State of TGEA on MacOS X

#1 There is no OpenGL driver and there hasn't been any stated for a long time (actually not mentioned anymore since the large discussion why the OpenGL driver, even mentioned as part of a Milestone, was not added before release)

I wouldn't hold my breath on it, as Torque 2 went into heavy development, I don't think its realistic to assume that an OpenGL Driver is going to happen ... especially as the have not even ironed out the bugs of the DX one yet ...

#2 At least they are removing those marketing lies...err..at least most of them. :/

I still remember the day I used the demo and thought "GREAT!...GL SUPPORT!" ...only to pay $300 and then get access to private sections that make me realize that the GL will never happen.

I hope we 'TGEA guys' get a Torque2 discount.

::sighs AND shrugs::

#3 I wouldn't call them "lies" so much as the project direction changed. My wish is that it had been more transparent to developers. That's why it's often perceived as lies. Luckily, Torque 2 will be much more transparent.

#4 The whole TGEA has been very intransparent.
It was handled like it was the new "core technology" to GG and now, 10 months after its rushed out launch, it is already on "no heavy dev any further"

#5 Not only that Marc...
any forum-thread that anyone uses in attempt to have a mature conversation about this entire situation turns into an immature rant fest by employees/head-employees and members.[don't get mad, it's a fact]
Perceptions in a mature discussion should be ok...but rants that fly off of a 'discussional handle' usually send the conversation into a spin to the ground...sometimes a locked thread as well.

I would like to have the chance to 'pick a few brains'...but I fear that the community and a few employees would stop this from occurring in a peaceful manner.

Such a shame really...because I think a decent dialog would help open the doors to many issues that TGEA members can not solve in a decent time-frame or even solve at all. *Some strange things were done to that codebase...and any mature help is always 'warm heartedly-welcomed'*.


At this point:
I still see no resolve anywhere over this situation besides a few GG employee replies that entail:
"oops, we f'd up" and "the advertising isn't a lie if you fix the engine yourself (type answers)".[Factual actualities that I am aware of] ...where is the 'sorry', where is the 'gameplan to fix the wrongs' ?
Look at this from our point GG.

Those 'already given' answers don't solve anything or even rearrange the bad ethical decisions made on GG's part. ...I have not seen any attempts to resolve this on GG's part.

Why ?
[I know this sounds malicious...but I do not mean it as mal-intentioned. I am one who likes functional-resolve/closure.
please keep mature and on point guys]

Oh and Happy Thanksgiving.

#6 I think one of the problems is that combative language is usually used. Like the word "lies" when the problems came down to changes in dev direction. The big key problem to those changes was a transparency issue. Since it was so closed and locked down, mostly because of the combative feedback from the community, it fed itself. It's an ouroboros problem of a snake eating its tail, both sides being exceptionally wary of the other while relying on the other. Hopefully the transparency of Torque 2 will be a step in untying that Gordian knot, but right now we have one that is very, very tight in terms of TGEA and its userbase.

One thing that I did get from talking (and mostly listening) at IGC was that there was stuff going on on the TGEA front at GG. I don't know how much or if it included GL support, but the employees were positive about it even in light of the excited brouhaha over Torque 2. I guess I should have asked more questions, but I still use TGE more than TGEA while I tinker and play.

#7 TGEA... such grand possibilities it has. I will not really get into the lies vs. direction changes issue. I think it boils down to taking away any negative connotations each word has, the end result remains the same. Having said that, I can relate and fully understand their situation regarding these things and how they could easily happen.

The issue IS/WAS transparency with TGEA, plain and simple. Yes, there are several issues always hovering around it, but it was the completely transparent-less way things were done that totally fueled the fire. And.. I can also see why they thought this was a good idea in the beginning, though I don't agree with it.

I think people get upset because when they see some of those things don't work/were never really implemented, they become disappointed. Then they see more and more variations of torque being developed with less and less talk of TGEA and it's future. It becomes cumulative in nature and from there.. it simply spirals.

As David said, Torque 2, and the manner in which they convey information concerning it appears to be a huge step in the right direction. In my opinion, GG has been very upfront with their plans and thoughts.

The one thing about GG that.. whats a good polite word... that bothers me, is the manner in which they handle their forums. I have seen posts deleted, closed, added to, altered, sections re-written by GG employees made by other people, for reasons ranging from not liking the direction someone goes in it, disagreements and more. Of course, some of these things are valid, but others alienate people, and just make them look really bad. It's poor public relations when they think it keeps things on topic or more calm.

Back on topic.. I love TGEA, and even though in some ways it upsets me that focus has been removed from it by GG, I am also looking forward to Torque 2. I just wish one or two people from GG could for alittle bit longer be allowed to be more transparent with TGEA, and assist this engines community on specific things.

