How long should it take to get 'comfortable' with torque?

#21 Yes, i must say i felt the same way Patrick, but it all comes in time, after a few years you'll be liek Ace and Bob teh C Builder, this engien is never ending, its constantly being upgraded, and de-graded, and modified, just pay attention, and use logic, (yes at time logic must go out the window with your monitor) but it comes in time, after all who is it that say that famous quote "All great things come in time"

#22 I found a great place to start was putting "trace(true);" at the top of main.cs in the root folder (higher than common, starter.fps, demo, etc.). This turns on tracing of all function calls made into and out of scripts.

Personally, I like looking at print-offs more than code so I chose to print all .CS files in /common and starter.fps (and subfolders) minus the /common/editor folder (which is bigger than I wanted). I also printed a few GUI files - those with script functions and not just new GuiControls.

Tracing through the code, packages, etc. took about 2 days - maybe 10 hours total for me though I knew the basics of scripts. I wrote down every function call in each file and compared everything to console.log. It was a lot of writing that something like dump() might give you, but writing it down helped me remember everything versus scanning a textfile.

I've found that scanning code/logs is great to find something when you know what to look for. If you want to commit it to memory, however, you normally need to write it down yourself (write on paper or type).

I agree with the comments about learning scripts first and then engine code. The C++ code is huge and doesn't really give you a context to anything until you see some scripts use the objects and make a "game".

-Nerseus

#23 Thanks for the console workout Pascal, and the tips Dan.

Patrick, I understand your complaints too. When you code something from the ground up you know exactly how everything works. It's a bit different trying to learn another person's code.

I'm impatient as well and did not want to focus on scripting at first. I'm not interested in doing an FPS, there are too many FPS' coming out already and the competition is stiff. I wanted to get straight to some engine changes, like camera and mouse selection. However I recently decided to take a step back and focus more on scripting first.

#24 I understand completely. I've had torque about a month and 2 days ago was the first time I even looked in the engine directory. I downloaded some tutorials and used the torque demo to play around with. I was able to use the editor fairly easy and was excited by the ability to edit the world from within the world. I had no problems making a building in quark and placing it in the world, and I thought that this game making thing was going to be easy. Then I decided to add an AI player. Not as easy. It took me quite awhile to get a bot in the game running around like a bot with his head cut off and to fire his weapon.

What lifted my frustration was the console and dump(). I did not realize until a few days ago you can type commands in the console and control the objects (WOW). Also, the dump() help a lot. Thanks Pascal for the other things to try.

Right now I feel good about torque. I know I will get mad again in the future, but I know I will be able to accomplish anything I need to with the tutorials and all the wonderful people in the forums.

#25 @ Patrick - Me and a friend of mine have been using the Torque engine since Sept. of 2001. I had little experience in programming and he had none at all. We bought the engine because of playing Tribes and Tribes 2, we wanted to make our own mods and Tribes 2 like game. Back then it was just a chore trying to get it compiled. Today ... I might recompile it several times in a night... it's no big deal. You won't learn this engine in a short time...I think you will always be learning it, since it is always being improved. We spent a year just trying to learn the different tools that we are going to use(Milkshape,Quark,Worldcraft,Paint Shop Pro,jEdit,and we just started using Blender). Last year we came up with a project that we wanted to do. Since then we have been working on our project, but I set it up so that we build it a step at a time. We started at creating a world... just the terrian at first then added some trees, then buildings. And we continue building each step a little at a time. Each step is a learning experience...but we take the time to learn it and keep working on that step until we get the results we want. Believe me it is fustrating at first ..but you take this approach it is much more fun and you learn alot more.

I just started getting into the scripting...I been trying out all the example codes, reading forums and bought two of the BraveTree content packs. The enviromental and the war sparrow pack seem to really help me understand how things work. I just got these this weekend and I am already understanding alot of things. I understand not to run Torque in D3D mode (it crashes ever since the 1.2 ver. release). But hang in there... I looked at alot of other engines and none come close to what this can be for the price. When do we think our project will ever be done?....maybe ten years.LOL

#26 I just got the Torque about 4 days ago, and I have never worked with c++ before(only Torque script). I've already made a few engine modifications(autoaim, tracking camera). Once you've got a handle on the scripts, you won't have a problem adding simple engine features. ;-)

#27 I'm beginning to get somewhere, and I've been at it almost a year so far.

#28 It depends what you want to do...i've had it for about a month now and just usuing the tute base example and editing that you can get walk arounds, shapes triggers stuff..i found this is the easiest way to learn as long as you back up your originals you can stuff around with the codes and directories and see what happens - not one for taking in documentation as its not really set up for me (dont actually know any scripting:P)

#29 I think learning Torque goes in stages:
1) Buy the engine.
2) Really excited after watching demo.
3) Try to do something.
4) Try to do something. Urge to kill rising.
5) Try to do something. Urge to kill rising more.
6) Try to do something! Urge to kill rising even more.
7) Post in the beginners section about how hard Torque is to learn.
8) Get reminded that learning 500,000+ lines of code takes a while.
9) Be humbled by the awesomeness of the resources in the code and people in the forums.
10) Do something and bask in your own glory.
11) Goto 3, Sometimes go to 2, and sometimes question 1.

#30 Bought the engine a few months back. Never really did anything much with it apart from buying Ken Finney's book. Everything looked complicated.

Last week, we clinched a racing project that has to be completed withing 3 weeks (including testing). Nobody else is available to work on it. Took 1 day to orientate, then I was okay with scripting. 4 days in, I made my first independent change (albeit a minor one) to the engine codebase.

I think it all boils down to having a project that "must be done by yesterday". These speed up the learning process tremendously.