Independent Research Project - Thinking of Using Torque
by Steve Kapp · in General Discussion · 11/21/2010 (10:15 pm) · 3 replies
Hi, I am currently enrolled in an Independent Research class at my high school. I am currently a senior at age 17, soon to be 18. In this class we are aimed to produce a product over a course of about 6 months - up to late May of 2011. After the deadline, we send out and present our product to various organizations or companies in our field.
My field being that of Game Design, I have searched high and low over the internet for an appropriate engine for my project. Specifically, my project will be a single player RPG for the PC platform. After much of my research endeavors I have taken a second look at the Torque Game Engine. I have actually been keeping an eye on it for quite sometime too. It appears to have a user-friendly learning curve and seems to have lots of capabilities. I own a license to Torque TGEA 1.7.1., which I had for a previous project which I never got around to.
Now, here is my question: Is my version of Torque and ArcaneFX in combination with MMOWorkshop.com's "Torque MMO Kit" the best-suited set of development tools for my project?
I already have my game design document fleshed out, soundtrack composed and recorded, and meshes created and mapped with textures. I intend to use my project for future use and am also wondering if it is worth using Torque now that it has somewhat ceased development. Or should I mess with the Epic UDK? Though, I am really not fond of the 25% royalty fee in addition to the $99 up-front charge.
Being quite familiar with the Java and Visual Basic programming languages, and having taking several courses on them I am also wondering if TorqueScript would be easy enough to learn alongside the TGEA engine to produce my product in approximately 6 to 7 months.
Any advice or help will be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
My field being that of Game Design, I have searched high and low over the internet for an appropriate engine for my project. Specifically, my project will be a single player RPG for the PC platform. After much of my research endeavors I have taken a second look at the Torque Game Engine. I have actually been keeping an eye on it for quite sometime too. It appears to have a user-friendly learning curve and seems to have lots of capabilities. I own a license to Torque TGEA 1.7.1., which I had for a previous project which I never got around to.
Now, here is my question: Is my version of Torque and ArcaneFX in combination with MMOWorkshop.com's "Torque MMO Kit" the best-suited set of development tools for my project?
I already have my game design document fleshed out, soundtrack composed and recorded, and meshes created and mapped with textures. I intend to use my project for future use and am also wondering if it is worth using Torque now that it has somewhat ceased development. Or should I mess with the Epic UDK? Though, I am really not fond of the 25% royalty fee in addition to the $99 up-front charge.
Being quite familiar with the Java and Visual Basic programming languages, and having taking several courses on them I am also wondering if TorqueScript would be easy enough to learn alongside the TGEA engine to produce my product in approximately 6 to 7 months.
Any advice or help will be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
#2
If you have TGEA and AFX, then you have all you need to use the MMOKIT. The mmokit out of the box for TGE will work excellently for a small single player (or even multiplayer) RPG as it already has all the framework. You will however need to note that to use the mmokit, you will need to learn Python as well as some Torquescript. There are alot of examples available at the mmoworkshop site.
I would suggest that as part of your research you go and look over the site and make sure that it will fulfill your needs.
As Ben mentioned, it might be easier to do something simpler as your first project, but you won't go wrong with the TGE mmokit as it is solid and functional. You will need to verify, but I don't believe the TGEA kit is quite complete and so would not recommend it.
11/22/2010 (5:45 pm)
Steve,If you have TGEA and AFX, then you have all you need to use the MMOKIT. The mmokit out of the box for TGE will work excellently for a small single player (or even multiplayer) RPG as it already has all the framework. You will however need to note that to use the mmokit, you will need to learn Python as well as some Torquescript. There are alot of examples available at the mmoworkshop site.
I would suggest that as part of your research you go and look over the site and make sure that it will fulfill your needs.
As Ben mentioned, it might be easier to do something simpler as your first project, but you won't go wrong with the TGE mmokit as it is solid and functional. You will need to verify, but I don't believe the TGEA kit is quite complete and so would not recommend it.
#3
If you've got your content made already, I'd say go for it - as long as you're convinced that 6 months is enough for you to implement all the systems you need, and build the world to the size you want it. It may sound like a long time, but it's really not, and things always take longer than you expect ;P.
The time this takes will also depend on how much you need to delve into source code. Speaking from experience, while Torque in general has a fair learning curve, working with the source code does not (at least, it didn't for me). There aren't a ton of good tutorials aimed at modifying the engine's insides, and while integrating resources will teach you a lot, it takes a lot of time to get comfortable with the C++ side of things.
Also, if you're comfortable with Java, TS shouldn't pose much of a challenge syntactically. The key thing will be to wrap your head around the concept of datablocks as fast as possible!
11/22/2010 (7:05 pm)
Quote:I would highly recommend you start with something basic such as Tetris or PacMan, or something like that.On the flipside, I think you'd spend a lot more time struggling with the engine when trying something like this, since TGEA is already set up with everything you need for FPS/RPG character movement and world creation. To then try to break back into a simple 2D paradigm might be counter-productive.
If you've got your content made already, I'd say go for it - as long as you're convinced that 6 months is enough for you to implement all the systems you need, and build the world to the size you want it. It may sound like a long time, but it's really not, and things always take longer than you expect ;P.
The time this takes will also depend on how much you need to delve into source code. Speaking from experience, while Torque in general has a fair learning curve, working with the source code does not (at least, it didn't for me). There aren't a ton of good tutorials aimed at modifying the engine's insides, and while integrating resources will teach you a lot, it takes a lot of time to get comfortable with the C++ side of things.
Also, if you're comfortable with Java, TS shouldn't pose much of a challenge syntactically. The key thing will be to wrap your head around the concept of datablocks as fast as possible!
Torque Owner Ben Versaw
The engine is a good fit for a RPG or any type of game, however, I would highly recommend you start with something basic such as Tetris or PacMan, or something like that.
Those games would fit more into your 6 to 7 month time lines provided your a hard worker and fast learner. An RPG would likely take over an year or more to build even for someone already experienced in game development.
My advice is to get TGB and work with that for a while before trying to jump into a more complex genre.