New books from Garage Games

#101 @Ed and book owners

I've spent too many hours trying to piece together the content listing to your book, I've scaled your site, the publisher's, gg's and amazon all to no avail. Amazon's "look inside feature" is pretty cool but empty in this case.

Can you please provide a content listing of the book. I'm interesting in buying it but I really have no idea what's in it. I can only imagine TorqueScript is covered but what else?

In particular I want to know what modeling/artwork tools are covered 3d StudioMax, QuArk, Blender, ???
Is it pitched at the novice or advanced programmer, artist, ???

Thanks.

#102 For good info about book content
http://gamers.hallofworlds.com/products/gpgt/


I don't think it covers modelling artwork tools, my copy should arrive tomorrow morning so I have not seen it yet but personally I hope it doesn't. Better be focused on programming and I think it only covers Torque Scripting, I don't think it covers Source code which may be coverd in the next book.

#103 @Hokuto

Thank you, I had seen that link but it caused by browser to muck up... I'll try another ... ok it works.

Yep that's cool but Amazon's "look inside" is the sort of detail I'm wishing for.

Cheers ;-)

#104 No that is incorrect, in that directory it only list "testcloakskin.png" I have double and triple checked it.

#105 Oops my bad I was looking under textures not terrains

#106 @Alex - I talked to Josh and we're working on getting a copy of the Table Of Contents made available. Meanwhile, I don't talk much about tools. My primary focus is on using the Torque Game Engine. Furthermore, I narrow that focus to ONLY using scripts and scripting. I talk about the features that are provided by the various classes (GameBase, ShapeBase, Item, et al). I have given this material as thorough a coverage as I possibly could while restricting myself to talking about what is 'do-able' with stock TGE. As part of this coverage, I talk about things you could never learn without a lot of digging and/or without reading the source code. For example, here is an excerpt discussing animations which you would have to examine the code to learn about:

Quote:
Damage animations.
All ShapeBase-derived objects will automatically play two different animation sequences based
on the shape's damage state.

"Visibility" sequence.
The first of the two sequences that is auto-played is the "Visibility" sequence. This should be
a blended animation. It will assume one of two positions. i.e. it is either off or on and does not
actually play an animation sequence. When the shape's damage state is not destroyed, the
shape plays position zero (0) of this sequence. When the shape is destroyed, it plays position
one (1) of the thread.

"Damage" sequence.
The second of the two sequences that is auto-played is the "Damage" sequence. This
sequence can be blended or nonblended. This thread plays as follows:

If damageLevel >= destroyedLevel,

If damageState == 'Destroyed', play "Damage" sequence position zero (0).

If damageState != 'Destroyed', play "Damage" sequence position one (1).

If damageLevel < destroyedLevel, play thread at position damageLevel /
destroyedLevel.

In short, this sequence advances as damage is accumulated, until the shape is destroyed.
This thread/sequence is used to create a damage effect on shapes and may involve IFLs,
geometry animation, visibility animations, etc.

@All - I'm glad to see that some questions got resolved in my absence. Thanks for the help Mark!

I'm working on getting a forum for this book so we can stop posting to this thread. I know it is getting a bit long. :) Thanks for your patience.

Hall Of Worlds - For Gamers
EdM|GPGT

#107 Ah, yes; found out about the "damage" sequence and found it useful....this is the 'behind' the scenes I hope to find.

Thanks for a lot of hard work.

#108 Hi,
Is anyone having prolems running the gpgt.exe lesson kit?

when I double-click on the .exe there is a flash (appear/gone) of a dos-prompt window and I can see the .exe appearing then vanishing from the list of application in my Task Manger.

So in other words it is not working for me!

Help!
:)

Windows XP -

#109 Hokuto: You need to copy the folder to your hard drive and create a shorcut (right-click). Then edit the properties of the shorcut to start gptgt.exe with the correct command line. It should be something like:

"C:\GPGT LessonKit\gpgt.exe" -game gpgt

#110 DOh!
I should have known that as well!

