Who wasted there money? :P

#21 @Jimomighty...................................your profile states you're skilled at scripting/modding....for the life of me I just can't understand how you see the TGE as a waste of 100.00.

As someone who 6 years ago couldn't even turn a computer on let alone program one...I feel you gave up WAY too easily.

#22 Torque should be listed on FBI's controlled substance list....

#23 I had been looking around at game engines for a long time before I found Torque.

What you dont expect (or at least I didnt) is how absolutely huge TGE actually is. Folders and folders of scripts and code. At which point I felt quite lost :(

So, I bought the book (3dGPAIO), read it from cover to cover in about 2 days flat and realised that, taken a bit at a time, Torque wasnt quite as scary as it first appeared.

I think it helps a lot if you have some kind of coding background as you can learn an enormous amount just by reading the source.

The only thing, IMO, that seriously lets Torque down is the Q word (Q**RK) - it is absolutely terrible - but I suppose I have been spoilt with Maya :)

Apart from that, its the best

#24 As I told the people in the Synergy Summit Workshop, I am believer in Torque! Even if I had the $2M to go and purchase one of the competing engines, I would still use Torque. I find myself using it for the oddest things sometimes just because it is such a solid codebase to work off of =)

#25 Lol crazy thread !
How many have wasted $100 on chips or icecream over the years.
Or wasted $100 on 2 bad games.
I cant say i wasted any money on Torque at all .
I have learned so much over the years i have been a SDK owner.
And thats worth $100.000 .
So basicly i think i earned alot more then i wasted :)

#26

Quote:Why don't we start another thread? Who is a Torque-aholic, or addicted to Torque?

Quote:Torque should be listed on FBI's controlled substance list....

Take The Test

#27 Jeff, you have to decide.

I guess TGE is not expensive enough - is the business model working?

Make it more expensive - then the upside is, you lose all the script kiddies. The downside is, you might lose some Indies.

You decide.

#28 @Dirk: I'm not reading what you are saying.

#29 I'd have to say my biggest gripe with Torque is that if you aren't a C++ expert you don't get much flexability. Sure you can get into the script and make a game but there are other tools out there that give you more flexability with less low level knowledge. I feel somehow stuck in between the two extremes that are Torque ... Script and C++. I'm quite used to coding more low level behaviors of objects and not just utilizing someone else's yet I'm not really comfortable messing with the source inside Torque so it's a catch 22 for me.

I love the games that Torque has produced ... but for me it's quite difficult to create a game with the tool because I just feel caught in the middle as far as what my abilities allow me to do.

#30 Well, I've actually been working pretty hard, but considering it's been about 7 or 8 months since I bought Torque and all I've done with it so far is make a player model, decide it sucks, trash it, then start over, all about 4 times now, I'm starting to think if I don't start making some progress my money may have been a waste :p

Not a total waste, though. It definately provides me with entertainment when I've got nothing else to do ;)
I kindof enjoy fiddling around with the engine from time to time... making silly little interiors to see how they'd turn out ingame, etc. I guess this is just kindof an extended practice period for me.

#31 I bought torque 2 years ago i think and i let it sit for about a year before messin with it.

#32 @Jeff heh actually i didn't mean my statement to come across that way (saying that it sells as a product that "makes it easy to create games"), but sorry if it did =D

@Billy O.o that's a good way to put things in perspective...I think i've wasted more than 200 on vid games last year...

I guess waste can be defined as something that's totally unproductive. Torque definately would not fit under that category

What I think the best thing that comes with torque is the awesome community. It's a lot more friendly and helpful than any other that i've seen, and is very acceptable. They contribute a heck of a lot to helping people get up on their feet.

As to the whole game making process in general, it's never going to come out perfect the first time. I still remember the words in the docs: PROTOTYPE, PROTOTYPE, PROTOTYPE!

#33 @Mathhew

I have more than just a little experience in using other comercial engines out there on a variety of platforms, and I can tell you; none of them come close to Torque in terms of a well though out architecture, good solid documentation, and a very sane scripting interface.

If there is one criticism I have, it's the tool-chain. The use of Quark for the bsp modelling is probably a really good option to keep the cost of tools down, but it adds another another step in the creation of the level (Quark -> Torque) which is IMHO; a bad workflow and something that hits hard in day to day game production.

Terrain, BSP and mission editing would be great to have in a single editor, directly linked to the Torque engine.

Torque has a great programmer workflow (yay!!) but I think that the art workflow needs to be addressed somehow. The tools themselves are fine, so please don't think I'm knocking them.



@Jeremy

This is just the way fo game coding. Scripting languages are great, and offer a lot of power and flexibility but they cripple your performance. For this reason alone, Scripting should really only be used for the most high-level of game-control. The sort of stuff that game designers can mess with, without having to go to a programmer for 90% of the game related behaviour that they want.

