Torque for Teens

#1 Looks interesting.

Mike is a lurker on the forums it seems... maybe he'll see this and chime in! :)

#2 I have to say though, I was more interested in the "Maximum Torque : The Ultimate Guide to Game Scripting" but from the discussion threads on here, I'm under the impression that it's not being released anymore, or it's a delayed product. Would like to know if Kenneth Finney could chime in on his book.

Well, if I get some decent feedback on the "Torque for Teens" book, I'll go ahead and get myself a copy.

#3 Available on Oct 22, 2007 (325 pages)

Table of contents here.

#4 This is disappointing, im 15, and yet i understand programming really well, i understand C++ and understand how to use API's such as OpenGL (a little) and DirectX and have worked on an MMORPG Server Emulator (Star Wars Galaxies Pre-CU). And yet they make these "for Teen" books that arnt really game programming books, but more of lets design a game and use the ingame editor to make the game. I dont know if its because im "special" when it comes to programming or any of the sort. But i still do respect the fact that its hard to start developing games, and that book would be a good start.

A book i really want to see out of GG is a book that explains the internals of the engine better. So it will make the C++ ers lives easier when going in to mod the engine. And the book described above, "Maximum Torque : The Ultimate Guide to Game Scripting" sounds good, as i am new to Torque Script and do now know all of the secrets it holds ;).

After all said, my heart still goes out to Mike, good job and we hope to see more books for Torque in the future :) as books are the things that keep indie developers alive.

Cheers,
Dallin Wellington

#5 Dallin - GG recently posted a doc which describes some of the innards of the C++ engine - you can find it on this page. That, in concert with either Mike or Ken Finney or Ed Maurina's books would probably be a fairly complete diet for getting familiar w/ this game engine.

#6 Sweet!, thx

#7 I'm with you on that Dallin, I took a peek of some other "for teens" books and they just looked more like you described, more of a designer point of view. Which is why I was looking to see if anyone has taken a peek or knows more about the Torque for Teens book. I saw that it's not available until Oct 22, so, perhaps my inquiry was premature, although there is that possibility that some GG'ers may have been involved in previewing the book to help find issues with the chapters before the book is finalized.

A book I'd like to see for the GG community would be one that takes TGB, TGE(A), and eventually T2, and has the readers go through creating 5 to 10 (depending on the difficulty) games from scratch to finish. I'm a fan of books that deal with different projects. Maurina's book takes the reader through the maze game, which was good. But as I said, I want to see a book dedicated to completing 10 quick/easy to make games (or 5 lengthy games for more advanced readers). Each game project covering different aspects of the engine/api.

#8 Thanks, Mark!

Also been waiting for 'Uber' TS helpGuide, Ed M.'s is really, really good. I am hoping for a nice extension to the topics covered. And hopefully, with 'Torque-correctness' flow, and not a lot of, "...well, TGE doesn't do this well; this is how I hacked this into working...".

#9

Quote:A book i really want to see out of GG is a book that explains the internals of the engine better

I think the best your going to get will be Edward F. Maurina's second book when released. Two sections covering:
1. Introduction to Engine Coding - Learn the basics of working on the engine code (C++).

2. Intermediate Engine Coding - Dig in deep and learn how to use and create new variants of the top-10 console object classes.

Here is the link of what his second book is supposed to cover.

The documentation, TDN and the forums are about your only sources of learning the internals of TGE and TGEA. I got bogged down trying to learn the source code. So I stopped and just stuck to learning Torque Script. Made alot of things easier, learned alot more on how the engine was setup and my game continued to be built.

Quote:A book I'd like to see for the GG community would be one that takes TGB, TGE(A), and eventually T2, and has the readers go through creating 5 to 10 (depending on the difficulty) games from scratch to finish.

One of the round tables at IGC this year, this was discussed. It wasn't really going to be a book but a step by step tutorial might be released as a product. What was an idea mention was taking a person from start to finish of making a FPS game for example. It was an idea for future users of Torque 2 not TGE(A). The best bet for learning how to make a game with TGE would be Ken's books and Ed's. Also, one of the features of "Torque for Teens" is "Step-by-step instructions spell out exactly how to build a game in the Torque Game Engine environment." I will be looking at this book when it comes out to see what it has to offer. I learned alot from the other three books.