TSE beauty shots/video

#1 video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1852642052423824642&q=garagegames video and www.garagegames.com/mg/snapshot/view.php?qid=1163 snapshot of the TSE tech demo Legions...

#2 Hi Dean,

To download some TSE demos visit this url
www.garagegames.com/demos/browse/development/

For a preview of the Legions TSE Tech demo visit
www.tribalwar.com

To look at another great engine which sounds perfect for your project visit
www.terathon.com/c4engine/index.php

Let me know what you think.

- Tim

#3 Dean,

I just realized that there is a shortage of good hi-res promotional stills and videos for TSE. Hopefully that can change soon.

Here are a couple of items for now. I'll try to get some better examples later and post links to them here.

Aaron E.

www.aaronellis.net/moonshot.jpg
www.aaronellis.net/islandwater.avi

(Note: the video is compressed with xVid)


[Edit: changed a word)

#4 Thanks for the links everyone.

I went here
http://www.tribalwar.com/

Tim Aste, from Garage Games, was kind enough to send us 2 movies showing off Legions, the tech demo for Torque Shader Engine.

Check em out here:


Movie 1
Movie 2

movie links don't work.

tried these torque TSE people as well
http://www.ascension-game.com

they have links for films

XViD: http://vid.RenWerX.com/mar06.avi
QuickTime:http://vid.RenWerX.com/mar06.mov
Windows Media: http://vid.RenWerX.com/mar06.wmv

none of these work either


video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1852642052423824642&q=garagegames video

the video is a bit small, there are two of these knocking about, they will be the same movie as above, unfortunately you cannot download it to disk, i have to keep my main disk free (long story) and just download to my other disk, you have to watch these onscreen which would mean clogging up my C: drive, would be nice to find direct links to download the films to my drive, not watch them onscreen.

Its odd how torque don't really promote the TSE with videos and pics, they should carry a load of links direct on the site.

On the tech demos, I downloaded one a while back, it needed a newer card than the one I use, mine is an old card gforce 3 ti 200, so it would not work, so I don't think I can download then, I don't think the publisher would have the very latest video card to run them, though lap tops do come quite up to date. Think it may be time for an upgrade, though I dont feel like upgrading just to see a tech demo, that's why I was looking for films. Has anyone else found the same or does everyone keep more up to date in their graphics card.

From the like 5 shots Ive seen the TSE does very nice water and terrains, in fact its superb at them, very nice indeed. though I would have to see more, haven't seen what it can do in internal locations.
It really needs more videos and pictures on site so the engine can be sold, developers and publishers are usually very busy so not a lot of time to search for things, its nice to just have them available on site, that way I don't even have to upload them to my own web space I just forward the direct links to the publisher.

The C4 engine looked very nice, will have to try the demo, I'm looking for an engine that can be used for a lot of arcade games if it bears good fruit, from what I have seen C4 engine looks better indoor, though I cannot see what torque has yet, but Torque would be good for a racing game, either track or boat game, it would be nice to use torque on a whole load of arcade games and if it worked well the ports to the home market, but without seeing it marketed well with images and videos its hard to access how well looks yet.
are any demos available to download like working games, or any good projects that use the TSE so I can see how others have got on with it.

#5

Quote:Its odd how torque don't really promote the TSE with videos and pics, they should carry a load of links direct on the site.

I guess thats because TSE is still in EA and is always changing, or the games that use TSE are under NDA at the moment.

Hi-res versions of the videos... they work for me...
www.tribalwar.com/legions/h_legions.wmv
www.tribalwar.com/legions/h_legions2.wmv

edit: if you want to download the "unofficial" TSE demo I made (to help pimp TSE), you can find the link on...
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=10218

#6 Wow torque does landscapes really well.


Also on this demo from here
http://www.garagegames.com/pg/demo.php?id=38

Torque Shader Commercial License
Windows Demo
Torque Shader Commercial License
Download Size: 26.2MB

Download Now

Does anyone know what shaders are required, the dojo i could not use on my computer due to its use of 1.4 shaders

the car was 1.1 so I did see that one, what does the demo above require.



