Game Development Community

Launching External Applications

by Joshua Ayers · in Torque Game Builder · 10/20/2006 (8:02 am) · 1 replies

Hi, i was wondering if there is a way to launch (and kill) external applications from TGB. I would prefer to do this through scripting, and not C++ :) I'm considering porting over a front end that I wrote in Multimedia Fusion which acts as a launcher for emulators, and also allows for playing movies and dvds. Currently the way it works is:

Load Config File:
Display List of available choice such as play an nes game, watch a movie, etc
Based on that choice load a configuration that tells the app which list of games to load, which emulator to launch, where the screenshots are at, etc.
When the user selects a game, disable the menu controls for the frontend, launch the executable, and pass to it the game to play.
When the user presses a specific button, kill the emulator / external application, and give menu control back to the user.

Not overly complicated, but Multimedia Fusion has a lot of objects designed to do specific tasks like loading ini files, managing tasks, running executables, etc.

Is this type of functionality available through the scripts in TGB? Don't think it would be that hard to program something like this in C++, but I'm more comfortable with torquescript. Thanks.

#1
11/27/2006 (1:21 pm)
I am interested in doing something similar. I want to use Torque in my machine while using other pieces of hardware as well, for feedback. I have a casino type system and I want to take the game and make the reels spin based on input from the Torque that I have running. I realize that I will likely have to use the C++ source code like a library else write a Torque Virtual device to handle my reels. I believe that the C++ route will be easier.