Blog for coxosclassic at GarageGames.com

Stage 2 - Environment

coxosclassic — 2007-03-06T02:48:10+00:00

Environment

I got a bit confused at the beggining of this stage, to get used to play arround in Quark wasnt easy at all. Although the program is quit simple I found it more difficult to use than GTKRadiant (dont ask me why..??).
But after a while I got in to it and stuff started to come out...

After downloading Quark I went through several tutorials (Documentation and Mapping) and after I learned how to move arround I started to sketch a map based on the idea i had for the game:

Birdseye view and topography for terrain.

This is actually a map of a place I used to live
in.(Portalegre)

My old neighborhood will be the map itself[ (image from google earth)

The main reason that I decided to give Quark a try was because of its map2dif converter and its documentation, which I think is a significant advantage over GTKRadiant (although I still perfer GtK!).

The first problem I faced was a lack of size reference in Quark. Basicly I modeled everything without knowing on which scale I was working on... Somewhere in GG foruns there is something about this topic (something like 32 Quark Units = 1 Torque Unit) but I wasnt shure about it and developed the whole map without a proper size reference.
I ended up getting this for a start:

Torque birdseye view

LOD at work: Church0.dif and Church1.dif

Map details: Church and street...

Map detail: Roof tops...

Another map detail: Church...

reference picture of the place...

Another reference pic...

Real church (detail)

This is the map I will use for now on. Its still in a 'raw' shape, the textures are temporary (I dont need them for now)and the overall lighting is really primitive. I made this base map a single .dif file, and later on the project I will add a lot of .dts shapes for the details and texture the whole thing properly.
I made LODS for the church because I want to use this building (along with a couple of others) part of the story for the game.

Im still considering to use some .dts shapes as buildings But I will decide that matter later in Stage 5.

Im happy for now about the environment stage. I learned how to bring bulidings to torque and this is what most of this stage was all about. There are a lot of other things I want to include in this scenario like particles but to start think about that I really need to go into torque script...

Next step: Stage 3 - Torque Script

Stage 0 - Idea

coxosclassic — 2007-03-06T01:40:42+00:00

Somehow this thread got erased, so this is the 2nd time Im writting it...

'The player runs through a small town shooting mutants on his way... along his 'journey' he collects powerups, different weapons, ammos and healthpacks.'

This is the basic idea for the project, I dont want to go deep on it now since this is just a way for me to learn Torque. So I inspired myself on some games I really like and try to 'redo' them in the process.
I will have to tweak it later on when I get to game logics, but even then I will try not to make a big thing out of it. Just a simple straight forward story.

Im planning to have different types of mutants and a Boss at the end of the game which will give me the opportunity to learn the AI integration in Torque and Im also planning to use a soundtrack during the gameplay.

The entire process of developing this game will be documented in a small design document aswell.

Stage 1 - Character

coxosclassic — 2007-01-23T22:46:33+00:00

Character

I've been playing for a while trying to move my character from Maya to Torque. I have followed the dannyngan.com online tutorial that helped me a lot! Loading a static shape from Maya to Torque is really straight forward specially with the help of the dtsUtility; plugin. Everything went fine until I got into the Character Basics part... I was having problems with my character everytime I tried to export it to STP. I posted a forum thread explaining my problem, and with the help from Affectworks I managed to get through that with no prob!.

Finally I had my character showing up fine in STP with the animations running. So far I learned that I have to be really carefull with name conventions, I cant just play arround with names or I will get trouble ahead!

Files that I consider important to know about:

- player.dts - Its the file that contains the mesh and skinning data (path: '.demo\data\shapes\player\...).
- player_.dsq - are the files that contains the animation data for each sequence (path: '.demo\data\shapes\player\...).
- player.cs - the script file that 'merges' the animations (*.dqs) with the shape itself (.dts). (path: '.demo\data\shapes\player\...).

I can use a completly different path for my character though, but to do this I also have to change the 'player.cs' file in path:'.\demo\server\scripts'.
One other thing: I must have at least 2 .dsq files in my player.cs script. One for the 'run' (forward) movement and another one for the 'root' (idle) movement. If I dont have any of this files listed in my player.cs file, Torque engine wont run any .dsq files...

Here are some screens shots of what is going on:

This is the character Im playing with...

This is the rig...

This is the hypergraph layout for the character (without sequences)

This is a running pose...(character no properly skinned)

this is the character loaded in TGE...(belive me, its moving!)

Ok with the character for now, I will tweak it later on in this project (Stage 5). Now its time to put some environment in! As soon as Im done with it Ill drop another post (Stage 2 - Environment).

TOOOOOOOOORQUE! (study01)

coxosclassic — 2007-01-18T23:44:30+00:00

Hey! This is my first blog in torque. Actually its my first blog ever... Anyways, since Im really focused on use Torque just for fun, I decided to document the learning process with this .PLAN.

I've organized a scheme that (hopefully) will end up with a prototype for a FPS.

Stage 0 done! - Idea!

Stage 1 done! - Characters - export all the models including characters that I'm doing in Maya to the Torque engine

Stage 2 done!- Environment - explore the QuArK editor (which I think is the same as GTKRadiant but with a torque compiler). At this stage I will decide if I build the level map in Maya or QuArK (or GTKRadiant ;) ).

Stage 3 - Learn TORQUESCRIPT (ongoing). So far I don't know anything about it, I'm pretty confortable in Flash actionScript2.0 though, and maybe I could use some of that knowledge to Torque Script. Although they are not the same thing, I hope torque script is Oop (Object Oriented Programming) and use that as an advantage to move forward to the next stage.

Stage 4 - Definition of game logic through torque script. This is probably the stage that will burn my brain cells out, and I will definitly spend most of my time on it. The game story will be defined based on what I learned from the previous stage, and the idea at stage 0 will start to get shape.

Stage 5 - At this stage I will be full on torque! With everything I learned so far, I will get back to the good old paper and pencil process and start tweaking art concepts, properly rebuild all the models, characters, guns and assets in Maya, create the final textures in Photoshop and dump all of that in Torque engine with the game logic ready to use.

Stage 6 - I will have to tweak and change stuff arround, so this is the time to do it.

Stage 7 - DONE!!

This .plan will not be folowed by rule, I'm conscious this is not that easy and I know that I forgot about lot of stuff that I will need during this project, but for a start I think its enough.

This .plan will be in constant change, otherwise it will not be made... The main thing is try to stick to it as much as possible.