Torque Pipeline for Cartography Shop - Beta 2 Released!

#21

Quote:I'm feeling the same with TGE and TSE. They have dropped TGE since the day they talked about TSE (no more CVS updates so forget about adding the new stuff in your current project, etc ...). But at least, with TGE we have the sources so my brother can do all what my artistry brain need :)

I wanted to comment on this as well.

The reason there are no daily/weekly updates to CVS has nothing to do with TSE, but with a paradigm shift in delivery of TGE. The aim (based on community messages here, not any inside knowledge) was to move to a more controlled set of release updates based on major versions instead of trying to continually coordinate HEAD and revision numbers for not only support, but more disciplined control of the functionality and capability of TGE itself.

TGE is most certainly still in refinement, and will continue to be so for the forseeable future. For example, as Tom mentioned, TGE 1.4 is currently in progress, and is a major progression towards the component system, as well as including bug fixes and new functionality. There are also already major plans for TGE 1.5.

Using the installer method of delivery instead of CVS provides many advantages not only to GG, but to the purchasers as well. It gives a much more controlled "version number" for reference, support, and maintenance, and also let's the purchasers focus on their own development, with quarterly synchronizations with the latest release, instead of having to pick and choose when to synchronize with head, and why.

P.S.: Sorry for the thread hijack, I just didn't want this perception sticking around!

#22 Thanks, Stephen. @Giles: You are WAY off base with that comment about not working on TGE since we announced TSE. Do you have some facts to back that statement up? I have the hundreds of SVN commits, the multiple whiteboards of planning, the project management, and the checks that I have written as proof that you are wrong.

#23 No need to pile on Gilles... he is an artist and i'm sure he just wasn't aware of the new way releases are being done. I myself didn't know this until recently.

#24 @Tom, the select thing isn't that bad for new map. We just have to learn to work differently. I just got CS monday so I will learn to work the way the tool can do things, like I did for all the other graphic apps I learned since the vic-20 :) . That would be really great if that was added. There wasn't much infos from torquers about it and Will was so enthousiast that I didn't took the time to try the demo deeper. I will probably be one of the first to buy CS5 if it is better then CS4 nway, so don't make someone work too hard if I'm the only one questionning those features.

Guys, I'm talking french so I sometime don't express exactly what I want to say. It takes me forever just to write what probably take you 2 min. so I sometimes cut on the content of what I'm trying to say. Never was my intentions to sounds like if I was "yelling" against CS. I like the tool, but only wanted to tell what I think would be great to have to work as fast as possible to enjoy doing games in place of searching the right tool again and again by using only ONE apps. And I really think that CS is that tool. And tha's because of Tom's exporter. Thanks Tom !

Sorry for the hijacking topic :

@Jeff and all : I knew you were working hard on 1.4, it's just another misinterpretation on my side of what I really wanted to say. Look up at how I was talking about the lasso thing and you'll see :) . Because I'm primary a 3D artist, I liked the old system where we were watching the engine mature. It was a great learning for me and for all that always like to learn new things. I'm one of them. I was following the head and learning with the new additions, adding it in my project (Not just copy and paste, but looking at the codes changes and see if it's good for my project). I learned much and I've been able to do a couples of own things because of that learning. The engine was a teacher ! Now, we don't see what is happening with the engine the way it is, so I can't learn anymore as much as it was. Also, I was feeling confident to have expert fix the bugs because I was feeling safe with my engine for my games. Programmers are a little like gods for me :) (huh, Tom, you're a God ! hehe). That's it, that's how I feel in my humble position and I don't want to change the world or start a war :) . I will follow and adapt. That's why we finished a game in december and that's why I'm working on another one ... adapting and searching the right tools to make it faster and make another one, and ... :) .

#25 @Gilles - No god here... just an old hack. =)

I talked to Josh and it looks like we can expect a lasso function in CS5. You'll also get terrain, static mesh instances, a pipe/arch tool, a hierarchal view of the scene, and alot more i'm forgetting. If all goes as planned we'll have a full Torque mission/terrain/interior editor in CS5.

#26 @Tom, I think you're God after telling me what you've just said ! :) I can't wait to play with CS5, wowy !

#27 @Tom: I have to be honest here, I haven't been tracking CS at all, and really don't know it's functionality--is this simply adapting the tool to be a replacement for quark/hammer, or is this totally new functionality for an editor that used to do .dts style shapes?

I had thought that the direction for CS was to be updated to allow for .dts style shapes, but for the life of me I can't find out where I got that, and obviously now, you are talking .dif style stuff.

