C4 engine vs Torque

#61 @Stephen, I compare engines but its not only eye candy ,its one issue here , John made the tlk and after this its the only choice to get better lights ,except if you not code it yourself.
And GG saying now we will not fix the light in tge because we will not put john out of business.
I understand none want to put John out of business .
What i don't understand is that why GG didn't fix the terrain lights when Melv did the fxlight.
This is not about all lovely futures that are in the tlk its more about a core thing in the engine.
And i don't think a fix like this would not put John out of business , what i have seen he know what he is doing. I can buy the tlk as support to John if i only could get the fxlight don't blend the terrain !

So the question , is this gonna happen in TSE to ? that some make third party core thing for the engine and then the core things don't get fix ?

#62 Garteth is correct. ThinkTanks, and ThinkTanks for XBox (for xbox live arcade) were both done while we were still BraveTree, before our acquisition by GarageGames.

Note that ThinkTanks for the XBox was done with the TSE.

#63 Billy L - If I'm not mistaken, the TGE and TSE licenses state that you can't sell your mod to an engine without their permission. If you tried to sell something that was going to be added at a later date, they would turn you down.

I could also be wrong, but I'm pretty sure at the time John created the lighting pack, that clause in the EULA wasn't in place. I could be wrong, I just thoguth they added that recently.

#64 Mod Note: Post removed--off topic, and inflammatory (probably wasn't intended that way, but it was), and this thread needs to finish itself out sooner rather than later!

Stephen

#65 Anyone who would say "What games have been made with TSE.... NONE. End of story" has done absolutely no research into TSE at all and has absolutely no clue what they are talking about. "End of story".

I actually find this whole discussion a little hokey. Not, as Nihonlvr noted as a C4 versus TGE forum debate or whatnot. I welcome the C4 forum users here. Their forums are small by comparison since they are also new by comparison. I'm a licensed "owner" of both engines. I like having them here just as I would like to hear more voices there. That's not really an issue, though it seems to have come up.

C4 is a nice, beautiful engine. Eric did one hell of a job on it. And he has the graphics programming (and writing) chops to make a great engine. Does he have the time to stress-test it, test for hardware compatability, etc.? Who knows? There are a lot of things that go into making an engine that works on a variety of hardware options (and on multiple platforms). I would like to see the C4 community do something with it. It is a nice engine, well documented, and stable on extremely high-end hardware (its target).

I think the thing that I find hokey is the whole "C4 is advancing at an incredible rate!" argument. Mainly because it is a new engine... If it weren't advancing at an incredible rate, I'd wonder what the hell Eric was doing. TSE has been advancing and moving through stress tests and XBox/360 development advancements. Unfortunately, many of the XBox/360 advances are specific to NDA's so they don't work their way back to the community in terms of "WOW HERE IT IS! WE'VE BEEN WORKING HARD!" But, if you have a game that your develop under TSE, the chances of moving it to the XBox/360 are much higher because of that legwork.

Is that good for indies? Of course it is. Is it bad for PC dev's? Perhaps if it is your only target and you feel slighted by GG's direction of advancement.

But again, I have only used both in a cursory fashion, and I still think that they are both excellent engines. But I'm also biased towards TGE/TSE. It doesn't mean that I'm biased against C4, though.

@Jason, love ya man, but...um, I have to disagree.

Quote:come on, everyone should know that a game built by the engine company doesnt count as one built on the SDK.

This is like saying that no one should ever look at Unreal/2/3 or Quake/2/3 or other commercial engines because third-party developers had to jump through several hoops to make their games work in their engine. If you're going to spend a few hundred thousand dollars (or even a hundred), go with an engine without any proven track record (because the track record of the engine developers does not count). Now, talking to Raven or Gearbox or Max Gaming might garner completely different answers on the evaluation. Epic and id and GG might be a little biased.

There are teams using TSE and adding to TSE. Just like the advanced shadows and cloth dynamics from Splinter Cell were added into the licensed Unreal code, just like a large number of features have been added into the TSE code by the Poacher team. Do they directly benefit us TSE users? Probably not (I don't know if they have rolled anything GG's way). But then, I don't expect them to. I do expect people to say "damn, that game looks kick-ass! That was done in TSE?" Same with C4 or A6 or Blitz3D, etc.

@Billy L

Quote:I compare engines but its not only eye candy ,its one issue here , John made the tlk and after this its the only choice to get better lights ,except if you not code it yourself.
And GG saying now we will not fix the light in tge because we will not put john out of business.
I understand none want to put John out of business .
What i don't understand is that why GG didn't fix the terrain lights when Melv did the fxlight.
This is not about all lovely futures that are in the tlk its more about a core thing in the engine.
And i don't think a fix like this would not put John out of business , what i have seen he know what he is doing. I can buy the tlk as support to John if i only could get the fxlight don't blend the terrain !

