Hello all!

#1 Hi Rob! Welcome!

Just so long as you set your expectations right (that it will take a little while to get comfortable in any new environment), you should be as delighted as the rest of us with T2D. I spent most of this last weekend learning the ins and outs of Torque script. There are a bunch of places where I felt like I was walking around in a cave without a flashlight, but soon enough things start to click.

(NUDGE to the powers that be: A Wiki would be really nice, so that those of us growing through the "beginner stage" can help document what we've learned so that as new folks come in, they can mix and drink the Kool-Aid more quickly! BTW, I've already requested a Wiki, and I know it's planned, I'm just excited to start fleshing out docs... even if only for my benefit!)

The places I've gotten the most help so far (other than this forum--which has been just great!) are: Josh's great starter tutorial, the book 3D Game Programming: All in One (since it covers a lot of the basics of Torque Script and GUI programming in Torque), followed by looking at the source code in the example folder. Each subfolder contains .cs files and those are a great source of learning.

If you get stuck, the forums already contain a lot of "beginner q & a" from people like me who are in your shoes. To be fair to T2D, I've been building little games and game engines for a long time and T2D is extremely complete even in EA. Sure there could be better docs, sure there could be more tools, but as a developer: the "stupidest parts" of building a game are already handled: creating a window, translating the main loop input into events, handling all the nasty cases for windowed vs. full screen (including reloading all resources that get trashed in the process), A POWERFUL GUI! Man... I can't count the hours and frustration this thing has saved me. I truly can focus on just "building a game" versus all the mundane details of working with the OS. Great job GG! (OK, "fanboy off").

#2 Welcome Robert.

I am fellow newbie to the whole Torque environment too. I am taking some time to get my head around a lot of how the whole Torque 2 environment hangs together. So, you are not alone in that respect. I have gone through the tutorial PDF file a few times now and everything is starting to click into place...slowly though!!! I am use to using Games programming languages where I have to do everything from scratch so getting use to using an already built engine is actually taking me a bit longer than I thought it would.

Already it is obvious there is a very good T2D community developing. Everybody here are really kind and helpful. What has helped me is seeing some of the code already published in the various threads of this forum - even if it is code snippets which don't work and you get somebody else giving a solution. That is a wonderful way to help me solve potential problems I may encounter or pitfalls to avoid.

Good choice on getting UltraEdit. I am using that to edit my Toque scripts at the moment. UltraEdit is such a powerful text editor. Does anybody know if there is a TorqueScript syntax highlighter available for UltraEdit?

As Jason said when the wiki is in place that will be an invaluable form of help. If this is the state of the product at the EA version, I drool at the thought of what the state will be like come the official release.

Good luck with converting your game. Keep us updated on how it is goings.

#3 www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=result&qtm=UltraEdit

There seems to be at least 4 UltraEdit syntax files for TorqueScript posted. Personally I just use the C++ highlighter.

#4 I used the wordlist on this post
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=6342
and followed the instructions contained within the post and it works a treat.

Thanks Harold. Much appreciated.

#5 Hey Robert, welcome to the fold! I find myself with you and Darryl as well - learning the ins and outs of TorqueScript along with the general structure and execution of the engine itself has been harder than I first thought it would be, but once I got the hang of some general concepts things started to fall into place.

I too have a game (two actually) that will be converted to T2D. They've both been frozen in production for the past few months as I've struggled to get my own engine off the ground (time constraints mostly). Now with T2D, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's awesome. Good luck on your game and as Darryl said, keep us updated :)

#6 Welcome aboard everyone!

The idea of a wiki was brought up again above, and let me just repeat that we're going to have something for you guys on that end soon. :) It will be at least a couple weeks, but it's on its way.