Blog for Ed Johnson at GarageGames.com

TorqueSchool updates

Ed Johnson — 2008-02-01T23:52:41+00:00

GarageGames and TorqueSchool communities:

Today is the last day the $50 Holiday Special is going to be active. Those who haven't redeemed theirs already can do so at any point in time this year. Our instructors have been working day and night (literally... ask Dave!) to make these courses as easy to follow and complete as humanly possible.

Speaking of course development, work continues on my courses. My second course has been much funner and easier than the first. The weapons course is much more modular; isn't as dependent on other parts of the course, so I can create them at my leisure. The only thing the individual weapons will share will be the combat systems they are linked through. For example, the first week focuses on the simpler projectile-based weapons, whereas the second week will focus on hand-to-hand (melee) style combat. Each weapon is an example of different configurations of weapon datablock, as well as different ways of scripting the combat.

There is still a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff we aren't ready to announce just yet,but you can be assured that there are grand plans for expanding the course base of TorqueSchool. Our most anticipated courses, TGE 101 and TGB 101, have unfortunately been delayed, and as soon as we have more information on when they will available, you will know as well. Getting these courses online is a high priority.

We're opening up the lines for Mini-Course suggestions/requests. Take a look at the examples provided and submit your own. We would like to focus on simple, straightforward how-to's aimed at those just starting out with torque. Similar to many of the wonderful articles in the GarageGames Resources section, with a TorqueSchool twist: high quality, rich text documentation, guaranteed to be up-to-date. These Mini-Courses will be developed by expert instructors and community members.

We have also started testing out a new feature... TorquSschool Journals... which we hope will be taken advantage of with the next course sessions. The best journal entries will be featured on the TorqueSchool main page. If you would like to participate (either Journals or Mini-Courses), you will need to make a post in the Author's thread so that I can enable authoring on your account. This is easy and you should be online and blogging within an hour of posting.

More updates soon! Thanks for reading!

Live Free and Prosper,
- Ed Johnson
TorqueSchool Administrator

TorqueSchool updates

Ed Johnson — 2008-01-25T16:37:47+00:00

Dear GarageGames and TorqueSchool communities

In early December Dave Young passed the TorqueSchool torch to me and since then I've been working on developing his ideas further. this transition has lasted much longer than anticipated, but that is life, and you don't get something for nothing :-) I will be working with GarageGames and the community to help bridge the gap between the engine developers and game developers. We're making TorqueSchool.com the most convenient way to learn Torque Technology. GarageGames knows that detailed, easy to follow documentation has historically been their weakest link, so they are working with us to make sure the materials we create properly reflect their technology.

ONE week left for the holiday special!
If you didn't see the blog post regarding the Holiday Special at the beginning of the month, where were you?!? You only have a week left to take advantage of this insane deal!
Note: We are in the process of revamping the site. if you are unable to complete a purchase for any reason due to website issues, email me and I will assist.

Regular Enrollment will begin again February 1st, 2008.

Ashtara's Player Modeling course starts February 3rd, 2008.
My 2 Courses (MS3D and Weapons) will be starting February 18th, 2008.
Character Creation for AFXA (First part of the RPG Course Series) starts February 21st

Those who had previous classes (Intro to MS3D) will be able to attend and get updates at no charge, as promised.

Those who purchased the $50 Holiday Special will be able to redeem them at any time (this year) for any course available.

New developments
While course development continues on the courses currently on the table, we are always looking for talented people in the community with the skills and motivation to teach others. We are still on the lookout for TGB instructors, who are in high demand.

Dave Young's RPG Course series - based on the highly popular DreamGames MMO-kit (Gryphon/Titas) . Not just a codebase with limited instructions, now a step-by-step, from-the-ground-up guide to creating your own RPG based on Torque Technology.

The Official AFX 101 Course is in development, authorized by Faust Logic. More info when available.

TorqueSchool will be releasing free "mini-courses" in the upcoming weeks, which will be richly detailed how-to's in the style and format of our full course documents, but with a smaller scope. These are meant to both give prospective students a "taste" of what we offer, as well as providing genuine learning resources (Not gimmicks) for the community. Examples of topics include: "Replacing the default Player shape", "Creating destroyable items", "Shapes with ambient animations", etc.

As much as I'm sure you all love to hear about these things, I KNOW you would much rather see then. We will be releasing previews as they are available, so be watching this area on the What's New page.

