Tall order from small people

#1 wow, pretty dead around here huh?

Well, I guess I will just have to go ahead and GUESS? Figure it out myself? Keep waiting for support from garagegames? who knows, I guess its just a business right? Make an engine, spend ten years developing and putting out tid bits of information that people can latch onto and scrounge around learning from and in a few years they would be able to figure out just as much as us. Hey, it really doesn't matter, as long as they pay for the license, who gives a damn, we gave them a cool little tutorial in their documentation, what more do they want from us? Hell, I don't have ten seconds of my time to even jot a suggestion down to someone with less resources who bought it to use in a 3rd world country.

Oh, well, big thanks to having the engine available at all, and with at least documentation that didn't leave me feeling stupid and not able to understand it. I will succeed in this, regardless of the time it takes

Don't take it wrong, just seems like fun watching a thread not even being looked at let alone suggested upon.

#2 I'm sorry that you feel that way, Ashley. I'm actually out sick right now, but just logged onto the forums to see what people were talking about and saw this.

You can find the system requirements and recommendations on the product page for the engine. As for the documentation, there are a number of tutorials and comprehensive documentation that ships with the engine. They are also available with the demo version.

#3 Thank you so much for answering, and like I said I really do appreciate it. What I was asking was what is the REAL bare minimum I have to have (like really from experience, not just ...well, it would work on this but load in about 6 months).

And the documentation I got with it is comprehensive, I did understand it and thank you guys so much for tossing the documentation in with the adventure kit too.

I did all the tutorials, and I did all the tutorials in the other thing I bought from somewhere else (hands on coding, TSITv2.0 software teaching how to use it). But even though I understand it, and I can most definitely build something with it, I was hoping someone could tell me how to teach it (the main reason I bought it).

I mean, I could just copy the tutorials and go from there, but really, what about all the other unexpected stuff I am studying in the blogs here and the like?

Is there any real proper form to teaching it? I noticed online that games like the paper mache (however you spell that) game for Wii was originally (and still is though modified) with Torque 2D in a classroom setting.

So I was hoping that someone knew a formal way to do it, or I could just start from scratch I guess. But closed mouths don't get fed. So I had to ask here.

I just want to add this to our school, since this is something we can use, its a no brainer, and much better to work with this engine than something like gamecreator or other jazz (statistically speaking), since the game engine is limitless once you get into it. Where other stuff is quite limited, and their GUI sucks, or can only export to swf, or whatever other options there are that really can't go any further.

In any case, IF I can do this, and really put this to work, I will move on to the 3D engine becuase that is the first one I saw, the one that had the "educational" blog tossed at me when I searched in google. And the ones you guys are actually developing a curriculum for.

In any case, I probably sound like a retard by now, soo, no matter what, even if there is no resources for this as far as classroom structure, then I will just have to make do, create it myself, and then modify as I see fit when something doesn't seem to be translating well.

In any case, do you guys know what is the lowest TRUE recommendations for development that is not the actual lowest on the site, i.e. this type of processor is the slowest that anyone with common sense would REALLY develop on because the true minimum requirements would make it slow?

Or are the minimum requirements on the site really the common sense machines, and even though it could possibly run on something slower, it wouldn't even be remotely feasible?

I am sorry I came off like an idiot, but I really want to get this class off the ground as fast as I possibly can so that I have something fresh and great for these kids to learn, and maybe put to good use later on.

#4 @David,I am sorry you have a winter illness, hopefully, your recovery is quick and painless. Winter sucks in the US specifically for that reason, where here, it is a standard 85 degrees all year round (well, 6 months of rain, it probably gets down to 75 degrees in the evenings).

#5 Ashley, I'm not sure how far you're wanting to go with this but if you want to teach computer programming (even game programming) properly, you'll probably want to start off teaching very basic C++. The college programs over here start off with very basic C++ and maybe some Java before they even begin to touch a 2D or 3D game engine. My first 6 months I didn't even touch an engine. Then we slowly moved into using the Allegro library with C++. I loved Allegro. Even though it is extremely difficult to do anything beyond simple 2D games in it, that is all you should be starting out with anyway and it will teach you a lot about how game programming all works. I highly recommend you start with the simple basics before you decide to jump into a game engine like Torque. The most valuable information you can teach those kids is the basic concepts of programming through C++/C# and Java. Integrate game development around these fundamentals to make it fun. Don't skip over them.

Also as a side note, don't get too frustrated if you don't get a response right way on these forums. Responses can be slow sometimes but the people on here are very helpful. It's nothing personal.

#6 Thank you very much for the information, I knew for a fact that I would have to put that in the curriculum, but I didn't know if I needed to teach the math first, and then programming.

I know a lot of Java already, so it would be less difficult to teach, and I have a tiny bit of experience with C++, so going into that and learning it, let alone teaching it, shouldn't be too hard.

