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Survey Says ... TGEA 1.7
Survey Says ... TGEA 1.7
| Name: | Deborah Marshall |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Apr 18, 2008 | |
| Rating: |  Not Rated | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Deborah Marshall |
Blog post
Collecting information can be a tricky thing, especially with a community this large and diverse, but with your help and these fancy interwebs, we can try to learn all that's necessary to make smarter decisions. I don't want to imagine how I'd get this kind of info without it. Southpark painted a scary picture for me though. Back when I was a kid, I remember my father and me paying $3.95 per minute on the Sierra phone hotline to solve a particularly challenging puzzle in Conquests of Camelot. Now, if my sister tells me a ridiculous story about an elephant being able to paint pictures, I can verify her story pretty quickly.
With the TGEA 1.7 release we asked you guys for some help and suggestions. We've received a lot of information in the form of blog discussions and other on-line posts. We also asked you to take a survey about your thoughts on TGEA and 3D game engines in general. This is really important to us because we want to provide you with solid technology to make awesome games.
While we're already hard at work on our next release, there are plenty of open questions and we have a lot of ideas of what to do with TGEA, thanks to your feedback. In the interest of keeping the dialogue open, I want to share some preliminary survey results, as of April 18, 2008. All the charts are shown with the percentage response as well as the number of people who replied in that category. Of course, we know the survey has bias and is not the end-all of where we want TGEA to go, but it's good to get a little feedback on the feedback we received from y'all! ^_^
What do you want in a 3D game engine?
This is what you guys said want in a 3D game engine. As you can see, source code available, easy-to-use editors, smooth art pipeline, and extensive documentation were the most valued by users who participated in the survey. People are torn on whether they want to create games for the Mac, with almost a 50/50 split between caring a lot about Mac games and not caring at all. People seem to care least about actual development on a Mac. Some other things that people cared about not mentioned on this list were an affordable price, frequent updates, starter kits, and a good physics system.
How do you feel about TGEA?
After knowing how people felt about game engines in general, we wanted to know how TGEA ranked. The above chart shows all the responses we received, regardless of TGEA version number. TGEA's main strengths lie mainly in the community, which is no surprise to us. TGEA also scored high on PolySoup Collision, MegaTerrains, and multiplayer support. We scored just "all right" on our art pipeline and support, as well as the newly released Forge demo. We also received a flood of comments about TGEA, so here's a small subset I'd like to share, completely unedited in original form:
How do you think the TGEA 1.7 betas went?
Of all the data gathered, nothing is quite as clear as the chart above. You guys obviously loved the TGEA 1.7 beta process and we loved it too because your input helped us make a more solid release. Some other comments you made on the beta process:
So what does this all mean?
We're still figuring that question out. We know some of the directions you guys want us to go:
We have our own ideas about TGEA, ranging from improved documentation to specific features. I'm hoping in the comments that follow, you can expand on some of these results and keep giving your two cents. So type away. We are listening. We want to keep an open dialogue. We'll struggle some if we try to please everyone, but the more feedback we get from you, the better decisions we can make for the future of Torque engines.
And for you slackers out there, if you haven't already, take the survey. We have 160 responses so far, but I would be thrilled to have 1,600. Let you voice be heard and we'll do our best to keep Torque rockin'. ^_^
With the TGEA 1.7 release we asked you guys for some help and suggestions. We've received a lot of information in the form of blog discussions and other on-line posts. We also asked you to take a survey about your thoughts on TGEA and 3D game engines in general. This is really important to us because we want to provide you with solid technology to make awesome games.
While we're already hard at work on our next release, there are plenty of open questions and we have a lot of ideas of what to do with TGEA, thanks to your feedback. In the interest of keeping the dialogue open, I want to share some preliminary survey results, as of April 18, 2008. All the charts are shown with the percentage response as well as the number of people who replied in that category. Of course, we know the survey has bias and is not the end-all of where we want TGEA to go, but it's good to get a little feedback on the feedback we received from y'all! ^_^
What do you want in a 3D game engine?
This is what you guys said want in a 3D game engine. As you can see, source code available, easy-to-use editors, smooth art pipeline, and extensive documentation were the most valued by users who participated in the survey. People are torn on whether they want to create games for the Mac, with almost a 50/50 split between caring a lot about Mac games and not caring at all. People seem to care least about actual development on a Mac. Some other things that people cared about not mentioned on this list were an affordable price, frequent updates, starter kits, and a good physics system.
