Why close the thread discussing TorqueScript?

#21 [mod edit: because its just fun to be in control].

#22

Quote:[mod edit: because its just fun to be in control].

whoa... I made one post, that wasnt even all that bad.. and its gone. I even wished him well. What's with the heavy hand? This isn't the IAC thread so...?

#23 Looks like keeping the peace, any post that 'you know who' may not agree with, [mod edit:].

#24 Now I'm being accused of "reverse bias"? Just let it go. Talk about TorqueScript if you want, but leave the meta-conflict alone. That's not a request.

#25 @Stephen Z

have not accused you of any such, you were modding to reduce said conflict, (i just said what i saw).

@ Andrew

hows your constructor probs, had any luck yet?

#26 It's not a question of bias Stephen ( I know your not bias). I've just never seen this many.. moderated posts.

#27 Yes, I believe I found some limitations (depends on how you look at it) which seams to cause glitches. Ill post them in the appropriate thread when I've cleaned it up some. (good idea on the change of subject deep)

#28 WAyyyyy off topic here......

Derek, you said in the other thread....sorry, don't recall which one, but it got locked before I could reply... that you were looking for a good graphics engine to plug the rest of your engine into. Have you looked at Irrlicht??
It's got all the bells and whistles you could ask for, plus it's stable. I'll stick with torque tho as my coding skills are basic.


Ok, back on topic now....sorry for that side trip.

#29 @ Mike

I looked at Irrlicht awhile back and it kinda fell off my radar. atm, we're looking into either Unigine or CryEngine2, though we have three months (of evals to do before I press the trigger).

Since we've already got the terrain engine (and tools e.g. GROME editor, SpeedTree RT license etc) sorted out, the final phase really is getting a bare metal rendering engine. One that has some stuff (e.g. audio, networking, physics etc) which we don't need, but which can easily be bypassed without too much trouble, is really my goal. Unigine is unique in this regard (e.g. we already use FMOD for audio, ReplicaNet for multiplayer, PhysX for physics) because all those extras can be bypassed with ease. However, v0.4 (they no longer license 0.3) is forever delayed and I don't want to even touch a work-in-progress engine.

Thanks for reminding me about Irrlicht, I'll get it back on my radar and look at it again next week to see where they're at.

Once again, I just wanted to point out that, like other engines I'd looked at, Torque came back in my radar because of TGEA, but given how closely tied in all its components (which we don't need) are tied in, coupled with the fact that - costs aside - its, well, hardly future proof and of next-gen quality (e.g. when compared to Unigine), puts it completely out of bounds. It is great for those starting out from scratch though, since it is an all-in-one and affordable solution with a great community behind it.

#30 I started this thread to find out why the TorqueScript thread was closed (since it was actually helping me out, despite the problems), but I am happy this new thread seems to have turned into a thread about 3d game engines. Please don't consider it "off topic" to discuss 3d game engines. I hope GG doesn't actually ban Darek, since he has a lot of real-life knowledge on the game industry that is useful. He is actually positive on TGEA even though it doesn't happen to meet his needs.

#31 @Derek: I would love to have your thoughts on both the Irrlicht and Ogre engines, since both are in my price range . Unigine is out of my price range at this point.

#32 E-drama

#33 "E-Drama" hehe classic.

@Derry

Have you checked out Visual3D.net ? It looks pretty promising although it has the XNA gloom to it (gloom as in the dev license surrounding XNA gives me the shakes). Unless you're like the other two in here with deep pocketbooks (supposidly) and don't care.

Personally my bankroll is as long as a cigarette paper. :P Theres my virtual bank muscle for all to see.

Theres my engine suggestion because I totally hate OGRE and Axiom and something I "really" hate; that damn OGRE head! It's freakin everywhere! And the model sucks! aahhhg

**edit**

I forgot to mention V3D is still in beta, free to use for now however an indie license hasn't been mentioned. They compare their commercial license to Torque pricing though. Indie would be nice since I can't wing out 1 or 2k whenever I feel the urge.

#34 @Derry

We looked at OGRE extensively about a year or so ago. Its a bare metal renderer with zero fluff. At the time, it had quite a few shortcomings, the renderer just didn't perform well enough for my style of games (which given that they feature massive battles at any given time, can bring any machine to its knees without notice). The docs were extensive but had some odd bits missing which you can only gleam from their forums etc.

