Complaints about your website hiding information

#1 If you want to be certain about the scripting then download one of the demos and mess around with it.
I'm pretty sure you still get access to quite a bit of the scripting documentation even if you haven't bought TGE. If not, there's tutorials elsewhere. There's tons of stuff on the link below that doesn't require you to have a license:

www.garagegames.com/developer/torque/tge/

There's also tons of scripting resources in the resources area. Open your eyes.

#2 Good point. The first few things I clicked on didn't show me what I wanted, and most of them tried to sell me a book.

Still, my other points are valid. They shouldn't hide the documentation without reason.

#3 Ummm, I only think one of them is a link to a book. Which by the way is a good book.

In fact, you could buy that book, and use the demo version on the disc to learn about TGE and it's scripting to help you decide if it's worth the money for the engine. Sure it would cost you $32.99 on amazon but it would be better than you spending $100 only to decide that you don't like torque script/the engine or that you can't understand torque script. Plus you'd still have the book to help you along after you've bought TGE.

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Alot of the offlimits documentation pertains either to the source code or it's pretty well detailed descriptions of all of the features used by the datablocks. It makes perfect sense why it's not available.

#4 The demo is pretty impressive.

But its mostly an empty terrain, with a few simply buildings.

How many polygons can it handle at a time?

Is there a way to make the demo show the polygon count, as most engines do? I could just place objects around and test after that.

I played the Minions of Mirth demo before. It had some lag problems. Was that because of the polygon count, or other factors?

#5 There is no hard limit on the polygon count, but that doesn't mean that the 1.5m tri's that top out Unreal 3's scenes are going to be as spiffy.

To see the fps, type "~" to open the console and then "metrics(fps);"

#6

Quote:
How many polygons can it handle at a time?

Not many. You will need to rely more on quality artwork than engine rendering.

Quote:
I played the Minions of Mirth demo before. It had some lag problems. Was that because of the polygon count, or other factors?

Put simply, too complex a game for the engine to handle efficiently.

I'm not trying to be off-puting. I am a licensee to TGE and quite like it. Just wanted to tell you the truth before a bunch of defensive fanboys spewed out some nonsense.

-Tim.

#7 Complex?

Its been awhile, but it was just me running around, with monsters that had simple AIs, and there a lot of scenery around.

Inventory, simple dialogue with townfolks, and whatnot shouldn't have taken any effort.

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Most art programs have some polygon reduction method, and there are programs out there that do it also. The Unreal 3 engine can take a model of over a million polygons and reduce it to just a few thousand. Someone linked to an example awhile back on the Irrlicht forum when I was chatting about polygons. of course, the Unreal 3 engine cost a few thousand dollars to license.

I'm not certain how well the various polygon reduction tools out there work.

Seeing the FPS doesn't help if I can't calculate polygon count.

Whats the most impressive visual game made with Torque thus far?

#8 I used the forum search feature for "polygon" and apparently there have been polygon test.
http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=17121

I need a member to tell me what it says since all I can get is

Quote:
Forum Posts...

Sorry, only members who have purchased the following products may access this discussion:

And that leads me back to my initial complaint.

Why wouldn't post like that be visible to the public? That makes no sense at all, unless they were trying to hide something.

#9 Yes, complex. I was referring more to the network code not being able to handle the size of the game. What you must realize is that Torque is not designed to contain huge levels with lots of detail. You will see people making overly ambitious products with TGE however none of these have ever reached completion or release. That's all I will say on the matter.

If you want a more capable engine rendering wise look at TSE.

Quote:
Most art programs have some polygon reduction method

I use Max 8 and use render to texture. I.e. create a high and low poly model, render normal map from high poly model and apply to low poly. Works brilliantly in C4.

Quote:
Whats the most impressive visual game made with Torque thus far?

Released game? None have impressed me visually.

Games in development, search this website for Monster Island, Ninjas vs Pirates or Illumina.

#10 Why do you think that you should be entitled to this type of infomation without a licence, above you point to the private forums, their are public ones aswell.

#11 Oh, look up Project Shadow as well. That game is looking quite nice nowadays.

#12 Go into your demo game
After going into the console (key above tab)
type this in....

GLEnableMetrics(true);
metrics(video);

You should then get up metrics info for ALOT of info to do with the video engine.... the key to all the numbers is....

TC.....triCount0 + triCount1 + triCount2 + triCount3
PC.....primCount0 + primCount1 + primCount2 + primCount3
T_T....triCount1
T_P....primCount1
I_T....triCount2
I_P....primCount2
TS_T...triCount3
TS_P...primCount3
?_T....triCount0
?_P....primCount0

check out common\client\metrics.cs for a list of all the metrics that are used...

I copied and pasted all this from another post... and its not source code related so should be ok to show without a license.... hope it give a little more info for you....

#13 The procedure for Unreal 3 is up on the Unreal Technology site:

Quote:For every major character and static mesh asset, we build two versions of the geometry: a renderable mesh with unique UV coordinates, and a detail mesh containing only geometry. We run the two meshes through the Unreal Engine 3 preprocessing tool and generate a high-res normal map for the renderable mesh, based on analyzing all of the geometry in the detail mesh.

