Getting Started

#1 I think this is a bit difficult to answer, as the context is very broad. I think the best way to go arounf this is to define your game first, and then ask specifics, like physics, polygon output, tools ect.

Every game engine has limitations, the question is just how easy it is to get around them and can you live with not having that feature in the game.

Having a sound design for your game, helps in determine what engine you should use. That is right after the size of your wallet.

#2 Well, I guess my question was a little to broad but what I mean is, I done a little programming with 3d gamestudio and it have a polygon limitation of 30,000 per model. I believe torques is higher but I haven't worked with it other than the demo. I will be receiving my copy later on today when the mail comes. If I have models that are about lets say 10,000 polys and entities are about 5,000 terrains about 50,000 is there a way to get the engine to run this smoothly without cut down our frame rate. The frame rate we are shooting for is about in between 30 and 60?

#3 A copy in the mail?
wtf?.....
explain that.

30,000 polies per model is insane...
maybe with one on the screen it would be ok.

maybe a building.. sure .. but not a "per model"

Quote:this project that we are looking to put on a next-gen console but we are new to programming!

maybe you mean the generation After the next gen console?

:)

not to discourage.. but it is a long road to stardom.

best to sit back and read and learn alot. before you target something so far away perhaps try for something closer (tetris?)

#4 Badguy, do you know anything about video games? or programming for that, I viewed you page and you don't have any projects or works in progress! If you have been keeping up with the next gen consoles some games like fight night round 3 have a poly count of 200 million polys per character and if there are two character on the screen at a time then that 400 million+ on the screen at a time. Another game that has a high poly count is a game called gears of wars which uses 1 million poly per character for CG's and in game poly count of 8500. So I really don't think that 30,000 is high for a next gen game! Plus, I never said I was using 30,000 for my project, I was talking about the limitation of another engine I was playing around with. I was thinking more of the range of 5000-10,000 per character, you may think that is high but a popular game for the modern gen consoles use about what we are aiming for. Resident Evil 4 for the PS2 has a poly count of 5000 and the gamecube uses 10,000. So the next time you make a comment or reply to a post on this forum make sure you do your research first! Creating a game like tetris would be to easy for me anyways I'm looking for a challenge that why I'm shooting high! I know it a long road to stardom but if you are going to o something then you should strive to do your best or to be the best. I hope there is no hard feelings, if you ever decide to get serious about game design then holla at cha boi!!!! Here are some link you can start with for doing some research.

http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=4310

http://www.xboxaddict.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70359&page=2

http://journal.pcvsconsole.com/?thread=15556

http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=355196&page=2

http://sports.ign.com/articles/675/675097p2.html

Oh, and thanks for the support!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#5 Oh and in the mail is a metaphor!!!!

#6 Pardon me but, Fight Night Round 3 developer Kudo Tsunoda flatly states that they used 3 million poly wireframe models to build their fighters. Nowhere can I find a claim that they use 200 million poly models. In the interviews I can find Kudo Tsunoda never even claims they get 6 million polys on screen (3 million x 2 fighters). Keep in mind that your standard TV screen has far less than 1 million pixels so trying to render a scene with over 6 million polygons is just a huge was of CPU and memory budget. The viewer is never going to see the difference.

To make a good looking player model you don't need anywhere near 30,000 polygons. Most of what makes a model good is artist skill, not polygon count. Trying to improve your art by building 30K poly models will just get you bad art slower if you are a bad artist. Conversely, if you have talent and can can create beautiful 2000 poly models why use 30,000. That just cuts your ingame player count by a factor of 15.

#7 When they say the models had 300 million polys, it means to generate the normal/scatter maps.
the in-game models rarely top 2 million polys (usually, there are a few that top this by far).

#8 "30,000 polies per model is insane..."

Generally speaking ok
I had in mind a project sometimes ago
Just two characters in an empty room or even on a black screen
A sort of "Phiscologic" game .
Apart from the game play
Does it make any difference If I use all the polys for two characters only, rather than for several characters, objects , ambient etc as in a normal game ?

#9 How many people have sucessfully export stuff that's 30,000 polys? I can tell you it doesn't happen with my lightwave exporter. after about 10,000 it startes destorying you geometry.

#10 Lol, I lost track of this one.

I did not really mean to insult you.
so if I came across like that you need to see the smiles there :)

Quote:but we are new to programming!

after reading this, and viewing your response..

so you have made some games already? being new to programming and all.
I would assume you have not.

Edit:

I note your copy has still not arrived.