Community website
As I briefly stated above, we are currently in the process of revamping the TorqueSchool website. One of the biggest areas of complaint was the simplistic and rather bare website. We are working on streamlining the registration process, as well as some minor layout changes, to make it a bit more aesthetically pleasing, as well as adding more information.
Some of the functionality we hope to add over the two weeks include: Live Chatting right on TorqueSchool.com (no IRC client necessary), Journals for students and instructors to write about their progress, Places to showcase your project or stuff you have created, Contests with prizes, plus more! We highly encourage cooperation and collaboration among the communities, as that is where progress comes from.

Help Wanted!
We are also looking for people to help with tutoring and advising positions. Even if you don't think you have the time/skills to be a course developer, you can still help others by providing guidance and assistance when needed. Tutors are responsible for providing guidance (in the form of communication and research) on a given topic they have experience with. Allows instructors to focus on questions specific to their course, and those with specialized knowledge in an area (such as AI) can address those specific questions. An adviser is responsible for talking with prospective students, figuring out their game development needs, and hooking them up with the instruction they need. If you have experience with the following and would like to help out, send me an email with your contact info and what topics you are familiar with. Ex: AFX, AI, Audio, 2d Art, 3d Art, Game Programming, Game Design, GUI, Programming, TGB, TGE, TGEA, TorqueScript, TorqueX...

There is much room to grow and improve. there are many smart and talented people working on this, and you can be a part of it!

Payment System other than PayPal
Additional payment options (other than paypal) should be available when we upgrade our learner software this week, so those who have been held back because of that should have more options soon.

Thanks for reading! More information available upon request. Feedback highly appreciated!

Happy Holidays from everyone at TorqueSchool!

Ed Johnson — 2008-01-01T06:32:16+00:00

Greetings! I hope your winter has been a productive one. The folks working on the TorqueSchool project have enjoyed a little winter break, and are now getting ready to charge into the New Year of 2008 with a bigger, better TorqueSchool.

The first few months were a trial run of the courses and we have since taken a winter break to collect our thoughts and reorganize some things. We received much feedback, both positive and negative, and have been working on smoothing out the tougher aspects of learning Torque via an online course. I am pleased to announce our plans of expanding TorqueSchool with a completely redesigned website interface, more staff, and much more content available(courses, workshops, articles). I will be coordinating these efforts with the help and support of people like Dave Young and those in the DreamGames/GarageGames community.

To kick off the new year in full Torque style, we are offering a Holiday Special of $50 for 1 TorqueSchool course.
This is the lowest price a TS course will ever be, as these are complete courses. You can buy one for a friend, co-worker, or for yourself, and redeem it for the TorqueSchool course of your choice after February when the new website launches.

This Holiday Special will be running from Jan 1st thru Jan 31st
You can read more about the holiday special on our website. There you can see the courses in the works and what else we are developing. We will officially announce new courses on TorqueSchool.com and GarageGames.com as they are made available.

In addition to courses on the individual aspects of game development, from understanding the engine to creating the 3d art and sounds, there will also be Gaming Workshop courses designed to help budding game developers take their game idea from ideas to a playable prototype. I currently am working on a Platformer Game Workshop which will show you how to convert Torque's default first person shooter setup into a hack and slash action adventure game(reminiscent of Mario, Sonic, Rayman, or Zelda). In the future I foresee RPG Game workshops, Driving Game workshops, RTS Game workshops, etc.

Those who participated in the first runs of the courses will be glad to know that the first 3 launch titles will be back and better than before, thanks to the feedback gathered. The planned video tutorials will be on-line then as well. Many thanks to the brave souls who braved the first drafts of the courses, your feedback is invaluable and I hope to see you back in class February!

With a complete redesign of the TorqueSchool website will come a focus for better communication with instant messaging, and rating/commenting on items. Also, In an effort to increase the amount of return traffic to TorqueSchool, our instructors will be writing short articles and tutorials available for free exclusively here at TorqueSchool.com. Check the site often for updates!

Over the next few weeks we will be looking for people to groom into various positions from course development, to administration, advisers and tutors, as well as experts in general game development. Interested in creating or reviewing content for TorqueSchool (Articles, courses, assignments, tutorials, workshops) ?
We have many opportunities for learning and success depending on your abilities and time available. Send me an email (ed@torqueschool.com) and tell me what you are interested in.

