TGE and TSE Duel development
by BrokeAss Games · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 06/23/2004 (8:49 pm) · 4 replies
Hay folks Russ here at BrokeAss Games,
I have ha few questions on cross development in TSE. The team I've been working with on a TGE run game just kicked down and bought up TSE with all the high high hopes to drop down on it with our collective feet running at full speed; ends up after looking at the code more then half of TSE is simply not done. Are programer had a fit when we told him to start porting all his code and pieces of working TGE to TSE and basically said no, he wasn't going to develop on a engine that's not even done yet. So now I am at a dilemma on the project: what are we going to do?
We don't want to wait for tse to be finished. The rendering pipelines just way to cool from a artist perspective, 2 days in and im still giggling when I apply a glow effect to my lights, but to much of TSE is simply broken to be even viable to run a game in. We ran a multiplayer game test and had people running through the terrain and buildings.
What we finally figured out was the other artists and I would work on TSE and create all are artwork workable inside the new engine, then making it backwards compatible with TGE. Are programer who is basically working out the base engine mechanics would keep working on TGE till a viable build of TSE that was remotely close to the polish of TGE's code base. So we work on both and wait for a better TSE version to come out.
What I need to know is if this is the best way to do it?
Any tips on preping code to port TGE to TSE eventually?
Are materials basically finished? are there any drastic changes coming?
What things should we simply not even touch?
Frankly I would die just to have a version of TGE with the shader code in it, any resources simply for that?
So far from the devs I got one tip: Stay away from skys, water, sound
I have ha few questions on cross development in TSE. The team I've been working with on a TGE run game just kicked down and bought up TSE with all the high high hopes to drop down on it with our collective feet running at full speed; ends up after looking at the code more then half of TSE is simply not done. Are programer had a fit when we told him to start porting all his code and pieces of working TGE to TSE and basically said no, he wasn't going to develop on a engine that's not even done yet. So now I am at a dilemma on the project: what are we going to do?
We don't want to wait for tse to be finished. The rendering pipelines just way to cool from a artist perspective, 2 days in and im still giggling when I apply a glow effect to my lights, but to much of TSE is simply broken to be even viable to run a game in. We ran a multiplayer game test and had people running through the terrain and buildings.
What we finally figured out was the other artists and I would work on TSE and create all are artwork workable inside the new engine, then making it backwards compatible with TGE. Are programer who is basically working out the base engine mechanics would keep working on TGE till a viable build of TSE that was remotely close to the polish of TGE's code base. So we work on both and wait for a better TSE version to come out.
What I need to know is if this is the best way to do it?
Any tips on preping code to port TGE to TSE eventually?
Are materials basically finished? are there any drastic changes coming?
What things should we simply not even touch?
Frankly I would die just to have a version of TGE with the shader code in it, any resources simply for that?
So far from the devs I got one tip: Stay away from skys, water, sound
About the author
http://www.youtube.com/user/BrokeAssGames
#2
Also, maybe your programmer can help out on small bits of TSE (thats if he wants to and has available time.)
not sure of how useful it really is, but TseDiff might give you an idea of what could need doing. As Ben said, its mainly the rendering code through the classes. (And it has been done in some places (i.e shapebase/player etc) so theres some examples to work from.
06/24/2004 (4:17 am)
I would just stick with TGE as you are. However you can still make normal maps etc for your models and just drop in TSE to check.Also, maybe your programmer can help out on small bits of TSE (thats if he wants to and has available time.)
not sure of how useful it really is, but TseDiff might give you an idea of what could need doing. As Ben said, its mainly the rendering code through the classes. (And it has been done in some places (i.e shapebase/player etc) so theres some examples to work from.
#3
06/24/2004 (5:08 pm)
Got the big notice ben just trying to run ahead of the curve. :) thanks for the info, it will help in the long run of things.
#4
06/25/2004 (6:58 pm)
As long as you don't post on the forums saying things like "I'm trying to ship and I need this bug fixed ASAP!" we'll get along just fine. :) 
Associate Kyle Carter
Materials are in general in their final form. We are probably going to be tweaking and modifying a lot but they shouldn't go through any major rewrites unless there's a really good reason.
Texture manager is slated to get rewritten, and the GFX API will get revisited when we do the OpenGL backend.
TSE _is_ a version of TGE with just the shader code in... just has a few things broken. We're working on fixing them and improving others.
You should not be developing a product with TSE at this point. Check the big notices from when you bought it. :)