Torque 3D Development - GDC Live Edition
by Brett Seyler · 04/04/2009 (2:31 pm) · 333 comments
Wow...another GDC behind us. This was a big one. I dare say it was GG's biggest ever. Josh Williams and I gave a talk on Thursday titles "The Future of Web Games" which ended up being packed full with standing room only. There was a tremendous amount of interest in both InstantAction Technology and Torque 3D. That went off fabulously. We did some private demos for the big gun studios. The GG booth was jam packed for 3 days straight, and despite bringing a full staff of GG'ers to San Francisco to help, I think everyone was overloaded with excited questions and lots of "when can I get that!!??" The really exciting part for Torque 3D stuff (which was absurdely well recieved) is that we've still only shown probably 50% of what we're working on. Some of you saw Tom Spilman's uStream walkthough of the "South Pacific" demo. That's all been captured and posted for you relentless viewing and scrutinizing below =) Obviously a lot of people put hard work into Torque 3D, but we really owe a lot to Sickhead Games for helping us SHOW rather than tell all of what Torque 3D is capable of.
Tom's gone way above and beyond creating a new terrain implementation (as you'll see in the videos), physics, procedural object placement brushing tools (called "Forest Kit" after the original tech it's based on), and of course, the new Advanced Lighting. It's not just Tom though. Russell Fincher, a great artist, is responsible for making most of this look as good as it does. James did the River and Road tools and Ross worked a lot on bending the World Editor to make all this stuff easily accessible and easier to use. That's just the high points, but they really are a great crew. We're lucky to have their help.
So, in this blog, I'm just posting the Torque 3D relevant footage from GDC. You'll see two demos below, both pretty ground-breaking stuff. There's a lot more on the way. This shakey cam stuff is great, but the video is low resolution and I want to get some straight-from-the-machine captures out to really show how good this all looks and how easy it all is to use.
There truly is a lot more to come. There's a more in depth look at the World Editor, a focus on the Road and River tools, Gerhard's AI and GPU Cloth, Physics, new demos, genre kits, and more. We're also going to try to get a live demo embedded on the website so you can see this stuff for real. All that, and our first build for pre-order customers is just around the corner. Since we opened up the pre-order promotion last week, you guys almost broke our ecommerce system with the flood of purchases. Sorry to those of you who were turned away while we tried to patch things up last week. Hopefully everyone who wanted in got in. Shirts are on their way, and the Torque 3D private forums are alive with anticipation. I can't wait to see what you'll all do with this new technology. I have high hopes :)
I also know that there a lot of unanswered questions from the nearly 500 comments on the last blog. I'm going to re-read those thoroughly this week and try to answer them all. Thanks for you patience and thanks again to everyone whose kept the faith and stuck with us. It's great to know there's still such a huge community behind Torque.
More development blogs to come. This is post #16.
Torque 3D development blogs:
- Post #1 - Kickoff
- Post #2 - Apparatus and Warrior Camp
- Post #3 - Luma's racing kit
- Post #4 - Josh Engebretson and Web Publishing
- Post #5 - Pricing and Licensing
- Post #6 - Pricing and Licensing CONTINUED
- Post #7 - Wetness & Precipitation
- Post #8 - Screeen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
- Post #9 - Matt Langley and the Torque Launcher
- Post #10 - Chris Robertson and Collada
- Post #11 - Depth of Field
- Post #12 - Advanced Lighting
- Post #13 - Soft Particles
- Post #14 - World Editor
- Post #15 - Pricing and Licensing ANNOUNCED!
- Post #16 - GDC Live Edition
- Post #17 - River & Road Editors
- Post #18 - Beta is UP!
- Post #19 - Light Rays, Undercity, Material Editor
- Post #20 - Mass Market Hardware
- Post #21 - Beta: Part Deux
- Post #22 - Marching Towards Beta 3
- Post #23 - pureLIGHT
- Post #24 - Lighting, Terrain, and Cloth
- Post #25 - Beta 3!