Thanks Tim


@Ed: yep, a dedicated forum will be great. I got your book, finally Amazon.co.uk was showing it as 'in stock' a couple of days ago... I ordered it and straight after my order it showed again 'out of stock!' wow they only had one copy! Lucky me I got that one copy:)
Reading through.... so far so good! Great job

#111 How can this book benefit someone who read through 3d Game Programming all in one?

How is it different than 3dGPAIO?

Are your lessons "How Tos" for specific solutions or does it teach us how to solve a variety of problems with different programming theories?

#112 My personal view is that 3dGPAIO has more emphasis on asset creation, pages and pages and pages about Game genres, using milkshape3D to create a character a car, texturing a character, creating a building/structure with QuArK,etc

WOw I just noticed that this post is only showing the first 3 lines of along reply I wrote with example differences between the two books... it's all lost I guess...

never mind

#113 How can this book benefit someone who is on a MAC???

are there examples for OSX too?
and will the code work here???

i would love to have a book which is useful for the other platform!

thanks for clarifying

#114 How can this book benefit someone who is on a MAC???

are there examples for OSX too?
and will the code work here???

i would love to have a book which is useful for the other platform!

thanks for clarifying

#115 Hmm thanks for replying Hukto.

I was trying to figure out how to word my first post and those questions didn't do a great job of communicating my real concerns.

Come to think of it, you're right. 3dGPAIO does a great job of explaining the entire dev process. But I picked up the book with the thought that once I read every chapter I'd be ready to make at least my own FPS. I was a little disappointed when I realized that I still didn't know how to create any other games that fell outside the realm of what was discussed in the book.

I still think it's great. I learned more than when I started, but my goal is to know torque enough to create my own scripts. Or at least understand the scripts that others have created.

#116 Well I have only started with GPGT so I can't really confirm this 100%, but my impression is that GPGT should give the reader a good overall Torque Scritping knowledge (plus appendices covering references of game class methods, console functions, GUi, etc..) from which to take the next step: create your custom scripting code depending on your needs.
NOTE: You still need to learn how to program, that is a never ending process.

Hopefully someone else that had the book for more than a day may be able to confirm or give us their impression?

OPS!
I just noticed that at the top of the GPGT book's front cover it does say
'The Official Guide To The Torque Game Engine'

there you go :)

#117 @Marvin: I wrote a blog about the books that refer to making a game with Torque. Since this book has come out, everyone is comparing them. I suggest buying this book and K. Finney's two books. They have two different ways of teaching. Kens books are more general, as where Edwards book goes more in depth of the Torque editors and Torque script. And one thing to remember is that no one book will be able to teach you everything about Torque. You are going to have to put some effort into learning Torque. The books I refer to in my blog, TDN, GG forums, content packs and IRC chat are great places to learn about Torque.



A good article to read is "Torque Game Engine Documentation:Chapter 2. Creating a Successful Indie Game With Torque"

@rawi: I am not familiar with Mac, but I don't think that Torque script is much different from Windows, Linux or the Mac version.

#118 Thanks Mark, That blog helped me a lot... if I'm lucky my school's Library should get it soon. Till then I'll be reading Adv 3dGpAi1

#119 Subject: Book Errors
@ Ed Maurina: I think there is a problem in Chapter 3 - Page 90/91

Pag.90
Last bullet point says: "File->SaveGUI, select MainMenuGui.gui".
That won't work, I think you should save to "mainMenu.gui' instead, then it will work :)

Pag.91
1. Open the file "gpgt\client\Interface\mainMenu.gui"
it should be: ""gpgt\client\Interface\mainMenu\mainMenu.gui"

Very minor things for us really, but the error on page 90 will confuse
very new users because they will save the edited gui but the kit loads a different one
showing no changes. So their edit will never appear

Cheers

#120 Subject: GPGT feedback
@Hokuto:

Quote:
Pag.91
1. Open the file "gpgt\client\Interface\mainMenu.gui"
it should be: ""gpgt\client\Interface\mainMenu\mainMenu.gui"

You are correct. Also Figure3.64 looks like it is TGE 1.3 save window, not that of 1.4