine" you can buy and there is a lack of quality titles that are selling well. TGE already has a leg-up on most of them in terms of features, fortunately, but still we have a lack of hot-selling 3D TGE-based titles due to various issues with TGE that daunt developers and could be solved by GG with a bit of *focus* and a modest investment in time and resources.
How are the 3 console platform games selling? Are they also developed in-house at GG (or with significant time/resource investment by GG staff)? Do they use TGE or TGEA or are they TGB 2D games...?
It's good that TGE has been updated a few times recently... however, if you ask TGE customers that have been working on their game since the TGE 1.2.x or TGE 1.3 days, you'll probably find that (until 1.5.X at least), the updates were pretty rough around the edges, tended to cause more (new) problems than they solved, where difficult to merge into existing codebases, and still lacked key features/fixes that many TGE Indie devs have been asking for for years. That's an oversimplification (updates to the official TGE inevitably cause hub-bub for devs with existing TGE codebases, mainly because of the way GG delivers them) but it's not too far off-mark.
[Edit: TGEA Indie price has changed]
03/31/2008 (11:40 am)
Stephen brought up some interesting points that merit a bit of off-topic wandering.The GG "business decisions" to not support OpenGL in TGEA are likely temporary, dependent on a number of factors - like Lee mentioned, Mac TGEA demand could turn things around. Also, I'm suprised that GG doesn't just pay someone (maybe Alex or others who have added some GLSL features to TGE) to take the TGEA source code and integrate an OpenGL renderer, and then let the TGEA community help hone it into shape... but GG must have a good reason for not doing that or they would have already done it. It's a no-brainer... new platform support for TGEA without much of an investment.
Logically speaking, Legions has GG staff/resources devoted to it and seems to be essentially developed "by GG" from what I can tell. Also, Legions is headed for the FPS market, which true "Indies" likely won't target, for obvious reasons. Maybe GG can pull it off and make some big cash... maybe not. Regardless, GG sales of GG products helps GG. We can all (potentially) benefit somewhat from that (i.e. TGEA is not quite up to snuff for a retail PC game release yet, but after Legions it might be)... assuming GG puts in the extra effort to give the results back to the TGE/TGEA community as timely and well-thought-out updates to their core products and customers.
In general, I think the term "Indie" (in the TGE case) refers to those of us who purchased an Indie license of TGE and are making a game alone or with the help of other individuals (who are not associated with GG). We have different motivations and markets (as mentioned earlier). We're not making the next "Bioshock" or "Crysis" (certainly not with TGE and likely not with TGEA any time soon). Is that what GG wants? To somehow "show them all" that they can make the next FPS with TGEA, and have it run on any run-o-the-mill Dual nVidia 8800GTX or Radeon HD2900XT Crossfire setup? Unfortunately, that's not where your "Indie developer" customers are headed. Do you want to try to convince them that they should shoot for that kind of mark?
"$295 and a Dream - You Can Create the Next *Crysis*"
I don't think that is very realistic, for 99.9% of your customers at least. ;-) I would guess that many of GG's age-ole TGE customers already avoid TGEA because of the $295 price tag, lack of features they wanted, end-user system requirements that put TGEA-based games into a "niche" that Indies don't necessarily want to get put into if they want to make some money, new rendering engine that doesn't have many titles worth of end-user support under its belt, etc., etc.
Interesting... does MBU use TGEA? Did MB sell 150,000 units of the TGEA build of the game, or does that include all versions of MB that were previously just TGE-based (however, even that was a significantly modified TGE that is not what we have now in 1.5.X)...? Those are impressive numbers for any 3D TGE-based game regardless. But it is an exception - what have Indie devs (that are not affiliated in any way with GG) done in terms of sales with a TGE-based game? TGEA? Ever wonder why that is? Why aren't there more "hot-selling" TGE 3D titles out there? The bottom-line answer(s) are not simple, but devs that have been working with TGE for years already have a pretty good idea. We can't completely fault GG for this - look at just about any "game engine" you can buy and there is a lack of quality titles that are selling well. TGE already has a leg-up on most of them in terms of features, fortunately, but still we have a lack of hot-selling 3D TGE-based titles due to various issues with TGE that daunt developers and could be solved by GG with a bit of *focus* and a modest investment in time and resources.
How are the 3 console platform games selling? Are they also developed in-house at GG (or with significant time/resource investment by GG staff)? Do they use TGE or TGEA or are they TGB 2D games...?
It's good that TGE has been updated a few times recently... however, if you ask TGE customers that have been working on their game since the TGE 1.2.x or TGE 1.3 days, you'll probably find that (until 1.5.X at least), the updates were pretty rough around the edges, tended to cause more (new) problems than they solved, where difficult to merge into existing codebases, and still lacked key features/fixes that many TGE Indie devs have been asking for for years. That's an oversimplification (updates to the official TGE inevitably cause hub-bub for devs with existing TGE codebases, mainly because of the way GG delivers them) but it's not too far off-mark.
