Atlas for TGE?

#1 No, it's TGEA only.

#2 Is there any plan for making atlas available for TGE? Or making TGEA available for OpenGL users?

#3 OpenGL has been a rather large and tumultuous issue with TGEA in the past. Things are looking good on the front once again according to Matt Fairfax's blogs, but I can't promise anything.

#4 I have been reading his blogs too. I couldn't really tell if he was going to give TGEA OpenGL support, but I really hope so, otherwise I am going to need to either find a resource that would give TGE Atlas capabilities, or I am going to need to find a different engine that would suit my needs.

#5 Tyler - from one person here that has looked through a fair chunk of the terrain code in TGE and TGEA I can tell you now that it'd be a huge task to get Atlas working in TGE so I doubt it's something you'll ever see.

As for OpenGL support whilst I can't comment on if it will ever be implemented by GG but I'd perhaps look at it another way - the windows market is by far the biggest market and if you're game is successful enough on that platform you could hire a C++ coder to implement OpenGL support if that functionality isn't there by the time your game reaches release.

#6 I use a Mac, so I would rather be able to not need to build it on windows (I will port it though).

I see that TGEA will never have OpenGL support, but I have found something that I hope will come out soon.

Torque 2 is scheduled for beta in a few months, and when it is released, it said it will have OpenGL support, along with all the features in TGEA, TGE, and a few new ones.

This is the new one I am waiting for, not only for the Atlas terrain, but for the Pixel Shader, water effects, and better physics.

#7 Just thought I'd point you to Brett's Blog about the future of Torque in case you missed it. It should clear up some confusion on "Torque 2".

#8 What about this?

#9 Did you check the dates?

#10

Quote:Q. When will we see OpenGL support in TGEA?
A. Ahh...should have added that to the R&D bubble in the last graphic. There is work being done on it right now, but talking about a delivery date is still premature.

This is very confusing... First they say Torque 2 is a new game engine, and that TGEA is never going to be ported into OpenGL... THEN they say Torque 2 is not going to be a game engine, and TGEA IS going to be ported into OpenGL.

I have no idea what is happening... I guess I will just need to wait...

#11 As far as I have gleaned from threads here, there will be a better Torque for many platforms, implementing coolness from TGEA. We'll just have to wait till the magic pixies have implemented it.

#12 Tyler - what you have to understand is with working on any project whether it be games related, IT, engineering, or anything really you are going on a journey and along that journey things are going to change. Much the same way if you're in a car going on holiday - you know roughly where you might make stops along the way but that can change, traffic jams or accidents might cause you to take a different route.

Working on a project is just the same, what GG have started to do is to be a lot more open with the community on their thoughts for the technology and their product set and that is both good and bad, good that we get to hear about what might come along and bad that it leads to confusion and people misunderstand or getting disappointed when it changes. I don't believe GG has ever stated that TGEA will categorically have OpenGL or not... more that it's not something they were going to work on back then but right now they have some resource that can work on it.

It may change again on that journey as other priorities or factors come along but some time they'll reach the destination and you'll get OpenGL support.

The guys working at GG are really passionate about their work and in providing us with great game engines to work with and I'm sure a lot of them in the office would just love to deliver openGL support for TGEA many months ago but in a business world much the same way as our personal lives we need to prioritise things.

Don't get disheartend it'll arrive just be patient

#13 @Andy

I do understand, but I am 13 years old, which means I can't really work on a major project even if I wanted to, and I have high patience for releases, so I can wait until OpenGL support comes for TGEA for a while.

Quote:Q. When will we see OpenGL support in TGEA?
A. Ahh...should have added that to the R&D bubble in the last graphic. There is work being done on it right now, but talking about a delivery date is still premature.

I got this from the .blog, so that means that OpenGL is a work in progress. They say it is too early for list an accurate release date, but by the looks of it, I am guessing about 2-4 years at least, but I am not holding my breath.

Anyway, I doubt OpenGL for TGEA is going to be canceled, especially since it is a pretty long project, but I don't want to think about if it is canceled, because that would ruin my plans.

#14 @Andy

That "if your game is successful on Windows" is a huge "if". A game on Windows needs to compete against an enormous number of titles that come out daily, and a deluge of press release and marketing gimmicks. The large publishers spend millions of dollars on this market competing for eyeballs, and there is very little room for an indie developer who is self publishing to make any money.