Like with any "content pack" or "add on"...if it will save you time and money and get your game done, it might be worth it for you. John put time into it, time which you are currently spending on. Now, whether it is a core feature of the engine or a core feature for your game is debatable. Personally, I'm among the crew that believe that TLK should have been in TGE in the first place, but I'm also in the crew that lauds John for stepping up to the plate and getting it there. It's always nice to have an addition to the "core" engine functionality that comes back to the community regardless of whether the community feels that it should have been included out of the box anyway. If Josh Ritter released the MMO pack, would people start complaining that Torque should have "core" MMO functionality out of the box? Actually, I seem to remember several threads on just that topic, even without such a release.

Quote:So the question , is this gonna happen in TSE to ? that some make third party core thing for the engine and then the core things don't get fix ?

Perhaps. But again, it depends on dev schedule and what you define as "core thing"s. For some, the ability to create an entire level in Max and drop it into the game is a "core thing". If that's your thing, then Unity's pretty cool for you. It has a number of other drawbacks, but content-wise, it's pretty slick. If you want a complete game-making solution with included modeling package, world editor, IDE, and script compiler, then A6 is probably the engine for you. You may have quibbles with some of the tools, but they are included.

@Randy
I think that was Cipher...which, as much as I wanted to see it suceed as well, has seemed to reach a stopping point.

#66 @David in my case Core include basic core .
I cant find a more core thing then sounds & lights that fully working.
Its like when you try to paint without colors or pencils . or to make music, without instruments.
I been against the content packs before , but i changed my mind.
But still i expected updates like sound and the light fixes and i'm not alone , i know that.
Maybe i expect to much and have to live with it ,but i feel sorry in a kind of way because i know how small these changes could be but they could make a huge difference in the end.
And i thought GG would like to see people making and finish they're games with Torque not give up for issue's like this.

#67 Sound and lights are working. Just not to the level that you feel they should (or that John felt they should...and GG agreed which is why they let him sell TLK). OpenAL has had several issues in the past, though.

I was using TGE well before TLK and could make dark/light interiors. Granted, I wasn't doing much of anything with terrain. But I really don't think it is issues such as this which make people stop working on their games. Perhaps port to another engine which has their specifications out of the box...but then, that is somewhat a testament to their testing of the engine.

#68 The issue about people stop is already done , and i know people that ported to .
So enough talk about this i could only say to the topic starter that Torque is a lovely engine in many ways , but so is the first tests i done with C4.
Choice must be made on what game you would like to make or what audience you are targeting.

Thanks for nice inputs David, Chris and Tim !

#69 Teams change engines. It happens. Like with Duke Nukem Forever.

#70 I really wish GG would just buy out all the other engines and shut them down :D

I guess that's illegal :(

#71 I thought they renamed it "Duke Nukem Never"...

j/k

#72 Again, my point isnt that TSE cant be used to make great games,

its just that people shouldnt consider a game bult by GG as being bult on the TSE SDK. It's not the same thing, as people have mentioned, GG has the people who built the engine, and using it internally is NOT the equivlant of using the SDK.

And yes, it's the same thing with Unreal, or Quake, or Halflife. Those games were not (i think) written with their SDK's. So they should not have any bearing on their respective SDK's usability.

They are all great games, and great engines, and it helps people understand the potential for each engine, that is true... but It is very dangerous for a person to evaluate the usefullness of an SDK based on games written by the engine developers.

So going back to TSE, it does have games written for it by 3rd parties, and what's probably more important is that it is an extension of TGE, meaning that the usability of the SDK is already pretty much proven by the fact that there are many successful games written with TGE.

I hope this clarifies what i'm saying, and one more thing:

Quote: From Gareth:
Yeah man, I truly consider a marble racing game above my skills, as man himself is above the humble ant. No other members here could possibly possess the skills to make small balls race along platforms. Truly GG is made of demigods, beings so far beyond the rest of us mortal indie developers that we should quake in abject fear when one of them walks through the door, or posts in forum threads.

(Just to clarify, I am NOT trying to mock the GG team, or their hardwork and dedication, I do actually think they are amazing and skilled and worthy of immense praise; I was just pointing out the rediculousness of saying that "normal developers" can't make a marble game, thats its beyond our puny skills)

You are missing the point entirely. my point is as I just elaborated, i dont know how you could ever extrapulate that acusation from my comments.

#73 Id, Epic, Valve, etc created their engines and their games. And then they licensed them out to others who saw the engine's potential in the engine from the games that were developed by the engine designers. Mable Blast Ultra is a good example of the potential of the engine as long as you have a dedicated and talented team.