- Post #26 - Coming Soon!
About the author
Since 2007, I've done my best to steer Torque's development and brand toward the best opportunities in games middleware.
#22
I only wish I had the money to pre order because I already would have if I had the money.
And I'm also curious as to what will come standard in the engine and what is the forest kit. Physics for one is that the forest kit or standard with the engine? From this protion of what you wrote it sounds like it's part of the forest kit: "Tom's gone way above and beyond creating a new terrain implementation (as you'll see in the videos), physics, procedural object placement brushing tools (called "Forest Kit" after the original tech it's based on".
04/04/2009 (5:08 pm)
I'd like to echo everyone when they say it looks sweet as all get out.I only wish I had the money to pre order because I already would have if I had the money.
And I'm also curious as to what will come standard in the engine and what is the forest kit. Physics for one is that the forest kit or standard with the engine? From this protion of what you wrote it sounds like it's part of the forest kit: "Tom's gone way above and beyond creating a new terrain implementation (as you'll see in the videos), physics, procedural object placement brushing tools (called "Forest Kit" after the original tech it's based on".
#23
Honestly, I've been set on creating 2D games for the rest of my career. Torque 3D + Forrest Kit are seriously making me rethink that decision. I have never had a development experience like I had with the South Pacific demo.
Amazing work guys. Seeing this first hand at GDC was a real treat.
04/04/2009 (5:23 pm)
We just got our machines back from GDC yesterday. I immediately stopped what I was doing, set one up, and continued playing around with the South Pacific demo.Honestly, I've been set on creating 2D games for the rest of my career. Torque 3D + Forrest Kit are seriously making me rethink that decision. I have never had a development experience like I had with the South Pacific demo.
Amazing work guys. Seeing this first hand at GDC was a real treat.
#24
Magical Foliage Wand it is! ;)
04/04/2009 (5:28 pm)
Quote:We'll do a full "Forest Kit" blog at some point detailing what it does, what it adds, what's included, with pricing, etc. I still think we should change the name though :)
Magical Foliage Wand it is! ;)
#25
I sure hope it isnt going to be like..
----------
You want tree's and grass ? Pay 400$ more forest kit
You want car physics ? pay 300$ more car kit
You want better water ? pay 300$ more for water kit
You want the shaders you have seen ? pay 300$ more for shader kit
You dont want to pay it ? spend next 6 month trying to make it yourself.
----------
Then the engine suttenly starts to become very expensive if you want all the functionality.
Its of course nice you guys showed all these amazing video's of T3D, but if it cost 1000$,2000$ or more to get close to that (shaders, ssao, tree's, terrain), and have to pay for all that, then i start to fell kind of cheated :)
I might have misunderstood something though in the dev blog posts.
04/04/2009 (5:28 pm)
Yeah im starting to wonder if that 1k$ actually have alot of catches (like the "kit" systems).I sure hope it isnt going to be like..
----------
You want tree's and grass ? Pay 400$ more forest kit
You want car physics ? pay 300$ more car kit
You want better water ? pay 300$ more for water kit
You want the shaders you have seen ? pay 300$ more for shader kit
You dont want to pay it ? spend next 6 month trying to make it yourself.
----------
Then the engine suttenly starts to become very expensive if you want all the functionality.
Its of course nice you guys showed all these amazing video's of T3D, but if it cost 1000$,2000$ or more to get close to that (shaders, ssao, tree's, terrain), and have to pay for all that, then i start to fell kind of cheated :)
I might have misunderstood something though in the dev blog posts.
#26
Cred where cred is due...Ross & James
Russell & Tom
What this stuff looks like in person...
hawtness
Dudes from Sony Japan, scoping Torque 3D
"Do you guys have this on PS3???"
