TSE in a usable state right now?

#1 A few games have been shipped on TSE yes... it's usable, but you need to know what your doing.

#2 You can't go into it expecting to make "mega buck games". That usually only happens if you already have a studio making megabucks.

#3 Actually it's unfair to say it's usable without caveats. It depends on the type of game you want to make. If you want to make a small cartoony type game then it's probably OK. It is certainly not ready for a "realistic" looking RPG unless you have a team and one or more of them are very good programmers. TSE is early access and many things are still missing, most noticeably lighting.

But you can start learning and generating much of your game right-away, although you will hit frustrations until the final release is completed. In the great scheme of things it would take you longer to write an RPG than for the engine to be ready anyway (I hope!)

#4 Or build your game in TGE and port to TSE when it's released.

#5 Other than the lack of a terrain editor, what features of TSE are missing in comparison to TGE? I know there's a number of features still being added to TSE for the milestones, but I'm curious about the state of TSE compared to TGE. is the scripting language completed? is it buggy?

#6 Dave..

Quote:It is certainly not ready for a "realistic" looking RPG unless you have a team and one or more of them are very good programmers.

You said this specifically about TSE. But I would say that about EVERY and ANY engine. Doesn't matter if you have the million dollars in your back pocket to license Unreal 3. You still would need an amazing team with lots a incredible programmers to make a "realistic" looking RPG.

#7 @Benjamin:

You have good intentions, but you can't compare TSE with Unreal 3 for a few reasons.
You *cannot* make a realistic looking RPG with the lighting currently in TSE. TSE will get there, but currently it does not have that kind of lighting - which is what this thread is all about.

@Sean H.

TSE is not missing alot of features that TGE had, really. These are the ones I can recall:

Quote:
Terrain Editor
Transparacy
Lighting on terrain
Working *.zip support (it does work, but not for all streamed files)
Player splash/emitter stuff (which will probably get replaced by something else)

TSE does on the other hand have alot of new stuff! The water looks great (except the jittering and the sharp edges around terrain/interiors) and Atlas is getting better and better.
The percepiation (spelling?) is another very nice thing, and the rest I've simply had no time to look at closer :)

If you can fork out the cash and want to save a few bucks when it's released, I would purchase it and play around. The key is to not expect too much before some more updates are rolled out.

#8 Stefan... I wasn't comparing engines. I was stating the fact that to make any "realistic" looking game you have to have a huge talented team of designers, programmers and more. Doesn't matter WHAT engine you use. If you don't have the people who have the skills, you'll never accomplish it.

#9 And, what Dave said was this:

Quote:
It is certainly not ready for a "realistic" looking RPG unless you have a team and one or more of them are very good programmers.

He's saying that if you want to make a realistic looking game with TSE, your programmers will have to implement or change stuff in the engine to make it look realistic, because TSE ain't there yet.

#10 Hmmmmm, Interesting

#11 At this point, the only major things missing from TSE are a) dynamic lighting, and b) tools for the Atlas terrain system. Ben's got an update for Atlas that he'll be talking about fairly soon. Dynamic lighting has been in development for a while, so it's coming.

Is TSE usable? Yes, very much so.

I can understand frustration with Atlas tools. But you guys are talking like you can't develop a game without dynamic lighting. I agree you shouldn't *finish* one without it, but really even if you had to write your own, it would be about 1-5% of the development time on a serious RPG. Worry about getting your game done, we'll take care of the shadows.

#12 Cool, thats good enough for me!

#13 Yeah, definatly prototype your game instead of worrying about eye-candy right now. Scripts in particular are easy to prototype without losing their usefulness later when something is updated. I wouldn't touch Atlas or lighting myself until they are final.

#14 The "mega buck games" comment was in joking, Honest! ( Shouldn't have done that to derail a serious thread, sorry. )



1) It sounds like I can start with TSE to learn torque and have for all practical purposes the current functionality of TGE? ( Realizing much more is to come. )

2) There are games that report to have been written with TSE. Have they used beta ( generally unavailable versions ) of TSE, or maybe extensive in-house talent to get around TSE's incompleteness?

3) Is the terrain editor not implemented yet?

#15 1) You can, but you should look at both TGE and TSE and your gametype to see which one will be better for prototyping gameplay. If your gameplay requires large terrains, then TSE is the prototyper. If dynamic lighting and shadows in small interiors are necessary (for, say, a stealth game), TGE and TLK would be a nice prototyping option. Prototyping quickly and easily can save you some misery when deciding what you need to do to the core of TSE down the road.

2) It depends on the team. The MBU team used TSE and the 360 development SDK (which could be seen in your comment as a generally unavailable version). Poacher and the like have used incredible in-house talent (as did MBU). So the talent side is necessary. But you do not have to have any special access to do it. GG was lucky in that they are a licensed developer for the 360 and therefore had to use in-house talent to create something that they could not legally release to everyone with a license (but which would be valuable and available for those who become licensed 360 developers and go with GG for a console license).

3) The editor is not implemented. Terrain is implmented, but a nifty editor is not.

#16 The "mega buck games" comment was in joking, Honest! ( Shouldn't have done that to derail a serious thread, sorry. )



1) It sounds like I can start with TSE to learn torque and have for all practical purposes the current functionality of TGE? ( Realizing much more is to come. )

2) There are games that report to have been written with TSE. Have they used beta ( generally unavailable versions ) of TSE, or maybe extensive in-house talent to get around TSE's incompleteness?

3) Is the terrain editor not implemented yet?

#17 Ok, look at that. There is that nasty imposter again.

I did not make that duplicate post. I have been away from my computer till now.

#18 Do not refresh the page and you won't get any duplicate posts. When you refresh your page, the browser reposts your message.

#19 Marble Blast Ultra was using an in-house build of the TSE that we do not have access to. I can't think of other 'released' games using TSE.

#20 We're currently prototyping 3 games in TSE, and it looks usable enough. We're rolling our own lighting/shadowing solution and none of our projects rely on terrain, so the WIP pipeline doesn't affect us for now.

But we have been working with TGE for almost two years already, and shipped 5 games with it, plus some internal prototypes. We accumulated quite a bunch TGE experience so far, allowing us to have a smooth ride on TSE's new features, modifying/extending it to suit our needs with no worries.

Tackling the need to fill up the missing gaps in TSE may or may not be a big hurdle for someone totally new to the Torque platform. It depends on your game/graphics programming background, how much time you'll be spending working with the engine, and how long your deadlines are (if any).