Good or bad for learning?
by Tom Kidd · in Torque Game Engine · 12/18/2001 (7:49 am) · 1 replies
Okay, I'm finally at a point in my work where I can start to devote long evenings to the Torque engine. I have about four months of forum posts to plow through and so forth.
I had been reading the documenation and so forth but I always kinda neglected the whole console/scripting thing. It always seemed like an afterthought to me. Last night while reading all of this I finally had the epiphany that the Torque engine, by and large, is all about scripting. Meaning that I'm going to have to wade through all the scripting stuff to get it to do what I want it to do.
That's fine - I don't really mind picking up a new language and so forth, plus I get how you can get around making your game such that it can't be modified (distributing compiled scripts only, having the game check for file sizes/dates, etc.)
Here's the part that bugs me - I've always programmed in C. I have some side projects that use Visual Basic and at my job I program mainframes in obscure/old languages (COBOL and Natural). I just plowed through some books on C++ and I was hoping to dive right in to the Torque engine, which is all C++. C++ is tricky to learn and know - what with the OOP nature of it. However I was hoping Torque would be a trial by fire of sorts. Now I seem to be on the impression that you could concievably write a whole game with Torque and never touch the C++ innards - not exactly what I was looking for. I noticed someone on here who was toying with taking the whole thing a step backwards and making it so that the script would be integrated back into the engine as native C++ code, but he was advised the effort spent doing that would be better invested in simply doing the scripting thing.
So, for those of you fortunate enough to have had the four months of experience with Torque - how much C++ have you had involvement with? For those of you that are C++ veterans, is Torque a good way to get experience with that language? And since I don't intend to throw away my Torque license but intend to get better on C++, what would be a good other way to get my skills up in that area?
Schnapple
I had been reading the documenation and so forth but I always kinda neglected the whole console/scripting thing. It always seemed like an afterthought to me. Last night while reading all of this I finally had the epiphany that the Torque engine, by and large, is all about scripting. Meaning that I'm going to have to wade through all the scripting stuff to get it to do what I want it to do.
That's fine - I don't really mind picking up a new language and so forth, plus I get how you can get around making your game such that it can't be modified (distributing compiled scripts only, having the game check for file sizes/dates, etc.)
Here's the part that bugs me - I've always programmed in C. I have some side projects that use Visual Basic and at my job I program mainframes in obscure/old languages (COBOL and Natural). I just plowed through some books on C++ and I was hoping to dive right in to the Torque engine, which is all C++. C++ is tricky to learn and know - what with the OOP nature of it. However I was hoping Torque would be a trial by fire of sorts. Now I seem to be on the impression that you could concievably write a whole game with Torque and never touch the C++ innards - not exactly what I was looking for. I noticed someone on here who was toying with taking the whole thing a step backwards and making it so that the script would be integrated back into the engine as native C++ code, but he was advised the effort spent doing that would be better invested in simply doing the scripting thing.
So, for those of you fortunate enough to have had the four months of experience with Torque - how much C++ have you had involvement with? For those of you that are C++ veterans, is Torque a good way to get experience with that language? And since I don't intend to throw away my Torque license but intend to get better on C++, what would be a good other way to get my skills up in that area?
Schnapple
About the author
Torque Owner Jeff Trier
Simple Distractions Software
But...
If you want to make a game that is a whole lot more diverse, you can use C++ to do so.
In short (as it never usually is), you have the source code and can program entirly in C++ if you want too. The more C++ you use, the more diverse your game can be.
-Jeff