Hey GG, how about a vehicle collision fix??

#41 For a good many features, you will have to wait for the development staff to expose them to the community (which happens rather quickly in their testing cycles). They have excellent support. There are some graphical quirks when using the fixed-function pipeline on newer cards, primarily in the lighting department. The physics seem relatively stable from the little I've used them. I would have to pay for a commercial license ($1499) to release the test levels that I've been playing with, however. Since I use Lightwave, it is a no-go for animated meshes without completely re-rigging them in another application, which means that I cannot use any previously created animated meshes without a LOT of work. The editing environment is pretty slick. Their LUA editor is pretty cool as well. The support is top-notch. I just wish that all of the features were exposed. You can do some pretty slick FPS things with the ones that are, though.

I thought I wrote up a big review of it, but I can't seem to find it now. Weird.

EDIT:
Anyway, that's WAY off topic!

#42 Ogre tho just a renderer has some really nice features.

Like its license.

but the community is pretty large, and lots of modular components are ready.
pretty easy to make a game with.
(vehicle physics are pretty tight in some of those modules.)

#43 Martin: Take your pick. Just about all the engines available in the indie range have disgruntled torque users on their forums. I don't believe anyone has done a survey and knows which engine has the most ex-torque users. I most remember recently seeing posts on the forums for a Mac only engine called Unity. Really nice engine, but scripting support only it seems.

As far as all the alternatives to torque mentioned so far, C4 looks the most promising to me. People on their forums rave about how well designed and clean the codebase is. It's art path seems quite good with a built in CSG editor and Collada support. It has PhysX. The developer is also accessible and consistently interacts with the community on their forums. He has a clear roadmap for future development of the engine and the whole process seems quite transparent. So it's the one product I'll be keeping an eye on as it progresses.

If you really want to know why these people have ditched torque for greener pastures elsewhere go to their forums and look for threads titled similar to, "which engines have you used in the past?" or "which engine should I buy." Their reasons run the gamut. The majority of them seem to mirror the longstanding and unresolved complaints repeatedly raised here.

#44 I've had quite a pleasurable experience with C4 - I highly recommend it to anyone.

#45 I'm quite partial to Ogre3D myself, and theres a driving game with full source avaliable thats kind of cool. There are quite a few addon physics solutions for Ogre too. Physx, ODE, Newton, and Tokomak.

Very cool :)

walaber.com/index.php?action=showitem&id=7

you can get the binaries or source from there.

#46 I'm fond of Ogre too - I've found a decent front end for it as well.

If you're afraid of the "But Ogre's just a rendering engine" mentalilty, take a look at this engine.

NeoAxis Engine

It uses Ogre for rendering and adds in input, sound, physics, editors & tools, game logic etc - in other words it's a full blown engine that uses Ogre for rendering. Check out the demo.

#47 @Jacobin: Yeah, thanks. I guess that is the normal flow of users that some go from engine a to b and vice versa. So I would even guess you find here in the forums users from the other engines too :-)

#48 It's really dissapointing to see what the reponse are on the physics and fixing it. To me it is starting to feel like me getting the source code is an excuse for GG not to fix the bugs, since I'm suppose to.

Is buying a 3D engine and hoping that the things will work out-of-the-box too much to ask? Sure, GG can't get all the bugs. But saying some parts is not intended to be used in final products, because it's stuffed is unaccepteable.

No wonder the MOD community is dead. People are suppose to download the demo, and create wonderful things. Well... that's what GG makes people believe. I'm sure it doesn't take those people to realise that things just dont live up. And they can't even fix the bugs.

If something doesn't work, suddenly GG lifts its shoulders, and say it's a bonus... a Broken bonus... but we're still going to put it in. Oh and btw... We're not going to support it. This is such an unprofessional thing to do.

Then when people say something and give their opinions, you just get hit back with the old famous "Show us what other game engine has this and gives you this for $100"...

I'm a big Torque fan, but this really pains me to see the responses.

#49 I have to agree to James. I'm too a super big fan of Torque (since 2001), but there are issues. And it seems they don't get heard although the issues have been rised often enough. And that's what makes me sad sometimes - GG seems to have lost focus in some areas on what is (from my perspective) important to work on. Don't get me wrong, they're doing a lot of things absolulty right and I love them for that.

But see for example how TGB has evolved from it's beginning. Absolutly stunning. And yes I'm aware that a lot of people like more to work on 2D games (which I'm fine with, no offense) than 3D, but from a TGE perspective one might sometimes look a but jealous on TGB how it evolved. And again, don't get me wrong here too please. TGE evolved too, but it *feels* sometimes like it evolved in the speed of a Volkswagen Golf compared to a Lamborghini TGB.

(again, no offense or flame, just some thoughts)

#50 At the end of the day, you have to take Torque for what it is. An engine that was developed commercially about 7 years ago, for a very specific task and one that isn't updated or maintained to a reasonable standard. The benefit is you have a complete package to work from, tried and tested - the downside is there are many half-implemented, bugged or non-working features. Although the source code is included in the license, it has had so many alterations and tacked on code it ends up being a fragile, held together with tape, solution.

The engine is sold for one simple reason, Garage Games need the funding to create their own publishing label and release their own games. Let's face it, the community does a huge amount of work regarding adding features to the engine, diagnosing and correcting bugs and maintaining documentation.

Things aren't going to change, all I've heard for three years is talk yet I've yet to see any real action. If Torque isn't the engine for you, get out... now! We are at a time where there are plenty of alternatives, and they're only getting better. If Torque is for you, there's no point in whining, it won't get you anywhere.

