Anyone asked this yet ?
by Eugene Karnot · in Torque Game Engine · 01/01/2009 (7:13 am) · 14 replies
Wait, so let me check if i got this right...Torque documentation is lauded as being the worst of commercially available engines, and the beginners book (3DGPAIO) is filled with pieces of non-working code and general mistakes...why do i get the funny feeling that developers dont really want people to use Torque ?
#2
Personally I've never had an issue with the 3DGPAIO if you use it with the version 1.3 of the engine that's included with the book (v1.4 if you buy the second edition - which you really should). If you try and use those against a later version of Torque like many seem to then of course you're going to get a lot of issues with non-working code as the engine changes between versions.
Torque is usually one of the first step ups for people used to using game builders or mod tools and I think it comes as a very big shock to a lot of people that they can't just go off and create a master piece, it requires patience, learning and a lot of commitment to get to grips with but when you do it's a great piece of software. I've looked at a lot of commercial engines and few can compete with Torque when offering so much for that price tag.
01/01/2009 (7:35 am)
The documentation for Torque is lacking in some areas but it's come on a lot of late especially since Garagegames employeed someone directly to look after documentation now and we're starting to see some of the fruits of that now.Personally I've never had an issue with the 3DGPAIO if you use it with the version 1.3 of the engine that's included with the book (v1.4 if you buy the second edition - which you really should). If you try and use those against a later version of Torque like many seem to then of course you're going to get a lot of issues with non-working code as the engine changes between versions.
Torque is usually one of the first step ups for people used to using game builders or mod tools and I think it comes as a very big shock to a lot of people that they can't just go off and create a master piece, it requires patience, learning and a lot of commitment to get to grips with but when you do it's a great piece of software. I've looked at a lot of commercial engines and few can compete with Torque when offering so much for that price tag.
#3
Excellent fanboy. Well, i guess you're obligated to justify the money you spent, natural thing.
Andy Rollins,
"If you try and use those against a later version of Torque like many seem to then of course you're going to get a lot of issues with non-working code as the engine changes between versions."
The book comes with a CD. When the code in the book is not working as intended with the resources from attached CD - that has nothing to do with my abilities. Have you noticed how many threads there are in this subforum about chapter 4 problems alone ?
01/01/2009 (9:01 am)
"Excellent troll.. 9/10"Excellent fanboy. Well, i guess you're obligated to justify the money you spent, natural thing.
Andy Rollins,
"If you try and use those against a later version of Torque like many seem to then of course you're going to get a lot of issues with non-working code as the engine changes between versions."
The book comes with a CD. When the code in the book is not working as intended with the resources from attached CD - that has nothing to do with my abilities. Have you noticed how many threads there are in this subforum about chapter 4 problems alone ?
#4
I guess it goes to show that if you're willing to work at what you love, you'll do fine.
Besides, your complaints were well established before you wrote them. I guess people don't like to research before their impulse purchases.
01/01/2009 (10:27 am)
Funny, I've had no problems writing dozens of games in various Torque products; and at one point I did use this book.I guess it goes to show that if you're willing to work at what you love, you'll do fine.
Besides, your complaints were well established before you wrote them. I guess people don't like to research before their impulse purchases.
#5
Used to be true. Not so much now. Torque docs have come a long way since Michael was hired to do just docs.
This statement is not true at all. There are only 2 places where the code doesn't work, and the fixes are here in this very forum.
There is no such thing as a book or software that is totally bug free. Sometimes things slip thru unnoticed. Try searching this forum. All of your answers are here.
01/01/2009 (11:52 am)
I'm going to attempt to answer these. Quote:Torque documentation is lauded as being the worst of commercially available engines
Used to be true. Not so much now. Torque docs have come a long way since Michael was hired to do just docs.
Quote:and the beginners book (3DGPAIO) is filled with pieces of non-working code and general mistakes
This statement is not true at all. There are only 2 places where the code doesn't work, and the fixes are here in this very forum.
Quote:Excellent fanboy. Well, i guess you're obligated to justify the money you spent, natural thingStatements like this make you look quite childish, and turn people away from helping you. I would attempt to control my temper if I were you.
Quote:Have you noticed how many threads there are in this subforum about chapter 4 problems alone ?Yes. Those threads are made by people who were too lazy to search for the problem before posting another bug report. Always research first, then ask. If you aren't willing to do that, then you need to go back to one of those "game making programs" and stay away from professional engines.
There is no such thing as a book or software that is totally bug free. Sometimes things slip thru unnoticed. Try searching this forum. All of your answers are here.
#6
Please, welcome back from 2005. Forum search hasn't worked for a few years and it's a known issue which is being looked at according to the web devs. But asking him to use it when it doesn't work isn't very useful.