04/04/2009 (5:50 pm)
Thouht I'd post up some of what Sickhead has on their Flickr stream...Cred where cred is due...Ross & James
Russell & Tom
What this stuff looks like in person...
hawtness
Dudes from Sony Japan, scoping Torque 3D
"Do you guys have this on PS3???"
#27
I like GG you guys work on performance as much as you can so we can have high quality stuff. Keep performance work down and I will be happy for the rest of my life. :P
Ok not quite done is there a poly limit I know you said there's no terrain limit size will there be a limit for Collada?
Thanks as you can see I made this post just to make you happy on the capitalization. :P I never been good with placing periods,comas and capitalizing is just a pain to press Shift and a letter. Paragraphs was a pain because school teaches you one way of doing paragraphs. I was told to do it differently for online chatting like a year ago so getting used to doing it this way now. I have always sucked at this kind of stuff in school and outside of school, but every day I type I know I will get better and better taking things slowly though. :P
I can make good posts but in order for me to do that I have to go back and change things which takes more time. When I type a post I just want to post it and get it over with. Most people think I am way out of my league with this kind of stuff based on my typing I bet. I can type good if I try harder and I know I not going out of my league I taken some classes for this kind of stuff. I might not be a coder, but I still know how to edit code quite well even add stuff to it to make it better.
Thanks, Brandon Baker
04/04/2009 (5:50 pm)
Thanks Brett Seyler you said all I wanted to hear as I was thinking most of that stuff was part of that FK kit. The tree thing looks cool way better then cryengine as there trees are breakable which is good but it will hit performance so hard. I glad that they are not breakable though I would think we could do that as well I for one would not. I have messed with cryengine and allot of stuff just hits your performance.I like GG you guys work on performance as much as you can so we can have high quality stuff. Keep performance work down and I will be happy for the rest of my life. :P
Ok not quite done is there a poly limit I know you said there's no terrain limit size will there be a limit for Collada?
Quote:@Brandon: Dude! I see paragraphs and periods! Nice =) If we get you to start capitalizing, you're going to be a poet :p I kid...joking of course :)
Thanks as you can see I made this post just to make you happy on the capitalization. :P I never been good with placing periods,comas and capitalizing is just a pain to press Shift and a letter. Paragraphs was a pain because school teaches you one way of doing paragraphs. I was told to do it differently for online chatting like a year ago so getting used to doing it this way now. I have always sucked at this kind of stuff in school and outside of school, but every day I type I know I will get better and better taking things slowly though. :P
I can make good posts but in order for me to do that I have to go back and change things which takes more time. When I type a post I just want to post it and get it over with. Most people think I am way out of my league with this kind of stuff based on my typing I bet. I can type good if I try harder and I know I not going out of my league I taken some classes for this kind of stuff. I might not be a coder, but I still know how to edit code quite well even add stuff to it to make it better.
Thanks, Brandon Baker
#28
04/04/2009 (6:03 pm)
Looks better than any engine I've seen under $100,000, which is saying something. Very nice work GG and SK people, can't wait to see and read more.
#29
SSAO, DoF, Soft Particles, Water, etc - INCLUDED
other shaders - INCLUDED
terrain - INCLUDED
grass - INCLUDED
car physics - some improvement to the vehicle class included, must more specific car racing game logic and assets in the Luma Racing Kit
general physics improvements (basically everything shown in the vids except possibly out-of-the-box tree physcis, need to check w/ Sickhead on that) - INCLUDED
South Pacific demo + assets - probably need to own FK for this one since it uses FK. Binary demo w/out FK editing tools will be INCLUDED
New AI - we need to see if this can be brought into the core and if it will work across a broad set of hardware first, but I want this out there and people to use it, so there are lots of options. I'm pretty confident we'll get this into the core so that it will be included.
Gerhard's Cloth, demo assets, etc. - This is still coming together, so it's yet TBD at this point. Each feature works, but I want to see how compatible it will be w/ the core systems (Lighting in particular).