But I did (and do) recognize your point about the internal knowledge of the engine designers and developers versus external developers. I'm excited to see Poacher and Flight Aces. From what I've seen, they're quite functional and looking damn nice. The poacher team added some damn cool lighting and shading to the TSE core. They didn't let the milestone list get in their way to finishing their game.

Anyway, I just thought that I'd note that I disagreed with the base argument of using first-party games as examples. A number of other engines with a much heftier pricetag use their internally developed games to prove to other teams what their engine is capable of.

I got what you were saying, and agree with it in many ways. I just wanted to throw out a traditional POV in the engine world, even if it was previously in terms of hundreds of thousands of licensing dollars that were available only to "proven" entities. The simple opportunity to have a chance to qualify for XBL in the indie scene with an engine that has already made it to that level (with a dedicated team, and yes, with insider knowledge and a XB360 dev kit). But still, it's a nice possibility.

#74 ThinkTanks Xbox was not made by GG (we at BraveTree were a completely separate entity at the time). We did have a the advantage of being able to walk next door and ask questions of Pat, Brian, and Ben but that did not significantly improve our ability to make and finish a game on TSE. In fact, we uncovered and fixed a *ton* of bugs in TSE in our own development that were then rolled back into TSE for the benefit of all. We were actually quite a bit ahead of GG in terms of using their technology (MarbleBlast Xbox was not built on TSE).

Orbz Xbox was also not made by GG but by the awesome team over at 21-6. They did not even have the advantage of being in the same office building (or state). Not only that, they had to make use of more of the engine than we did for ThinkTanks Xbox (we didn't have any Interiors). Justin Mette actually solved some pretty big bugs in TSE and shared them back to BraveTree and GG.

There is absolutely *nothing* stopping you from shipping a game with TSE as it stands in its current state. All of the production stopper bugs have been worked out and the current art pipeline reflects the usage of 3 different shipped games.

Are you going to have to tweak and tune for your own game? Of course! You would have to do that no matter what engine you use (even TGE).

Are there still some bugs left? Yeah! But they aren't bugs that are going to stop you from shipping a game. They are things that you can work around or easily fix. Even with 5 years under its belt, TGE still has its fair share of bugs but I don't see anyone arguing that you can't ship a game with it (given the wealth of evidence to the contrary that would just be dumb).

Are there some nice enhancements coming for TSE that might make your game easier to make? Yeah, there are a few. The new stuff coming for Atlas (terrain blending and realtime editing) are going to be fun but you could just use the classic terrain instead. The lighting updates are going to be awesome but there are plenty of examples on how to implement realtime lighting with shaders out there and you have the advantage of being able to tailor your solution to your specific game (we are trying to write a completely flexible solution that can cover a wide range of games and that takes a *lot* more work). The lighting in TSE right now is pretty much the same lighting that has been in TGE for years which has had plenty of games ship on it and has been good enough to ship three TSE games already. Does it look a little dated? Yes, but "dated" lighting isn't going to stop you from shipping a game (unless you are making a game about realtime shader-driven shadows =P).

Anyone capable of shipping a game is going to be capable of shipping a game on TSE. Everything else is just excuses.

#75 "Realtime shader-driven shadows" is my new favorite phrase. My previous one was "super magical embedded text" to describe PDF's and Powerpoint slides that get munged somewhere in the middle and turn into an unreadable mess...but still magically display.

#76 @Matt: a bit of a miscommunication (you arnt listining ;)

Maybe you are getting me and that Frank guy mixed up or something.

I was talking about how Marble Blast isnt a good benchmark for what TSE SDK can do... not about anything made by bravetree or whoever...

i'm more saying "be cautious of using games developed by the engine makers as a benchmark for what you can do with the associated SDK"

and, going back to the C4 engine like wise, you shouldnt take anything done by those deveopers as proof of what the sdk can do for you. And it is right to point out that there is nothing done with C4 yet.

and it is my mistake that I thought marbleblast was made on TSE

#77

Quote:
Anyone who would say "What games have been made with TSE.... NONE. End of story" has done absolutely no research into TSE at all and has absolutely no clue what they are talking about. "End of story".

I wholeheartedly agree. I made that comment in retaliation to Benjamin Bradley's comment (same comment, substitute TSE for C4) as I don't think it was a fair and valid point. How can you compare released titles between TSE & C4 given C4's infancy? I think TSE has the potential to be a great engine, yet I also feel C4 has that very same potential and get upset when people dismiss it as a worthwhile engine for ill-considered and trivial reasons.

As far as BraveTree and it's association with GG, well I must have been misinformed. I think there's more to their relationship that they're willing to reveal but that's another arguement and i'm done arguing.