I only wish I had bailed out sooner as now I'm left with a vast knowledge of Torque and nothing to do with it. Don't make the same mistake as me.

#51 @Tim: Sounds like you're leaving. Sad to hear. Where is your new game engine home? (coming back to my question above where the users leave to... :-)

Ah, one thing Tim: You not leaving with a vast knowledge and nothing to do with it, I'm pretty sure you learned tons of things in that time that apply to other engines too.

#52 That's true; I did learn some fundamentals of game development through Torque. It's mainly my understanding of the DTS hierarchy (no other engine I've used has such a cumbersome, unintuitive and cumbersome art pipeline, what's up with that?) and the scripting language that will go to waste.

I ventured off to C4 when I realized things weren't going to improve with Torque any time soon. Initially, it was only going to be a brief pit stop, to clear my head and take a break however C4 ended up progressing so quickly and became so good that I'm not coming back to Torque now. Some very unprofessional conduct from an ex GG employee pretty much sealed the deal - that and other developers I'm in contact with refuse to work with me if it involves Torque.

#53 Now that is.. ehm... funny. I had the same experience not finding artists wanting to work with Torque stuff. Nearly all refused. Didn't know even developers refuse to.

BTW: Spend the last half hour reading NeoAxis - pretty impressive. Will try it out. Thanks for the link, Tim.

#54 Try the NeoAxis demo, it does a good job of showcasing how versatile and intuitive the engine is. Still needs some work, but the developer is committed to the engine and its users.

Quote:
I had the same experience not finding artists wanting to work with Torque stuff.

Why do you think the content pack market is so big here? People struggle to bring art assets into Torque in an efficient manner and therefore some choose to rely on purchasing pre-configured models - just to learn from. That's pretty crazy in my opinion.

That's one of the reasons some developers steer clear of Torque, it ends up costing a lot of money in external tools and plug-ins, even more if you want/need the source, and the time taken to learn the pipeline and some of the hack(ish) methods just to get content into the engine ends up costing more money (people don't work for free, time is money). Atlas is a classic example.

#55 Haha, on the opposite it opens up a big market to sell art to :-)

#56 That's it! Plenty of people to Exploit! :P

#57 Hehe, so no reason to complain about! ;-)

#58 I'm not going to spend a lot of time responding to this thread, but I have a couple of things to say:

--the art pipeline, and the dts class, are built the way they are for maximum commercial production team flexibility. Sure, it's nice in some engines to drop in a model worked on by a single artist by someone that simply knows art, but then again when you have 22 modellers, 40 animators and 18 texturers, trying to get them all working on the same model series at the same time is not going to work with your "drop in, it's pretty!" mode.


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Quote:
I have found posts on the vehicle collision hangs/lockups at LEAST five years old.

Then why haven't you found the threads (at least 2 that I am aware of) that discuss and implement the solution?

--Why, time and again, do people push systems past their intended use cases, and then blame the systems? Can you, ever, make the stock starter.racing kit crash with no wacky datablock changes or high speed collisions?

The Vehicle class in Torque was designed for a specific game style--all the reference implementations (basically ShapeBase on down) are--just as your classes should be. It was never intended to handle every possible configuration, style, speed and complexity of interaction, and if your game needs something the starter.racing doesn't have, implement it.

You wouldn't use a printing press to take notes in a lunch meeting, but you also wouldn't distribute a daily newspaper written by hand. Why don't people make the same logical conclusions when it comes to starter kits and reference implementations?

#59 Oh the old "the DTS is my crux" complaint, its been a while since I have seen it.

Look, people can gripe all they want about the DTS system in Torque, but the truth of the matter is that it is difficult because of the following things:

1) The user doesn't know their 3D application well enough. Sorry but this is the root of like 98 of 100 problems. People need to understand that art isnt just some hack solutions where any person can pick up the tools press a few buttons and become an expert in 48 hours. Just like learning how to code it takes a lot of time, skill and practice to get things right and become proficient enough to do even the most basic things properly.

2) The user hasn't read the documentation. Yes I will admit it is long, verbose and enough to make most casual people say "bah why isn't it just a 1 button click process", but the system is also incredibly powerful, versatile and it works great. The only area that could be cleaned up and refined more is understanding additive blend animations, but that's a pretty complicated area so its understandable why its tough to describe.

Simple truth of the matter is that the DTS spec, even though it is old and somewhat outdated, is still one of the better formats on the market and is pretty dammed powerful and versatile for what it can do. But it is a double edged sword at times too, in the hands of someone that can weild it, its a force to be reckoned with, capable of doing some truely amazing things that would make your mouth drop, in the hands of the inexperianced you are a bigger danger to yourself.

@ Tim

Sorry bud but I feel that you are dead wrong with your opinions about Content Packs. They aren't there to be a stop-gap solution for a difficult art path they are there primarily to support hobbyists who just want to make something and don't honestly care if its original content or not.

From an art standpoint there is honestly very little that one can learn from a content pack that would help you learn DTS or DIF creation. From an empowering the user standpoint, its a wealth of low priced content that fits the needs.

#60 @Stephen Zepp: Really? I'm aware of a number of threads where people are trying very hard to find a soution to the vehicle hangs, but I haven't seen a solution. Care to share?

As to other engines, does anyone offhand know of an engine with a) source code availability b) cross platform support and c) a robust scripting engine, other than Torque?

It seems like all the other engines I've checked out fail at least one of those tests, which are showstoppers for me.

I will say that a big part of Torque's marketing mentions the robust community, and quite rightly. But I think it would be quite foolish indeed for GG to take it for granted.