How do you feel about TGEA?
After knowing how people felt about game engines in general, we wanted to know how TGEA ranked. The above chart shows all the responses we received, regardless of TGEA version number. TGEA's main strengths lie mainly in the community, which is no surprise to us. TGEA also scored high on PolySoup Collision, MegaTerrains, and multiplayer support. We scored just "all right" on our art pipeline and support, as well as the newly released Forge demo. We also received a flood of comments about TGEA, so here's a small subset I'd like to share, completely unedited in original form:
- "The docs were nice but it didn't go into detail about mega-terrains. I would like to see a better physics implementation with a nice user friendly gui some day and same for particles."
- "I used TGEA for a prototype. I think that there were many things that may be improved like importing custom shaders and how easy to use they were. I see that many features have been solved in TGEA 1.7 but havent tested them yet."
- "It can be difficult for newcomers to the engine to pick up. Tutorials would be of immense benefit."
- "TSE was a huge disappointment. The lack of OpenGL, and the poor performance of the engine made me consider it unusable, so I stayed with TGE. TGEA1.7 is the first release that I've seriously considered using for development again. I'm hoping that this trend continues."
How do you think the TGEA 1.7 betas went?
Of all the data gathered, nothing is quite as clear as the chart above. You guys obviously loved the TGEA 1.7 beta process and we loved it too because your input helped us make a more solid release. Some other comments you made on the beta process:
- "I thought it was the best release of a Torque product. Just the smashing of the nasty bugs that put a bad taste in buyers mouths when the final is released and they are still there, was a great feeling. Having the community involved was really nice, because you were able to see the process of what was going wrong, and everyone actively fixing the bugs, rather than you wondering if a bug was actively being worked on (getting fixed)."
- "The open development, fast communication and updates make this an example of how it should be done. Great job."
- "For a short while there, it felt like we were back in 2002-3 when the GG community was really active. In my opinion, that community is 50% of the engine(s)."
So what does this all mean?
We're still figuring that question out. We know some of the directions you guys want us to go:
- "I hope you guys continue to make GAMES, and not just develop tools, because I think that is the best asset for making a good engine. When Marble Blast Ultra was the only GG game running on TGEA progress was slow, but just having you guys working on Legions helped us as a community know that problems we might run into making a FPS game would be addressed because you guys would run into it first in testing. So I guess I'm saying whenever you are going to make a new big release for an engine, it would be nice to work on a demo of something, internally, that would really push the engine in the way that buyers would want to (like FPS, RTS, RPGs, the norms)."
- "I want some kind of editor to make 3d games with 2d gameplay (for example, placing "3d tiles" in an editor and having them automatically aligned, having an isometric view camera, having optimized organization and rendering for that)."
- "TDN Docs should be compiled together and made available offline. Spidering software for offline archiving does not work well with the TDN."
- "I think you guys do great stuff. Since we need mac support we stuck with tge 1.52 and now could not change even if we wanted, too much custom code. I'd just love it if the new tgea terrain or at least its texture size would be ported to tge, thats the only thing sorely in need of a better look."
We have our own ideas about TGEA, ranging from improved documentation to specific features. I'm hoping in the comments that follow, you can expand on some of these results and keep giving your two cents. So type away. We are listening. We want to keep an open dialogue. We'll struggle some if we try to please everyone, but the more feedback we get from you, the better decisions we can make for the future of Torque engines.