Thanks again for the information and I will definitely check out some curriculum for C++

#7

Quote:
TRUE recommendations for development that is not the actual lowest on the site, i.e. this type of processor is the slowest that anyone with common sense would REALLY develop on because the true minimum requirements would make it slow?

for my experiments on torque 3d(not torque 2d) in different configuration,i have found that it's problem is in it's default configurations.it seems t3d always was tested in high or middle configuration pc.so it's default configuration is not suitable for low class pc.specially for advance lighting and other special effects using particles.
but some tweaking in configuration can run it in all type of present pc.

i have tested it with
a celeron 2.26 ghz.512 mb ram and a built in 64 mb intel gma of 845 chipset
and
also with a dual core 2.00 ghz.1 gb ram. and intel mother board above 945 chipset.it runs almost same.

with core i3's intel gma 3000 it's performance become twice.

finally the only fact that i found is grafics card.t3d massively use shader in almost everywhere.
grab a good grafics card with core i5.all torque engine will be able to run well.

personally i am going to buy a pc with:
Intel Core i5-2500K
ASRock Z68 Extreme3
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB ram
(no video card)

and i think here nobody actually use any configuration around minimum requirements.

see this:
www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/126379

#8 Thanks, The only reason I ask is because the computers that are donated to us are usually just whatever, Year 19??, and so I would actually have to have some specs to look for. Graphics cards would have to be compatible as well, but we have a fund raiser so we can take from that and put it straight into some graphics cards.

So, you're pretty much dealing with someone with zero ability to just walk down to Walmart (or even jump on new egg, regardless of how much money we have), because our country doesn't have it (and unfortunately for us, doesn't support much online either).

I do however, have a few good friends in foundations that help us out, and I know that lots of times, especially with computer equipment, its mostly stuff from the old Pentium II or less days. Thus I have to look for an exact range of computers (which is possible, but like pulling needles out of haystacks).

Look guys, I really don't want to sound like I am too stupid to know the difference between a SSD and IDE. I do have a masters degree. I simply dont have the resources to be non specific.

I really do want you guys to know I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions as well, becuase this isn't as detrimental to me as it is to what we are trying to create for these kids.

I chose games becuase I grew up in the US playing them and I know what the possibilities are with them, and when I came back to my home country, I started a school, trying to emulate the same thing most are provided where I grew up.

So no matter what you throw at me, I will accomplish, to be able to flip it and send the same knowledge down the hill to these guys.

#9 Oh, by the way, I cant view that thread....haha

I only bought 2D, so I would have to wait until I can purchase 3D to view it.

Thanks again,

Ashley

#10 Year 19?? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i am afraid that type of pc will not be able to run torque 3d(even 1st version 1.0.1 or whatever).may be those pc have 512 mb ram but their pci slot will not be able to hold a video card which support shader.and without shader support a engine like torque 3d will not be able to run.

as far i know nvidea fx series agp card and ATI 9800 series was the first to support shader.those card even does not support my old 2003 model pc.so i am not seeing any light.

not sure,but for pentium II their will be issue for cpu's support on
MMX /SSE/ SSE2....

in that case i think u can use torque game engine(TGE) or torque advance game engine(tgea) or 3d game studio.

i have not use tgea but have read that a big part of game play script of TGEA is similar to t3d.and they also support multiplayer.

so u can use tgea in low configuration to teach scripting.
and
use a high configuration pc for teaching level designing.


may be torque 2d(i do not have t2d) will not make any problem with those pc.

#11 Yeah, I figured that anything less than P4 on a gx280 wouldn't even come close to trying to work.

So basically, I just look for anything I can scrounge up that has at least a 1.7ghz processor (free, you cant argue much)and supports a good enough graphics card and the just buy the graphics cards ourselves through fundraising. We can raise $50 (the current equivalent of having about $300 in the US), but we cant raise thousands of dollars to buy new PC's.

We are going to use Torque 2D, so hopefully, if we stick to above that we should be fine, and I was thinking of buying the ram separately also, because here the DDR sticks are pretty cheap by themselves. Most PC's with a single P4 processor only have two slots for ram, so I figure to buy 2 gigs for each computer, which would be like $30 a computer (here, not US).

The graphics cards are more expensive.

The teaching computer (my own) is way more than capable and can handle 3D as well.

Now I am off to find 5 computers to do this. Thanks everyone, and If you have any more suggestions as to Curriculum, what to teach first and why... feel free to let me know... thanks

#12 The best thing I can recommend on very old hardware is to download the demo and install it on them to gauge its performance. That will be the best test since most of the hardware you are talking about is extremely old and untested by our QA department.

On the topic of curriculum, the only pieces we have an started an official curriculum on is Torque 3D 1.2. You can find that information here. It may help in organizing one for you using Torque 2D. There are also a number of educators here who have been using Torque 2D in their classrooms. They may be able to help you out.