I also think that this post has gone on for long enough and will make this my last post. I think we (as fellow game developers) should all be more considerate towards each other and look out for one anothers best interests. No-one else is going to, we have a hard enough task being indies as it is. I admit i'm just as guilty as anyone else on this thread and have learnt a valuable lesson.

#78 Man, can we close this thread already? It's starting to sizzle...

#79

Quote:As far as BraveTree and it's association with GG, well I must have been misinformed. I think there's more to their relationship that they're willing to reveal but that's another arguement and i'm done arguing.

don't want to add more to a already going nowhere thread, but I just felt compelled to respond to this comment.

At the moment, BraveTree no longer exists. we have been acquired by GarageGames.

Before that, we were an independent development copmpany that just happened to be located in the same town.

We knew the GarageGames crew very well, as we had worked with the founders at Dyanmix.


After we were done making ThinkTanks (which, it should be noted, was done while we were working from home, and not in our offices near GG), we could afford to get an office, which happned to be right across the hall from GarageGames. (and this was based on a tip from GG that the space existed and was cheap).

Moving into the offices accross from GG was certainly helpful, more so for business reasons than reasons of technology.

I am curious as to what it is that needs to be 'revealed' about our relationship with GarageGames.

What is up with this sort of conspiracy theory thinking?

I would like to know the nature of the misinformation and what it is that needs to be 'revealed'.

Sorry if I am coming across as defensive.. I found the comment a little insulting, as it really minimizes the hard work we did at BraveTree to start a company from the ground up with no funding other than our savings.

I also feel it is unfair to GarageGames.. as at the time we made ThinkTanks, all they did was provide a toolset that we decided to use to make our game with.

For ThinkTanks on the XBox.. GG paved the way by opening a door for us.. it was up to us to walk through the door and enter the room by delivering the game. The same was true of Orbz on Live Arcade.. GG opened the door, and 21-6 had to walk through it,

In the truest sense, we did what GarageGames anticipated others would do.. take the tools, make a game, and then find ways to distribute it.

Others (Josh Ritter, Andy Schatz, MaxGaming, 21-6) did the same thing... take the tools, and pave a path to their own success.

I want to point out that GG did not ignore us.. but BraveTree did not get any super special treatment (as in, they offered us no funding)... they certainly did help us to put together business deals.. and the existence of the engine and the site lead to a boatload of contract work for us.. but this is something that is available to anyone who uses the tools and resources they have made available.

A key point to note, we made our game first.. we completed a title that continues to sell. All things sprang from the fact that we created something of value.. GG helped us to leverage that value to it's maximum.. and that is something that they (and now we) can do for you if you can make something that has value.

as for the GG<-> BT relationship, In terms of the argument here.. there is no argument to be had. you can argue all you want about it.. but you will probably lose the argument.. you were not there. I was. I will be very honest about everything that happened.


In terms of the TSE .vs c4 and shipped games..

the TSE has 3 (Marble Blast Ultra, ThinkTanks XBLA, and Orbz XBLA) titles shipped. If you discount the 'developers' game.. it still has 2.. ThinkTanks and Orbz.. and if you want to ignore ThinkTanks.. then it still has Orbz. That is the point that everyone is trying to make here.. the TSE, in an unfinished state, has been used to ship 3 games.. all on console, and all of them multiplayer.


As for the c4 engine (to try to get this back on track).. it looks like a decent tool.. and if it helps anyone to get their game done quicker and better, then that is a good thing. Use whatever you want to pave the road to your own success.

It is up to the developer to choose the tools that are right for the project they are undertaking. I am certainly biased as the toolset made by GG allowed us to start, grow, and then sell a company, and to continue in the business of developing independently for going on 5 years. I cannot say the same for the c4, and I am not going to say that the c4 may not someday also allow someone to do the same. I think that at the moment, it is apples and oranges....

If the comparison feels unfair to some in this thread.. get over it. If you are distracted by 'the shiny'.. that is your business. If you are in the business of making and shipping games.. your priorities are a little different.

When comparing this vs. that.. tools, tech, engine.. whatever it is.. people have different 'things' that make them excitied about whatever it is they are excited about. If people are all facisnated with the latest and greatest shader tech.. more power to them. If this is what they need to bring their visions to life, I have no problem with that. The games I want to make don't need the latest and greatest shader tech (although I would not mind it)..

I am asking that everyone reading this take some time to realize that frame of reference matters when it comes to these 'comparison' threads.. one size does not fit all. Use what fits your goals.

#80

Quote:I made that comment in retaliation to Benjamin Bradley's comment

Retaliation? You know a thread is worthless when it's participants describe their comments as retaliation.