Torque 2D - What is missing?

#1 1) There staying tight-lipped on that. I know that they will be adding more editors and things as they deem fit.

2) It's still early adaptors. People are making good games. Some things need to be fleshed out and optimized but it is a great product as is.
3)not there yet
4)all the code is there
5) should be handled the same way as TGE. You paid for it once, why would you have to pay for it again? That does not include expansion packs, content packs, etc
6)T2d isn't 3d so models are whatever you want them to be.Some people use screens of 3d models though
7)almost everything can be done in Torque script. If you need some optimized code you can do it in C++
8) can't tell you about the camera. But I can't see it being 3d since it doesn't support 3d.Although you can intergrate T2d into TGE.

#2 Thanks for your quick reply.

So how does the per-polygon collision detection work, if we're using 2d sprites? What sort of format are these sprites in, or is there a specific editor for it?

#3 I'm going to go out on a limb here but don't take this for fact.

If I am not mistaken, graphics are broken up into triangles in Opengl. So that's how it would have polygonal checking.

You really are not limited on design with this engine. Draw how you want to draw and T2d will handle the detection issues.

But please note that there is a learning curve with working with T2D but It is primarilly due to scripting.

It is a lot easier to do then in TGE but it still takes time to learn. The fact that its still EA, there is not very much T2D specific tutorials out there but there are more being added day to day.

T2D has a awesome comunity behind it. Torque script can still be learned but sometimes its not that easy to do. But man, is it fun. And the comunity is there to help

#4 Ah okay, sounds good.

I'm an experience C, C++ programmer who has had the... "pleasure"... of working in sh, tcl and a rather nasty intra-company scripting language called 'Scrye'. Scripting is something I can handle.

Sounds fantastic - I guess the time will come quite soon.

Again, thanks for the quick replies - it's much appreciated.

#5 - What are some features that are going to be implemented, but haven't yet?
The only primary engine feature that is not in is networking. The groundwork has been laid for this, and the physics were designed with networkability in mind.

- What are the current limitations / inadequacies in the engine?
Right now, we don't have as many editors as we want. Primarly the sprite editor which would let you easily create and modify collision polys. The tile editor needs to be fleshed out a bit, but in general the editors are very well done.

- What is the current state of the networking code, if it exists at all?
Like I said, the groundwork has been laid and it is being worked on.

- Do we have access to every single line of code in the Torque 2D engine, or is some of it propriatary and hidden from us?
You have it all.

- I understand that Early Adopters get free updates. How will the second release of Torque 2D be handled though? Will we have to buy it again?
No, you will not have to buy it again.

- How exactly does Torque 2D handle actor and scene objects? Are they 3D models made of polygons, are they sprites?
Collision, position etc are all in 2D. Melv has put a 3d object into a 2d scene, and you may ask how does this work, well it is just treated as a 2d object. It still renders in 3d, but it has no depth component to its position, etc. Think of them all as sprites.

- How much code, in an average game, is done within the C++ (engine) code, in contrast to what is written outside of it in scripts?
All the demos are done in 100% script. Pool, Space-Shooter, Fish, etc. All script. You can do a whole game in script if you want.

- How does the camera work? I remember reading that it is a 3D-positional camera system... can anyone elaborate or verify this?
The camera behavior is linked to the SceneWindow class. You attach a 2d-SceneGraph to a SceneWindow and set the center point of the camera, and it's width and height (basically). You can also attach it to an object to follow, make it shake. Make it smoothly transfer from one point to another etc.


Collision is done using user-defined polys. It then does a swept-poly/swept-poly collision with the two objects. There is no editor for this *yet*, it's very high on the list of things to do.

#6 All of your questions have been answered very well, so I'll only touch on one thing:

You mentioned you have TCL experience--you'll like TGEScript a lot if you liked TCL--the only major things that will throw you at first is a different use of $ for variables (in TGEScript a $ indicates the variable is global, unlike TCL which is basically saying "take the value of the variable"), and the much more C++ syntax of TGEScript.

Other than that, use of TGEScript is extremely parallel to scripting in TCL.

#7 Simple RTS Demo

Note: 98% of the scripting for that was done in under 14 hours... most of the art and sound was from free resources in this community (except the players which I did a simple render out in blender)....
also note the buttons up top to see debug info... this demo also demonstrates the camera moving and transition... (very fluid movement is out of box)... you set a target then tell it to go to that target and take a certain ammount of time to do it... very easy and nice (along with very good looking in game)

here I have some other T2D Demos... including a physic one to run through most of the physics options you get...