Graphic Capabilities Concerns.

#1 What you see is what you get, otherwise you will have to code it in yourself, how hard that is depends on how much you know about those features.

#2 Torque and RW both support lightmaps... Perhaps you didn't look very closely?

Real time shadows are supported (from dynamic shapes). The terrain and, I believe, interiors now, support detail textures and bumpmapping. There is 3rd party code available to make the engine support shaders (although this breaks DirectX compatibility).

Really, Torque gives you a lot more than just pure graphics. If you're looking for nothing more than a convenient platform for graphics, you might want to look at one of the open source game engines. They're very storng in that area; Torque's stengths, at the moment, lie elsewhere.

#3 Torque supports lightmaps for interiors. Torque supports shadows, Torque supports environment mapping, Torque supports multitexturing. Perhaps you should have examined the Realm Wars demo more closely.

And one more thing:

"I am looking to purchace Torque for a private prototype game, but I can not find a graphic capabilities listing of any type."

Did you think to check the features page? Here's what it says:

"Rendering Engine
Multi-pass texturing
Layered volumetric fog
Decals
Detail texturing
Environment mapping
Vertex and multi-pass lighting
True spherical distance fogging (for terrain, buildings)
Spherical distance clipping (for terrain, buildings)"

#4 I've looked at realmwars more then once. I'm a graphic engineer. I see no shadows in the demo whatsoever, and no settings menu above resalution. No lightmaps, no character shadows. The tribes 2 demo has lightmaps and shadows. So it's obviously something with realmwars.

As for the features page it does'nt list anything with support for materials. You aparently dont understand what that listing is. All of those features are very, very basic. They also dont explain if the detail textureing is environment/character only yadadada.

If the native engine does'nt support simple specular or alpha based multitexture, or bump.. Then I really dont see why I would purchace Torque. I'm looking for simple, but this seems too simple. It would take me 2 months to peice together a workable version where I could apply the simple material features I want.

So essentially Torque is'nt a development kit? It's a lump of source code, and everything you need, you add manually with external tools? Has it actually been updated at all, or plan to be?

Can a developer please answer this, I need a clean answer.

#5 If you dont belive me here's a screenshot from Realmwars.

http://home.comcast.net/~painiac/rw.jpg

There are obviously no shadows at all.

#6 Torque is a game engine. It gives you a lot more than graphics; including a distributed networked object simulation system, a scripting language, a GUI library, collision response, and a resource manager. If you're looking at Torque solely as a platform for advanced graphics development, you're probably looking at the wrong place. You might try crystal space, OGRE, or another more graphics oriented project.

That said, Torque does have a good graphics engine which is capable of giving good (but perhaps not bleeding edge) results.


Here we have some shadows, both the lightmapped and dynamic sort.

And from ThinkTanks:


Now, TT is modified from stock Torque, but not significantly (mostly in secondary areas, not in core rendering functionality).

If your graphics card setup is busted, or RW is broken, this doesn't mean that Torque doesn't support certain features!

#7 Specular mapping is hardly bleeding edge graphic development. I stated what I needed three times. It's a simple prototype. Torque has all of the accessable gameplay functions I need but, torque just does'nt really impress me feature wise. Hell, you can grab AMP 2 for 200 bucks, and it includes normal map support, it's own editors, and it's own script. You don't get souce, but why would you need it if every feature you need is included.

I really don't understand all of your replies. No one has actually answerd me.

In a simple yes or no, does Torque natively support these features:

1. Specular maps
2. Bump maps
3. Alpha map based transparency
4. Global lighting
5. Light map detail
6. Terrain and BSP object detail textures
7. LOD sprites
8. Dynamic shadows

These are very simple and are standard for most every other tool set i've been researching. From what i've seen so far, it would be the same if I was to just grab a free engine like tenebrea, or crystal space. I really don't mean to down Torque, just need the questions answered. If they are not supported natively then are they availible for free? I would really hope that you forum users, who own the Torque SDK would know the answers to these questions. The developers certainly have not yet.


**edit to above user,

read my posts before assuming my graphics card is faulty. Tribes 2 shows the shadows, realmwars did not. It was just an example. I'm a graphics engineer, I know theres nothing wrong with my video card.