Integrating T2D and torque source... plus those movies Melv made

#1 Well, here's a mega-quick guide to putting T2D in TGE:

1) Copy the C++ source files in the engine/T2D directory over to your TGE project (copy them into your directory, and add them to your compiler project)

2) Compile

And there ya go. :) We designed T2D specifically to be drop-in compatible with TGE like this. Maintaining this constraint was quite painful, design-wise. There were many times when either Melv or I said "man, forget Torque compatibility, this sucks." Luckily though, when one of us said that, the other guy was like "come on... this is important" and then we figured out a smooth way to keep the code clean but still do what we wanted from T2D's p.o.v. So, we pulled it off, and it's extremely easy to integrate these two projects now. Should always stay that way.

Once you have the new binary compiled... you can call T2D functions as usual from inside a Torque game. So, you can set-up a t2d scenegraph and window, start making sprites, etc. Just like you were in T2D itself. But, you can also have a full Torque game going on at the same time.

As to benefits of integration... shoot, be creative. Lots of possibilities here. Maybe you'll just use T2D to make fancy GUIs in your Torque game. Or, maybe your HUD will be run by T2D. Maybe you have a 2D mini-game in there.... I dunno, tons of possibilities.

Look forward to seeing what you do with this. :)

We should write this up as an ultra-quick resource, yeah. When time allows, we will. Or, if someone out here beats us to it, all the better.


PS- regarding showing a 3D mesh inside T2D... that was a special bit of code that Melv wrote, just for testing. This won't make it into the official T2D SDK, because it requires things that are specific to TGE itself. But, when there's time, we should write this up as a resource too.

#2 Thanks for confirming this... haven't attempted it yet but wanted to numerous times :)

#3 Thanks A LOT Josh.... Now I am running for the compiler! :-))

PLS

#4 Oh man its that easy? SAWEEET!

#5 It works, too--it is THAT easy. I brought T2D into my highly modified project in under an hour, and 45 minutes of that was setting up a private branch in SVN, and then merging that private branch back into our /trunk. 5 minutes of it was a clean compile of our server and clients.

#6 Now ypu've done it Josh!:) Now everybody's going to want to do this- that include me! lol Yay!:)

#7 Man ya'll blowing my mind here... lol.

#8 Cool Stuff !!

Oh.. BTW:
quote:" The movie you released with T2D running on top of TGE left me pretty eager to check how I could explore this mix."

What movie? I missed that... do you have a link?
Thanks

#9 Hokuto: I can't find it anymore, but it was posted by Melv.

PLS

#10 Okay - I was just about to ask this question again, but found the answer here. Am I correct in assuming this is still the case, 18 months later?

If so, this seriously rocks.

UPDATE: Nobody answered, so as soon as I had time tonight, I tried it.

There is some glitchiness, and some conflicts with T2D's version of "mIsZero" and the one found in mMathFn.h (seems like the only difference is in epsilon values). However, it looks like the T2D objects' functionality is preserved (if not entirely behaving as expected). I think it may take some futzing to get everything working as expected, but I am pretty optimistic at this point, with so little effort expended.

#11 Any luck with that Jay, I just tried it today with TGE 1.5 and TGB 1.1.2 and got a ton of mIsZero errors.

#12 MIsZero errors are easy to fix, I did it before by simply removing the one that only takes one parameter.

Thanks to the default value on the second parameter, compatability with all the functions calling with only one param is conserved.

Gary (-;

#13 Yeah, I cleared out the errors easily enough and got the thing compiled just fine. However, I got busy porting my old project from TGE 1.4 to this new, improved "TGEPlus" (what I called it) code, which involved a bunch of code changes.

So I haven't done much testing of the T2D functionality.

However, I *should* have some time tonight, and I'll try and test it out and see if I can get some nice, animated UI stuff going. I'm mainly interested in using this for an upcoming project which won't really start until sometime early next year... but I'll be sticking what I can into Apocalypse Cow where I can.

#14 I fixed the MisZero thing, compiling now, hope it works

#15 Hmm, its yelling at me about util/undo.h, but when I include it I get a ton of linker errors, same with random gui files.

Do you only have to copy over the T2D folder, or a buch of other files too?

#16 Originally you only needed to copy over the T2D folder. Nowadays T2D has some extra UI widgets, so you need those. I'm reasonably certain I wrote an all-inclusive list on this forum somewhere, recently...

re: undo.h ; you need to add undo.cc to your build too.

Gary (-;

#17 Is this the thread you are talking about, Gary?

T2D in TGE, Works For Me

#18 Whew, got it, awesome

#19 @Jay: Yep! That's the one. Dunno why I couldn't find it :-/

Gary (-;

#20 Okay. I couldn't get the editor to run with my new combined ("TGEPlus") executable.

However, I was able to make a TGB game that I'd written run *flawlessly* with the combined executable. So this is a good thing. Not a perfect win, but very close, and very useable. If I was really more dilligent I'd do a complete diff on the two and find out what else I'm missing.