#8 Or at least finish its advertised features before they move on. There are bugs known since MS x ... one of the worst that is still persistent is the detail level 0 error on meshes ...
Another thing are the mentioned 3d tools for TGEA ... so far I see tools for TGE that do not work in many circumstances in TGEA ... I fixed a serious load of bugs, reimplemented commented out implementations and all the like in the past weeks in the tools and so far I would still not say that it is much above TGEs, its just far less broken than the stock editors.
It seems like nobody actually was assigned to get the whole 3D toolset TGEA ready ... (legacy terrains is the largest building site actually with a broken texture painting panel that only shows 6 textures and does not allow you to see the others or features not even existant in TGEA just due to the initpersist copy paste work done on it), at least I assume so as I do this with only a few hours a week and got it that far in this time so someone with a 40h+ week would have been able to do it in one or at max two weeks and it would have been done.

When I look at which rate Jeff and others fix some more or less core bugs that have been mentioned months ago its hard to see that the money invested in a license is used to bring it to level the users payed for basing on the advertisement. At the moment I am not sure if anyone is even investing time in it beside the users and at this rate the users will stop to give out their fixes as well.
This makes me most likely sad because the engine has great potential that is wasted as it got (due to missing informations on its future) buried alive.


I am aware what Stephen wrote in his blog thought about the idea to "unify" the editors and I couldn't agree more that it would be a great step for the torque technology but especially for the editor base. But this will be serious work as I do not see the TGE / TGEA editors as suitable or even desireable for the base.
The TGB ones are design wise (code) worlds above the TGE editors hack approach with spread implementations all over and no clear line for what is meant to be code and script side.
Due to that, getting them or even their base into TGE(A) won't be a simple thing (I've seen how long it took Melv etc to get it into TGB in the first place and TGB was already partly restructured at that point compared to TGE)
I dropped the idea after initial research, as they would force me to go deeper into the core with modifications than only the editors, which I do not want to go to prevent further bugspreading in the core.



From that point of view, generating a new base surely would be the best, ie Torque 2 is from that point of view more or less the only way ...
But the question is how the migration will work from TGB, TGE and especially TGEA to it (TX isn't affected, I think it will always remain its own thing due to the XNA bind) and how the pricing will look like for that migration.
I'm sure that even TGEA users won't try to "burn everything down" if the migration pricing from TGEA to T2 is fair assumed that TGEA is officially declared discontinued by then (or handled like now, which is in the end the same). At least I would go on to T2 if it is as good structured as Stephen mentions in his post if I get a fair upgrade / crossgrade price from TGEA to T2.
T2 will bring GG as well a fair chance to continue its development. Due to its modular base, I'm quite sure that you can buy the core engine and all additions like a "TGB addition" or the long awaited AI Addon and the like will be sold extra.
Thats fair and allows the user to buy what he needs and generate a "steady" income for GG for ongoing support for T2 instead of spreading their capabilities that thin that even electron microscopes wouldn't be able to find them any more :)

TheGameCreators survive with this way for quite some time now, DarkBasicPro (or to most here better known the GDK that comes with VC++ 2008 express for free) has that many extensions that they generate the multiple income of the actual engine :)

#9 Just a note here:
David Blake said:

Quote:I think one of the problems is that combative language is usually used. Like the word "lies" when the problems came down to changes in dev direction.

All about perceptions my dear friend.
To a customer that READ there was GL support, when there clearly is none, it is a "lie".
To an employee that saw a change in direction due to engine transparency issues...

It is not a harsh word when it is the truth. Unless the truth hurts of course.

#10

Quote:
To a customer that READ there was GL support, when there clearly is none, it is a "lie".
To an employee that saw a change in direction due to engine transparency issues...

It is not a harsh word when it is the truth. Unless the truth hurts of course.

The problem is that you are describing a change in implementation from an EARLY ADOPTER Proposed Feature List into what your words describe as a pre-planned "bait and switch" tactic, which is clearly a misrepresentation of fact on your part.

When OpenGL support was planned, it was exactly that--a planned feature. When it was removed from the Early Adopter Feature List, and then you post the way you do, you are making accusations that are inaccurate and misleading. That is why we respond the way we do to your continued posts about the topic that has been answered so many times--as you state, "All about perceptions"--the problem is, your perception and the conclusions you base from it are inaccurate.

#11 Stephen...do you ever take responsibility for anything you have done wrong ?

I see nothing about "planning" or "intention to implement"...in these images from the TGEA demo.
Yuo are not dealing with someone who will cower in the corner because Stephen Zepp tries to be demeaning.
I am not in your board room or reading your minds.

I am FARRRRR from inaccurate.

So you can say you have X#X even though you don't, just because you may have typed a disclosure in 1 random spot of your 100,000 page website ?

Seriously. I don't think so.

#12 Apologies here, I didn't mean to re-ignite a flame war. ;-p Interesting discussion tho... I'm new to Torque but it sounds like there's a bit of history here.

Back on topic, has anyone ported the rendering system in TGE 1.5 to work within TGEA? I'm just interested in cross-platform compatibility between MacOS and Windows, not necessarily per-pixel equivalence. If the Mac renderer didn't look as good I'd be fine with that, but at least I could release *a* version on MacOS.

For that matter, I wonder how much work it would be to write a Torque GFX front-end for Ogre. Has anyone looked into that?

#13 You can not port the rendering system from TGE into TGEA

TGEA is fully shader driven, TGE on the other hand does not support shader at all.