FPS Genre Kit - This contains a lot of assets and specific FPS logic (well beyond what was in the old FPS starter kit), and it will be sold standalone. A base level (probably Warrior Camp) might be included. No promises. The full kit will have multiple levels and lots of really nice content to work with the FPS logic.
I'll try to answer any other questions I can. If you're wanting to create this South Pacific demo from scratch, all the features are in Torque 3D, except the FK stuff.
04/04/2009 (6:11 pm)
@Bo: Quote:Yeah im starting to wonder if that 1k$ actually have alot of catches (like the "kit" systems).Catch? No, not at all. Much of this is still in dev, that's the only reason for ambiguity. Let me see if I can clear some of this stuff up then...
I sure hope it isnt going to be like..
----------
You want tree's and grass ? Pay 400$ more forest kit
You want car physics ? pay 300$ more car kit
You want better water ? pay 300$ more for water kit
You want the shaders you have seen ? pay 300$ more for shader kit
You dont want to pay it ? spend next 6 month trying to make it yourself.
----------
Then the engine suttenly starts to become very expensive if you want all the functionality.
Its of course nice you guys showed all these amazing video's of T3D, but if it cost 1000$,2000$ or more to get close to that (shaders, ssao, tree's, terrain), and have to pay for all that, then i start to fell kind of cheated :)
SSAO, DoF, Soft Particles, Water, etc - INCLUDED
other shaders - INCLUDED
terrain - INCLUDED
grass - INCLUDED
car physics - some improvement to the vehicle class included, must more specific car racing game logic and assets in the Luma Racing Kit
general physics improvements (basically everything shown in the vids except possibly out-of-the-box tree physcis, need to check w/ Sickhead on that) - INCLUDED
South Pacific demo + assets - probably need to own FK for this one since it uses FK. Binary demo w/out FK editing tools will be INCLUDED
New AI - we need to see if this can be brought into the core and if it will work across a broad set of hardware first, but I want this out there and people to use it, so there are lots of options. I'm pretty confident we'll get this into the core so that it will be included.
Gerhard's Cloth, demo assets, etc. - This is still coming together, so it's yet TBD at this point. Each feature works, but I want to see how compatible it will be w/ the core systems (Lighting in particular).
FPS Genre Kit - This contains a lot of assets and specific FPS logic (well beyond what was in the old FPS starter kit), and it will be sold standalone. A base level (probably Warrior Camp) might be included. No promises. The full kit will have multiple levels and lots of really nice content to work with the FPS logic.
I'll try to answer any other questions I can. If you're wanting to create this South Pacific demo from scratch, all the features are in Torque 3D, except the FK stuff.
#30
04/04/2009 (6:15 pm)
@Brandon:Quote:I can make good posts but in order for me to do that I have to go back and change things which takes more time. When I type a post I just want to post it and get it over with. Most people think I am way out of my league with this kind of stuff based on my typing I bet. I can type good if I try harder and I know I not going out of my league I taken some classes for this kind of stuff. I might not be a coder, but I still know how to edit code quite well even add stuff to it to make it better.=) You do make good points, definitely. I get lazy typing stuff too, but when I do, I think it does hurt the message some. Thanks for participating as much as you have in the discussions here, though. Engagement is always good.
#31
04/04/2009 (6:20 pm)
I heard them say that the PHYX plugin is not going to be in the beta or demo release? This true?
#32
04/04/2009 (6:28 pm)
@Kevin: Quote:I heard them say that the PHYX plugin is not going to be in the beta or demo release? This true?What Tom is saying is that he doesn't know how much of this kind of thing will be networkable. No engine has networked physics that look like this. They all show single player physics madness, and we'll include pretty much all of this kind of thing good for single player as well, but we're pretty focused on what we can do to improve networked physics. The future is multiplayer.
#33
That whole conversation is mainly what made us decide to port Ruin in Torque3D.
Thank you so much Tom, the applause and cheers were well deserved!