Clue me in? :)

#28 @Stephen - Josh was pretty sharp in this. CShop3/4 was just trying to do QuArK/Hammer functionality in an easy to use interface (DIF interiors... not DTS). CShop5 is aiming at doing what UnrealEd does for Unreal Engine based games. To this goal Josh is writing his own engine to work side by side with his editor. Still Josh knows there is a market to Torque users that are fed up with QuArK and will to still allow plugins to extend the editor for other engines.

Personally i like tools outside of the engine vs. integrated tools (like the mission editor). For CShop4 my goal was simply DIF interiors (and maybe a first stab at DTS instance placement depending on the wait time for CShop5 ). My goal in talking with Josh early and during the beta for CShop5 is making sure with a few plugins it will also be the UnrealEd of Torque. If all works as planned terrain creation, mission editing, DTS placement (not creation), and DIF interior creation could all be done in CShop5.

It won't be perfect. You won't get real-time previews of the sky or particle effects, but you will get centralized location to edit your entire scene/mission. Ideally you could do a single click export and then "refresh" an existing instance of your scene loaded in Torque to see what it looks like in engine.

#29 K, makes sense, thanks!

#30

Quote:...then "refresh" an existing instance of your scene loaded in Torque to see what it looks like in engine.

Quick OT question: Is there a way to refresh your DIF content while in the TGE editor (that is, so that you dont have to quit and restart everytime you make a change in an outside editor, like CS)?

For example, a way to "refresh" the directory tree on the side panel, so you can load a new model.

#31 @Will - Currently there is not. This is one of the many little projects on my list. I've added a system to TSE to have textures and DIF resources reload, but have encountered problems with forcing the engine to update the scene with them. I have a hijacked thread on this over here. (it's in the shader engine forums... so you might not have access).

Once i get back from GDC i plan on getting back to this.

#32 Okay thanks :)

#33 For testing purposes with small scenes I would go for a command the reloads the whole mission, and maybe bind it to a key. This way you can export to dif while running Torque and the hit, say, the L key and the whole mission gets restarted.

#34 @Dirk - I'm not an expert in this stuff, but that doesn't seem to work in TGE/TSE. You can simulate this by loading a mission, changing a texture, exiting the mission, then opening the mission again. The texture is not unloaded from the resource system, so the new one is not opened.

To not hijack this thread further i just created a new thread here.

#35 Where can I download this plugin? Every link seems dead. Is it still in development?

#36 I just tried it and it's working fine for me:

www.sickheadgames.com/torque_pipeline.php

#37 @ Tom

Something I may have misunderstood (or missed altogether) but does your map2dif code do anything about the lightmap pink edges issue as detailed in the link below??

www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=20022

I have noticed a distinct pink splodge on some of the test pieces I have been exporting from cart shop.

Apart from that, the plugin is great - I cannot begin to describe how much I hate Quark!

#38 @David - I haven't looked into this at all. I'll stick it into my to-investigate list.

#39 Wow. I just can't beleive what I just seen ! I was playing with CS and I didn't see the time going because it was cool to make a building for fun and and adding lights, then relightning to see the result, beautifull to see. I then exported the building to try it in torque. The exporter did it like always (See down), so I loaded the building in a mission. Awesome ! Never I though that what I was seeing in CS would be exactly the same in Torque ! That's unbelievable, the shadows, the lightning, the textures, all is there like in CS ! And because we do the lightning in the editor (CS) and see what it will be looking, in place of guessing what it will look in torque, it is making it easy to make realistic buildings (And I mean, as close to realistic as if it was made in max ! Well not that realistic, but really near). I didn't knew before this that it was possible to do lightning that realistic with torque. It's so nice and fun that I think a will take 2 weeks off of my current project and only do "kick-ass" buildings with it :) . Those could then be used for an FPS, who knows. Nway, it open a whole new world of possibilities for me for other projects (Oh no, more games and applications ideas, hehe)

The exporter : What I find wonderfull too is that I never got any problem with the exporter. On other testings this week, I was trying to do bad things to make it yell at me, or something ... It never did and has exported everything, lol. On the other tools Quark, hammer, max2map, you can make everything crash really easylly, but this is not the case here. That's fantastic for an artist that don't know all the 0 and 1 that are hidden behind each clicks of the mouse he is doing :)

Josh's CS + Tom's exporter = Power tool ! You guys are really Gods :)

Thanks ! Keep the great work !

#40 @Gilles - Wow, sounds like you're really enjoying yourself! What do you do in CS to see the lighting effects before exporting to Torque? I've used the lighting dialog a bit (Ctrl-L), but I'm a bit confused by it, since the building looks pretty brightly lit and appears to be lit up even if I have no Torque lights inside it. I'm wondering if I am not doing this correctly to see the effect of the Torque lights I place in my buildings.