Need directions
by Ka Wang Wu · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 12/03/2007 (9:09 am) · 2 replies
So after finishing my little presentation of Torque at school I was thinking of making a game with some real gameplay. My goal is to make a game that's like "Tower Defense". If you haven't played it... it is basically a game with a top-down view where you build towers that will shoot at enemies that are walking by (yes, very brutal).
I've been thinking on how to do this in Torque for a while and I can't really figure out how to get some key aspects to work. If anyone can point me in the right direction on where or how to do things I'd be grateful. What I'm thinking of is:
- Camera. Basically I'd need a RTS view. I know there's a RTS starter pack but that's for TGB and also it costs money I don't have :/ So I've been trying to look around the scripts to figure out how to get a stand-alone camera working... and honestly it's like a web of scripts. I don't mind if the camera will be static even though being able to add controls would be nice. But right now I just want to get a flying static camera.
- Placing objects. Basically to be able to create towers you need to place them on the ground. I couldn't find anything in the creator scripts about how to get this going.. in fact when I looked at the creator scripts there was surprisingly little code.
- Selecting objects. Well, I don't think I need to explain this. You can do this in the creator so I assume it can't be too hard.. even though the creator selection is pretty horrible when it comes to objects inside another object's bounding box.
- Status Gui Icons. Basically in most modern games you can have icons floating next to the models that tells you about their status... such as health bars and other things. Not sure how to go about making these (if you assume that you can do things like rotate the camera).
I know it's a lot of questions here.. but any help would be nice. Oh.. and it would be nice if anyone could tell me what I can and can't do with scripts only.
Thanks :)
I've been thinking on how to do this in Torque for a while and I can't really figure out how to get some key aspects to work. If anyone can point me in the right direction on where or how to do things I'd be grateful. What I'm thinking of is:
- Camera. Basically I'd need a RTS view. I know there's a RTS starter pack but that's for TGB and also it costs money I don't have :/ So I've been trying to look around the scripts to figure out how to get a stand-alone camera working... and honestly it's like a web of scripts. I don't mind if the camera will be static even though being able to add controls would be nice. But right now I just want to get a flying static camera.
- Placing objects. Basically to be able to create towers you need to place them on the ground. I couldn't find anything in the creator scripts about how to get this going.. in fact when I looked at the creator scripts there was surprisingly little code.
- Selecting objects. Well, I don't think I need to explain this. You can do this in the creator so I assume it can't be too hard.. even though the creator selection is pretty horrible when it comes to objects inside another object's bounding box.
- Status Gui Icons. Basically in most modern games you can have icons floating next to the models that tells you about their status... such as health bars and other things. Not sure how to go about making these (if you assume that you can do things like rotate the camera).
I know it's a lot of questions here.. but any help would be nice. Oh.. and it would be nice if anyone could tell me what I can and can't do with scripts only.
Thanks :)
#2
The camera seems to work (I only tried two modes just to make sure the compile went fine). Now just need to figure out how to configure the camera to work as I want.
Hopefully the rest of the resources will work just as painlessly :)
12/04/2007 (3:52 pm)
A quick updated for the interested. The Advanced Camera resource works really fine... and it's easier to implement than it seems like. Almost all of the instructions to get it compiled are redundant nowadays. The only thing you really need to do (with latest TGEA SDK) is to add the game files to your engine/game folder and also add it to your project. The rest of the code changes are already done (exposing to script and changing the gameconnection stuffs). So all you have to do is to compile!The camera seems to work (I only tried two modes just to make sure the compile went fine). Now just need to figure out how to configure the camera to work as I want.
Hopefully the rest of the resources will work just as painlessly :)
Torque Owner Ka Wang Wu
For the camera I maanaged to find a camera resource for just what I needed:
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=5471
It's pretty old though so I'm not sure if it works yet. Judging from the comments it seems to be working except I just to comment out the dgl.h. Will probably try to implement this sometime tomorrow.
As for selecting objects there seems to be quite a few resources. The most prominent one seems to be this one:
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=11152
I could probably get the whole package here but I'm not sure how well it'll work in TGEA so I assume implementing one thing at a time is the best way to go. I searched the comments for TGEA but I couldn't find anything pertaining to it so:
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=13617
if anyone has any experience with any of these packages and have any information I should know.. please tell me :)