As a beginner, what is your biggest hurdle so far?

#1 Well a little lack of documentation, though the EGTGE would solve most of the documentation problem when completed, from the experience I had with the currently available Light version.

Well, I also attempting to make my first 3D game, though have does OpenGL projects and simple 2D games in the past for fun. It is quite daughting, though many here have helped guide me to relevant related resources.

#2 The Scripting side was always my biggest hurdle. I've done loads of work in c++, albiet mostly self taught
after Pascal in college. I got a bit frustrated by some lackings in the engine... (Terrain mostly), so I moved
away from torque to Ogre3D...

You want some tough work, try that. I've completed quite a bit in Ogre3D, even did some modifications
to the Physics side and added in a wrapper for Accessing the Terrain Pager with the Physics, (No one else
has yet)... Now that was some work...

I've returned as I just don't have the time or interest in building all the underlying parts of the Engine....
That is where Torque shines, 99% of it's there already.

Now that they have Large Terrain in TSE, I'm concentrating on just getting sorted out with the Scripting
again... Accessing the objects just seemed to escape me... It was just to simple. That was why I had so
much trouble, I was thinking it was more complicated then it was...

The BEST resource I found was:

http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=5661

This is probably one of the best help on the whole thing....
Read it, follow it through, then have fun...

#3 For items that GG or the community can actually help with, I have to agree on documentation. Now that we can search the forums better, I can general find where someone has solved the problem before and documented the answer, however it takes time to sort through all the threads and resources to find the answers that work.

For my actual biggest hurdle, it is just me personally making the time to do everything.

#4 I'd say my biggest hurdle is actually getting the motivation to continue this far down to path.

I've cut so much out of my social life for Torque (but it has been worth it, :D).

Robert

#5 Getting my arse into gear. :)

#6 Figuring out what game I can make. That is my only hurdle. I want to call it a mountain actually.

#7 Learning the engine. I want to learn how to code with this engine, not how to code other people's idea with this engine. The majority of the tutorials on this site are designed so you can remake Realm Wars on your own, or what have you.

#8 Motivation / Direction.

I spend to much time reading these forums, and not enough actually getting my hands dirty.

#9 Lack of engine documentation for each component and some engine tutorials for beginners.

#10 Biggest hurdles for me:

1) art creation time and frustration with it
2) lack of time to get deep into the source.

I have to disagree with lack of documentation. I can't think of any times I couldn't find an answer either through the forums, docs, irc, or the resources.

#11 Okey, here goes... Ive yet to figure out how to export the models from 3dsmax to DTS Shapes. Ive tried, Ive read, and Tried.. I failed, read again, and tried again... And failed... Exporting works fine if I load models that comes with the engine so its not the exporters fault. Alll I ever wished for to know, is there anywhere where they explain the barebone basics, that is first and foremost exporting a damn boxmodel. So that you get a hang on everything that is really main.. Im not stupid when im using max, ive been using it for some time... I dont like the DTS format at all yet, ive used formats which is so much better and easier. I dont want to spend alot of time defining hitboxes and what is getting exporter, im an artist, I want to create and export and expect to see what I exporter. the Nif Format used in a few games "Like morrowind" was very good but quite limited. So in short... Exporting has been a royal pain in the ...

Cheers

#12

Quote:Alll I ever wished for to know, is there anywhere where they explain the barebone basics, that is first and foremost exporting a damn boxmodel

Question here, as I am trying to understand where you are coming from and did not quite inderstand the statement you made.. does the box model tutorial in the 3dsmax2DTS docs not give you what you need? Are you unable to find the docs? are the docs not organized well enough?

#13 I was'nt aware of the document. Thank you very much. Haha, sometimes the easiest solution is to simple to remember to look for.

Thanks again mate.

#14 Setting up a unified development environment. I don't understand all the cvs type stuff, and then finding a compiler etc. Wish I could install, then just click and open the application. Save, or compile. My biggest hurdle has been setting everything up. To seasoned programmers, that may sound really silly, but that's the biggest hurdle for me. I still don't know if I have everything set up properly and have yet to compile anything.

But I have spent lots of time designing my game, and creating a design doc. I found the Torque Build Environment, hopefully that's what I need.

#15 None of the technical stuff, strangely.

My biggest hurdle has been motivation. The problem is, to overcome the motivational barrier, I had to produce something to demonstrate to myself that it was worth the effort. To produce something, I had to learn how TGE does things, taking myself from fiddling with the GUI editor all the way through to extending the AIPlayer class to actually do more than run in circles.

Once I started seeing the fruits of my labour, the motivation kicked in, and it's been an exponential boost in my productivity.

But finding enough information about TGE to do what I wanted to do, that was pretty demotivating.

#16 Another major hurdle for me and others like me.

The general lack of tools for Linux to create content for TGE, particular the DIF files. Though I believe GG's Constructor tool will solve the DIF problem for Linux.

At least we have Blender to help out with the DTS files. Pitty Maya still does not have the student Linux version available for use, only Mac and Windows, for us hobbiests.

#17 Lack of time. If I could spend 8 hours a day in the TGE, I would be in heaven. As it stands, I only get about 8 hours a week :(

#18 Getting over the feeling of being overwhelmed at the number of subjects/skills which need to be learned and the tools which need to be gathered to start practicing.

#19 Personally, I think Lack of Time, Lack of Organization, and Lack of Modeling skills.

I was working on a commercial game, and we were making progress, but then HL2 came out and the team dropped out to join clans.

#20 Finding an artist willing to undertake the project, that artsy fartsy stuff is just beyond me for some reason...

What's really odd is I come from an art background, it's in my blood and most of my relatives have Art actually
hanging in museums, sculptures citing in front of city libraries, music published, or films they have acted in, but couldn't run a computer to save their lives :)