TGB Roadmap?
by Rodney Rindels - Torqued · in Torque Game Builder · 06/04/2006 (12:23 am) · 6 replies
I can understand because of threads like this www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=41561 why "roadmaps" aren't being released, but it really would go far to understand the future of TGB and how it fits into our projects. I'm not sure how many people are like me, but I generate my primary income in this way, and it doesn't make sense to spend inhouse development time on something your including anyway. I understand there is a fine balance between holding your breath, and exciting the community with "whats coming". I would say if its something you "know" your not going to cut from the roadmap, releasing a few blurbs about it is a good thing, 99% of the community will benefit, get excited, and help market the tool to peers. Many of us picked this tool because of early features announced, but are staying with it because quite frankly its flexibility and power balance out the missing features, and having the source shuts down the issue of "not" being able to do somthing. I keep hearing about cool upcoming things, but haven't a clue as to what direction they really are, how they benefit me as a customer, and how to plan / staff my 1 year development project. I personally would like to see a published roadmap, even if its stamped as visionary, or littered with disclaimers regarding the chance of pulling the features.
I promise I wont complain whatever it is :-)... It would just be helpful to know!
my almost $0.02 worth....
I promise I wont complain whatever it is :-)... It would just be helpful to know!
my almost $0.02 worth....
#2
Well my main concern is (and always will be) is in adding or modifying anything in TGB's source without a plugin facility... But I have been anyway....
I'm not really "waiting" for anything specific (except for R1 Bugs to get resolved), I'm more wondering what additional features I can include in my finished product, without additional time, or include in my game design in the upcoming months. Maybe (*probably) something I haven't even thought of ?
Many other sofware vendors just require I agree to an NDA, and I know their roadmaps...
And I know you can implement features 1000 times better than me, so when you mention "neat" things coming up, I'm just wondering when we get to hear about them? and how they will affect us.
Even though my initial investment was small, picking this tool to literally puts me into bed with GG, hairly legs and all, and that type of investment is hard to measure monetarily.
I'm adding most of my solutions to TDN as I figure them out. Because I know you "can't" do everything in the engine. But it would be nice to know about some things like "Are addition AI pathing Methods" going to be a feature? I'm spending alot of time implementing that portion, and if knew it was coming, I could focus some effort in other areas first to see if a native implementation would be more sound...
Well most of the blogs I've read just dont have your enthusiam for mentioning upcoming "features"... But I'll continue reading those, and seeing if anything really comes from those thats useful.
Thanks for taking your time to respond ...
06/04/2006 (2:07 am)
Helpful as always Melv.. :-) Well my main concern is (and always will be) is in adding or modifying anything in TGB's source without a plugin facility... But I have been anyway....
I'm not really "waiting" for anything specific (except for R1 Bugs to get resolved), I'm more wondering what additional features I can include in my finished product, without additional time, or include in my game design in the upcoming months. Maybe (*probably) something I haven't even thought of ?
Many other sofware vendors just require I agree to an NDA, and I know their roadmaps...
And I know you can implement features 1000 times better than me, so when you mention "neat" things coming up, I'm just wondering when we get to hear about them? and how they will affect us.
Even though my initial investment was small, picking this tool to literally puts me into bed with GG, hairly legs and all, and that type of investment is hard to measure monetarily.
I'm adding most of my solutions to TDN as I figure them out. Because I know you "can't" do everything in the engine. But it would be nice to know about some things like "Are addition AI pathing Methods" going to be a feature? I'm spending alot of time implementing that portion, and if knew it was coming, I could focus some effort in other areas first to see if a native implementation would be more sound...
Well most of the blogs I've read just dont have your enthusiam for mentioning upcoming "features"... But I'll continue reading those, and seeing if anything really comes from those thats useful.
Thanks for taking your time to respond ...
#3
very often you can add features without modifying any existing code. If you look at my CipherLib resource it is just a drop in of source files without modifications of existing ones. The whole console system and the resource manager are easily extendible. There are other parts in the engine where this is not the case though.
Just my comment on the plugin facility. It could be better but you can do a lot already.
06/04/2006 (2:39 am)
Rodney,very often you can add features without modifying any existing code. If you look at my CipherLib resource it is just a drop in of source files without modifications of existing ones. The whole console system and the resource manager are easily extendible. There are other parts in the engine where this is not the case though.
Just my comment on the plugin facility. It could be better but you can do a lot already.
#4
06/04/2006 (2:47 am)
@michael, Yeah I am adding some stuff , but cautiously. Especially until they hit R1. I have a framework for dropping my own code in the engine, but really I want to know what to expect from the product roadmap, so I'll know what to stay away from, or just rip in myself, like you did with your CipherLib, I would prefer to know if they are going to add native asset protection so I dont' diverge too far, and collide.. etc.... 
#5
As a game maker, I would never rely on a roadmap from a company. Once TGB is finished, which it will be within the next ten days, that is really all you can ever count on. Of course, we are a technology company, and will always strive to make our tech better, but what if we decide to go back and put all of our resources on remaking our website or making our own game with our tool? We are not going to do that, but COULD decide to. TGB is complete, and has been proven to be able to make commercial games (and you have not even seen the game we will soon be releasing with it).
If you need AI, it does not matter if we release an AI pack or add on (of which there are NO plans to do so), since it is so important to YOUR game, you need to take the responsibility to develop it. As a long time project leader and developer, I am always reluctant to move to the new and shiny once my project is under way. Unless there is a show stopper or clear cut advantage to upgrade to a new compiler, engine, OS, etc. during the development of a particular project, I/we don't allow it.
