"The Indoors renderer sucks"

#1 My opinion is it is fanboy stuff. TGE is not the easiest to use, but it is a powerful engine. It is like saying a Formula One car sucks because it is harder to drive than a Honda Civic.

The indoor renderer looks as good as the ability of the artist to place lights properly to make them look good (my opinion anyway)

#2 That was my view of thinking. I asked them "what exactly makes the renderer so bad" and I go no reply.

Then one of them went on to recommend the A6 engine over this one. I think that's a joke. A6 looks nice, but it holds your hand too much, and is not cross platform, and for twice the price you don't even get as many features as the torque has.

:shrug:

I am curious as to why all the 'hate'. The indoors renderer seems nice and speedy to me.

#3 LoL

I made tons of maps with all engines mostly with unreal
My opinion on this is that i can do exactly the same as i do
in the unreal engine and others.
Its only a matter of learning how the light sources and how to use them, maybe some detail function is better in some other engines.
Dont listen to people that dont know what they talking about.
I show them some results soon and i bet they change there minds.

-Billy

#4 The indoor engine is missing lots of featurs that are "standard" in all other FPS games. With some of the resources like the radiousity one applied it looks nicer now. but it is still missing almost all the fetures that say "half-life" has "entity" wise.

#5 Surely you can code what you need? I mean... We ARE game developers, not mod developers. Unlike with half-life, we get to have the source. I wouldnt think that adding a new 'entity' would be too hard.

But if your looking at its out-of-the-box features, then I suppose that it doesnt quite have the 'entity' support of bigger names. But should we really be comparing it to these 'professional' engines? They are in a different league.

Quote:It is like saying a Formula One car sucks because it is harder to drive than a Honda Civic.

I like that quote :D

And you need to know OpenGL if you want to add any new types of rendering classes to the C++ code.

#6 Because of the algorithm used for indoors rendering, should I be avoiding large, multiple indoors areas? or, more on key with what the 'fanboys' were saying, is, multiple buildings within LOS of eachother?

#7 I dont understand this at all !
Whats the problem i have levels indoors and outdoor with
50 houses,walls,churches and moore ofcourse for my single player.
I made so many maps with unreal,litech,quake,and other engines
and i dont see the differns in bad renders !?
I can do towns like in rtcw and there is no problem ,the only things is the close detail renders they are not so good.
And dont come and talk about the hl engine it the most sandy shit
i ever played with .
So what is large Patrick ,i think nobody in any other engine can
do worlds like in Torque.

So far Torque Rocks
Correct me if im wrong but im pleased :):):)
-Billy

#8 Torque uses BSP rendering for indoor levels (right?) same as A6. I have used A6 for a while and have been able to create great indoor levels. So why on earth should Torque be any diffrent. I wouldn't say it's the rendering but maybe the tools ;-)

#9 Torque doesn't use bsp in its rendering of interiors. It uses a purely portal system (if the portal is visible then all the geometry inside the two zones the portal splits is visible). In the hands of the right artist this can be very powerful and competitive with other engines.

The Quake and Unreal engines use pvs (potential visibility set) which works in a similar way to TGE's portals/zones. It is a prepocessed list of all of the gemoetry that is visible or potentially visible whenever you are standing in a particular zone. In some cases it can be a lot faster than a portal system and in some cases slower. The major advantage is that it isn't reliant on the artist's skills since it is mostly automatic (you can add TGE-like portals to quake and unreal levels also). The disadvantage is that pvs doesn't handle windows and doors to an external terrain very elegantly (considered a leak).

#10 There is nothing wrong with the collision and culling in Torque interiors. The Portal system is much more flexible and robust than say any straight up BSP visiblity system like in HL.

It is just lacking features out of the box.

And if it was so trivial to put doors, moving platforms ( ala elevators ) and the other 'standard' entities in all the other FPS engines it would have been done and published in the last 2 years don't you think.

#11 Bad logic.

Of course "easy" is never easy with murphy and his ugly law lurking around every corner, and to call those tasks "easy" is to minimize the effort that goes into them.

Stil...

The reason it has not been put in is that, while easy enough to do, it does not significantly increase the value of the engine from GG's perspective. I'm sure they have been working on other things they think increases the value more, as well as working on making games, which is what they really want to be doing...just like you and me.

#12 No one said, GG had to put it in, the fact that no one else has submitted a resource that is easy to use and robust. the door resources are all hacks in my opinion, tells me it is not so 'easy' or 'trival' to do. I mean being able to place doors and what not in quark and have them show up in game just like HL or any other engine.

#13 I converted/placed 3 full HL maps into 1 Torque map. It runs just fine with proper portal placement.

#14 Well, the interior stuff I can agree on. Torque's interior lighting is not to great, and the interiors turn out to be not very detailed. Detail textures would help a lot for the latter, but for the former there is a technique that I've already implemented in Legends to make the existing lighting become more alive. See for yourself here:

hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/compare2

Those are the same exact interiors, just rendered a little differently. It gets even better if you also reexport them with a modified map2dif.


Pretty much anything else anyone might say is total BS. The only thing that torque really "lacks" is shaders.

hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/shadez/screen_0002.jpg
hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/shadez/screen_0003.jpg
hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/shadez/screen_0021.png
hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/shadez/screen_0034.png
hobbiticus.acm.jhu.edu/stuff/screenshot_004-00002.png

oh wait...

#15 Myself, i think what the game lacks most is particles.. I just recently got the engine, and i was flippin through it havin a good time, until i hit the particle code.. Thats when I lost it. I mean, honestly, it looks like there is wayy too much there for what it does.. I've played quake 1 engines with better particle setups that are way smaller, and I've made my own that looks extremely good, and is soo much more compact! Thats the one hting so far im disapointed in with torque...

#16 JUST WAIT TILL BOB RELEASES HIS RENDERING STUFFZ AND THE CSMXDIFF!!!!! W00T, oh and reguarding doors and moving platforms use triggers and sts's from what i've read ;)

#17 Looks great Chris :)

@Jacob, Melv is working on particles I think... I personally think the particles are fine but i'm always interested in what Melv is up to.

Coz

#18 Well the partciels themselves arent bad, but the code for em is aweful! Shouldnt have to be near that long and complicated i think.. Once i learn my way around the engine more im gonna try writtin my q1 setup into it... They were 2d circles drawn by triangle fan with 6 layers to add smoothness.. Looked sooo nice! :)