- Ed Johnson
TorqueSchool Administrator

First Day of Class, Weapons Ready for Launch

Ed Johnson — 2007-10-15T20:36:38+00:00

Today is the first day of my Intro to Torque Art class. I just got done sending out an email with the getting started info. I am looking forward to the next few weeks, as I will be working with my students, helping them make their own game art. I will also be working on course materials, revising the Intro course's materials and working on my upcoming courses.

I am thrilled to announce that my next course, Advanced Torque Art: Weapons is ready for registration and class will begin November 12th, a little less than a month from now. This course will also be available for the Introductory price of $80 until November 1st, at which time the price will be the full $200.

As the name suggests, this course is designed to teach you how to properly model and script different kinds of weapons for different kinds of games. The first two weeks focuses on the types of weapons and combat you'll see in the wide range of games that people call "First Person Shooters", from firearms to explosives, throwing stars to heat seaking missiles. Not only how to make them look and sound, but make them act as they should. The second week focuses on melee or contact-based combat, such as swords, sheilds, punching, kicking, biting. You can read more about it here.

Just as with my other course, in this class you will receive:

* 100+ pages of graphical lecture material and tutorials.
* Videos that complement the written materials (lecture and tutorials).
* Communication with instructors and peers via IRC, forums, email, and phone.
* I'll be available for One-on-one and group assistance almost every day.
* Yours and your peer's submitted assignments will be available to download to learn from and critique.
* Links to other relevant information, further reading, and book recommendations.
* Access to future sessions of the course, including all updated materials, for 90 days after purchase (~3 sessions).

It will be jolly good fun, I hope you will join me! Comments and questions can be posted below.

Happy Torquing!

Intro to Torque Art with Milkshape3d - Preview online

Ed Johnson — 2007-09-18T16:33:26+00:00

Whew.... Its been over a month since I've posted. I've been busting my behind to get the materials for my first TorqueSchool course ready for prospective students.

Unfortunately many of the other instructors involved with TorqueSchool right now are so busy making their own materials that I haven't received very much feedback (comments/criticisms) on my materials. The little feedback I have gotten has been all positive, but I know there are things in there that perhaps you could point out.

There are obvious spots missing, and I have left highlighted notes/comments in there that point out where I already plan to add more. If you see an area that could use more description, pictures, examples, etc... let me know!

The course preview is going online at TorqueSchoo.coml Monday, September 17th (Constitution day!). It is meant to give you a taste of what this course will offer. The full course will go beyond textbook style materials, with:

* 200+ pages of graphical lecture material and tutorials.
* Videos that complement the written materials (lecture and tutorials).
* Communication with instructors and peers via IRC, forums, email, and phone.
* I'll be available for One-on-one and group assistance almost every day.
* Yours and your peer's submitted assignments will be available to download to learn from and critique.
* Links to other relevant information, further reading, and book recommendations.
* Access to future sessions of the course, including all updated materials, for 90 days after purchase (~3 sessions).

So, here it is: the preview of my Intro to Torque Art with Milkshape course. I've spent the better part of 6 months working on this in one form or another, and when it is completed it should go above and beyond anything comparably priced.

If you like what I've done so far and would like to see more, go to www.TorqueSchool.com and pre-register for the course to take advantage of Introductory price of $80, which will go up to $200 after September 30th. The full course will be starting Monday, October 15th. We might make the course materials available prior to the actual launch date.

Hope it sheds some light on the process of creating Game Art.

Happy Torquing!

Introducing Ed Johnson: Torque Art teacher

Ed Johnson — 2007-07-18T17:13:06+00:00

Notes:
1) Make sure you read Dave's post introducing Torque School before you read this. It will make much more sense.
2) This blog post is mirrored on my website here.

Hello!

My name is Ed Johnson, and I've been an avid gamer for years, as long as I've used computers, which is also as long as I can remember. My first memory of computers included watching the original Prince of Persia game being displayed on an overhead projector in my Kindergarten computer lab. Yes, I was a lucky kid :-).

I have since played dozens and dozens of games over the last decade, from Banjo-Kazooie to Metal Gear, Zork to WoW. Something that has never gone away in this time has been the feeling of limited satisfaction, or always thinking "This could be better". In just about every game I played I would notice things I wish I could change, but there isn't a button to "pop the hood" and see what makes it tick. I was a game developer trapped in a gamer's body! Aaahhh!!