* Renderable Mesh: We build renderable meshes with 3,000-12,000 triangles, based on the expectation of 5-20 visible characters in a game scene.
* Detail Mesh: We build 1-8 million triangle detail meshes for typical characters. This is quite sufficient for generating 1-2 normal maps of resolution 2048x2048 per character.
* Bones: The highest LOD version of our characters typically have 100-200 bones, and include articulated faces, hands, and fingers.

Normal maps are great. And Tim is right. It does work great in C4. C4 has a little bit higher requirements than TGE, though, in terms of hardware.

The reason that the post is not public is not that GG has moved it into a private forum or locked it away from your prying eyes, but that whoever posted it has placed it in the private forum for whatever reason.

#14 The obvious reason for "hiding" information is that its the only way GarageGames can try to convince otherwise software pirates to buy the license instead of just downloading it from somewhere and use as they see fit.

As they give away the source code to the engine - which you wont get from most other commercial engines - they have allowed us (indies) for a very affordable price to gain source code to a powerful engine. But in the same proces they have opened up the "crown jewels" of any company.

I applaud them for being so daring to do so, and I fully understand why they try to "hide" the documentation and add on values of resources etc.

I hope you understand too in the above written light

#15 Hiding the code, yes. Although if anyone was going to pirate it, they'd just need one disgruntled licensed user to post it somewhere.

I suppose some forums have a lot of code in them, so they just decided to block those out entirely, getting harmless discussions along with them.

And perhaps they believe people will be less likely to just steal their engine from some warez site, if they gain access to additional code in the member's forum.

Still, there is no reason to hide things like this:
http://www.garagegames.com/docs/tge/general/ch01s02.html

Is there any secret code listed there? Are does it just explain why Scripting is better than C++, something many considering buying the engine might want to know about.

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So things are measured in metrics instead of polygons. Strange.

I was thinking about making a real time strategy game with Torque, since the RPG starter kit helps speed this up greatly, and has network code enabled.

Can it effectively handle hundreds of units at a time, building and fighting it out? Can it handle more than a one on one game? Sometimes its more fun to have 4 people in two teams of two than just going one on one.

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If for online games like Minions of Mirth, there was too much for it to handle... doesn't it just load up sections of the map as necessary? If a smaller map would work fine, why not just load it up in sections? Or were there just too many models at a time being managed?

#16 Hiding the code, yes. Although if anyone was going to pirate it, they'd just need one disgruntled licensed user to post it somewhere.

I suppose some forums have a lot of code in them, so they just decided to block those out entirely, getting harmless discussions along with them.

And perhaps they believe people will be less likely to just steal their engine from some warez site, if they gain access to additional code in the member's forum.

Still, there is no reason to hide things like this:
http://www.garagegames.com/docs/tge/general/ch01s02.html

Is there any secret code listed there? Are does it just explain why Scripting is better than C++, something many considering buying the engine might want to know about.

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So things are measured in metrics instead of polygons. Strange.

I was thinking about making a real time strategy game with Torque, since the RPG starter kit helps speed this up greatly, and has network code enabled.

Can it effectively handle hundreds of units at a time, building and fighting it out? Can it handle more than a one on one game? Sometimes its more fun to have 4 people in two teams of two than just going one on one.

-----
If for online games like Minions of Mirth, there was too much for it to handle... doesn't it just load up sections of the map as necessary? If a smaller map would work fine, why not just load it up in sections? Or were there just too many models at a time being managed?

#17 Greetings!

Quote:You will see people making overly ambitious products with TGE however none of these have ever reached completion or release. That's all I will say on the matter.

By definition are not overly ambitious products hard to finish regardless of underlying technology?

@Wolf:
If you have questions about how MoM is architectured I'd recommend that you get in contact with Josh Ritter rather than listen to conjecture from those that didn't have a hand in programming it.

- Dave

#18 Good point. The guy's profile says he has been developing things for a decade, and released a number of games last year.

I probably should look at some other examples in the games demo section of the site as well.

And maybe in the months since I tested it out, things have been improved.

#19 Good point. The guy's profile says he has been developing things for a decade, and released a number of games last year.

I probably should look at some other examples in the games demo section of the site as well.

And maybe in the months since I tested it out, things have been improved.

#20 Hi Wolf,

Quote:So things are measured in metrics instead of polygons. Strange.

Rendered triangles are still treated as such by the engine (since Torque uses standard 3-sided polygons). The term metrics is just a catch all command word that encompasses several kinds of performance measurements. Using the command listed above, you can check on currently rendering polygon/triangle counts, texture usage, vehicle statistics, and tons of other stuff.

As for why that particular page (scripting vs. C++) is locked, I can't answer that. Oddly enough, I just tried to view that page as well and I'm locked out also. Since I'm a commercial TGE licencee, it should be available to me. Probably just a minor website glitch. Anyway, I can give you a short list of Script vs. C++ points as I understand them. Maybe someone else will come along and add to this list and/or clarify/correct my mistakes.

SCRIPTING
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Scripted additions of a feature or solution to a problem are often quicker and easier to implement.
Scripted solutions do not require an engine re-compile to test out.
Scripting changes do not require the scriptor to own a license for the game engine.
Scripted features can be added by end-users, players and anyone else who installs your game.

CODING
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C++ code solutions to a feature or problem can be more highly optimized for performance than script alone.
C++ code solutions can allow you to implement features that are too complex for scripts to achieve (since source code changes are affecting the engine's DNA or basic building blocks).
C++ code solutions can be locked into the engine executable, potentially limiting the cheating power of script-savvy players.