And for you slackers out there, if you haven't already, take the survey. We have 160 responses so far, but I would be thrilled to have 1,600. Let you voice be heard and we'll do our best to keep Torque rockin'. ^_^
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 08/06/08 - Snapshots of the Garage 07/08/08 - TGB 1.7.4: Anatomy of a 2D Game Engine 05/13/08 - Yard Sale Junkie coming to a portal near you! 04/18/08 - Survey Says ... TGEA 1.7 03/21/08 - GDC, TGB, You and Me 01/31/08 - Game in a Day: GG Style! 01/23/08 - Call to Action: GG Internships 12/14/07 - TGB 1.6 Released...and Manatees? |
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Submit your own resources!| Phillip OShea (Apr 18, 2008 at 23:49 GMT) |
| Kenneth Holst (Apr 18, 2008 at 23:55 GMT) |
| Michael Perry (Apr 19, 2008 at 00:00 GMT) |
Oh...ummm...going to take survey now >_<
edit: Wow...second person to make the claim that Deborah can't make cookies...sounds like a challenge to me =)
Edited on Apr 19, 2008 00:01 GMT
| Benjamin Thomas (Apr 19, 2008 at 00:28 GMT) |
| Mike Rowley (Apr 19, 2008 at 01:36 GMT) |
I agree with the people who want better editors. Namely, the light, terrain, and particle editors. Those are the hardest to work with. I've figured out the light and terrain editors, but have Never figured out the particle editor. Visual feedback in the editor showing in real time what you are doing would be fantastic.
(oh, and an Undo my total goof up button as well)
| Magnus Blikstad (Apr 19, 2008 at 03:22 GMT) |
Edited on Apr 19, 2008 03:23 GMT
| Scott Warren (Apr 19, 2008 at 03:53 GMT) |
The new Forge Demo is too intense for my, now, low end system to do anything.
Alt C for camera to move about was as fun as shaving with a dull razor and using cold water.
But that particular demo is extremely useful for me.
It gives me a bench mark to surpass. Have been shopping for a new monster PC and that Forge Demo will be used for the decision of Yay or Nay. Thank you.
On a side note, The site still has connection issues especially noticeable for me after doing a Google search on the site and any links that are returned as a result from the search then just add a new Tab in the browser with a 404 error. I understand it's the Network backbone and not an issue with GG directly.
Login to GG requires me to use the physical URL number instead of the www,garagegames.com
The community here at the Forums are a major form of cross reference and having easy access to it without the 404 errors would help me to speed up the learning process.
2 Thumbs Up: for the TDN forums. I am very grateful to all the devs that have posted resources, snippets, and Links to further educate the reader.
Wish List:
Script "Profiler" for Torsion. For readers that may not have experienced a Profiler, it's basically a graphical indication of a program flow. It's similar to IDA Debug for assembler. the Red line on the left of the window shows you visually where the function is referencing and it shows it in Blocks that are related to that function.
If the Profiler was incorporated into Torsion in the same way, then making sense of the scripts includes, function calls, and behavior would be a huge boon for both learning and productivity.
Wish I had the 6,631 dollars for the monster Dell Laptop of any Gamers dreams.
I keep wishing on this one.. but you know what they say:
Wish In one Hand.. {self edited } in the other, see which fills first.
| Jeff Cole (Apr 19, 2008 at 06:47 GMT) |
However i also think the response percentage is a little skewed..
If only mac developers responded to the question, Im sure the responses would look more like 90% of developers developing games for the Mac think its important to be able to develop those games on the target platform.
Having PC only devs responding to the question is not very useful.
Also, I know that other Mac devs as well as myself have almost given up on Garage games getting OpenGL into TGEA and ported the Mac.. Common guys.. give the community the support and more Mac devs will come on board..
If you build it they will come..
| Jeremy Alessi (Apr 19, 2008 at 07:11 GMT) |
| Deborah Marshall (Apr 19, 2008 at 07:51 GMT) |
Seriously, though, thanks for the responses. Keep 'em coming. We're still in early planning stages for where we want all of our current Torque engines to go, so this is a great time to get your voice heard, either via comments here or in the survey.
| Neil (Deepeyed) (Apr 19, 2008 at 10:07 GMT) |
would like to see torque keep up with full physics support like an intergration of Physx or ode in tgea,
on a side note i believe this is also needed in TGB, an intergration of box2d or something as tgbs physics are limiting compared to how they are represented (and for the longevity of the engine)
(+ tgb bump mapping and lighting ala torquex while i am at it).
as physics is one of the main areas that is letting games create new gameplay experiences, i think its an important one.
being able to remove network limits for single player games would be cool.
an updated default camera with many modes or settings (ala advance camera resource) allowing a 3rd person chained/spring-linked camera for 3d platform games etc... would be a benefit.
also i like the idea of having support for 2d gameplay options (not to hard to do but maybe a path lock for a player could be handy?)
more genre Varied starter kits, showing how torque can be used for mutiple game types ( including instructions in any needed sorce changes).
anyway, thats my little voice if someone wants to hear it.
edit: yeh mac support should be an option.