My first game development experience was with a game "maker" I played around with called o.h.r.r.p.g.c.e. It allowed you to make a basic 2d rpg, reminiscent of games I enjoyed growing up like Zelda: a link to the past, or the pokemon games (yes, I used to be a PokeFreak). Not having to worry about the coding aspect let me focus on the art and world building. Months and many notebooks later I had drawings and notes up the ying yang, so many ideas out on paper, but I was really feeling the limitations of the program I was using. Still, I had fun and I played with it, but never did anything serious.

I kept the game development passion burning inside of me, albeit on the back burner, during high school while I took time to learn some real programming. I had written some html in the past, but I took a pluge when I bought a 3 inch thick C++ Reference book. I didn't even buy an "Intro to C++", I dove straight into reference. For a year or two I practiced C++ and read many articles on the interwebs about programming and IT. At some point I bought the book "Programming Role-Playing Games with DirectX".

I thought the only route was to write my own game/engine from scratch because I could never afford to license one like in the games I've played. While that book has many useful articles and tutorials, I still wasn't prepared to tackle the project of making a game engine from the ground up. I didn't really know enough about the game I would want to make to start from scratch. I still had lots to learn about Game Development, so Game Engine Development was still beyond me. I just wanted a powerful game engine I could use as a starting point and tweak to my heart's content, to make my dream game.

Sometime in early 2005 I was watching The Screen Savers with Leo Laporte on TechTv, my favorite show at the time, and they were showing off and talking about a really cool game called Blockland where you could build things out of Legos in a multiplayer environment. It was a lot of fun when it was fresh and still popular, there were lots of people on there! What really caught my attention about this game is that they pointed out the fact that it was made with a game engine specifically designed for Independent Game Developers, or otherwise those who can't afford 10 grand to license a game engine. I'm not sure if I fully realized what that meant at the time, but it was interesting, and I downloaded the Blockland demo to try it out. It was indeed very fun, and I was fascinated by the gameplay and how they did it!

I dug a little deeper and found out the code was there. I sat there reading the scripts figuring out how it all worked. I was amazed at how simple yet powerful the scripting language was. everything that made the game tick was there to be read in black and white.

I instantly knew this is what I wanted to be a part of. It was amazing. Not just the engine, but what you could do with it. Namely, anything you could do. The first thing I figured out is how much control you have, and the engine's limitations are really your limitations. With that said, there are so many people in the community sharing their knowledge and making it easier for others to learn. I am one testament to that statement. More proof can be found scattered around GarageGames.com in the forum posts, resources, and blogs posted daily.

In February 2005 I bought the Torque Game Engine license and I haven't looked back since. I've spent the last two and a half years comfortably tinkering with it, learning bits here and there. Not until recently have I even attempted to work on a full game project, I have been taking my time to learn the various aspects of the engine.

I've learned so much and have had so much fun because of all the resources submitted and forum conversations people have been having. I wanted to give back in any way I could, and after struggling with the current Torque documents to learn the art pipeline and find a work flow that worked for me I decided to start to write all new Torque Art Pipeline tutorials from scratch.

I wanted to take the best info that was already available in various places and fill in where I felt info was missing. For example, if you search around the GarageGames website you can find a cornucopia of info on modeling, animation, and scripting game objects. This information is very disorganized though, and many out on the forums have asked for an "All In One" approach.

I started asking myself questions about what kind of shapes there were to make, and began outlining my Intro to Torque Art guide. I referenced the existing docs where appropriate and found the gaps of information that I felt needed to be filled in. Little by little I began piecing together a picture of the Torque Art pipeline from ideas, to basic shapes, to some of the not-so-basic shapes like weapons and vehicles.

Those docs evolved over time. I began to focus my efforts on Milkshape3d, the standard Indie modeler. I didn't have a lot of experience with it, but it is what many in the community use, and I saw it as a good starting point for someone who was new to the 3d art scene. It was because of these documents that I was introduced to the Torque School project. Little did they know but they were making my dream of being a teacher a reality. Having a job doing what I love: helping others, and making games... what else could anyone ask for?! Peace on earth? well... things are looking up, so who knows :-).

Continued below, or read it here.