01/01/2009 (12:11 pm)
Quote:
Try searching this forum. All of your answers are here.
Please, welcome back from 2005. Forum search hasn't worked for a few years and it's a known issue which is being looked at according to the web devs. But asking him to use it when it doesn't work isn't very useful.
#7
01/01/2009 (12:31 pm)
I was talking about just searching [u]this[/u] forum. As in...trawling thru the threads. That's what I did when I got stuck on chapter 4.
#8
If you're the kind of person who learns from having your hand held and following tutorials, fairly standard book learning approaches, invest in an engine with a strong reputation in that field. Plenty of people thrive on problem solving and hands on experience, such as myself, and find Torque quite ideal.
Pointing out Torque is regarded weak in these areas then complaining about it only really highlights your own failure to research your purchase. Plenty of people are doing amazing things with Torque who might have found other engines less suited to their requirements, and vice versa.
It's also rather hard to miss the acknowledgements from GG itself that Torque is/was weak in that area along with the concerted effort going into rectifying it, which really only makes your thoughts look even less well researched.
Personally I find a strong community of problem solving oriented people beats strong documentation hands down. No amount of documentation can cover the range of problems a good community can solve, but I'm happy to acknowledge that's my preference and doesn't suit everyone.
01/01/2009 (1:12 pm)
I always find it quite interesting that people will invest in a product (all kinds of products) that doesn't suit their requirements, then complain that it doesn't suit their requirements when x or y rival product does.If you're the kind of person who learns from having your hand held and following tutorials, fairly standard book learning approaches, invest in an engine with a strong reputation in that field. Plenty of people thrive on problem solving and hands on experience, such as myself, and find Torque quite ideal.
Pointing out Torque is regarded weak in these areas then complaining about it only really highlights your own failure to research your purchase. Plenty of people are doing amazing things with Torque who might have found other engines less suited to their requirements, and vice versa.
It's also rather hard to miss the acknowledgements from GG itself that Torque is/was weak in that area along with the concerted effort going into rectifying it, which really only makes your thoughts look even less well researched.
Personally I find a strong community of problem solving oriented people beats strong documentation hands down. No amount of documentation can cover the range of problems a good community can solve, but I'm happy to acknowledge that's my preference and doesn't suit everyone.
#9
Torque's documentation is not bad at all. Back in the day, from when most of the "bad docs" comments spawned, the problem was that the engine docs were doxygen generated and it was expected that you were a knowledgeable C++ programmer who could read code and determine what was going on. Our artists docs were better than most that you would receive with an engine in the hundreds of thousands of dollar range. When GG started pushing the envelope on providing a low-cost professional codebase to allow indie's to develop their dreams, the lines got crossed a bit since opening the tech to anyone with $100 and a desire to make games suddenly opened it to people who had never seen C++ let alone fudged about with BASIC back in the day.
So suddenly they were learning C++, a complex engine, and doing it all in their limited spare time. Suddenly playing games seemed a lot easier than trying to make them. Every game development community, no matter how lauded for documentation or ease-of-use sees these people blow in, get irritated, and blow out. Most are not vocal and you never miss them if you ever noticed them in the first place. I've seen this in the RPG Maker and Game Maker communities as well as mod communities for extremely well-documented commercial engines (at least well-documented from a mod perspective). You'll see the same thing with free engines as well.
I think that the problem is rarely the engine they choose. Most of the time it comes down to focusing time management. I've seen people blow into RPG Maker communities with huge design documents for their RPG only to realize that to do anything even starting on the level that they want, they will have to learn Ruby and learn it well...and then extend the engine. After the first couple of chapters of Ruby for Dummies and sorting through the various scripts, they often give up and blame RPG Maker for being too limited to create their vision. Perhaps if their vision includes features that are documented in the RPG Maker FAQ (such as no video format support or 3D support in XP or VX), that could be true to a point. But if it is because they could not figure out how to implement their advanced quest system, the problem is with them and not the engine. It's not that they were stupid or somehow unfocused; they were often wrongly focused, not able to determine the correct learning order to get past the dip. Rather than working specifically on a quest system, it might have been better to invest some strong time in learning Ruby well so that they could understand the RGSS scripts and piece together what is there, how they would need to modify it and then begin with a simple quest trigger system and built it up to the one that was part of a grand design. It doesn't mean forgoing their vision; it just means microfocusing on the pieces of that vision to make it not seem so overwhelming.
We have a strong focus on enhanced documentation that attempts to bridge the gap between the high-end programming audience that was initially expected and the hobbyists and artists and avid prototypers who want to make games on the side while still maintaining their families and 80-hour workweeks at their primary job. It is like ten different markets to hit and some engines are hitting some pieces of it well and avoiding others.