Am I wrong, torque doesn't do normal maps and parallax mapping.

that it just does bump mapping, because I haven't seen really high poly models or textures with lots of depth to them, the surface just looks very slightly raised.

I am tied between C4 and torque, the screens in C4 look better for indoor scenes, though I need a better graphics card to see the demo so I cannot run that, but torque has a bigger community, I want to hire on this project and have confidence the project has the right people for the job, there are more people in torque to hire as staff, though I never see anything finished or playable though these may be hidden as I notice I cannot see all board posts without having a license, unless I'm wrong on this, plus I do not know my way around the boards or have time to findthe best projects without spending quite some time looking or getting into the community in a big way, which makes me think it may be better to re train staff but just take on a torque coders.

#7 I'm not sure about Parallax, but it does do Normal mapping.

#8 Dean,

From what I can gather, you are on a relatively tight schedule for your project.

Though I am a Torque fan, to be honest with you I would have to suggest steering away from TSE. It's still in production and as such contains many bugs, lacks features and is still quite experimental. If you have a team of programmers you could possibly iron out the bugs and add the features you need, like lighting and shadowing, but this may defeat the purpose of switching engines.

You should be aware that the Legions video (and others) you saw do not reflect the quality of the public version of the engine. Many of the features within that video are not yet available to licensed customers. The game is being run from an experimental copy of the engine which only Garage Games employees have access to, and contains 'prototyped' code. It was put together as a demonstration for the GDC06 conference.

Some quotes from Garage Games employees on the matter:

Quote:
We didn't have time to integrate the next drop of Atlas into this demo, so the terrain textureset alone is currently 4+ gigabytes for textures.

Quote:
It's also currently running on a lot of prototype code for future milestones - thus the shadows - which means it's a bit buggy.

I'm not trying to completely put you off TSE, just giving you some facts which I feel are pertinent to your current situation.

Lastly, you should be aware that C4 is not an 'indoor only' engine. It has just received some very nice water effects. Such as dual animating normal maps for waves, fogged refraction, shore line blending, and reflection with a Schlick-approximated Fresnel factor. It also has terrain; though no-where near as powerful as TSE's however it's receiving a major update in a few builds time.

www.terathon.com/c4engine/shot.php?shotname=water1
www.terathon.com/c4engine/shot.php?shotname=water2

#9 Ahh that's a shame, the Legion demo looked great for some form of racing game, I was going to mention Torque to the publishers product manager, as the shots looked great and I'm sure Ive seen some package that had a car with all the stuff set up for it, hmm that's a real shame, now i hear that the texture for the terrain is like 4 gig, not looking into torque I bet it does what i saw done in the unreal community recently when someone made a terrain in terregen then imported in into unreal along with its huge texture, they turned off the lights to the terrain in the ed and used the pre rendered terragen tex, worked quite well, ran fast as it didn't have lighting applied to it, wouldn't surprise me in torque is on those lines.

hmm, shame Ill have to look at C4, see what it can do. Only trouble with C4 is that it has no pathing or AI, so you have to use middleware or code it yourself, which isn't good when you are on a tight schedule and tight budget.

Just checked those C4 water shots, not as nice as torque, still think torque may be better for an outdoor racing game, seems you could be up and running overnight with that, should be only a matter of the art team getting some meshes into a terrain map.

#10 Quote-

edit: if you want to download the "unofficial" TSE demo I made (to help pimp TSE), you can find the link on...
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=1021...

I downloaded
starterfpsport1_3_5.zip
from your site, what do I do with this, do you need Torque to run this. Keen to look what its about, as I want to run a racing arcade game by the publisher for a future project or one to run at the same time as the current gun game.

#11

Quote:
Only trouble with C4 is that it has no pathing or AI

Nor does Torque.

