Barricade Demo
by Matt Fairfax · 06/20/2008 (3:32 pm) · 14 comments
Barricade Demo
Click to see a preview of the Barricade demo or head over to the TGEA demos page to try it out directly
As promised last Friday with the release of TGEA 1.7.1, we have released the Barricade demo!
The Barricade demo is loosely based on the GDC 2006 Tech demo which I know some of you have been asking after for a long time =) Moving forward we plan to use this demo as a showcase of some of the best features and effects in TGEA.
The Barricade demo does have pretty high system requirements. This is both because we wanted to show off the best our tech can do and to give us a nice bar to work against for future optimizations of the engine. It may very well run on a much lower powered system but we can not guarantee that it will not have any odd visual glitches. We recommend these as the lowest system requirements:
Windows XP or Windows Vista
DirectX 9.0c
2.2 GHz Processor
1 Gb RAM
7200 RPM Hard drive
nVidia GeForce 7700 or ATI Radeon 1600 XT with 256 Mb Video Ram
Latest video drivers from nVidia.com or ATI.com
Go check it out!
Click to see a preview of the Barricade demo or head over to the TGEA demos page to try it out directly
As promised last Friday with the release of TGEA 1.7.1, we have released the Barricade demo!
The Barricade demo is loosely based on the GDC 2006 Tech demo which I know some of you have been asking after for a long time =) Moving forward we plan to use this demo as a showcase of some of the best features and effects in TGEA.
The Barricade demo does have pretty high system requirements. This is both because we wanted to show off the best our tech can do and to give us a nice bar to work against for future optimizations of the engine. It may very well run on a much lower powered system but we can not guarantee that it will not have any odd visual glitches. We recommend these as the lowest system requirements:
Windows XP or Windows Vista
DirectX 9.0c
2.2 GHz Processor
1 Gb RAM
7200 RPM Hard drive
nVidia GeForce 7700 or ATI Radeon 1600 XT with 256 Mb Video Ram
Latest video drivers from nVidia.com or ATI.com
Go check it out!
About the author
I am a Game Designer at PopCap who has worked on PvZ Adventures, PvZ2, Peggle Blast, and Bejeweled Skies. I am an ex-GarageGames employee who helped ship TGE, TGEA, Torque 3D, and Constructor.
#3
06/20/2008 (6:48 pm)
Looks excellANT! 
#4
06/20/2008 (9:08 pm)
That looks awsome! 
#5
One odd thing I noticed though when in third person view (hit tab key) and looking at the water there's a odd field effect like thing going on around any objects that are between the camera and the water such as the player object in third person view, but only ever occurs at some positions around the water such as the shallow end near the castle like wall structure. I also see a similar effect while in free camera movement moving around while the mission editor is open, it'll do a weird effect right under the menus when near the shallow end of the water again near the caste walls.
Another interesting thing with the water is there is a horizon white or blank line where the terrain and water line intersect, especially noticeable off in the distance free camera roaming flying across the water. I see it in other engines as well such as the shader water examples in ogre3d graphics engine.
Over all really nice demo and I love during the interactive demo how nice the water always looked, most realistic water shaders I've ever seen. Question about the terrain textures, did you guys just use a single LOD texture for the entire terrain? Cause I didn't see the terrain show more detail as closer you got it, except just smoothed out enlarged texture with no detail enhancements or is that not available in TGEA, just in TGE?
One last very little thing, how come we didn't get any fancy music playing in the background while interactive demo ran just like in the video you posted? That would have been sweet! :)
06/20/2008 (11:40 pm)
Figured out a neat trick. When the interactive demo is running hit Alt+C to switch camera videos and you end up controlling the player that was shown sitting on the garagegames G logo. You can also fly by holding down the right mouse button and he can shoot a grenade like explosive using the fire button (left mouse button).One odd thing I noticed though when in third person view (hit tab key) and looking at the water there's a odd field effect like thing going on around any objects that are between the camera and the water such as the player object in third person view, but only ever occurs at some positions around the water such as the shallow end near the castle like wall structure. I also see a similar effect while in free camera movement moving around while the mission editor is open, it'll do a weird effect right under the menus when near the shallow end of the water again near the caste walls.
Another interesting thing with the water is there is a horizon white or blank line where the terrain and water line intersect, especially noticeable off in the distance free camera roaming flying across the water. I see it in other engines as well such as the shader water examples in ogre3d graphics engine.
Over all really nice demo and I love during the interactive demo how nice the water always looked, most realistic water shaders I've ever seen. Question about the terrain textures, did you guys just use a single LOD texture for the entire terrain? Cause I didn't see the terrain show more detail as closer you got it, except just smoothed out enlarged texture with no detail enhancements or is that not available in TGEA, just in TGE?
One last very little thing, how come we didn't get any fancy music playing in the background while interactive demo ran just like in the video you posted? That would have been sweet! :)
#6
06/21/2008 (8:10 am)
Did anyone notice if there was any full screen shaders? I didn't see it in the demo but it said that they were supported. 
#7
@JChack - DRL, Bloom, and the view from under water are all examples of the full screen shaders.
06/21/2008 (9:04 am)
Yay Barricade!!!!@JChack - DRL, Bloom, and the view from under water are all examples of the full screen shaders.
#8
06/21/2008 (12:23 pm)
Sweet! 
#10
I've got a Nvidia GeForce 7850 GT with 512 megs and a core 2 Duo E6700.