Of course, your project is your project, and you can decide how much risk you are comfortable with in your development plan. All I can promise from the GG side is that we will continue to make improvements to our engines/tools, but we will not release a roadmap due to the very reason you pointed out. We feel our engines are complete, have proven they can be used to ship commercial products, and you need to decide for yourself which parts you decide to wait and hope we may create or that you dig in and make for yourself.
-Jeff Tunnell, GG
06/04/2006 (10:16 am)
@Rodney: You say you are in bed with us, "hairy legs and all", but it is very much a one way street. GarageGames is pretty transparent, our business plan is in the open, the source code to our engines and technology is available to all, even our competitors. Yet, we know nothing about you. Your developer profile is nearly empty, we don't know what project you are working on, etc. If you want to really be in bed with us, you need to come at it differently. Email us, bring us up to date, and then we can consider a closer relationship.As a game maker, I would never rely on a roadmap from a company. Once TGB is finished, which it will be within the next ten days, that is really all you can ever count on. Of course, we are a technology company, and will always strive to make our tech better, but what if we decide to go back and put all of our resources on remaking our website or making our own game with our tool? We are not going to do that, but COULD decide to. TGB is complete, and has been proven to be able to make commercial games (and you have not even seen the game we will soon be releasing with it).
If you need AI, it does not matter if we release an AI pack or add on (of which there are NO plans to do so), since it is so important to YOUR game, you need to take the responsibility to develop it. As a long time project leader and developer, I am always reluctant to move to the new and shiny once my project is under way. Unless there is a show stopper or clear cut advantage to upgrade to a new compiler, engine, OS, etc. during the development of a particular project, I/we don't allow it.
Of course, your project is your project, and you can decide how much risk you are comfortable with in your development plan. All I can promise from the GG side is that we will continue to make improvements to our engines/tools, but we will not release a roadmap due to the very reason you pointed out. We feel our engines are complete, have proven they can be used to ship commercial products, and you need to decide for yourself which parts you decide to wait and hope we may create or that you dig in and make for yourself.
-Jeff Tunnell, GG
#6
Like I mentioned above, We have already started implementing my own way of doing things like AI once TGB hit R1, and even considering the community as we do things.. see: www.garagegames.com/blogs/67136/10616
I just really wanted to know if I'm wasting time and resources on something that you guys were going to implement that is going to be implemented better. Thats it, no hidden agenda's... To me its really about resource management. If you guys were going to be adding something thats neat, new, and cool, and it saved me some time that would be cool, if not, thats cool too..
I hope you took nothing about my post in a negative sense, its 100% positive. I'm loving the engine as it stands, and I'm considering procuring more licenses and adding more staff, we are just like you guys, a small company with limited resources, although we do have funding and are well underway with our project.
We feel our game design doesn't need anything new, it would just be good to know if anything is going to diverge in the near future, its not that big of deal to know, just would be neat to get on our project boards. I want a long term relationship, and no grass is growing under our feet waiting, we have already made great strides on our product, release date looks like March 2007. We knew R1 was feature locked, so we started tearing into our engine customizations at that point, because I made the decision to hold off until the features were closed. In the meantime we ripped out 4 or 5 prototypes levels, and built the higher level tools we are going to need.
On another note, I'll update my profile to more telling of who we are and what we do. and whats in the works.
06/04/2006 (12:52 pm)
@Jeff Like I mentioned above, We have already started implementing my own way of doing things like AI once TGB hit R1, and even considering the community as we do things.. see: www.garagegames.com/blogs/67136/10616
I just really wanted to know if I'm wasting time and resources on something that you guys were going to implement that is going to be implemented better. Thats it, no hidden agenda's... To me its really about resource management. If you guys were going to be adding something thats neat, new, and cool, and it saved me some time that would be cool, if not, thats cool too..
I hope you took nothing about my post in a negative sense, its 100% positive. I'm loving the engine as it stands, and I'm considering procuring more licenses and adding more staff, we are just like you guys, a small company with limited resources, although we do have funding and are well underway with our project.
We feel our game design doesn't need anything new, it would just be good to know if anything is going to diverge in the near future, its not that big of deal to know, just would be neat to get on our project boards. I want a long term relationship, and no grass is growing under our feet waiting, we have already made great strides on our product, release date looks like March 2007. We knew R1 was feature locked, so we started tearing into our engine customizations at that point, because I made the decision to hold off until the features were closed. In the meantime we ripped out 4 or 5 prototypes levels, and built the higher level tools we are going to need.
On another note, I'll update my profile to more telling of who we are and what we do. and whats in the works.
Associate Melv May
I can understand that having a complete breakdown of the intended roadmap ahead would be cool from a curiosity standpoint but from a game development standpoint it doesn't help as much as you would think.
It's my opinion here but I think it's always best to work on a project using your own resources but more specifically, you're own timeline/agenda. If you wait for a feature to be released (unless of course it's guaranteed to be released in a week or so), you'll never get your game done for a few reasons...
- The feature isn't released when it was planned to
- The feature isn't technically what you expected/require
- The first release has many issues/bugs
I can see that having someone else do a major feature would help you save time but it's definately at a risk of you *never* getting your game done either on time or ever.
You're also correct with your first statement that it's always risky to mention what you intend to do unless you're %100 sure you'll get it done on time as expected with minimal bugs! ;)
A while back there was a request for more details on what was being worked on and we did that with a fleet of blogs literally a few weeks before a release and people like Justin/Matt/Adam have been doing that. I think this is the safest and most responsible way to release information and I hope it will continue.
Again, I'm not an employee so this isn't an official statement, I guess it's just my $0.02 worth! :)
- Melv.