As to the book, I believe that part of the issue comes down to poor editing. I'm not sure who the editor is, or who the editor is for most programming books on the market, but it does not seem to be limited to a single publisher or topic or author or even editor. I've seen it with Microsoft Press books, Sams, O'Reilly and Associates, etc and across topics from C# to Flex to Photoshop and Lightwave. Sadly computing books seem to be some of the least edited books on the planet and what may have worked with one revision will not work for the next (I'm not talking about editions, but revisions before it hits print the first time). On top of that, depending on the publishing house, the media for the CD may be pressed while the book is still being edited and changed, leading to further inaccuracies.
At one time there was an errata page on the publisher's site, I believe, that helped alleviate a number of those inconsistencies. I'm not sure if it is still extant or not, though. It has been years since I purchased and used the book.
01/01/2009 (2:16 pm)
@EugeneTorque's documentation is not bad at all. Back in the day, from when most of the "bad docs" comments spawned, the problem was that the engine docs were doxygen generated and it was expected that you were a knowledgeable C++ programmer who could read code and determine what was going on. Our artists docs were better than most that you would receive with an engine in the hundreds of thousands of dollar range. When GG started pushing the envelope on providing a low-cost professional codebase to allow indie's to develop their dreams, the lines got crossed a bit since opening the tech to anyone with $100 and a desire to make games suddenly opened it to people who had never seen C++ let alone fudged about with BASIC back in the day.
So suddenly they were learning C++, a complex engine, and doing it all in their limited spare time. Suddenly playing games seemed a lot easier than trying to make them. Every game development community, no matter how lauded for documentation or ease-of-use sees these people blow in, get irritated, and blow out. Most are not vocal and you never miss them if you ever noticed them in the first place. I've seen this in the RPG Maker and Game Maker communities as well as mod communities for extremely well-documented commercial engines (at least well-documented from a mod perspective). You'll see the same thing with free engines as well.
I think that the problem is rarely the engine they choose. Most of the time it comes down to focusing time management. I've seen people blow into RPG Maker communities with huge design documents for their RPG only to realize that to do anything even starting on the level that they want, they will have to learn Ruby and learn it well...and then extend the engine. After the first couple of chapters of Ruby for Dummies and sorting through the various scripts, they often give up and blame RPG Maker for being too limited to create their vision. Perhaps if their vision includes features that are documented in the RPG Maker FAQ (such as no video format support or 3D support in XP or VX), that could be true to a point. But if it is because they could not figure out how to implement their advanced quest system, the problem is with them and not the engine. It's not that they were stupid or somehow unfocused; they were often wrongly focused, not able to determine the correct learning order to get past the dip. Rather than working specifically on a quest system, it might have been better to invest some strong time in learning Ruby well so that they could understand the RGSS scripts and piece together what is there, how they would need to modify it and then begin with a simple quest trigger system and built it up to the one that was part of a grand design. It doesn't mean forgoing their vision; it just means microfocusing on the pieces of that vision to make it not seem so overwhelming.
We have a strong focus on enhanced documentation that attempts to bridge the gap between the high-end programming audience that was initially expected and the hobbyists and artists and avid prototypers who want to make games on the side while still maintaining their families and 80-hour workweeks at their primary job. It is like ten different markets to hit and some engines are hitting some pieces of it well and avoiding others.
As to the book, I believe that part of the issue comes down to poor editing. I'm not sure who the editor is, or who the editor is for most programming books on the market, but it does not seem to be limited to a single publisher or topic or author or even editor. I've seen it with Microsoft Press books, Sams, O'Reilly and Associates, etc and across topics from C# to Flex to Photoshop and Lightwave. Sadly computing books seem to be some of the least edited books on the planet and what may have worked with one revision will not work for the next (I'm not talking about editions, but revisions before it hits print the first time). On top of that, depending on the publishing house, the media for the CD may be pressed while the book is still being edited and changed, leading to further inaccuracies.
At one time there was an errata page on the publisher's site, I believe, that helped alleviate a number of those inconsistencies. I'm not sure if it is still extant or not, though. It has been years since I purchased and used the book.
#10
Torque3D will launch with the best documentation any of our engines have ever had. By mid next year, all of our engines will be way beyond what most other commercial engines offer in regard to support and documentation.
By the end of 2009, there will simply be no comparison at all. I think the past 6 months worth of content delivery and blogs from me say it all, and I plan on tripling the output for 2009.
On a completely separate note, 2008 was a great year for our community. Let's not start 2009 off with posts calling people trolls or fan boys.