06/23/2008 (12:38 am)
I'm sorry to have to comment a bit negatively... I've got a set-up that is better than the one recommended. And the demo works quite good. Just to make a try I've started the editor (f11) and tried to duplicate some of the difs around (not so much but a piece more of the bridge another starship and 3 or 4 barricades. The engine starts to suffer badly. I've noticed that Difs got no LOD but as my plan is to build a village with a bunch of houses around, I wonder if TGEA (that I already bought by the way) is good for my project. So a question comes to mind: does duplicated dif work like instances of the first (so no more video memory used) or are them considered like new entities? Another thing, the terrains is atlas right? I cannot see shadow projected by difs on terrain even after full relight, is lightmapping supported on atlas?. Last thing: on the starship even after activating smooth lighting and after full relight the rounded parts of the dif are segmented for me. Is that an unsolved problem?I've got a Nvidia GeForce 7850 GT with 512 megs and a core 2 Duo E6700.
#11
Probably best to take these kind of questions to the forums soo that we can have a bit more in-depth discussion about them but I will hit on it quickly.
Torque mostly treats the DIF's as separate entities since the lightmaps for each DIF is distinct. Adding LOD to those DIF's would get you a lot more performance (and is on our long range plans for this demo).
Atlas in its current form does not support casting lightmapped shadows from Interiors and Shapes onto the terrain. You will need to use a TerrainBlock or MegaTerrain for that. It is something that Rene has looked into but we don't have any solid plans for that at the moment.
The DIF's in Barricade were exported with map2dif (an older version) which does not support smoothing (even with the flag set).
06/23/2008 (12:46 am)
Hey Andrea,Probably best to take these kind of questions to the forums soo that we can have a bit more in-depth discussion about them but I will hit on it quickly.
Torque mostly treats the DIF's as separate entities since the lightmaps for each DIF is distinct. Adding LOD to those DIF's would get you a lot more performance (and is on our long range plans for this demo).
Atlas in its current form does not support casting lightmapped shadows from Interiors and Shapes onto the terrain. You will need to use a TerrainBlock or MegaTerrain for that. It is something that Rene has looked into but we don't have any solid plans for that at the moment.
The DIF's in Barricade were exported with map2dif (an older version) which does not support smoothing (even with the flag set).
#12
06/23/2008 (2:08 am)
Thankyou for the quick and informative answer!
#13
06/23/2008 (3:24 am)
Wooohooo... Nice work! I love the pace you got now :-)
#14
Unfortunately, I have quite a large problem with the Barricade demo and TGEA 1.7.0. Strangely enough, this problem doesn't occur with the Forge demo or TGEA 1.0.3. The Application itself seems to load fine, however, when I get to the point where it goes to load a mission, the game will get stuck at "LOADING DATABLOCKS". Sometimes this will just get stuck after the loading bar has been filled, and sometimes when I press the load mission button, nothing happens.. I have noticed in TGEA 1.7.0 that if I activate another window outside of TGEA, it will sometimes progress with loading, but this is not very common. Sometimes in the Stronghold demo, I do not even get to the point where I can load the menu, rather, I get a black screen after the TGEA logo fades out. The only temporary solution I have found to this is to reboot the system, but I plan to sell my game, and I'm pretty sure my customers don't want to be rebooting every time they wish to play.
http://motronsoftware.com/console.jpg
There is a link to a screen-capture of my console window after the button does nothing. If you request any more information please do so, I would like to resolve this problem as soon as possible.
My system specs are:
AMD Athlon64 x2 4200+
Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS 320MB
2GB of RAM
2 Monitors (Doubt this would cause problems)
Windows XP Professional (Corporate Edition) SP2
600W PSU
Now, I am currently blaming the inability to load on the fact that I usually have many applications open at once when I try to run any of the demos, and sometimes I find that closing tabs in firefox can sometimes let it load.
I would appreciate any help as soon as possible, please email me at: steven@motronsoftware.com , however I reccomend that you leave a follow-up comment here incase anyone else who has the problem can resolve it.
Thanks, demo looks great from the video anyway,
-Steve
06/24/2008 (4:19 pm)
Hello people,Unfortunately, I have quite a large problem with the Barricade demo and TGEA 1.7.0. Strangely enough, this problem doesn't occur with the Forge demo or TGEA 1.0.3. The Application itself seems to load fine, however, when I get to the point where it goes to load a mission, the game will get stuck at "LOADING DATABLOCKS". Sometimes this will just get stuck after the loading bar has been filled, and sometimes when I press the load mission button, nothing happens.. I have noticed in TGEA 1.7.0 that if I activate another window outside of TGEA, it will sometimes progress with loading, but this is not very common. Sometimes in the Stronghold demo, I do not even get to the point where I can load the menu, rather, I get a black screen after the TGEA logo fades out. The only temporary solution I have found to this is to reboot the system, but I plan to sell my game, and I'm pretty sure my customers don't want to be rebooting every time they wish to play.
http://motronsoftware.com/console.jpg
There is a link to a screen-capture of my console window after the button does nothing. If you request any more information please do so, I would like to resolve this problem as soon as possible.
My system specs are:
AMD Athlon64 x2 4200+
Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS 320MB
2GB of RAM
2 Monitors (Doubt this would cause problems)
Windows XP Professional (Corporate Edition) SP2
600W PSU
Now, I am currently blaming the inability to load on the fact that I usually have many applications open at once when I try to run any of the demos, and sometimes I find that closing tabs in firefox can sometimes let it load.
I would appreciate any help as soon as possible, please email me at: steven@motronsoftware.com , however I reccomend that you leave a follow-up comment here incase anyone else who has the problem can resolve it.
Thanks, demo looks great from the video anyway,
-Steve
Associate Steve Acaster
[YorkshireRifles.com]