I work with an engine on a day-to-day basis where 80% of the game code is written in script, and it's pure hell. If you want to do something really serious, then you need to mess around with the native code (C++).

Too many people see scripting langauges as a replacement for C++, and it kind of irks me a little (incase you hadn't noticed ;o) )

#34 I bought TGE in 2001. I bought it because I really enjoyed playing Tribes and Tribes 2. We saw other people making mods that was really cool... so a friend and I started modding. No coding or modding experience when we started. Then we heard GG started up and was selling TGE for $100... we bought it. I remember how lost we where when we started (still are today), but we have learned so much from TGE. I have tried other engines...but I still come back to TGE. You will only get out what you put into TGE... if you work with it...it will take you a long ways for years to come. I learn something every day working with it.
Yesterday I took another step foward... I purchased TSE. Today I was already learning things and started testing to see what we could make. There is alot more stuff out there for the newbies then when we started. It takes time.

My twelve year old daughter made me a plaque that hangs on the wall by my computer that reads...

Imagine

Don't Be Pushed

By Your Problems,

Be Led By

Your Dreams!


My dream is to make a game that people will like to play and will want to mod. Already my daughters are wanting to start to learn to create their own games. I have been showing them how to make and place things in TGE. I also use this to relate on how important what they are learning in school is.

As with anything in life...it is what you make of it.

TGE ...$100
TSE ...$150
what I have learned ...priceless

#35 I bought Torque several months ago, and it's been pretty much lying dormant on my hard drive since then. I think I've used the engine enough that it's not a waste; I'm sure someday I'll start messing with Torque someday and it'll be an amazing investment. But.

I've been very confused with Torque's scripting language. I have some background in C++, so no matter how hard I try to learn scripting, I'm more comfortable with the engine's C++ code. Why? I know what the C++ is doing. When I create an "int", I know that a special constructor is getting called for "int" and I have a rough idea of how long that takes. TorqueScript is different. I haven't been able to find a document that tells me how fast TorqueScript procedures are compared to the equivalent C++ procedures. I also haven't been able to figure out why some variables seem to be getting used as if their value has a specific meaning, but I haven't seen the variables even initialized yet, no less given a meaningful value.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I think I just haven't looked in the right places for TorqueScript info; as I said, I haven't given the engine enough time. I'll have to set aside more Torque time in the future.

#36 @mark - MAN im gunna CRY...you cant just say stuff like that... lol but then again i go all squishy inside when i hear about fathers/daughter and their relationships.. Its like that old coke commercial... the kid with the puppies.. i cant watch that..:)

#37 James I wish everyone had the experience of working with other commertial engines. In fact, I wish everyone would just go download Quake 3 and look at that source. People don't even have an appreciation for how structured Torque is.

As far as script vs C++ code. I don't understand this, but I am not the right person to try to figure it out either. I've done crazy stuff like write an interpolater in script to move around T2D objects just to prove it could be done. It's slow.

#38 I've been trying to teach a friends daughter how to use a computer. She seems more happy to play with the mouse lead, though. Then again, she is only 6 months :)

As for script ... the general methology is if it's not time critical (game logic, UI, etc), it goes in script. If it's time critical (rendering, complex algorithms, etc) then it's done in C++. As Pat says, script is also very useful to prototype ideas quickly. If it turns out to be too slow then it's a fairly simple job to rewrite that code in C++. This may seem counter intuitive at first, but think of it like this: Torque is a huge codebase, it takes time to compile. When you're trying out a new algorithm there will usually be a lot of tweak, recompile, rerun, etc. cycles. With script, to a degree you can try out new code without restarting Torque (just re-exec the .cs from the console), and when a restart is neccessary it's far quicker then even partially recompiling the code itself. The time saved here is far greater then the time it takes to rewrite the code in C++.

Also, the source of confusion for some of those seemingly "magic" script variables is some of them are setup in C++ and some in script. Torque Script and the C++ code are very tightly integrated, so if you cant find the answer in one then look in the other.

Hope that helps a bit, though it may be stating the obvious :)

T.

#39 @Pat

People will be shocked, but the company I work for paid over $1 million USD for the engine we're using, and it's amazingly bad! I can't mention it by name I'm afraid but the source is badly written, there's been no thought into the platform/engine layers and the scripting? Don't get me started there....and the same goes for the (lack of) documentation.

I'm hoping to have some time this weekend to see just how seperate all the layers of Torque are, and what, if any, are the circular dependancies.


@Tom

I'm with you on what you're saying about the application of script code. I just wish lots of other people would follow those exact same rules. :op

#40 My motivation behind buying Torque was not only making games with it but also supporting these guys at GG because i found/find the idea great. Indeed, i purchased Torque back in 2001 and still didn't have much time to make really something productive with it because of my dayjob.