Also, they didn't seem to be concerned about moving forward as it pertains to next gen stuff. Also, at the time, their support for VS2005 was spotty at best. Then again, you get what you pay for and in this regard OGRE is indeed an impressive piece of work.

Go check out the resources which show various commercial (e.g. Ankh, Pacific Storm etc) properties which have been developed with it.

Its not TGEA, but it was never designed to be. While TGEA is an otherwise excellent all-in-one solution in which you have to rip out your hair (and do too much work) - literally - to bypass anything you don't need - OGRE gives you a pure renderer, exporters etc. And plugging in anything you need e.g. sound, networking, scripting, ai, physics etc) is trivial.

All these engines have their strengths and at the end of the day, you have to decide what you want from an engine and whether or not ease of use and fast tech support is paramount. e.g. If you go with C4, you've got Eric's accessibility and credibility, though IMO, C4 is lacking in far too many areas to make it worthwhile for a serious (i.e. non budget bin) commercial project without one having to bolt in various things.

For any serious developer, licensing middleware is all about credibility, ease-of-use, extensibility and tech support.

The other thing is that once you get a trend going, its hard to break. e.g. I can't think of _anything_ in Unreal3 that warrants its price tag. Nothing at all. However, triple-A publishers are willing to pay that price because for them (a) the cost is trivial (b) depending on their marketing and plans for said triple-A title, they are confident that they can recoup those costs.

Don't get me wrong, its a pretty nifty engine which, like iD's offerings are well documented, supported etc. But think about it, whats the difference between an engine developed by a bunch of Russians (Unigine) and one developed by a bunch of industry vets? Hardly anything, when it comes to technology. There isn't a single Unreal or iD powered game that couldn't have been developed with the likes of Unigine or even CryTek's original engine which powered (the under performing) FarCry.

The Reality Engine is an exceptional piece of work that never got a chance. The week I licensed it, we got word of the Epic buyout. That was one engine which - at its price point - would have given Unreal3 a run for its money. So Epic did what any competitor would do. Made them an offer they couldn't refuse by buying out the rights and hiring the lead developer and primary engine architect to go work for them. That essentially killed the engine and left it with less than a handful of licensees (3000AD being one of them) with non-existent support, no further development and the termination of the XBox port. The remaining members of the group went on to do demos - using their engine - for Aegia and releasing one sub-par game offering (which, oddly enough, uses their Unreal3 engine license which they got as part of the Epic buyout) for another lower tier publisher, Southpeak.

Given that Monster Madness tanked and with Aegia not doing well at all, its anyone's guess what will happen to them and the Reality Engine. Hence the reason I'm sitting on an engine I'd rather not use, though we do have a source code license.

Anyway, for my money, anyone looking for a baremetal engine depending on resources and how serious their project is, should be looking at these engines (listed in order of preference)

Unigine
OGRE
TGEA
C4

Since TGEA is so much more, I shouldn't really add it there, but then again Unigine has a bunch of modules which, much like TGEA, you can bypass - but with very little effort.

This is the thing with indie development. When people think indie, they automatically - and foolishly - think of the terms: broke, lack of resources, inexperience, part-time

Nothing could be farther from the truth. At least for most of us. The term indie developed has been misused, mangled, distorted over the years (even by GG btw) that the fine line between a resource ful indie developer and a start-up inexperienced indie developer has been further blurred.

Fact is, there are many resourceful indie developers out there. Most of whom - like my studio - do this for a living, have no second job, as 100% self-funded and can get their games published.

In the life of an indie, credibility, exposure and that elusive ability to deliver go a long way. Take me for instance, as abrasive and intolerant as I am, and with the ability to get right down there in the dirt with the best of them, I'd never be able to sell my games in the mainstream, let alone get them published if it was all just noise. While people were out yelling about how my games don't look like [name any piss-poor eye candy game you played lately], that they were too difficult, and people who don't get it, the number of people who actually bought - and continue to buy them - clearly indicates that the market is there for gamers to whom I am developing and selling my games too.

Many devs - especially indies - try to do what the next person is doing - without adding anything new - and wonder why they can't make it.

Look at GG. Back when it was started and I joined up, my impression of what it was going to be was probably too ambitious. At the end of the day, I was right (go back and look at my commentaries over the years). It ended up being nothing more than an incubation portal for startups. Rather than fostering indie developers from both sides of the equation, it appears to me that said indies - through no fault of GG's of course - ended up seeing an opportunity to do what the next person was doing. And either (a) not doing it as good (b) not doing it at all (c) just wasting time and resources.