[Edit: TGEA Indie price has changed]
#53
TGEA is a $145 upgrade from TGE
03/31/2008 (11:44 am)
Quote:I would guess that many of GG's age-ole TGE customers already avoid TGEA because of the $495 price tag
TGEA is a $145 upgrade from TGE
#54
Alex S. is (now) a GG employee.
That number (and it's not the exact number--I pulled it from various information published on the web elsewhere) was for the XB360 port of MBU only. MBU for the 360 was made with TGEA (and in fact, a version very much outdated from even what TGEA 1.03 was, much less 1.7 beta).
The other two XB360 releases currently available were all made by our customers, with versions of TGEA-360 that are again much older than what is available today.
03/31/2008 (11:46 am)
Couple of things:Alex S. is (now) a GG employee.
That number (and it's not the exact number--I pulled it from various information published on the web elsewhere) was for the XB360 port of MBU only. MBU for the 360 was made with TGEA (and in fact, a version very much outdated from even what TGEA 1.03 was, much less 1.7 beta).
The other two XB360 releases currently available were all made by our customers, with versions of TGEA-360 that are again much older than what is available today.
#55
As far as indie's making FPS--check my profile. If I can do this by myself, just think what someone with some resources can do. (my game is TGE btw, not TGEA at the moment--I've ported back and forth several times).
03/31/2008 (12:10 pm)
@EddieRay, I think TGEA is plenty ready for primetime for a serious developer. No one can make a complete FPS game without getting heavily into the source of any engine, IMO. It's "good enough".As far as indie's making FPS--check my profile. If I can do this by myself, just think what someone with some resources can do. (my game is TGE btw, not TGEA at the moment--I've ported back and forth several times).
#56
So there are *no* completed and selling TGEA games for the PC on the books? I figured there'd be at least *one* of note... as TGEA has been out for a couple years now. I guess TGEA Indie devs have to deal with most of the same issues in using the core engine as straight-TGE devs do - with the added complexity of making all the shader-glitz work on end-user machines. And that makes sense... over the many years that TGE has been available, there have only been an handful of hot-selling games made with it since GG started selling the engine. At the core, TGEA et. al. are "TGE", so Indie devs have to deal with the same issues regardless of which flavor they use.
Any idea how the other two XBox360 games are doing with their sales?
GG devoted a lot of time and resources into producing Torque for XBox360, TGEA, etc. It will be a shame if more Indie devs can't make successfully selling games with these tools.
I just thought of a 3D TGE game that has been selling for a while - Minions of Mirth - I wonder how it fares.
I wonder how many Indie devs out there produce TGE-based games for Mac that are doing well... with all the Mac updates from 1.5.X. It must not be that significant if Mac TGEA licenses aren't in demand, despite the nice 3D graphics hardware Macs have been equipped with over the past couple years.
03/31/2008 (12:20 pm)
Sorry... last I checked, the TGEA Indie license price was $495 IIRC... couldn't have been too long ago. GG can probably sell many more Indie TGEA licenses at $295 than they could at $495.So there are *no* completed and selling TGEA games for the PC on the books? I figured there'd be at least *one* of note... as TGEA has been out for a couple years now. I guess TGEA Indie devs have to deal with most of the same issues in using the core engine as straight-TGE devs do - with the added complexity of making all the shader-glitz work on end-user machines. And that makes sense... over the many years that TGE has been available, there have only been an handful of hot-selling games made with it since GG started selling the engine. At the core, TGEA et. al. are "TGE", so Indie devs have to deal with the same issues regardless of which flavor they use.
Any idea how the other two XBox360 games are doing with their sales?
GG devoted a lot of time and resources into producing Torque for XBox360, TGEA, etc. It will be a shame if more Indie devs can't make successfully selling games with these tools.
I just thought of a 3D TGE game that has been selling for a while - Minions of Mirth - I wonder how it fares.
I wonder how many Indie devs out there produce TGE-based games for Mac that are doing well... with all the Mac updates from 1.5.X. It must not be that significant if Mac TGEA licenses aren't in demand, despite the nice 3D graphics hardware Macs have been equipped with over the past couple years.
#57
04/01/2008 (8:51 am)
@Lee: Nice job Lee! Runs pretty slow on my laptop (which really isn't your fault - TGE is pretty "challenged" at rendering those kinds of object-heavy environments), but it's pretty neat despite the frame rate issues.
#58
Seriously, I'm like a monkey with an automatic weapon when it comes to this stuff, and the fact that the sucker runs at all is a tribute to the technology.