#12 Also a question on the content packs I see available, do the creators of these really have no problem with people making 'comercial' games with these, If I used one I would fully intend on making a profit from the project. At the moment it seems some of Torque games are by bedroom developers and hobbyists, and all power to them, I started by modding games myself to get into the industry, infact dont we all start as bedroom developers, but my point is this, arnt the makers of the content packs going to be upset if if a funded developer comes in makes a commercial project with the help of the content packs and starts making money hand over fist. I'm just checking here as it seems Ok on the one hand that the creators of these packs make a return but I just wonder when more money comes into it and someone starts making quite a profit with the game they used them in.
If I was to use them I guess id have a solicitor (lawyer) look over the license agreement on these products.

Its just that a tree is a tree and a rock is a rock, it saves modelling time plus it is cheaper than building from scratch, some of these content packs look useful.
I can see the packs available on torque, have any other devs seem other art assets outside of torque sponsored ones, these kind of things really persuade a publisher to green light when they see cost and dev time go right down, just keen to know if others have used other services and if they have links to any good resources

#13 Only trouble with C4 is that it has no pathing or AI

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Nor does Torque.

but I have seen an outside plug in for this Im sure,

#14 The content pack license will differ from pack to pack. I believe some can only be used as an example / tutorial on how to set up certain models in Torque. Others will allow you to use the content pack in a published commercial game with no restrictions.

As far as loosing out on money, well this is an indie game site and to be honest of all the people that own the engine, only about %0.0002 of them will actually sell a game. Plus the games are sold quite cheap. In a way, this is why people resort to content packs. It's an easy risk free way to make money. Some of the packs cost as much as the engine, so I don't think people are missing out on income. If you look carefully you'll notice that about %25 of the games published on this site were actually made by Garage Games and most of the content packs come from them as well.

Think of it this way. You spend 6 months to 1 year working on a game and sell it for $19.95.
--OR--
You spend 1 - 3 months making a content pack and sell it for $35

You tell me which is easier and will most likely result in higher profits, especially in the short term.

#15

Quote:
I downloaded
starterfpsport1_3_5.zip
from your site, what do I do with this, do you need Torque to run this. Keen to look what its about, as I want to run a racing arcade game by the publisher for a future project or one to run at the same time as the current gun game.

You need to download the demo from www.marinainternet.co.uk/dev/fpsport/TSEStarterfps1_3demo.zip it should include a .exe for you to run.

The "starterfpsport1_3_5" is for TSE owners to use...
Let me know if you have any problems.

#16 Quote

The "starterfpsport1_3_5" is for TSE owners to use...
Let me know if you have any problems.

You need to download the demo from www.marinainternet.co.uk/dev/fpsport/TSEStarterfps1_3demo.zip it should include a .exe for you to run.

I am not a TSE owner so will any of these work for me?

#17

Quote:
I am not a TSE owner so will any of these work for me?

@Dean, if you download the "TSEStarterfps1_3demo.zip" file (from the link above). It will have the TSE.exe file for you to run. (so you can play around with TSE if you don't own it)

#18 Got it to work, not sure if perhaps some things dont work on my card but torque gives very flat lighting, looked the same as the normal torque engine, though the water has some reflection.
didnt look like the torque tribes2 video, though I know see that has 2 gig of textures and has stuff not available to the public, I dont think torque is perhaps an arcade product, it doesnt grab on the graphics front, the rendering looks less than what something from ut3k would do and thats 3 years old, think I may have to look at C4, though if I did a 2d game I think torque would be great, I have heard that its very good for 2d.

#19 Yes, the shader engine has no lighting at the moment. The developers have decided to implement lighting and shadowing last (very strange in my opinion). This actually put me off buying it as well, shaders are nothing without proper lighting.

Good luck with your project whatever engine you decide on Dean.

#20 Well Ive asked the product manager to give me some idea of costs so I can look into engine, I went by the C4 forums but I'm not impressed by the people that post there, some very bad attitudes, I think I would sooner go for something with more of a price tag, it weeds out those with communication problems, is well supported and carries developers from which to recruit onto a project. Ill have to see what he says when he gets back, from that I can price a decent engine.