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.
#62
2.) Also with the partial systems, did you show off the wetness and precipitation effects in the south pacific demo?
3.) For floating objects in the river if i place a raft or a log could I jump on that floating object and float down stream on it?
4.) Can we get the makers of the Forest KIT to come to the forums and display a pricing.
5.) The brushing object into a scene technology used in the forest KIT. Can this source be used to place things like fences, houses, windmills,and other miscellaneous objects? I think the brush placement of objects far more controllable than the manual drop to camera of drop to center screen.
6.) What kind of remade art will be coming with T3D? Out side of the things that come with KIT's
Ok I'll shut up now and read. :) I'm really interested about #5
04/05/2009 (3:35 am)
1.) For the river path add-on, if I make a 90 degree angel fall in the middle would that create a waterfall effect or do i still need partical effect for that. 2.) Also with the partial systems, did you show off the wetness and precipitation effects in the south pacific demo?
3.) For floating objects in the river if i place a raft or a log could I jump on that floating object and float down stream on it?
4.) Can we get the makers of the Forest KIT to come to the forums and display a pricing.
5.) The brushing object into a scene technology used in the forest KIT. Can this source be used to place things like fences, houses, windmills,and other miscellaneous objects? I think the brush placement of objects far more controllable than the manual drop to camera of drop to center screen.
6.) What kind of remade art will be coming with T3D? Out side of the things that come with KIT's
Ok I'll shut up now and read. :) I'm really interested about #5
#63
BY GarageGames COMMUNITY
04/05/2009 (3:36 am)
I can just say: Fantastic, beautifully ,great, nice , extremely Sweet ,remarkable,looks amazing, impressive, wow, wow ,wow, wow, cant wait for the beta ,torque 3d engine of the year 09, Just ... >>PIP<< ...awesome!!!BY GarageGames COMMUNITY
#64
The two are completely unrelated--the terrain rendering is speaking towards the terrain, not the world system.
The "jittering" is an artifact of loss of precision in world coordinates as you move farther and farther from the origin, and while there are several different ways to address that issue, the benefits of moving to a GPU enhanced terrain isn't one of them.
04/05/2009 (3:37 am)
Quote:
With the new terrain system and "limitless" terrain; Does that mean the dreaded "jitters" problem is gone? (Long distances from the origin the camera begins to jiggle slightly)
The two are completely unrelated--the terrain rendering is speaking towards the terrain, not the world system.
The "jittering" is an artifact of loss of precision in world coordinates as you move farther and farther from the origin, and while there are several different ways to address that issue, the benefits of moving to a GPU enhanced terrain isn't one of them.
#65
04/05/2009 (4:24 am)
The south pacific demo was well worth the wait. I just have one questions about the destructible buildings/Objects were they made from DTS or DIF shapes?
#66
04/05/2009 (5:17 am)
Outstanding stuff 
#67
04/05/2009 (5:43 am)
@Jeff, they're DTS objects. Everything in the South Pacific demo consists of DTS objects, no DIFs at all. 
#68
The gesture was not lost at all, Josh... your pink roses made us feel both genuinely appreciated and extremely awkward. We figured that was the point. ;)
04/05/2009 (6:10 am)
Quote:This was the deciding factor in my sending (some truly hideous) flowers to their office to show my appreciation. However, I think the gesture was lost on them being dudes and all :)
The gesture was not lost at all, Josh... your pink roses made us feel both genuinely appreciated and extremely awkward. We figured that was the point. ;)
#69
Jeff, to be specific... the structures in the South Pacific demo were exported as Collada files (but of course become DTS internally, and could instead start as a DTS). For each destructible object, a rough physics counterpart must be made from primitives and PhysX joints and exported separately. So technically, any given structure is comprised of both a Collada/DTS and corresponding PhysX xml.
04/05/2009 (6:23 am)
Quote:The south pacific demo was well worth the wait. I just have one questions about the destructible buildings/Objects were they made from DTS or DIF shapes?
Jeff, to be specific... the structures in the South Pacific demo were exported as Collada files (but of course become DTS internally, and could instead start as a DTS). For each destructible object, a rough physics counterpart must be made from primitives and PhysX joints and exported separately. So technically, any given structure is comprised of both a Collada/DTS and corresponding PhysX xml.
#70
Anyway, as Brett said, there will eventually be a plan just for the Forest Kit that will cover all of this in detail, I'm sure.
04/05/2009 (6:46 am)
Kevin, I'll answer as many of these as I can:Quote:3.) For floating objects in the river if i place a raft or a log could I jump on that floating object and float down stream on it?We've done that a number of times. There are even bouyancy and friction settings in PhysX that help with this. But you'd pretty much be at the mercy of the river, without much control, and the river would need to be free of any hidden collision volumes that the raft could catch on. Also, if not built correctly, the raft could tumble end-over end.
Quote:4.) Can we get the makers of the Forest KIT to come to the forums and display a pricing.Frankly, it's not set in stone at the moment. I wish I could give you more info, but I can't.