#11 BadGuy,
When I say we are new to programming, I mean new to programming with the toque engine! Yeah, I made little programs like tic tac toe, battleship, and a couple of other little programs. If your in college and taking computer programming you'll have to do something like that. No, I haven't brought my copy of torque yet, I live in the real world I have bills, rent, and college classes to pay for ( I don't have my mommy and daddy to pay for it). Plus a wifey that is pregnant so right now money is tight! I thought I was going to start a new job this week but things didn't go the way I had planned. You better believe that it will get got!!!! It's just a matter of time. Plus my brother on this project with me. Just to let you know I've gotten a model higher than 30,000 in the demo verison of showtools so it can be done! Oh, and by the way did you check those links? If so then you see 30,000 not that high compared to games on the xbox 360. I have talk to a couple of my other programming buddies and they let me know that if you have a 256 graphic card with about 2 gig RAM memory, plus an understanding of C++ you can implement any game engine to run on the same level as a next-gen games. I know a decent amount of C++ and what I don't know I have books that do, if that's not enough! I have plenty of buddies that can help me out! So that's how that goes! I'm not upset by your comments, it just motivates me more!!! One more thing if you read my post I never said I was going to use models that high in polygon count anyways. I said I was using the 3d gamestudio and it has a limitation of 30,000 polygon per model. If you have a model lower than that then you will be able to put it in to the engine (but the higher the model is the slow the framerate will be). If you was to have something like poser 6 and send the main character that comes with the program named James which is about 68065 polygons it will not go in to the 3d gamestudio A/6 engine. I was able to bring the same character up in torque showtools demo verison, and 9 times out of 10 if you can bring it up in showtool you should be able to bring it up in torque engine!!! That's why they created showtools. "nuff said"

Alberto, If I was you I would try to stay a way from higher poly count models unless you plan on only having two character on the screen, because in most cases the higher the poly count the slower the framerate will be. So if you were going to make two character for your project, I would first see if you can reduce the poly count down to may 20,000 or 10,000 but if not then go for it! Don't let any of the hater tell you otherwise because believe me when you doing something right and it's a good idea you will have people to try to tell you, you can't do something. If you stick to it then you can get her done!!!

Good Luck!!!


Just to set the record straight to all I'm not using 30,000 polygons for my models. I'm shooting for around 10,000 but not lower than 5000. In fact when we get our web-site up we'll have pic and screenshots of our project, and things that we have done BADGUY you'll be surprised!

#12 James Stanley

Chill out dude, I don't think Badguy was intending to insult you in any way.

Only trying to help you here so don't you dare attack me, but if you keep this attitude up you won't be getting much help from this community.

He does have a point, 30,000 poly's would crash an unmodified version of the Torque engine. Showtool pro is not an accurate reflection of what will happen in the engine in my experience. Of course nothing's stopping you from altering the engine's source code to allow for a higher poly count, just keep in mind Torque is the old Tribes2 engine, was written six years ago and only intended to faciliate models of around 2000 polys efficiently. Don't misinterpret that, of course you can use models with a higher poly count but the engine was not designed with this in mind, thus the bold efficiently.

What college are you attending and which course are you studying, what degree will you achieve?

Peace

#13 Tim,
I was not trying to be a mean to badguy! He just thinks he knows it all in my opinion...

The way I see it if marble blast can make it to a next gen console. I believe with the proper help and teamwork me and my team members can achieve the same thing. Plus he misunderstand the whole 30,000 poly thing! If you check my post you'll see he attacked me first. I understand about torque's history in fact I've been keeping up with torque for awhile! I don't want people to get the wrong idea about me and what I'm trying to do and like I said I never planned on using 30,000 poly in torque engine anyways, I know that torque has limitations all engines do, but I just didn't like the way he worded his responses. Showtool is close to what your final reflection will be, I put different models in the demo verisons of both showtools and TGE. So I guess I have a little experience on this too! I'm the type of person that doesn't like when someone attacks me with not reading the whole thing I wrote and not having the knowledge to back it up. I'M NOT A BULLY!!!

Change of subject....

I attend Ivy Tech State College, I know it's not the best in the world but it teachs you pretty good
the classes I've taken is Java, Web-site development, advanced web-site development, Visual Basics, C++, and advanced c++. I have about three or four other classes I need to take before I'll have my assico. degree. After I recieve that I was considering going to full sail in florida or maybe just taking online classes for game simulations and design. So I'm pretty much set...