04/01/2008 (8:58 am)
@Eddie: Thanks, but it's all my fault if it runs slow. TGE is actually a champ at handling all the crap I'm throwing at it. My target system is a core2 based system. That's just the type of game I want to make....Seriously, I'm like a monkey with an automatic weapon when it comes to this stuff, and the fact that the sucker runs at all is a tribute to the technology.
#59
I must visit garagegames some day and see the parking lot, everyone must drive Lamborghinis because they just don't care about customers and money anymore.
"Well, the OpenGL drivers suck", well you know what the directx9 drivers on linux suck big time. The directx9 drivers suck hard on mac too.
Let me tell you something, you guys( I still love you ) are telling me what I need. But you forget, I'm the customer.
The customer is King.
If you are all too busy to just sit done this 1 day it will take to deliver a glsl opengl renderer for tgea why cant you put up a "wanted dead or alive" section on garagegames. Let us the CUSTOMER post what we want. Let us set the reward by donating money for that feature. When a opengl GOD that's a community member sees that enough money has been donated for a feature, they can code up and submit the code to svn.
Why are you telling me I don't want to have a mac or linux port?
How big is the console indie market?
There is a very wrong+bad mindset at garagegames.
When you guys make tools like showtools and constructor it doesn't have a crossplatform mindset in the code.
You protest about there is no money for linux but this is a tool to create games for a platform.
I hope that you guys can change the attitude / spirit of garagegames to like many platforms like before.
You know I would like to help you guys get rich and get fat...
If you guys want to make more money why not write some torque for dummies books. An overview of torque book. Maybe just have each expert at garagegames write a pdf book for their particular subject.
Like ben could write a dummies guide to terrain and polysoup collisions
I have every book on torque and there is still room for good guides and overviews.
For more money why not a official physics pack which adds ode, newton etc.
04/04/2008 (11:54 am)
These OpenGL discussions are amusing but are starting to get tiresome. I must visit garagegames some day and see the parking lot, everyone must drive Lamborghinis because they just don't care about customers and money anymore.
"Well, the OpenGL drivers suck", well you know what the directx9 drivers on linux suck big time. The directx9 drivers suck hard on mac too.
Let me tell you something, you guys( I still love you ) are telling me what I need. But you forget, I'm the customer.
The customer is King.
If you are all too busy to just sit done this 1 day it will take to deliver a glsl opengl renderer for tgea why cant you put up a "wanted dead or alive" section on garagegames. Let us the CUSTOMER post what we want. Let us set the reward by donating money for that feature. When a opengl GOD that's a community member sees that enough money has been donated for a feature, they can code up and submit the code to svn.
Why are you telling me I don't want to have a mac or linux port?
How big is the console indie market?
There is a very wrong+bad mindset at garagegames.
When you guys make tools like showtools and constructor it doesn't have a crossplatform mindset in the code.
You protest about there is no money for linux but this is a tool to create games for a platform.
I hope that you guys can change the attitude / spirit of garagegames to like many platforms like before.
You know I would like to help you guys get rich and get fat...
If you guys want to make more money why not write some torque for dummies books. An overview of torque book. Maybe just have each expert at garagegames write a pdf book for their particular subject.
Like ben could write a dummies guide to terrain and polysoup collisions
I have every book on torque and there is still room for good guides and overviews.
For more money why not a official physics pack which adds ode, newton etc.
#60
04/04/2008 (12:13 pm)
Your assumptions about Lamborghinis couldn't be farther from the truth quite honestly. I could go on and on and on about mistaken assumptions, but I'm going to let it go.
Torque Owner Trenton Shaffer
When I'm asked, "When are you going to port your stuff over to Linux/Mac", I reply, "When are you going to bite the bullet and install Windows?". I run all three. I have a PC, MAC, and Linux box. I have used Mac/Apple since AppleI/AppleII, PC since the 1st pc clone, and Linux since 1990. PC still PWNs the others. I must say Mac/Linux is pretty and powerful, but for some reason it just comes off as cheezy/generic. Again, IMHO.
We can only see what GG brings us in the future, speculation without facts is simply retarded.
I agree that if you want OpenGL, throw your own layer on top of the engine. Reach out to the community, many community members are glad to help in this area. Start a community project, be more proactive. IMHO GG has a long-term goal in mind which I'm sure will evolve over time. What is evident to me is the fact that they are clearly successful at what they do and have put together some really nice engines across the board.
I may not always agree with GG goals, plans, products or pricing, but I totally support them all the way. If they think doing things a certain way is better, I'm inclined to listen as their is a lot of experienced people on staff.
As much as I enjoy reading debates such as those in this thread, I must agree they are getting tiresome and really do nothing but bring more speculation and more questions.
Thats my two cents. Time for a beer. Cheers!