Browser Plugin/Activex version of Torque

#1 Short answer: not such a great idea, been discussed several times before over the past 3 years - at least once quite contentiously.

most recent discussion here: www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=18056

#2 Actually, this is the future of gaming. Downloading, unzipping, installing, etc. is a pain. The Flash model is nice. It will be a while before we get this capability though.

-Jeff Tunnell GG

#3 The active X version of ThinkTanks did not take us that long to do (a couple of weeks).

Unfortunately, we can't release it into the community as we had to put in some security measures to prevent people from hi-jacking our control to deliver bad things. We also had to shell out $$$$ for a certificate. It is not something we can just release as a resource.

#4 I understand you cannot just release it like that... but anyway, I was really surprised when I saw this becuase i remember having a short discusion with one of my teachers at school about this. Basically I said that if you wanted to build a cross platform 3D game you are better off with Torque then Macromedia Director (ow... I really don't like Director lol, still they make us use it at school). He countered my comments by saying "Perhaps, but Torque doesn't run in a browser, does it?". I then said it wouldn't be impossible to achieve this, and see, it actually was made.
Really if this would be public you'd see tons of people out of the Director community switch to Torque. Torque is more powerfull, cheaper, and a bit more userfriendly.

#5 If you sat down with a good book on ActiveX, I imagine you could reproduce BT's control in not too long. It's a nice piece of work but I don't classify it as rocket science. :)

#6 Director is great for certain things. Making games isn't one of those things. Same with Flash.

The problem with BT's control is that is uses ActiveX and would never work as a cross-platform solution. Other solutions may be available, but would probably still be difficult to port consistently.

#7

Quote:Same with Flash

Flash MX 2004 & actionscript 2.0 are great for games actually. No 3D tough...

#8 Thanks guys.. I was really interested in this and still am as I am a C++ corporate developer and have created ActiveX controls for business but not gaming and want to do it with the Torque Engine. I was curious on the Think Tanks version and how it seems like a very fast download even thought the engine and assets *can* get somewhat large. I believe that this is the future of gaming in some fashion (game cable / online clients games with local libraries like OpenGl or Direct X / etc ). It is a very large effort and wanted to see where it was at in the community as I couldn't find much information on it with Torque, I dind't find much and then nearly flipped when i saw the Think Tanks version recently. Good work on that guys.

I develop 3d games for Shockwave and WildTangent (2d with Flash) and you do have to worry alot about the size of your game and LOD but if expectation would come down that a game may be 200 meg for the activex or future browser application technology then it could change PC gaming / media center gaming as we know it.

Yes ActiveX is only IE but one day I think that there will be only one browser or at least one standard support. I hope that I can add to this or someone in community develops a TGE/TSE web edition (with active x or as downloadable for non compilant browsers) that can maybe compete with Shockwave3D or WildTangent since online gaming is really taking off. Nevertheless you could do alot with a web/activex version of the control not just for games.. education.. virtual showrooms (now with TSE can do shiny ones :) ), showing artwork, selling 3d models, etc, etc.

I hear you on the certificate (dont' really want your keys out there) and the problems with releasing the resource but maybe some background on any issues encountered and how you were able to make it so fast to download...

I just saw that TSE came out so probably ahve enough to do there getting my game running with that and reworking the art. Think Tanks did it farily quickly the port but I imagine it would take a good part of a year probably to work out a full fledged activex.

It would be killer to be able to program torque for the web though (or most of it) instead of having to use Shockwave 3d, WildTangent or Java 3D.

#9 ThinkTanks loads fast because we did a lot to reduce the download size. The acutall activeX demo is about 3MB. Note that the majority of the size of the full game is in the shell screen images and the music (the online demo has only sound FX)

We also wrote a tool that splits the PNGs we used for the shell and other art assets into two JPGs (one for the color, one for the alpha) which helped us crunch the size of the game even more.

The activeX version is not 'really' a browser version. What it does is downloads and luanches the game is a separate 'floating' window. By appearances, it appears to be in a browser window, but it is an actual TGE application. We have not looked into what it would take to acutally embed it in a browser window.. and we do at some point plan on looking into Mozilla (firebird) and Mac support, although this is a bigger job than we want to tackle right now.

Other than download size, there is nothing that would prevent us from installing the entire game, complete with multiplayer, via our active X version.

I also agree that this is the future.. we want to at some point make it so the game can be downloaded, installed, and even purchased with as few clicks as possible. A lot of work on the back end has to happen to make it all work nicely together, and our next two titles (in production) will be taking a few more of the small steps necessary to arrive at the eventuall goal.

#10 Running Torque in a browser sounds useful, but I'm actually interested in the converse, that is, running a browser within Torque. Think of a kiosk in the game world that displays a live web page. Is this possible? If not, what would it take to implement?

Thanks much!

#11 I found this resource on how to use TGE as a browser plugin(http://tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/TGE/Code/How_to_make_torque_a_plugin),if I am compiling and build the project one by one this resouce in my TGE1.5.1 ver. I'm having below result and error when I Build np3DPluginFF and Torque Demo in VS 2005 Pro no errors came.
like that.,

1>------ Build started: Project: np3DPluginFF, Configuration: Release Win32 ------
1>Running the XPIDL compiler and linker for nsI3DPluginFF
1>"Step1/3 Creating d:torquesdkengineout.pluginff.releasensI3DPluginFF.h"
1>"Step2/3 Creating d:torquesdkengineout.pluginff.releasensI3DPluginFF.xpi"
1>"Step3/3 Linking XPI's into "d:torquesdkengineout.pluginff.releasensI3DPluginFF.xpt"
1>Copying Release plugin to FireFox
1>Copying d:torquesdkengineout.pluginff.releasenp3DPluginFF.dll
1> 1 file(s) copied.
1>Copying d:torquesdkengineout.pluginff.releasensI3DPluginFF.xpt
1> 1 file(s) copied.
1>Build log was saved at "file://d:TorqueSDKengineout.PluginFF.ReleaseBuildLog.htm"
1>np3DPluginFF - 0 error(s), 0 warning(s)
========== Build: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========

and

7>audio.cc
7>vc7fix.cpp
7>Compiling resources...
7>Linking...
7>Generating code
7>d:torquesdkenginetstsshapeinstance.cc(535) : warning C4700: uninitialized local variable 'saveBaseName' used
7>Finished generating code
7>Embedding manifest...
7>Build log was saved at "file://d:TorqueSDKengineout.VC7.RELEASEBuildLog.htm"
7>Torque Demo - 0 error(s), 59 warning(s)
========== Rebuild All: 7 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

But I build and Compiling np3DPlugin the error came in my console Project Project : error PRJ0019: A tool returned an error code from "Performing registration"
1>------ Build started: Project: np3DPlugin, Configuration: Release Win32 ------
1>Copying Release plugin to FireFox
1> 1 file(s) copied.
1> 1 file(s) copied.
1>Performing registration
1>Project : error PRJ0019: A tool returned an error code from "Performing registration"
1>Build log was saved at "file://d:TorqueSDKengineout.Plugin.ReleaseBuildLog.htm"
1>np3DPlugin - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)
========== Build: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========

pls can you guide me what mistake i can do in my visual stdio 2005 pro.if anyother settings to change in this project.