Quest 3d, Cipher 1.3?

#41 Robin: Holy IRC Chat!

Batman: Exactly Robin!

#42 Holy good thinking Batman!

#43 the spam is taking over my mind!!

Anyway... looks aren't everything fellas, trust me. Torque has great potential, even if it isn't great out of the box. Once you spend your 10000 pounds to get the source code for Cipher, you will realize something horrendous about it that they failed to mention.

I.E. when we all bought Torque it never said any of the engines faults such as all the bugs in the task list.

There is always a catch, and when you finally find something that doesn't have a catch, you die of a heart attack... or something.

#44 I'm bored, and it seems like we're having a party in here, so I'll say a quick something.

The potential for Torque is well beyond what other engines may give you when you first take a look at them. When I first saw this engine implemented, I thought it was pretty low-grade, until I realized what it was. If you take a look through the resources people offer here, and even in the Dev shots, you can see the evolution of the engine over time. From what I've seen so far, I can only expect better things to come out of it. I can also say that I expect it to perform better than a lot of other visual-hogs out there.

#45 That's could end up being true.

I didn't say torque would alway be behind, just that right now it is. And for the time being it will be.

Eventually some great group of programmers could turn torque into a next gen engine. Maybe the TCP guys already have it suped up, lol. :)

But for someone like me, it'd be easier and faster to switch to a better looking engine, if the rest of it is also up to par.

#46 This is an old argument.
I didn't see anything in the pix I looked at from the Cipher site that couldn't be done by a good artist in Torque (after all, I'm sure THEY had a good artist do them). We cannot really tell how good their outdoors is, as we only see the sky--and torque excels here. Sure, they have shaders and probably some sort of bumpmapping.

If you come to an canyon, it does no good to fuss at for being a canyon. Build a bridge and get over it.

Eric

#47 Actualy the only thing you are truely seeing in them pics is that there is a good artest behind them models. You give me them models and I'll make it look EXACTLY the same in Torque with a little work.

#48 I'd love to see "a good artist" do the curved stuff with Torque in its current state.

;)

#49 Other than what looks like bump mapping in some shots and what appears to be real time reflections on the floor of one of the shots. I myself didn't see anything in either of these engines that can't be done in the Torque.

Not trying to defend the Torque, as it is starting to show it's age (about 2 years old), but it is not all that far behind.

As for curved surfaces-


I took out the texture and replaced it with a grey one for the shot above.

I also think that the soft shadows that are in the Torque now are far superior to the hard edged shadows that are in the Cipher...

My opinion is that bump mapping and per-pixel specular reflections are not the end all and be all of graphic quality.

Wait a bit, and someone in the community will release some code to add this functionality into the torque.

#50 IMO Torques biggest weakness is not graphics. As everyone else has said, resources (Melv comes to mind) are being produced and shared that boost Torque.

My issue is that there are some fundamental problems. Such as light leaking through walls in interiors. Elevators not working. Doors being broken. Limited AVI ability.

There's also a fundamental problem with the whole resource thing. I've been a software engineer for some time. This code base is over 400k. It makes me jumpy when so much of the code is piece code. Is there a quality procedure or review board for any of the code being submitted in the resources? You can't just screw in things like radiosity or curved surfaces into an engine like this. You'll inevitably end up with spaghetti code and a clunker ala WinME.

At the same time, I certainly don't want to downplay what the generous programmers in this community have done. Also, I'm not criticising any of the code quality.

It would feel much better to know that GG recognises these problem and is going to address them officially.

#51 I wonder about the *cough* Task Manager *cough*

-J

#52 Well, since I don't (yet) have the source license (one of my teammates is doing the Torque stuff, I'm working with Qube) I wasn't aware of the Task Manager.

So, I appologise about my "official GG" comment.

#53 Resources don;t automatically get in the main code base, they are, by and large, use at your own risk ;)

#54 Here's one way to create spheres in Worldcraft/QuArK: www.gamedesign.net/?file=rust/content/half-life/tutorials/sphere

Why doesn't QuArK have an easy way to make spheres? According to a statement from the head developer, no one has requested spheres:

Quote:If somebody really wants a sphere for mapping purposes, it would be best if I made a sphere-builder--it's a standard thing in 3d packages but hasn't been requested yet so doesn't exist in QuArK. But I wouldn't do it unless I just plain felt in the mood, or somebody really wanted it for a serious mapping purpose.

In other words: If we truly want to be able to easily create spheres (of which those arched rooms are partially comprised) the answers are within our reach; we must ask for it and hope QuArK dev will comply.

If you take a good look at the .dif format, it's actually pretty nice, IMO. QuArK may not be 3DSMax, but it is not meant to be a 3DSMax-killer. It is meant to create files that have been given certain rules--such as no concave (caved in) brushes--and it does this fine.

The developers of QuArK are continuing to bring new game formats into the fold--not the sign of an obsolete file format and editor.

I bring this up to show that while we may perceive there be shortcomings to Torque, it's not always true. This one in particular is a feature from a different program that just has never been implemented, because it was never seriously requested.

I'm no Torque fanatic, but I do like it quite a bit. There are features that I would like to see, and so I'm going to do what I can to get those into games I'm working on. I encourage others to do he same. Be proactive, rather than reactive.

Months ago I had the same questions (yes, this must be the 1000th thread on the subject), but what I did was challenge myself. Quite frankly, I was just curious. this is what I came up with--and that was at the start of my WorldCraft knowledge.

So, I suggest that you(the reader) do the same! :)

Eric Forhan
Art Director
trajectoryzone.com

#55 I know this is a rather old thread, but Cipher's new site has License price at $100.

http://www.cipherengine.com/licensing.php

David

#56 It say here that cipher cost 100 dollars (not 2,000)

http://www.cipherengine.com/faq.php#howmuchdoesitcost

#57 Thats a good price

#58 This thread was started before Cipher became an indy-priced engine.