Torque 3D Development - GDC Live Edition

#101

Quote:On the other side of things. I am totally looking forward to the river and road kit (we wont need to buy a water addon for other effects like waterfalls?)

Let's start referring to these as the River and Road Editors, as not to confuse anyone into thinking they are add-on kits. :)

#102 (Sorry... double-post.)

#103 Personally I really dont understand why there are people complaining they will have to pay for content kits that adds assets and functionality to T3D... at the end of the day even if its $200 you can easily call that 10 manhours wages, find anyone that will create the same pack in 10 hours... in the longrun unless you dont value your own personal time and have the skills and resources to create the packs on your own in your spare time, then do that, otherwise pay for the service provided by the lads at sickhead etc who are making the content packs and additional stuff.

I dont believe it will be the end of the free resources either, everything gets to a saturation stage, at the beginning i believe theres likely to be a considerable ammount of free resources, because its new, but down the line, when theres say a perfectly good resource for something, why would it get remade put up again by someone else ?

#104 Oh i agree andy, But if you read through the numerous threads. Dont you see a theme growing about the genre kits. EXactly what is coming with the SDK? will there be a "basic fps setup" or will it just be a raw SDK, with a few samplers. Keeping in mind that the FPS and racing kits are already stated to be seperate.. What will come with the PRofessional SDK, primarily to display all of the Features. Will we see demo levels like the TGEA level with wide open spaces 2 DIFS, a handful of flora and skies. DOnt know, im kinda worrying myself a bit with all this talk of whats going to be and not be.

I think that there will be a less free resources. Primiarly becuase the SDK source is for the PRofessional USers, which technically means that GG will need to make 2 Private forums, to fullfil that promise as folks with the Basic Package arent supposed to have sources unless they are part of a project. Or is my thought process wrong. And im sure there will be a lot of Basic Users vs Professional after the preorder.

#105 I would presume a fairly raw sample to be honest, having read what these kits are going to be like, their effectively a complete minigame primed for editing, majority of the time and hassle required to create your own game from them sounds to me like it will be considerably less with T3D then it was with TGEA because majority of the donkey work has been done within the genre packs.

#106 omg the browser capable of running flash and html etc as designed is killer. Hopefully in the end the surface itself is interactive? I can think of a million places this is useful. It is always hard to get good web content inside of 3d surfaces. If it is truly a browser in there that will be amazing.

#107 Question for one of the GG peeps. Are there any plans to post the Undercity demonstration as a video in the future?

#108 <rant>
So basically for the $1000 here is what you get (or don't):

You don't get the engine rewrite that was planned originally? Yes, I know that it will be released ~1 year from now (I'll believe it when I see it), but I'm sure you will have to pay for your update <sarcasm>because GGs has been so nice providing free updates for so long</sarcasm>.

You get a reskinned GUI in the editor. Yay!!!

You get some shaders to bring it to the standard that MANY engines already offer at much lower cost.

You get access to the "Torque Launcher" that acts very similarly to your task bar at the bottom of your screen. (Yes I know there is a little bit more to it than that, but come on. Where is the beef?)

You get the chance of spending hundreds of more dollars on add-on kits, oops sorry "EDITORS." Too bad that "EDITORS" are free with other engines.

You get access to a horrible mess of a game GGs tries to call a game engine.

In all serious though, Torque does offer some great things. I do think the web browser support is awesome. The networking is hands down the best thing around, except maybe RakNet.

Torque3D is what TGEA should have been. It never should have been an upgrade. GarageGames should not be developing so many products concurrently (TGE, TGEA, iTGB, TorqueX 2D, TorqueX 3D, Torque Game Builder, Torque3D). I know that they are going to cut down on how many engines they offer in the future. Honestly though, do you see Epic, Valve, Crytek, and the like developing so many engines at once? Of course you have to raise the price of Torque3D because you need to support a legion of programmers supporting a legion of products. The only product torque should even be supporting right now is TGEA and MAYBE Torque Game Builder.

The fact that many of the founders and major players have left GarageGames speaks volumes.

</rant>

#109 who pissed on your chips marcus ?

From what ive read about the genre kits and been told by lads that went to GDC, they are most likely going to be more then worth the price they get set to...

