TGEA questions about stencil shadows, atlas/legacy, tdn, etc
by Mario Selvaggio · in Torque Game Engine · 06/13/2007 (12:33 pm) · 3 replies
So i plan to buy TGEA and probaly tge as well, been a big fan of the engine since the tribes days. have a few questions first though before i bite off more than i can chew. heres the list of my TGEA questions.
perfect example of the kind of shadowing i want would be that found in SWG (stencil shadows). i've seen them applied to dts's in tge, however they didn't work on the wheels of vehicles or a players attachments (weapons). in my game i want stencil shadows on nearly EVERYTHING, this means:
DTS - including things like wheels, attachments, and all other moving parts
DIF - without exterrior shadows clipping the interrior, but with the interrior having its own stencil shadows based on seperate light sources
Atlas - not nearly as important as atlas has its own shadowing, but i plan to have a day/night cycle and it would be nice if the shadows were dynamic.
also, is it possible to have multiple atlas/legacy instances? i remember trying to edit the mission files in T2 to do this so i could create proper caves, but it would just crash right after the world loaded. for my game i need one main terrain, as big as possible, then at least 8 seperate terrain instances underground, which i may be able to do with one terrain, but thats still two terrain instances including the "main" terrain (get what i mean? lol).
i'm not too great at programming yet but i've been basicaly teaching myself all i can (part of why i want to get torque, to use as a base for my learning/experimenting), but i know i currently dont posess the coding skill needed to implement things like stencil shadows on everything, so i would end up using TDN for anything i dont know how to do. i've seen posts about the TGEA TDN not really having much info yet, is this true? if so would the TGE TDN be able to help me at all, or is the code too far different between the two that its probaly out of my current coding skill range to port?
finaly my last question (for now) is is it possible to have the main menu be 3d, like load a mission file with a seperate gui? looking at the tgea demo i imagine it would be, just flag the exe to run a mission file on start, and that mission would have the menu gui, or does the in-game gui not have the capabilities to run those kinds of commands without alot of modification?
perfect example of the kind of shadowing i want would be that found in SWG (stencil shadows). i've seen them applied to dts's in tge, however they didn't work on the wheels of vehicles or a players attachments (weapons). in my game i want stencil shadows on nearly EVERYTHING, this means:
DTS - including things like wheels, attachments, and all other moving parts
DIF - without exterrior shadows clipping the interrior, but with the interrior having its own stencil shadows based on seperate light sources
Atlas - not nearly as important as atlas has its own shadowing, but i plan to have a day/night cycle and it would be nice if the shadows were dynamic.
also, is it possible to have multiple atlas/legacy instances? i remember trying to edit the mission files in T2 to do this so i could create proper caves, but it would just crash right after the world loaded. for my game i need one main terrain, as big as possible, then at least 8 seperate terrain instances underground, which i may be able to do with one terrain, but thats still two terrain instances including the "main" terrain (get what i mean? lol).
i'm not too great at programming yet but i've been basicaly teaching myself all i can (part of why i want to get torque, to use as a base for my learning/experimenting), but i know i currently dont posess the coding skill needed to implement things like stencil shadows on everything, so i would end up using TDN for anything i dont know how to do. i've seen posts about the TGEA TDN not really having much info yet, is this true? if so would the TGE TDN be able to help me at all, or is the code too far different between the two that its probaly out of my current coding skill range to port?
finaly my last question (for now) is is it possible to have the main menu be 3d, like load a mission file with a seperate gui? looking at the tgea demo i imagine it would be, just flag the exe to run a mission file on start, and that mission would have the menu gui, or does the in-game gui not have the capabilities to run those kinds of commands without alot of modification?
About the author
#2
06/13/2007 (7:54 pm)
TGEA does not have stencil shadows, either does TGE for that matter.
#3
06/15/2007 (5:38 pm)
I know it doesn't, as i stated in the first post, i saw it done by other people, but not to the full extent. i was asking if this has been done or would be doable (to the full extent) in tse without too much trouble. 
Torque 3D Owner Mark Dynna
Second, you can have multiple Atlas instances in a single mission, but only every one Legacy terrain instance. Additionally, Atlas terrains have Position, Rotation, and Scale parameters now, meaning you can flip them around any which way you want.
Finally, yes it is quite possible and none too difficult to load into a "main menu" mission, and run the Menu GUI as a "play" GUI for that mission.