Look at the crop of GG games and draw your own conclusions. As powerful as TGEA is, I can't think of any reason why a mainstream contender couldn't have come out of it in the six plus years since its inception. IMO, everyone just lost track and all sense of direction. A top notch game - from the ground up - should take no more than two years to bring to market. All without re-inventing the wheel.

[cont]

#35 I'll give you one example of a missing opportunity. XB360 port of TGEA.

Since DAY ONE, Microsoft was very clear in what their plan was for XBLA, even with its [now raised] atrocious file size limitations and stringent (not to mention arduous) approval process. Had GG gotten in on the ground floor of that one - funds notwithstanding - and TGEA/XB had become an approved middleware provider, my guess is the GG landscape would - quite possibly - have gone beyond, Marble Madness.

Then, instead of talking about getting money to further the technology already present, push it forward, fund and publish TGEA games etc, they're talking about - yet another - un-proven technology thats just going to end up further dividing (and segregating) the active GG community. Like so many powerful engines out there which go unproven and relegated to prototyping and use by weekend warriors with regular day jobs, TGEA is going to get lost in the fray. And when serious devs (indies or not) go shopping for an engine, TGEA isn't going to be anywhere on their radar; and for all the reasons I've previously outlined.

Like the development of same, choosing an engine is not a trivial process and a lot goes into deciding what you're going to end up with. Look at Duke Nuken Forever. How many years and how many engines has that gone through?

#36 @Derek: Thanks, I appreciate your insight. I'm one of the guys you have mentioned working a day job and doing the game stuff on the side. From my point of Torque is/was perfect (maybe still is). Low entry cost, complete source code, and a complete game engine. Exactly what I need, but not exactly what you need.

There are good and bad aspects to GG's approach. The low price means there will be a lot of hobbyists and kids (nothing wrong with either) which can be an annoyance to an experienced game developer such as yourself. Certainly there will be less of both hanging out on the Unigine forums. The low price also probably means they (GG) won't be able to support it as well as they would like or have the resources they may need for development. Seems like they made the choice to try to offer the tools cheap and try to make up the revenue by selling games and helping marketing the games produced by their customers. I certainly appreciate their efforts. Even though you criticize GG (as have I), I'm sure that as a entrepreneur and self-made businessman (like myself) you can appreciate what they have tried to do and what they have accomplished. Just having the balls to try to do it earns a lot of points in my book.

I understand what you are saying about the importance of choosing an engine (hence my asking for you to share your wisdom). I have looked at OGRE, Irrlicht, and C4, as low cost or free engines but they all seemed to need a lot add-ons and work on my part to get them to a point where I could develop a game. Being limited in resources, I would like to spend as much of my resources as possible on actual game development rather than technology development, if you know what I mean.

#37 @ Derry

Absolutely agree with everything you said. I know that GG's intentions were (and still are) good. I never did question that.

My point is that you can't expect to treat a business as a hobby and expect to make money. You might as well release the engines as open source and call it a day. Which, IMO, is what will probably end up happening if in fact this buyout ends up putting the death knell on Torque efforts, as I fully suspect and anticipate that it will, regardless of the spinning. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either naive or hasn't been in the industry long enough to know how these things [eventually] play out.

And if they Open Source it, the first thing I'm going to do (in my spare time) is rip out TorqueScript or, at the very least, port it to C## or LUA. In fact, I'd probably just rip _everything_ out and leave the bare metal renderer. Then everything thats been ripped out (in whatever branch that is) such as audio, networking etc can - like other engines - be used separately or by replacing it with something else. e.g. Unigine supports FMOD, but you don't have to use it. CryEngine2 uses FMOD exclusively (a license is included in the price), OGRE allows you use whatever external engines you want.

Quote:I have looked at OGRE, Irrlicht, and C4, as low cost or free engines but they all seemed to need a lot add-ons and work on my part to get them to a point where I could develop a game. Being limited in resources, I would like to spend as much of my resources as possible on actual game development rather than technology development, if you know what I mean.

Indeed. Which is why the TGEA all-in-one solution, coupled with a price you simply can't beat, is such an important past of this whole GG indie scene, that one simply can't ignore it.