#110 @Marcus, if you really think Torque3D is nothing more than a GUI reskin and "a couple of shaders," I'm sure you could implement all that yourself into TGEA 1.8.1 in a couple of days, right?

#111 @Marcus
I'm fresh out of Hateraid, so I'll get to the point.

Quote:
Well I think it is best to lighten up on GGs. I know this may sound wierd coming from me, being quite critical of them in the past, but they really do have a great product. Some of these things will take some time and some delays. At the end of the day, the only thing preventing us from finishing our products is our own lack of effort. Certainly there are other parts of our projects that can be given more attention while we wait.

I must say that I am certainly looking forward to the pack and will purchase it immediately.

That's you in 2007, what a change of tune...
As a famous guild leader once said: "scroll back up newbcakes, and read it again".

#112 @Marcus: What Ross Said.

#113 @BrokeAss - A lot has changed since then. I really don't care what "Associates" opinion is of Torque anyway. It seems like the second someone is critical of GGs in anyway the GarageGames Mafia (a.k.a. Associates) attack. What I said above are things as I perceive them and my opinion only. People can make up their own mind about GGs they are big people. Some people love GarageGames and make money solely off of making hacks...I mean packs for Torque. Some people are sick of GarageGames marketing machine and shelling out money on empty promises. Whatever happened to transparent development anyway? I know that I am not alone.

#114 @Marcus

Quote:
What I said above are things as I perceive them and my opinion only.

My whole point was that you obviously don't know the facts and that you should try harder.
Allot of people have gone out of their way so that we could make games.

#115 I am sitting back and waiting for the pro-sdk-Engine specifics...a solid list of 'includes' and 'excludes'(sdk / packs).
- As I see it, plenty of what has been hyped is not yet implemented in the core and *may not be included in the sdk pro package...or at all ?

I understand that hyping something related to T3D, in blogs, is not the same as saying it is included in the t3d pro sdk...but there has been nothing to list what is not included. So, ..I will sit back and wait for a better list than what has been given. I say this because it appears that several things have been blogged about but few features(in comparison) have been listed as included or excluded from the sdk-pro.

I have begun to ignore 'hype', I would like explicit info. I am sure at least 1 other person is with me on this...how many would we need on a petition ? j/k :P

How about this...
I think we all would like to have the features, that have been mentioned in all of these blogs, listed in fashion for "what is" and "what is not" included in the "vanilla pro sdk". Explicit info. No super rush on it...but I know we all would appreciate this.


thx for the videos
//Edit: I am aware that I could have missed a list such as this or the mentioning of a like list. ..point me to it if it exists, thx.
- Perhaps it would prevent most of the clutter posts(like this one :P).

#116 How have they 'gone out of their way'? They are making a product to sell. I wouldn't call that going out of their way. I would call that operating a business.

T3D does look nice, mostly due to the work of Gerhard Botha, a lot of his implementations from his TGEA Enhanced blog are in T3D now.

#117 @eb - That list that you want was exactly what I wanted and was waiting for. I literally had my credit card in my hand, typed in all of my info and was about to order the beta of Torque3D. The only thing that stopped me was remembering my experience with the Torque Shader Engine Early Adopter program I got hyped into.

Don't get me wrong, the above videos from GDC look amazing. I just didn't want to fork out the money for the vanilla pro sdk, plus all the additional money on 'add-on' packs.

@BrokAss - Feel free to correct me where I have my facts wrong. I'm sure others will look at my posts and may be deterred. So do it for their sakes if not for mine. Nothing worse than the blind leading the blind.

@Jason - The going out of their way was a reference to what I have read on many of these blogs. They are talking about how generous GarageGames have been giving us updates to Torque for so long without charging us. I fully support charging for updates, but those updates need to be worth paying for. TGEA is dead. You could call Torque3D the update to TGEA, but why should I have to pay $505 for an update when I spent $250 on the original product? Normally the update would cost less than the original product.

#118 k. so sit back an' wait...pass me a beer while ur at it. :D

#119 Marcus, what's the point? That it's too expensive?