By contrast, the Mac OS X market sees a few new game titles per day, most of which are shareware/Indie quality. Apple advertises those games for free on their downloads site.

When we launched Wild West Online: Gunfighter, we struggled to get any notice at all the gaming press or on gamer sites. This is despite spending money on press releases. Even our $100/day Google ads didn't bring in as many users as a single free listing on Apple.com. Compare that to paying $99/mo for a listing on Downloads.com that brought in 1/10th as many users.

I saw the same thing happen with Digital Eel's games, which I ported to the Mac. Despite winning awards and getting an unusual amount of press for an Indie game, they saw as much revenue off the Mac version as they did from the Windows version, even though they had many more downloads for the Windows version.

@Tyler

Don't worry if your game isn't the most graphically detailed and polished, or has a seamless large world. Make it fun, addictive and easy to play. Design around those engine limitations. Make it reliable, so it doesn't crash and works smoothly at every point. TGE will be fine for this, and you can develop with it on the Mac you already have.

When the game has enough people asking for a Windows version that you can afford to deal with the hardware issues (drivers, video cards, etc..) and the Vista issues (Limited User Accounts and UAC mostly), TGE will also support a Windows version. Or an iPhone version, a Wii version, etc...

And if and when Garage Games release TGEA for OpenGL, you can always bring out version 2 (or 3 or 4) and introduce the improved look and larger terrains.

#15 @Ed Zavada

Oh no! I don't care about the graphics that much, I use the modernization kit which adds the water and a few other effects to TGE. I just want the ATLAS terrain, a tool that I NEED to get the game I want to finish...

Until OpenGL is supported by TGEA instead of DX, then I will be using TGB to make smaller games to start raising money for new tools such as:

Macbook Pro
3Ds Max
Photoshop CS3 (or CS4/5 when they come out).

I can also spend this time learning more about what I wanted to such as:

OpenGL
OpenAL
.NET
Java/Javascript
Cocoa
Carbon
TorqueScript
LUA

I think this time waiting might actually be better for me, for I would be able to do more stuff then I wanted to at first.

#16 @Ed - It's really not a pissing contest between pc's and macs which from your remarks and harware and vista issues comment is all you seem interested in doing - I was adopting a helpful approach and offering a different viewpoint to Tyler as he had posted that unless Atlas could be ported he'd have to find a different engine, which I would take to mean it's an important part of the design of his game.

Judging by other topics Tyler has made his game is of the MMO variety so my route is quite viable given the timeframe to develop and populate a game that would require huge terrains - in those coming years most likely GG would have added OpenGl support, so please don't beat down suggestions before you've engaged your brain.

It's really not difficult to make money from a game and certainly not to reach a few thousand sales that may net you the money for some C++ coding skill or other area, so NO I wouldn't put it as a huge "if" to making a successful game on the windows platform. Personally I'd start building a small community up of a few thousand people whilst you're developing the game to give you ideas, beta testers and then potential customers at the end of it - gets you an active base to start from.

#17 @Andy

A community? Well I already know the name of the game, so I guess I could set up a website of some sort and add a small trailer or demo and some forums.

I think I may try that, but first I need to get some money to either rent a domain name, or buy a server.

#18 Hi Tyler,

It's one option to help with your development process and one we're using to good success on our current project. speaking we've gone through the process really of:

- Game Design & Technology selection
- Basic web site and forums - initial cost outlay by ourselves, around $30/year
- Promotion of the site & game - we've used a number of different methods all for zero cost, which has built currently a 1200 registered users in the community of which around 100-200 are dedicated frequent visitors & contributors.

- From that community select people were approached to fulful a few different roles:
1. Moderators - as the forums grow the amount of rubbish and admin needs doing, bringing in moderators has helped us to stay focused on development.

2. Testers - a group of 30 have been approached and have signed NDA's and act as our testing team for new features...... they've been a huge help.

3. Public Relations - They promote the game & site, work with other sites to share banners & info, collect ideas and wish lists from the community and provide feedback on the design.

With that in place our development process goes in iterations now from design - code - test - bug fix - feedback.

As new features are included the groups feedback to the community and it generally works very well as a process for us, for any radical features requested/suggested by the community we can quickly push through a cycle to prototype the functionality and get that feedback and having small release cycles means we constantly give the community something to keep them interested and we get bugs fixed along the way.

It really does work for our project and team but it's not the only way and it's not a process that will work for everyone and every team.