Quote:5.) The brushing object into a scene technology used in the forest KIT. Can this source be used to place things like fences, houses, windmills,and other miscellaneous objects? I think the brush placement of objects far more controllable than the manual drop to camera of drop to center screen.Absolutely. We used it in the South Pacific demo to place hundreds of small rocks. Each "brush" you set up can contain any mesh (or number of meshes) you desire, with various parameters to control its size, rotation, vertical placement, slope, elevation, etc. It wouldn't really place segments of fences correctly, but you could at least use it to paint the segments out to re-align afterwards. It's not really set up to do the kind of alignment and regular spacing you'd need for a city, for instance.
Anyway, as Brett said, there will eventually be a plan just for the Forest Kit that will cover all of this in detail, I'm sure.
#71
04/05/2009 (8:19 am)
Stunning. Torque 3D is truly shaping up to be something special.
#72
I have some more questions, though:
Will the new Terrain system allow for creating Caves with a brush tool, or will we have to use Collada to import them?
How about Underwater effects, such as caustics. Are they included?
From the Depth-of-Field video, I'm assuming that Full Screen Shaders are supported?
04/05/2009 (8:31 am)
First of all, thanks for the answers to my post above.I have some more questions, though:
Will the new Terrain system allow for creating Caves with a brush tool, or will we have to use Collada to import them?
How about Underwater effects, such as caustics. Are they included?
From the Depth-of-Field video, I'm assuming that Full Screen Shaders are supported?
#73
I am curious about the specs on the computer used to show the South Pacific demo.
thx
04/05/2009 (9:06 am)
Sorry if this has been stated already..I am curious about the specs on the computer used to show the South Pacific demo.
thx
#74
1. Can oceans and lakes do the same things as rivers can do? Like floating objects and currents?
2. If I make a boat or a ship, would the player be able to walk on it while it is floating? While the current carries them?
3. When you said physics, did you say PhysX? I wasn't sure whether or not that is included.
4. Let's say you want the watertower piece to break in 2, 3, maybe even 10 pieces. How would that work?
5. Is there any use for .dif models anymore? Now that pre-baked lighting is pretty much disposed of?
6. Is the engine really going to be called Torque 3D? I just expected that to be a development name.
7. Like the poster above me, I too want to know what the specs were for that computer... It seemed like T3D would need very high-performance hardware to run.
8. Will Apple's OpenCL API be implemented into the engine? It seems like it would be good for low-performing hardware.
04/05/2009 (9:16 am)
I have a few questions myself:1. Can oceans and lakes do the same things as rivers can do? Like floating objects and currents?
2. If I make a boat or a ship, would the player be able to walk on it while it is floating? While the current carries them?
3. When you said physics, did you say PhysX? I wasn't sure whether or not that is included.
4. Let's say you want the watertower piece to break in 2, 3, maybe even 10 pieces. How would that work?
5. Is there any use for .dif models anymore? Now that pre-baked lighting is pretty much disposed of?
6. Is the engine really going to be called Torque 3D? I just expected that to be a development name.
7. Like the poster above me, I too want to know what the specs were for that computer... It seemed like T3D would need very high-performance hardware to run.
8. Will Apple's OpenCL API be implemented into the engine? It seems like it would be good for low-performing hardware.
#75
04/05/2009 (9:36 am)
Quote:4. Let's say you want the watertower piece to break in 2, 3, maybe even 10 pieces. How would that work?You would just build the physics representation of the object to be composed of 2, 3, or 10 physics actors (each actor can be made of a number of grouped primitives), and connect them with PhysX joints. It gets a little more complex than that, but I won't go into any more specifics about the PhysX implementation. I've actually been putting together docs for it in my spare time. It will be well-documented. :)
#76
I'm already a pre-owner, but I was wondering on the whole high end computer thing. Can you let us know little more about the computers the South Pacific Demo was running on?
I just wanna know what kind of computer I need (or if the one I have will be ok) to run everything and keep the framerates up!
Can't wait for the demo!
04/05/2009 (10:47 am)
Hey Brett,I'm already a pre-owner, but I was wondering on the whole high end computer thing. Can you let us know little more about the computers the South Pacific Demo was running on?
I just wanna know what kind of computer I need (or if the one I have will be ok) to run everything and keep the framerates up!
Can't wait for the demo!
#77
that has already been said in this comment its the second one from the bottom. read that and you will know everything.
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/16853/1#comment-118389
04/05/2009 (10:56 am)
Kory Jamesthat has already been said in this comment its the second one from the bottom. read that and you will know everything.
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/16853/1#comment-118389
#79
sh(censored), its like waiting for x-mas, roooaarrr...
04/05/2009 (1:19 pm)
Man, im going to piss my pants soon.. !! give us BETA ! :Psh(censored), its like waiting for x-mas, roooaarrr...
#80
$250 for current gen technology that should be implemented in the engine from the start...
Cute.
04/05/2009 (1:33 pm)
"That's up to Sickhead, but it were GG's I'd say it's worth quite a bit. Maybe $250-400."$250 for current gen technology that should be implemented in the engine from the start...
Cute.
Torque 3D Owner Afan Olovcic