So you would have to write it from scratch more or less. Another problem is that you must write all shaders from ground up or basing on the current one as well. Neither does DX understand GLSL nor does OpenGL understand HLSL ...

So ... good luck there I fear.

Chances you get a fixed pipeline fallback into the DX9 driver is far higher (and to my knowledge has at least been done by one team)

#14

Quote:Neither does DX understand GLSL nor does OpenGL understand HLSL ...

Both DX9 and OpenGL support Cg Shaders, (and HLSL basically *is* Cg)... If the DX9 driver in TGEA could be ported to use Cg then that would solve the shader compatibility problem.

#15 That demo graphic indicates the possibility of allowing for an OpenGL layer. It does not in any way promise as a feature the presence of an OpenGL device already implemented for you.

I'm very sorry that you don't understand that, but it's been stated by us at least 5 times in the last 10 months.

I take full responsibility for what I've said, even in the light of continued implied insults, misrepresentations of fact, and other conduct not appropriate for these forums from you specifically. If it was any other topic, and you demonstrated the same behavior, you would have already had your posting privileges removed (and in fact, my bosses have told me several times to simply do so, but I've not done that because I want you to have the ability to provide constructive, appropriate feedback if you decide to do so).

Also back on topic:

Quote:
For that matter, I wonder how much work it would be to write a Torque GFX front-end for Ogre. Has anyone looked into that?

The abstracted nature of GFX lets you implement a render capability to just about any device you like, including OpenGL. The "history" that you are seeing here is that originally an OpenGL device provided by GG was on the planned feature list, but was removed during the Early Adopter phase due to resources not available to the TGE-A development team and a decision to release TGE-A without that particular feature.

You could also write a render device for software rendering, console rendering (XB360 comes to mind, which is actually available as a separate license to TGE-A), and any other render target.

#16

Quote:
The "history" that you are seeing here is that originally an OpenGL device provided by GG was on the planned feature list, but was removed during the Early Adopter phase due to resources not available to the TGE-A development team and a decision to release TGE-A without that particular feature.

However, that was never (that OpenGL support had been dropped) mentioned until a few months after the final product was released. Before that, it was all "it's low priority, but not cancelled" and "you can do it yourself".

Noone has written an OpenGL implementation (or any other graphics library to my knowledge) using 'GFX' and before that has happened there's exactly 0 proof that it works for anything else than DX. Especially so that not even GG could handle an OpenGL implementation can give you an hint to how 'possible' it is for you as an indie.

#17 I have been "forced" to a corner.
I CAN NOT give constructive feedback because I was just threatened with losing my posting privileges.

I never insulted anyone @ anytime.

I am not saying anymore...
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#18 You accused us as a company of lying to you, you claimed I don't take responsibility for what I say, you claimed I was demeaning to you, you called employees of GG immature, and you've indirectly (or directly, depending on how someone reads your posts) accused us of false business practices.

Which of these aren't insults? All of these are just from this thread, and don't even review any of your additional historical posts.

#19 I am only replying because I have been directly asked questions by Stephen Zepp.

Quote:Which of these aren't insults?

honestly, none of them are insults....
I would refer to the issue, at hand, as you "reading into my words"(see what you want) rather than reading at verbatim.

To continue...
- I referred to the produced 'rant fest' as immature...not the employees. < Reread that plz.
**Mature people can act immaturely at times just as I am sure Einstein had bad days. So that was not an insult to anyone's person, but rather to a group-created-discussion-like-action. The ranting being the cause&entity of immaturity.** Dialects subdivide the masses...and misunderstandings cause chaos and confusion...such is life.

- I am a new client that had read and seen information about TGEA and it's GL support, not to mention the demo images I posted above that you discredit. (Which I find your interpretation and use of those images quite hilarious to be honest.) I don't feel I need to say more on this but I will give an example.

Example:
Honda can't legally display a car with a 90MPG sticker in the window only to appease the already-buyer by suggesting that if they're a good mechanic, they could make it happen.

So.... to me and many-many others I talk to...the aforementioned(in upper part of thread) usage of items and terms, ARE lies.
*That [u]is[/u] OUR perception of the situation because we feel 'lied to'.*
> If you want twist our perception into an insult of us directly saying "liars!" that is your call but it would be grossly incorrect as it never happened.
This goes along that same line of misinterpretation:
I NEVER claimed "you don't take responsibility for what you say".
..what I said to you VERBATIM was: "do you ever take responsibility for anything you have done wrong ?"
Severely different and it proves you want to slant my words.

- I suppose you and I will never see eye to eye and I am not worried about that at all really. I get the point here. You want me to shut up and you're ready to make threats of banning me to make that happen. You have successfully curbed another attempt of mine to gather information with hope for satisfaction.
I will once again "join the huddled masses" in the corner you ever so politely forced me into with those prior threats.

Just remember that loads of us are not happy with things. That is all.
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#20 We're using TGEA for our next game and are happy with the decision. One way or another we'll get the game running on OSX too... though, OpenGL support is really only a part of supporting the platform... and then there is the fact that Apple put some pretty craptacular integrated video boards in most of its lineup. Thems the breaks.