Straight Forward TSE Questions
by Tim Heldna · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 06/27/2006 (9:05 am) · 4 replies
Hi,
I own a license to TGE and would like to ask some questions about TSE.
1) What image formats does TSE support? If like TGE it supports JPEG & PNG are there plans for addional extensions like TGA?
2) What new material settings are at ones disposal (apart from bump maps).
3) Is is true all materials must be scripted? If so do owners of TSE find this too long winded?
4) Are there plans to rework the audio layer?
5) What state is Atlas Terrain in? I'll be honest, I have no idea on how it works but I've heard that terrains take up to 4GB and you have to apply one large texture to the whole terrain with no terrain painting ability?
6) Is the diff format being replaced with something new or is it going to remain unchanged?
7) Is Mac support (OpenGl) definate?
I own a license to TGE and would like to ask some questions about TSE.
1) What image formats does TSE support? If like TGE it supports JPEG & PNG are there plans for addional extensions like TGA?
2) What new material settings are at ones disposal (apart from bump maps).
3) Is is true all materials must be scripted? If so do owners of TSE find this too long winded?
4) Are there plans to rework the audio layer?
5) What state is Atlas Terrain in? I'll be honest, I have no idea on how it works but I've heard that terrains take up to 4GB and you have to apply one large texture to the whole terrain with no terrain painting ability?
6) Is the diff format being replaced with something new or is it going to remain unchanged?
7) Is Mac support (OpenGl) definate?
About the author
#2
could someone point me to these plans ?
or even better the part/s about improvements to DIFs ?
btw, the artists on my project are pretty impressed with the latest Constructor Beta.
06/27/2006 (10:12 am)
Quote:Read the plans on Constructor: they're cooking some nice new features for DIFs in there.
could someone point me to these plans ?
or even better the part/s about improvements to DIFs ?
btw, the artists on my project are pretty impressed with the latest Constructor Beta.
#3
At the top is a comparison of the .csx and .map formats, and what both of them support. And then near the bottom under the heading of Direct to DIF Exporting it mentions a little specifically about DIFs. By looking at the features supported in the .csx format you can probably get a good idea for some of the things that you can look forward to in DIFs.
Also, if you want to look at any of the previous .plans on Constructor, they are all listed at the bottom of that post.
06/27/2006 (10:37 am)
The latest plan can be found here.At the top is a comparison of the .csx and .map formats, and what both of them support. And then near the bottom under the heading of Direct to DIF Exporting it mentions a little specifically about DIFs. By looking at the features supported in the .csx format you can probably get a good idea for some of the things that you can look forward to in DIFs.
Also, if you want to look at any of the previous .plans on Constructor, they are all listed at the bottom of that post.
#4
06/27/2006 (10:43 am)
Sweet, thanks Jon. 
Associate Manoel Neto
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2) You're no longer bound by the DTS material flags. You must define materials in scripts. There are two kinds of material classes: Material and CustomMaterial. The first one builds a shader (HLSL) based on it's parameters (normal maps, specular, refraction, reflection, etc). The second one allows you to use a custom HLSL shader, and it's all up to your shader.
3) Yes, it's true. It can look daunting if you have lots of textures already, but since it's scripted, there are many ways to organize things to streamline material definition.
4) I don't know, but I hope so.
5) Right now you need to use external tools to generate a terrain. It also lacks dynamic lighting (well, the whole TSE still lacks dynamic lighting). Other than that, it's very impressive.
6) DIF is gonna stay, I guess. But it'll surely recieve upgrades soon. Read the plans on Constructor: they're cooking some nice new features for DIFs in there.
7) GG says they're gonna implement OGL support when the GFX layer becomes more feature complete (aka: when lighting and shadows gets implemented).