04/04/2009 (6:31 pm)
In South Pacific Part IV I can hear Tom answering a barrage of questions from Jon (BrokeAss Games).That whole conversation is mainly what made us decide to port Ruin in Torque3D.
Thank you so much Tom, the applause and cheers were well deserved!
#34
Thanks for clearing that up, all my issues/worries just "magically" went away v.v :)
Post #32, you quote me, yet it was Post #31 Kevin who asked the question :P (no biggie though)
04/04/2009 (6:34 pm)
@Brett SeylerThanks for clearing that up, all my issues/worries just "magically" went away v.v :)
Post #32, you quote me, yet it was Post #31 Kevin who asked the question :P (no biggie though)
#35
T3D is shaping up to really be the engine we all prayed for, high price or not. I think a really solid core, even an expensive one, with really quality add-ons, even expensive ones, are the way to go. If you guys set the bar high, the third-party kits will try to hit the same mark and every developer will be better off. I have absolutely no problem paying twice or three times as much for quality documentation and tools - definitely worth my money to save some time.
04/04/2009 (7:34 pm)
Looks like I'm going to have to stop eating for a few months to save up ;)T3D is shaping up to really be the engine we all prayed for, high price or not. I think a really solid core, even an expensive one, with really quality add-ons, even expensive ones, are the way to go. If you guys set the bar high, the third-party kits will try to hit the same mark and every developer will be better off. I have absolutely no problem paying twice or three times as much for quality documentation and tools - definitely worth my money to save some time.
#36
Q: will this live demo have the world editor in it? I'd really like to play with that before making the jump. I think the graphics capabilities of T3D are beyond any of the other indie engines right now, but what I really had a problem with in TSE was the world editor. I can't say it's really bad cos people did manage to make games with it, but clearly it wasn't the best thing in the product - it compares very badly with Unity for example. So I'd like to see how much better the T3D world editor is - I must say it looted good in Tom's demo here and I know you said you've got a world editor post coming up, but it's still nice to play with it yourself of course.
04/04/2009 (7:36 pm)
Looks really nice, great demos, very err... Crysis-like :) I hope you can get the shimmering in the shadowmap sorted though - that's the only really glarring problem in what would otherwise not look out of place in any next gen game.Q: will this live demo have the world editor in it? I'd really like to play with that before making the jump. I think the graphics capabilities of T3D are beyond any of the other indie engines right now, but what I really had a problem with in TSE was the world editor. I can't say it's really bad cos people did manage to make games with it, but clearly it wasn't the best thing in the product - it compares very badly with Unity for example. So I'd like to see how much better the T3D world editor is - I must say it looted good in Tom's demo here and I know you said you've got a world editor post coming up, but it's still nice to play with it yourself of course.
#37
04/04/2009 (7:52 pm)
Wow, awesome work Sickhead!!!!! I got a head rush watching the footage!!! :)
#38
The tree's in the background (right side at water) have this white "aura" around them, wich make them look very "cartoonish", is that a bug ? (incase anyone knows).
04/04/2009 (8:24 pm)
I had a look at the image titled "hawtness" (in bigger version aswell) and i see something wierd.The tree's in the background (right side at water) have this white "aura" around them, wich make them look very "cartoonish", is that a bug ? (incase anyone knows).
#39
04/04/2009 (8:26 pm)
@Bo, it's just an offset issue with the full screen fogging, IIRC.
#40
Ah okay :P, i was just like.. wt, why does those tree's have that wierd looking bevel :)
The game we will be making will have camera style ala Diablo3, so i guess it wont affect me much in any case since its just the fog hehe :)
04/04/2009 (8:30 pm)
@RossAh okay :P, i was just like.. wt, why does those tree's have that wierd looking bevel :)
The game we will be making will have camera style ala Diablo3, so i guess it wont affect me much in any case since its just the fog hehe :)
Associate Michael Hall
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