You're obviously entitled to your own opinion. I too was a EA of TSE and I feel your pain. I am, just like you, going to hold my wallet until I see something solid. But I see no point in ranting about it here.

Let's go make our games, instead. :) And watch by as this develops. *I* think it looks promising. Would love to see the Underground demo, too. But no hurries.

#120 Alright Marcus since you wanted someone to correct you where you were wrong,here goes:

QUOTE: You don't get the engine rewrite that was planned originally? Yes, I know that it will be released ~1 year from now (I'll believe it when I see it), but I'm sure you will have to pay for your update

RESPONSE: Are you referring to making things more modularized. There is now a physics and a sound abstraction layer for those purposes. I'm not so sure about a complete engine rewrite though. Bottom line on payment though, if you don't think its worth your money, don't upgrade. Or if you think people shouldn't need to pay, then why not write your own opensource engine and share it with everyone else out of goodwill to others?

QUOTE: You get a reskinned GUI in the editor. Yay!!!

RESPONSE: Nevermind the material, road or river tools, let's pretend they don't exist.

QUOTE: You get some shaders to bring it to the standard that MANY engines already offer at much lower cost.

RESPONSE: If they were so trivial for you to add and so many other engines already have the "shaders" then why not just add them to TGEA 1.8.1 yourself. Sure there are some cool graphics in some of the other engines, C4 for beginners. But C4 also is missing in a lot of other features. Let's complain about new features while downplaying what they add and ignoring facts. That seems to be the basis of your post.

QUOTE: You get the chance of spending hundreds of more dollars on add-on kits, oops sorry "EDITORS." Too bad that "EDITORS" are free with other engines.

RESPONSE: Again, your blowing things way out of proportion here. Noone is forcing you to buy genre kits. If they are not worth the money to you, the don't buy them. What are you talking about for editors though. What add-on editor are you talking about? The only one I'm aware of here is the Forest Kit, and if that isn't worth the cost, then don't buy it. You could always fork over $10,000 for Speedtree RT and then try to integrate that into TGEA. Good luck.

QUOTE: You get access to a horrible mess of a game GGs tries to call a game engine.

RESPONSE: Again, your not being rational. How can you act as though this was a rational post in any way. If you can't make a game out of the engine, then maybe you need a 3d game creator, there's plenty of those out there.

QUOTE: Torque3D is what TGEA should have been. It never should have been an upgrade. GarageGames should not be developing so many products concurrently (TGE, TGEA, iTGB, TorqueX 2D, TorqueX 3D, Torque Game Builder, Torque3D). I know that they are going to cut down on how many engines they offer in the future. Honestly though, do you see Epic, Valve, Crytek, and the like developing so many engines at once? Of course you have to raise the price of Torque3D because you need to support a legion of programmers supporting a legion of products. The only product torque should even be supporting right now is TGEA and MAYBE Torque Game Builder.

RESPONSE: Do you see Valve, Crytek and Epic supporting so many engines? Of course not, they are also selling their engines for hundreds of thousands of dollars, why would they need to? GG is moving in the right direction here, with TGEA and TGE pretty much as the end of their lives, and the engines using a more unified codebase. Is T3D what TGEA should have been? You can make an argument for that, but when TGEA was created Garage Games was a much smaller company with much less resources. They did the best with what they had. Now they have a much larger team, and that team doesn't work for free.

QUOTE: The fact that many of the founders and major players have left GarageGames speaks volumes.

RESPONSE: In honesty, I was concerned last year after the IAC deal when so many of the original guys were leaving. There was definately a shift in the company. But how can you honestly say this after complaining about TGEA and how slowly things went. How it wasn't the engine it should have been. Well guess what? It only became the engine it "should have been" after IAC. It wasn't until 1.7 that Torque began being a competitive engine in my opinion. Is the price hike exactly along the lines of some of the original founders ideas? Maybe not. Maybe that has to do with some of them leaving. Maybe they didn't like the larger company size. Maybe it was time to move on to greener pastures. Without hearing it from them, I don't know. But what I do know, is that Torque is a better engine now than it has ever been. There's no doubt about that.

Everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinions here. I can understand skepticism. But I can't respect a rant like you just did Marcus because it was completely irrational and one-sided based on a number of false notions.