01/02/2009 (1:00 am)
Indeed, documentation for all the Torque products has come a long way. Someone got the ball rolling before I was brought on. When I was hired, I invested quite a bit of my time planning out an entire year's worth of documentation upgrades (content, organization, and delivery).Torque3D will launch with the best documentation any of our engines have ever had. By mid next year, all of our engines will be way beyond what most other commercial engines offer in regard to support and documentation.
By the end of 2009, there will simply be no comparison at all. I think the past 6 months worth of content delivery and blogs from me say it all, and I plan on tripling the output for 2009.
On a completely separate note, 2008 was a great year for our community. Let's not start 2009 off with posts calling people trolls or fan boys.
#11
01/02/2009 (2:43 am)
Just to throw in my two cents. I recently opened up both 3DGPAI1 books (original and Advanced), and have been using them successfully with the latest TGEA release. Sure there are some bugs in the code, but the fact is I have learned a lot by hunting those bugs and making the code work. This forum has been useful a few times, too. 
#13
When I buy Torque 3D later (as long as the upgrade price is palatable, of course ;)), I'll be looking forward to looking at this tremendous documentation.
01/02/2009 (1:17 pm)
Well Michael, that's some promise you've made.When I buy Torque 3D later (as long as the upgrade price is palatable, of course ;)), I'll be looking forward to looking at this tremendous documentation.
#14
I started going through the 3DGPAI1 book (2nd edition) over the weekend using the engine that comes on the CD. So far, the code is not working. I have edited, debugged, and even copied the "working" code from the CD into my directories and ran these, but to no avail. This has been very frustrating. I've also searched the forums as suggested to find answers to my problems, but honestly, having shelled out $55 for the book, should not have to go searching for answers to the problems the book seems to have.
Have I learned a lot going through Chapters 1 - 6? Yes. Could I have learned more had the code actually worked? Yes, most definitely, and it would have been a lot more rewarding.
Others have mentioned Maurina's book in some of the posts where users were trying to get help with their errors. That tells you something. I hope to buy that book this evening and see where it takes me.
It would be helpful at a minimum to have complete working code for each chapter that is tested and posted somewhere on a forum or site.
Also, I've been terribly disappointed with the TDN. There appear to be two tutorials for TGEA, one which kind of works and one which isn't anywhere near being completed. It looks like they were started about 6 months ago or so, then no work has been done on them since. This problem isn't unique to Torque--I'm finding more and more very bad tutorials/how-to guides for other languages all over the Internet. I commend GG for starting the wiki--it just needs to be given strong legs.
What's the solution? A good tutorial will take into account both pedagogy and content. Just an idea, but I think many people would pay a nominal fee to use a set of tutorials (like on lynda.com) where they are walked through each piece of the software.
There will always be a set of individuals who think they can breeze in and start making games, with little or no knowledge of programming or other required knowledge. But for those of us who don't fit into that category and want to learn Torque for various reasons, having a true, error-free, pedagogically sound, beginner's guidebook would be extremely helpful.
Well, off to the bookstore.... :->
01/06/2009 (2:35 pm)
Eugene,I started going through the 3DGPAI1 book (2nd edition) over the weekend using the engine that comes on the CD. So far, the code is not working. I have edited, debugged, and even copied the "working" code from the CD into my directories and ran these, but to no avail. This has been very frustrating. I've also searched the forums as suggested to find answers to my problems, but honestly, having shelled out $55 for the book, should not have to go searching for answers to the problems the book seems to have.
Have I learned a lot going through Chapters 1 - 6? Yes. Could I have learned more had the code actually worked? Yes, most definitely, and it would have been a lot more rewarding.
Others have mentioned Maurina's book in some of the posts where users were trying to get help with their errors. That tells you something. I hope to buy that book this evening and see where it takes me.
It would be helpful at a minimum to have complete working code for each chapter that is tested and posted somewhere on a forum or site.
Also, I've been terribly disappointed with the TDN. There appear to be two tutorials for TGEA, one which kind of works and one which isn't anywhere near being completed. It looks like they were started about 6 months ago or so, then no work has been done on them since. This problem isn't unique to Torque--I'm finding more and more very bad tutorials/how-to guides for other languages all over the Internet. I commend GG for starting the wiki--it just needs to be given strong legs.
What's the solution? A good tutorial will take into account both pedagogy and content. Just an idea, but I think many people would pay a nominal fee to use a set of tutorials (like on lynda.com) where they are walked through each piece of the software.
There will always be a set of individuals who think they can breeze in and start making games, with little or no knowledge of programming or other required knowledge. But for those of us who don't fit into that category and want to learn Torque for various reasons, having a true, error-free, pedagogically sound, beginner's guidebook would be extremely helpful.
Well, off to the bookstore.... :->
Torque 3D Owner Peter Simard
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