Edited on Apr 21, 2008 12:44 GMT
| Mathieu (Apr 19, 2008 at 10:50 GMT) |
73% of our sells come from Mac users. 73%!
Making indie games is already extremely difficult, not publishing your game on that platform is foolish.
| Prairie Games (Apr 19, 2008 at 12:30 GMT) |
@Mathieu: There are 2 Mac questions... one for creating Mac games and one for developing (tool support) on the platform. The former scored significantly higher with a sampling of almost 100% Windows developers even :)
| Benjamin Thomas (Apr 19, 2008 at 15:23 GMT) |
took the words right out of my mouth
| Jeremy Parker (Apr 20, 2008 at 03:00 GMT) |
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say "People who, mostly, are already using TGEA seem to care less about actual development on a Mac, but perhaps that is because TGEA users are exclusive to PCs."
As Deborah rightly pointed out at the start of this blog entry, surveys and statistics are difficult things to deal with. "Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics..." and all that. And while I applaud the effort that has gone into setting up and designing the survey, I think the initial distribution and wording of it might lead to less accurate results (as other above me have pointed out).
First there is question of people finding out about the survey. I found the survey at the bottom of a very long blog entry about the wonderful new features of TGEA 1.7. I'm not sure if you had announced it anywhere else (And by the by, I am only talking about before this actual blog entry). A limited distribution might lead to a rather skewed result. For example, had you posted this survey only in the Mac/Linux sections of the Forums you would of had a very biased result. Certainly Deborah's blog entry will help to widen the distribution, but perhaps it would help to maximize you sample size by having a direct link to the survey on the front page, or by mailing it out to owners of ALL types of GG products.
Secondly, having found the survey, there is the question of whether people felt it was relevant to take it. While many of the questions are of a general nature, the title suggest otherwise. Perhaps a change of title and a short paragraph at the start welcoming the input of non-TGEA users as well might again help broaden your sample.
Anyway, just a thought.
Thanks for the survey, good to see you are looking for feedback. And congratulation of TGEA 1.7 - it appears to be quite an important step in GGs development. I look forward to trying it out, someday.
| Scott Burns (Apr 21, 2008 at 14:27 GMT) |
I finally got around to taking this survey, been putting it off all weekend. I thought I'd chime in with my thoughts on Mac support. I'd be all for it really. I'd love to be able to offer my games on Mac, but that requires access to the necessary hardware, and that fact greatly influenced how I rated the need for Mac support. I don't really see myself getting a Mac anytime soon. It'd be nice to have, but in the end it really doesn't affect me.
| JoZ (Apr 21, 2008 at 17:15 GMT) |
| Deborah Marshall (Apr 21, 2008 at 18:04 GMT) |
| Gary "ChunkyKs" Briggs (Apr 21, 2008 at 18:13 GMT) |
Interesting also, more than just which figure was the highest, was how the results are distributed across each question. For example, only 1/3 of the respondees are satisfied with TGEA's offline documentation, but almost 60% are either neutral or dissatisfied. [Today on "how to make statistics say whatever you want them to"...]
On a truly positive note, I see the betas as a good start on the road towards the much-touted transparent development, and it was universally hailed as a success in the survey. Good Work!
Gary (-;
| Shawn Zhang (May 06, 2008 at 00:52 GMT) |
| JoZ (May 12, 2008 at 21:38 GMT) |
Something like a SIM-CONTAINER-FOLDER (for brevity S-C-F) in wich, in the world editor tree, you can place objects...
The functionality would be that... the S-C-F has his own "position" property and his own representation in the world editor (like a bounding box)... when you translate the S-C-F or edit his position property all the objects inside it translate too accordingly... this can be very usefull also for implementing in Constructor the possibility to create an interior, place referenced shapes into it and do an export of the .dif + a mission file (.mis) code segment that contain a S-C-F with inside it the interior (.dif) instance and all the shapes referenced inside constructor in the proper position relative to the interior... copying this mission file code segment into your mission and translating the S-C-F or editing his position property you can move what's inside it to proper positioning in your mission file without loosing the exact shapes placement you've done inside Constructor...
Tell me if it's not clear, I'm not english mother language so maybe my explaining wasn't so good :)
JoZ.
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