TGEA future
by Frank Geppert · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 05/22/2008 (8:34 am) · 43 replies
Dear friends,
I create models and textures for several engine platforms but I really love the TGE / TGEA technology. Sometimes the workflow is a bit sophisticated but the rendering is fast, robust and reliable. Scene management is first class and multiplayer also.
I am in contact with some Torque users (e.g. Thomas Bang, Kiyaku) and got some feedback that helped me to write the following lines. They have similar and even better suggestions like I have.
I will try to mention some of them as ideas for future TGEA versions. Maybe I write something stupid or something that can be done with workarounds. So please dont be too harsh with me! ;)
Changing Assets on the Fy
Real-time replacement of models or dif structures after changing them sounds good to me. I dont want to restart the engine for re-loading a mesh
Shadows / Unified Lighting
Casting and receiving dynamic and static shadows for every mesh would be a fantastic feature. There are so many articles about shadowmapping available. Some of them use depth maps and a post-processing shader so they dont care about the number of polygons, only shadow texture size matters.
ShowTool Pro
Shader and shadow-preview is a real important feature. I would love to see a little material editor there to tweak my material until it looks good. It is really no option to start the engine again and again just to look how the material looks after changing a value.
Besides that ShowTool should be able to read Collada/FBX and convert to dts. All the options of a Max, Blender or Lightwave plugin could be integrated in Showtool. So GG needs only one single supported exporter (Showtool) where we can setup LOD, collision, create Nodes for mountings and similar.
Constructor
I want to see and edit materials for my structures there. So it would be great to have a TGEA mode where we can see shaders and tweak their materials.
Scripting
What do you think about a visual data-block designer? ;)
I would love it.
I hope this can be a base for a constructive discussion.
Regards,
Frank
I create models and textures for several engine platforms but I really love the TGE / TGEA technology. Sometimes the workflow is a bit sophisticated but the rendering is fast, robust and reliable. Scene management is first class and multiplayer also.
I am in contact with some Torque users (e.g. Thomas Bang, Kiyaku) and got some feedback that helped me to write the following lines. They have similar and even better suggestions like I have.
I will try to mention some of them as ideas for future TGEA versions. Maybe I write something stupid or something that can be done with workarounds. So please dont be too harsh with me! ;)
Changing Assets on the Fy
Real-time replacement of models or dif structures after changing them sounds good to me. I dont want to restart the engine for re-loading a mesh
Shadows / Unified Lighting
Casting and receiving dynamic and static shadows for every mesh would be a fantastic feature. There are so many articles about shadowmapping available. Some of them use depth maps and a post-processing shader so they dont care about the number of polygons, only shadow texture size matters.
ShowTool Pro
Shader and shadow-preview is a real important feature. I would love to see a little material editor there to tweak my material until it looks good. It is really no option to start the engine again and again just to look how the material looks after changing a value.
Besides that ShowTool should be able to read Collada/FBX and convert to dts. All the options of a Max, Blender or Lightwave plugin could be integrated in Showtool. So GG needs only one single supported exporter (Showtool) where we can setup LOD, collision, create Nodes for mountings and similar.
Constructor
I want to see and edit materials for my structures there. So it would be great to have a TGEA mode where we can see shaders and tweak their materials.
Scripting
What do you think about a visual data-block designer? ;)
I would love it.
I hope this can be a base for a constructive discussion.
Regards,
Frank
#42
10/21/2009 (4:57 pm)
Spambots that make on topic posts? Clearly Skynet must have come online. 
#43
I've been seeing smarter spambots lately, mainly on Wordpress sites. Rather than the usual "This is interesting. Thanks for your thoughtful post Look at my Spam site", I've been seeing what appears to be a dual sweep. Once for context, then grabbing description meta text from a search engine's preview cache and posting in every topic seemingly relevant information with a spam link.
They rarely make as much sense as this did here in context, but sometimes they can seem like valid posters depending on the topic and cache grab.
10/21/2009 (5:14 pm)
Removed. Now the last several posts will be meaningless when people search!I've been seeing smarter spambots lately, mainly on Wordpress sites. Rather than the usual "This is interesting. Thanks for your thoughtful post Look at my Spam site", I've been seeing what appears to be a dual sweep. Once for context, then grabbing description meta text from a search engine's preview cache and posting in every topic seemingly relevant information with a spam link.
They rarely make as much sense as this did here in context, but sometimes they can seem like valid posters depending on the topic and cache grab.
#44
I thought it was funny to see that my estimate for getting all of the feature requests done was 1.5 years =P
In the end, looking back over the Torque 3D development cycle, my estimates weren't too far off aside from places where we feature creeped like crazy (*cough* Material Editor *cough*).
10/21/2009 (9:32 pm)
Quote:Yes, it is an old thread, but it is interesting to see, that most of my points came reality after 1.5 years. Not bad! :)
I thought it was funny to see that my estimate for getting all of the feature requests done was 1.5 years =P
Quote:If I were to take on these projects and was lucky enough to lay hands on the right set of contractor teams to supplement our internal developers I would roughly guess it would still take me at minimum a year and a half to get *just* these 8 projects shipped.
In the end, looking back over the Torque 3D development cycle, my estimates weren't too far off aside from places where we feature creeped like crazy (*cough* Material Editor *cough*).
Associate Tom Spilman