Why isn't...

#1 3D is much more difficult to do than 2D. The necessity of depth manipulation, transparency calculations etc, mean that so much more functionality is neded to achieve a single view than simply drawing a 2D image.

I did 3D maths, rendering etc at Uni. They started you off by doing 2D and then explaining projections and eye views to you. The complexity expands with the dimensions. Makes you appreciate just how superior to a computer the human brain is. We don't take in a 10th of the information most people think we do, yet our brains are able to interpret what we do take in and create a super rich representation of our environment.

2D by comparison is childs play.....unless it's string theory that is....that's kind of 1 dimensional ;o)

#2 @Robert: Any chance of some examples? Not doubting you, and I happen to agree (with what little I've seen), but I'm sure that every perspective and observation would help GG work towards cleaning up TGE incrementally. Specially, why do you think it's easier, and where?

#3 - There are 5 minApp tutorials in the resources that do exactly that.

- You'll need to define what you mean by "documentation". There are more than 8,000 pages (and the number changes -daily- it seems) of online documentation of the entire engine organization.

- A .PDF for ALL of Torque would probably be 15 times larger than the torque download :( There is -that- much information.

- I will admit that TGE's evolution has somewhat muddled the helper function's organization and all, but just do a .dump() on any game object and you will see ALL of the helper functions along the way (or, look at the graphical user interface to the class organization/hierarchy, online in the docs section for TGE).

- While I agree that it's a pretty good idea, one of the major flexibility's of TGEScript is that it is a typeless, dynamic definition language. If you put in a strict mode, you'll cause developers that use the strict mode to give up all of the flexibility that typeless langages allow, and in at least some cases I can think of require 3-5 times the amount of coding to accomplish the same task (without a strict mode).

I've heard "Terrible documentation of the TGE engine" tons and tons of time, and each time I point them to the torque documentation that exists, they never come back and say what's terrible about it. Not trying to punch you here specifically or anything, but I honestly feel that people just don't grasp (or even look at) the massive amounts of documentation available. You can even generate your OWN documentation (doxygen) and update the reference each and every time you make changes in your own code (assuming you follow doxygen documentation procedures).

#4 Fair enough, hehe...I'm honestly trying to find ways to bring the information in the right way,and the right sized chunks to the less experienced purchasers, not trying to dog anyone, so if you do come up with suggestions, please let me/GG know!

#5 That's been discussed in the past--going to a "cookbook" type of tutorial setup, but the problem is, can you imagine the sheer number of things that random people want to do? There is just no way to cover even a tiny subset.

I do agree that a more trimmed down environment could be presented besides the full demo, but the Min App tutorials are too low level--hell, the follow on Min App tutorials have you add back in the GUI Editor, the console itself, etc. It's just incredibly hard to find the fine line between what is really needed in the min app, and what people want to have for demonstration/learning principles.

For example, The first 4 months of my dev work with TGE, I spent figuring out how the demo and the publically available version of Realm Wars worked--and those were extremely important examples that a Min App wouldn't have--and I would ultimately have to had to come to the forum and ask how to do things if the examples weren't already there.

#6 So basically what you are saying is that a good intro level "course" (in whatever format--online, docs, face to face) would be to have a stripped down (no mission, no game mechanics) version of the fps starter kit, and then a walkthrough to add each major functionality to achieve the starter.fps kit?

EDIT: Duh, yes, that's exactly what you said, hehe...ok, thanks a ton for the input!

#7 It's not that we don't want TGE to be as easy to use as T2D. Part of the fact is that 2D in MUCH easier to use than 3D, but the main reason is that we simply have not done the work on the docs and getting started. Instead, we have chosen to put our efforts into things like TSE, T2D, Constructor, etc. There are only so many GG employees to go around, and every person in the community wants something different from us.

Now that we have T2D out, one of the next things on our list is to use the T2D roadmap that Josh laid out for the .pdf files and tutorials for TGE. We are willing to pay a bounty to get this work done. Contact me if you are good enough and want some contract work.

We are actually way ahead of what people are asking for, we just have to get the time to do it.

-Jeff Tunnell GG

#8

Quote:
Sounds pretty fantastic, but for a bloke like me, no good. It's for serious programmers only and I respect that

Rob ... I know what kind of stuff you can program and I think you're selling yourself short there. I've got a cool game up and running with TGE and if I can I know you can. Here's the thing ... pick something to create that can be a derivative of the FPS or the Racing example. By tweaking one of those you'll learn all that you can accomplish and start to feel confident that you could do just about anything with it.

For my game I had to change the scripts quite a bit and now I know where almost anything I want to change script-wise is located. I also had to modify the C++ core a few times and feel nearly as confident with changing that as I do with the scripts. I know we both have a background in Blitz which I feel can lead you up to this stuff fairly well so long as you can get past the fact that with Torque you don't get a whole macro view of your game (it's just too big) as easily as with Blitz. I guess Blitz allows you to be a control freak in certain respects while with Torque you have to trust a lot of the engine to do things for you and that was a little difficult for me to get over at first. Good luck!

#9 Just following up on what Jeff said, we are pushing very hard to make the TGE out of box and getting started experience as good as T2D's. Actually, I want T2D's out of box and getting started experience to be much, much better than it is even now in a few months, and we'll be working to make Torque the same! As Jeff says though, we could really use some help to get it done.

#10 I'm pretty sure I could offer up a good tutorial now.