Blender all-in-one editor for TGE
by Mark Barner · in Torque Game Engine · 06/21/2004 (6:22 pm) · 6 replies
I have been following several threads lately about basically with the same idea "making a one complete tool for Torque". Everyone has their own ideas on what and how it should be. I recently purchased FarCry...and not for the game but to check out the CryEngine Sandbox. This is a nice all in one tool for their engine. It was really easy to start making mods with in a couple of hours. Basically I think alot of people are wanting something like this for Torque... I know I would.
What languages to use, what features to have... that may be a debate for years. One feature I know alot of people would like to see is a new .map program or a direct to .dif other than QUARK. I also noticed a free tool getting alot of work on it... that is Blender. Blender has some of the features that the CryEngine Sandbox has... maybe not as good, but they are there. Blender is multi-platform and work is being done with it for other engines as well. Could modifying Blender be a better start than starting a new tool from scratch? You already have people working on the dts and dif exporting. I have been writting my Torque scripts with the text editor it has in it. Guess my question is:
Would it be possible for Blender to be a real-time game editor offering "What you see is what you PLAY" feedback with the Torque Game Engine?
*I was going to post this in another thread but decided to make it a new one...didn't want to upset the people in that thread that was already upset. I just want to know if it is possible and would like to know what GarageGames would think of this idea.
Thanks, Mark
What languages to use, what features to have... that may be a debate for years. One feature I know alot of people would like to see is a new .map program or a direct to .dif other than QUARK. I also noticed a free tool getting alot of work on it... that is Blender. Blender has some of the features that the CryEngine Sandbox has... maybe not as good, but they are there. Blender is multi-platform and work is being done with it for other engines as well. Could modifying Blender be a better start than starting a new tool from scratch? You already have people working on the dts and dif exporting. I have been writting my Torque scripts with the text editor it has in it. Guess my question is:
Would it be possible for Blender to be a real-time game editor offering "What you see is what you PLAY" feedback with the Torque Game Engine?
*I was going to post this in another thread but decided to make it a new one...didn't want to upset the people in that thread that was already upset. I just want to know if it is possible and would like to know what GarageGames would think of this idea.
Thanks, Mark
#2
06/25/2004 (7:10 pm)
Thanks for your input Todd! I have been looking into blender a little more. I think that I am going to try to start working on it as my main project. I just have an idea that might be great for TGE. I started writting up a plan the other day on what may be needed and what needs to be done. I have a idea on how to intregate Blender with Torque and other packs as well. And yes it has to be a high level of intergation, because I will not settle for less than what tools I use currently. I will be posting up a plan soon as I get a chance to write it up. 
#3
http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=19200
If your interested check out here http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=project&page=view.job&qid=3919 i'm sure you could get on if ya wanted :) Were planning some awsome stuff, thats even over my head :p.
06/25/2004 (7:26 pm)
Dude, check out the help wanted ads =) http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=19200
If your interested check out here http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=project&page=view.job&qid=3919 i'm sure you could get on if ya wanted :) Were planning some awsome stuff, thats even over my head :p.
#4
If you're going to be undertaking this project with blender, I'd definitely check out the forums at blender.org and elysiun.com as well as subscribing to the bf-committers mailing list, available at blender.org, or at least going through its archive. There might be plans in the works or work someone has already done along the lines of enabling multiple game engines and/or some of the other features you mention.
There's already one fork in the blender tree (instinctive) and while it has some nice features, the maintainer gave up porting features from bf-blender (the official release) to it. If you're going to put the effort into this, it would be nice to see it become part of blender instead of another fork.
I suspect though, you're going to end up with your own fork of blender to make this happen the way I understand your description.
06/26/2004 (11:58 am)
Mark: Np, glad to share when I can.If you're going to be undertaking this project with blender, I'd definitely check out the forums at blender.org and elysiun.com as well as subscribing to the bf-committers mailing list, available at blender.org, or at least going through its archive. There might be plans in the works or work someone has already done along the lines of enabling multiple game engines and/or some of the other features you mention.
There's already one fork in the blender tree (instinctive) and while it has some nice features, the maintainer gave up porting features from bf-blender (the official release) to it. If you're going to put the effort into this, it would be nice to see it become part of blender instead of another fork.
I suspect though, you're going to end up with your own fork of blender to make this happen the way I understand your description.
#5
The problem with modifying blender is that it is GPL'd. So you wouldn't be able to use any code from the torque sdk there, unless you want to violate the license.
Making a real-time editing interface is a huge undertaking; Personally i would recommend working in a team in order to produce such an editing addon to blender.
Intergration is good to a point; But do you really want a suite that does absolutely everything? I wouldn't.
06/26/2004 (12:34 pm)
Mark,The problem with modifying blender is that it is GPL'd. So you wouldn't be able to use any code from the torque sdk there, unless you want to violate the license.
Making a real-time editing interface is a huge undertaking; Personally i would recommend working in a team in order to produce such an editing addon to blender.
Intergration is good to a point; But do you really want a suite that does absolutely everything? I wouldn't.
#6
06/26/2004 (2:05 pm)
@James: My main concern is about the Torque code as well. I am researching into what is the best way of doing this with no license violations. As well as if others got invovled in the other parts of the project that do not have the SDK license. I was looking at how you have been doing your exporter and was wondering if that would be the best way of doing it with TGE. I am open for any suggestions. Main goal is to keep it a happy medium with no violations as well as making the interfaces work between Torque and Blender smoothly. 
Torque Owner Todd "zaz" Koeckeritz
There has been discussion at blender.org and elysiun.com about generalizing the game interface to allow swapping the game engine. Those discussions normally end up pointing out how much effort it would be to do because of the differences between the game engins. I've never seen torque as a candidate for this, but crystal space has had some discussion as well as the several game engines already available in the blender source code base.
Now, how much integration you want and can get is also a good question. With the python integration it would be possible to provide better support for .cs files than you are currently getting from the basic text editor in blender now. Also, others have made IDEs for building blender python guis, so doing some form of GUI editor is possible as well.
With blender's new import/export menus, you can even make most of this happen via a menu and hide many of the mechanics from the user.
I also wrote a very basic blender to .map exporter. A basic one is trivial to write, but one that really works involves a lot of work in both the exporter and providing some sort of UI and/or toolkit for the user. I decided at the time I was working on it, it was going to take much less of my time to just bite the bullet and learn QuArK, even though I'm not much of a fan of its UI nor do I run windoze on my desktop.
So, what you're asking is definitely possible and would be a nice thing to have. I also believe though its an enormous amount of work that's likely to end up providing a 90% solution.
If someone does this, I'd definitely take a look at it and might even devote some of my time to it. However, its going to be competing with tools specifically crafted for doing their jobs like xemacs or jedit/TIDE for editing scripts and source code and QuArK for building maps.
It would have to be almost as good as those tools are at their jobs and provide a high level of integration for me to want to use it. I think those are pretty big shoes to fill, which is why I think this would require a very high level of effort.