When one gets to the part where you - indie or not - get to do this for a living, your priorities and decisions tend to change.

e.g. we as a team of experienced developers, can crank out our own engines. In fact, we did that over the years. It was only in the past few years we ended up replacing my legacy audio and networking engines with the likes of FMOD and ReplicaNet. At the "per title" price of both, it was simply economical. Plus, someone else gets to worry about moving tech forward. I have been holding off on the graphics engine middleware hand off because, given how my games are designed and the technologies I've developed over the years, this is one critical engine that I simply can't piss around with. Its not like I have twelve months to piss away. My mistake in jumping on the Reality Engine bandwagon, cost me time, money and resources. Sure we could still use it on at least one game, but I'd rather write it off as a tax loss, thnn bury more time in it. I'm sure that as a businessman yourself, you understand how that goes.

As I type this, my guys (my two other devs with graphics programming experience like me) are still trying to decide if we should even bother. e.g. Unigine .04 is due out in Q1/08 and the pricing _for_now_ is about $20K for binaries only and no royalties. Per title. I have been advised that the pricing will change once .4 is completed and released next year, but the price lock is in for those who licensing it now (during its dev phase). And if you want source (e.g. say you wanted to port it to XB360 or whatever), you're looking at around $40K.

For the type of engine and given that the likes of tech from Epic, iD, CryTek et al is North of $500K, you'd be crazy not to do the math in order to see if you are better off spending upwards of six to eight months growing your own engine or just licensing someone else's. For a small team, thats time you could be spent developing a game instead of pissing around with graphics tech.

The issue with licensing middleware is that, more often than not, you're locked to that engine. This has its good and bad points. The good part is that as long as the engine continues to confirm to the type of games you want to deliver - and you can sell enough for the engine to pay for itself - you're set. The rest is a no-brainer.

Then you get to do the math.

Say you've licensed an engine for $20K. When the dust settles, depending on if you are going the publishing route or not, you're looking at having to sell upwards of 6K - $7K copies just to recoup the cost of the graphics engine alone!! That is, assuming of course, that your net per-unit royalty is around the $5 - $6 mark.

....and thats for a $39.99 priced game.

btw. And in case you hadn't noticed, that price point is pretty much non-existent in the current PC gaming climate for non triple-A titles. In fact, most retailers will push for an MSRP in the range of $29.99 and only go anywhere near $39.99 or even $49.99 for triple-A titles from the usual suspects.

I hear you asking yourself what a triple-A title is. Well, the moniker is rubbish really. Currently, it seems that the triple-A moniker is based on who the publisher is and how much marketing they've done on the title. Would you say that, e.g. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars @ $49.99 is a triple-A title? Sure. How about Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, @ $39.99?

Now, go to your favorite portal e.g. www.ebgames.com and browse through their upcoming or recently released titles and see how many $49.99 and $39.99 titles there are and who they're from. Then look at everything else.

Anyway, I digress...

So, for a professional developer, licensing an engine is not just about what it costs but also what it costs to develop and maintain in the long run. Nobody is going to license engines from Epic, iD or CryTek and price the title at anything below $49.99. And even then, you're looking at multi-platform in order to not only recoup those engine costs, but also to amortize the costs over the shelf-life (which is now down to about twenty-seven days before you start to see price reductions) of the title. And more often than not, once your game uses one of these high priced engines, it further boosts that whole triple-A moniker, even if the game itself is crap.

We currently have the .04 eval of Unigine and our eval continues. But at the end of the day, for us, it goes beyond the pricing. And engine has to do exactly what I'm licensing it for. Nothing more. Nothing less. If I wanted an in between, I'd grow my own.

#38 Derek,

Just read the "THE GAMING INDUSTRY - WHERE WE ARE". It was very thought provoking.

#39

Quote:And if they Open Source it, the first thing I'm going to do (in my spare time) is rip out TorqueScript or, at the very least, port it to C## or LUA. In fact, I'd probably just rip _everything_ out and leave the bare metal renderer.

You don't have to wait for it to be Open Source to do that, do you? What's stopping you or anyone from just doing that right now?

#40

Quote:What's stopping you or anyone from just doing that right now?

The thought of updating their custom code all over again whenever GG releases a 'fix' or a major update?


EDIT: I was going to give TGEA a try before I heard of C4. After playing with the demo of both engines C4 is more artist friendly and has way better support and features overall. GG community doesn't believe in 'artist' friendly so that's just really funny especially when even id has realised the need to support their designers and not just coders.