I also have about 5 books on 3d game programming, my brother is going to buy the new torque book in a couple of weeks if he hasn't already done so. Really my goal is to use the torque engine to prototype our project and then either put it on another engine or put out a demo and try to get a major company to help support our project. All and all, we are aiming for a next -gen console to put it on. I know it's a long road but I've been working on this project for about 9 or 10 years. Just trying to come up with an original title and story that is not like any other. That's how most third party developer come up anyway. Just like at the team behind project offset and the team that developed killzone.

Hey what can you say I'm a big dreamer!!! Plus I have confidance our idea, our project, will set the bar in the gaming industry...

#14 Are you using, own, or interested in any other engines?

#15 I've tried out the 3d gamestudio and had a prototype or something close to the project we are working on now, but somehow I got a virus that wiped out my whole harddrive to my computer so I canned that idea.
Also, I tried work with Blender, a engine called kjapi. I found out about torque maybe three and a half years ago, but at the time I was intimidated with it! So I just checked up on it here and there. Then, last year I found out that they made some improvements on the interface and the new torque shader, light pack, and the upcoming constructor. I felt I was missing out, so me and my brother got a book called 3d game programming all in one and it came with a free torque demo. We got our feel for torque engine and we pick it up pretty quick. We were getting ready to try and find another engine, then we heard about marble blast going to the x box 360 and at that moment we knew this would be our engine. We would have already had gotten the engine but first we decide to get our third party software to start modelling characters, stages, weapons, and ect. Currently, we have about half the models for the project done! Just basically started working on the levels but we already have the storyboard and game techs done so it shouldn't take us to long. It's hard working on a project of this type with only two or three people but my brother is doing most of the character models, I done all the designning of the story and the game tech. If we can find about 4 or 5 more people willing to devote time to this project I would say we could have the first prototype of the game by summer!

We'll see though!!!! Right now my brother is trainning our little brother on modelling and scripting, so once he gets it that will be a little less work for all of us.

I wouldn't mine creating our own engine though because if you really look at it that's where the $$$ is anyways but for me it's not all about the money, it's about the experience!!!!

#16 Ok, you do realise that TSE does NOT produce an xbox executable as standard. Marble blast was made by Garage Games and the shader engine was heavily modified (lighting / shadows / optimisation code / xbox port) to allow for the xbox version of marble blast. These changes are NOT in the shader engine that is available to the public. Lighting and shadows will be available once TSE is completed (amongst other things I'm sure) but it's not going to compile an xbox exe for you.

Garage Games can support you if you want to release a title on xbox, but you'll need a damn good game, $10,000+ and then be able to port the shader engine to an xbox exe.

Not trying to put you off in any way, just advising you of the not so apparent hurdles you'll encounter.

I expect to get flamed for this but I don't care... If you want to soley release an xbox title I'd be looking at a different engine.

#17 Tim,
I'm not going to flame you, but I knew about the shader not doing exe that's why I said I'll just be prototyping the game on the TGE and the shader is more so a plugin for torque to opitmize the shaders of the graphic card. So you say GG will support us on our project? That's some good news so I guess help is around the corner! Yeah, I know we have a lot of work and changing of the source code for both TGE and TSE. Possibly even the constructor too! that why I said if we get 4 or 5 more people to help us out would be great but if not we still will be working hard to get a playable demo ASAP!!!

P.S. thanks for your support, I don't take what you wrote as an insult because you sound like you have some knowledge on what you talk about.

peace

#18 @James
$10,000 or more is for the TSE 360 license...
My understanding is that you will have to pay extra $xx,xxx for GG support if by support you mean substantial help into porting your game to Xbox 360

#19 Thanks James,

You seem to know what you're doing so I won't offer anymore advice, unless you ask for it. Some people think that the Shader engine has this magical ability to make an xbox game for you. Then they buy it, realise this isn't the case and get upset.

I didn't expect you to flame me. This site (engine) has one of the best communities that's in existance. The problem being some (a minority) of Torque users are unknowledgeable fanboys who couldn't write 5 lines of code if their life's depended on it. They offer potential buyers ill-gotten facts that don't offer any real truth or insight into the engine. I think this is unfair, and therefore will inform all potential buyers of the good AND the bad. Unfortunately some people misinterpret this as defaming the engine and take the defensive. I choose to ignore their childish views and endeavour to ignore them at all costs, though it's frustrating to see people make fools of themselves and not realise it.

I wish you the very best of luck and hope to soon hear more about your planned projects.

#20 Well does anyone know the price GG is charging to port games on the x box 360? I was just wondering a ball park figure!