Integrating a larger terrain in TGE project

#41 Hi Nathan,

I know it's hard to understand for someone like you, but TGE is aimed towards the lower-spec deal of games. It has loooooots going in terms of compatability (sp?). Unless its not obvious even now, you just can't cram a whole lot of new tech into such a engine without breaking the core idea of it. That's why they made TGEA.

You're coming here, spouting crap all over the forums, about stuff you obviously have no clue about.
Sit down for a moment and think (if that's within your ability) about your options. Do also consider other game engines that are still supported after 7 years in development of this size and within the same price range.

If you want to use TGE for something it wasn't intended to do, you got the option to (lo and behold..) implement it yourself, just like many others are doing. The Modernization Kit is a good example of such a project. Of course, it would be easier if GarageGames held your hand and made your game for you, but that's not gonna happen.

#42 Wow, frustration met with aggression. Don't think this thread can turn productive after this, but here goes.

Bottom line is, Nathan feels frustrated over no definitive statement from GG as to the direction and roadmap of the TGE engine. I think those of us who have suffered through the forums enough to collect some bruises and bumps can make an educated guess as to the the intended market as well as the direction of the various engines. But it would still be nice to hear it from the horses mouth.

I would be nice to have a cross-product roadmap with full feature comparision (present and future) on all product pages.

#43 I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for, but it is an official source and discusses Torque future: Torque's 2D and 3D Future

#44

Quote:
I think those of us who have suffered through the forums enough to collect some bruises and bumps can make an educated guess as to the the intended market as well as the direction of the various engines.

If paying whatever amount TGE costs today is such a big deal, then some research (like searching the forums or checking out the DevMaster comparasions) is ideal. Instead, this guy bumped multiple 2-4 year old threads with anger, which hardly is any helpful to himself or anyone else.

#45 I wasn't asking anyone to hold my hand, nor think for me. I'm well aware of the points you've just made. But they aren't valid anymore. Wider platform support? Add better support, and fallbacks- don't keep the thing in a stagnant state and call it "wider support". I've seen engines ported to portable devices such as the iPod and PSP. Would this be possible with Torque? Nope. Not in a manageable sense, where you wouldn't lose your mind.

I can name a few engines, that have been around at least 5 years, and they keep up with the times. So people around here need to stop jumping to the defense, blindly pulling out the same boring rebuttals just because it seems to be the "normal" thing to do. There isn't any sense in this to me, and not because I don't have the ability to sit down and think.

I paid money to shave some time off of projects, not add to them. Problem is, every needed feature makes me want to walk away from TGE, because it simply isn't there, or it's among the some of the sloppiest implementations I've seen. But I paid money for it, and I want to get the worth out of it. Seems everything that actually makes me feel warm inside when I look at the engine, comes from resources that the community has been so kind to release.

I wasn't expecting to make sacrifices on the look-n-feel of my game, simply to adhere to the product I bought. It shouldn't be that way in this market all the way down the checklist... that's some more backwards thinking. And just what is TGEA built on, thank you very much? TGE of course. So why was TGEA developed, instead of making a more portable, and modular TGE, with fallbacks, different compiling options, etc? It's obviously money. It cost another $150 to get on board with terrain and shaders. That's simply ridiculous in my opinion.

The whole system seriously reminds me of free software, that spouts all these features, and then once you get it, you have to pay to get the features advertised. Then on the other hand, you have those guys that I respect- the ones that list what their software isn't. I had no idea when I bought TGE that the max terrain heightmap size would be 256x256 and the quality would suck stew. I had no idea getting standard shaders working would be a 2 day battle. And a whole other list of things that get to me.

Perhaps I'm talking about something I have no clue about, as you say... But really this isn't so much about knowledge, as it is about personal opinion. Maybe that's my mistake. Maybe my opinion is wrong. Or maybe I've seen too many good projects, open source projects, that put more gusto into their software. Not supporting a widely used product is pretty rude if you ask me- and if this is the case, why hasn't it been stated in any news or blogs: "We won't be supporting TGE much longer"?

And for the record, my computer is around 5 years old and it can run Oblivion, Unreal 3, etc just fine at high settings. So I still laugh when people try and say that TGE is what is, to support older machines... Would upgrading the terrain really be all that big of a deal? It's obvious the only reason they haven't is because it would compete with another product that sells. Which probably wouldn't sell as much if TGE had sweet terrains as the only newly added feature- that plus MK would pretty much be TGEA right there. Boom, product sales cut in two.

So don't roll in here and tell me I don't think right. I'm thinking damn clearly, and hitting the nail on the head if you ask me. I've seen page upon pages upon pages all over the internet, where the topic was about Torque and just how wrong it is. It's not a matter of "ooh, choice, weee", it's standards man. It's quality. It's code bloat avoidance. It's feature satisfaction. It's taking the old horse in the back and shooting it, and then giving your client a new pony for free because you screwed him by giving him one with malaria.

Let me ask one thing- how easy is it to implement a new terrain engine in TGE or TGEA? How about various middleware products like Havoc, PhysX, SkyWorks, AdVantage, Nimble, etc, etc, etc? It's not at all. It's about as difficult as writing an engine from scratch. Yeah, I don't want GarageGames holding my hand at all. Or you for that matter.

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Yeah, I blew my top here, and I apologize for the rudeness. But I'm leaving it as is- food for thought, and the points still stand generally.
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#46 I think Nathan pretty much sums up the level of frustation that many can have with GG's as a vendor at times. I know I get to the same point from time-to-time.

Like his attitude or not, he has some good points.

#47 Nathan - TGEA is significantly more than MK+Larger terrains. If you haven't tried it out, give it a shot. It's seriously faster and has much more functionality than TGE. I was disappointed int TSE/TGEA until version 1.7 came out.
Most of your recent rants have been about terrain - They're all covered in TGEA - you get larger terrains (with better resolution). You have atlas of course, but the legacy terrain has been redone as well -- you can have multiple seamless terrain blocks in a mission, and it uses clipmaps so you can have better texture resolution, too. Check it out.

#48 Coming back the next day after making a post like that, I see that I sound as angry as a wombat spit on by a flamingo. To put my self in line, I shouldn't get so puffy at GG. Things could be better, of course. But they could also be worse. And I need to remember that.

Also, I was a bit foolish to forget about that Juggernaut blog post. It does answer some questions I had, though it doesn't really say anything about continuing to update/support TGE. It seems like a legacy product in the making now, not something that will be pulled into the current gen (or even near) of engines. That seems to be TGEA's market niche. So I'm disappointed there because I paid for it, and I can only make so much with it before the development cycle looks grim for any projects I do, that might require more than what TGE has to offer.

If I had the cash flow, I'd definitely upgrade to TGEA. Life is having fun with this area though (car needs work, fridge died, got bit by a mean spider and had to pay for hospital trip, and a whole slew of other fun things). And to be honest, I'm feeling more tempted by other engines out there that cost the same or less, but seem to have more updates, and more features all around.

TGEA definitely has great terrain, no doubt about that. But how well does it play with a physics system such as PhysX? Anyone tried implementing that? That's one of my main points overall with this engine, is how difficult it is to shove a third party middleware into it, to make up for features not there.

At any rate, I have to thank you guys for being patient. Even though this thread is years old (like a zillion other threads), I didn't want to hijack the OP. But I was sorta on topic about terrain I suppose... and better than making a new thread with the same subject matter I suppose.