Features we need, TGEA has them?

#1 21) Does TGEA support Instant-Action.com?

#2 I'll try to field a couple of these, though more experienced TGEA dev's should definitely chime in on some of the details.

Quote:1) The most important feature for us: Is it possible to create highly detailed terrains at specific spots to create bumps and curves like in those early prototype screenshots?

You should be able to do both of those scenarios in TGEA's ATLAS terrains since the curves are not convex (ie. pipes).

Quote:2) Is the game engine multi-thread ? If it is, how do you split the pipeline? I read the scripts are not.

No. TGEA is a single-threaded engine. There have been a number of topics related to multi-threading it, but I haven't seen any definitive resources for doing it.

Quote:3) Does it support Impostors for forests? ( Technique replacing trees by different oriented billboards )

Tom Spillman is working on a SpeedTree implementation. I believe foliage replicators are built into TGEA, though. It may not be as robust as you need, however.

Quote:4) Is it possible to create clothes, fluids and deformable meshes?

You would have to add this to the engine. Waterblocks are included, but nothing for deformable meshes on the level of cloth deformation. There was a resource for TGE, but I do not know if it would integrate easily into TGEA--or how robust the implementation was.

Quote:5) Does it have a built-in game replays ?

TGE had recording functionality, but I do not know if TGEA has it.

Quote:6) Does it have code to access online databases?

You would have to add it. There are resources for different connections, but you would have to implement them as needed.

Quote:7) Does it have realtime debugger/tools to know/modify the state of variables ?

If you code in TorqueScript, then yes. You would debug in Visual Studio/gcc/Xcode/etc for C++ just like you would most other applications.

Quote:8) How is the compatibility with Vista and DirectX 10?

It depends on the drivers for the video card whether or not it works well on Vista. I haven't seen too many issues other than DirectX device registration problems. The current renderer is DirectX 9.0c-based, I believe.

Quote:9) Does it have kits to save the state of a game easily ?

Since this is highly game-specific, it is something you would need to develop depending on the types of data you need to save the state of.

Quote:10) How do you configure materials of graphic objects? We want to use XSI but is there a WYSIWYG torque plugin for XSI?

There is a beta plugin for exporting DTS objects from XSI, but I do not know how robust it is. There is not a WYSIWYG tool for Torque and XSI, however.

Quote:11) How is the documentation of TGEA? http://www.garagegames.com/docs/tse/general/ seems completely out of date and it is the one given on TGEA website. Felt like we had to use TGE and TGEA docs altogether.

You pretty much do have to use the two of them together, which is why TGEA licensees got access to the older Torque documentation for TGE. There is more documentation on TDN, though documentation is one of the things that GG has commented needs works in terms of TGEA.

Quote:12) Does it have physical/graphical particles emitters?

Yes. The particle engine in the current build is not as robust as TGE's, I believe. That was a key point in porting AFX to TGEA. I believe the next build of TGEA (or perhaps it was with the 1.0.3 build that is currently available) that this was remedied.

Quote:13) What is the game loop pipeline? Are the input, logic and media components properly separated?

I'm not sure quite what you mean by properly separated. The way the engine operates is similar to TGE, but the rendering pipeline and terrain features are some of the core differences. Hopefully someone else can give a better answer.

Quote:14) Does it have tools to modify audio at runtime? To create motor sounds and such.

You can change sound data like in TGE, but neither has audio generation capabilities without modification. You should be able to change out engine sounds depending on shifting, snow pack, etc, though. Just like you can change out other audio. As long as it exists as a WAV or OGG.

Quote:15) Does it have easy support for rag dolls?

No you would need to incorporate a 3rd party physics engine to support ragdolls.

Quote:16) Does it support physic based animations?

It supports basic rigid body physics, but for more advanced physics, you would need to incorporate a third party physics engine.

Quote:17) Does it have Inverse Kinematic solvers?

No. Again, a third-party engine would be necessary. PhysX or ODE and then some custom C++ work on objects.

Quote:18) Does it support easily switchable joystick and other control schemes?

The actionmap system is the same as TGE, I believe.

Quote:19) Does it support other language than English? Like Russian, German, Japanese, Finnish, etc.[quote]
It should be Unicode compliant. All of the documentation, etc is in English, as is the engine source code. You would have to use a translation service to localize your game. But the engine itself is unicode compliant.

[quote]20) Is it possible to create a "deep snow" effect where the physical representation is lower than the graphical one?

I'm not sure how this would be accomplished. I was trying to think of a similar system for another topic (snowmobile related, IIRC) but it was in TGE. I didn't come up with much.

#3

Quote:21) Does TGEA support Instant-Action.com?

InstantAction is technology neutral. You could create your game in TGE/TGEA or C4 or your custom-rolled C++ 3D engine. As long as you can plug into the IA API, you should be able to publish to IA.

#4 Thank you for your fast answer. As you said at first, I'd like to have some opinions from other TGEA devs on these issues before deciding whether or not Torque migration is a good thing for us.

Take note that I have no experience with TGE or any Torque tools but i am an experienced engine programmer.

Another question:
22) Does it support Joints such as Six Degrees of Freedom (6DOF)?

#5 @Jules, as to joints, TGEA doesn't have them by default, but there are two pretty good resources which implement ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) or AGEIA's PhysX. Both have joints and can be set up to make ragdolls.

#6 Thanks for your answers so far. I ask so many detailed questions because i have to evaluate the time it would take for our team to do the migration from our game engine to TGEA.
I have more questions to complete some of the previous ones and a few new ones:

23) Is there a free trial version of Atlas or the game engine itself? I found the in-game feature demo but it gives me nothing about the tools or how easily the demo was done.

24) Is there a list of the TDN custom resources of TGE that had been fully ported to TGEA? TGEA seems to have many default features added to TGE but many custom resources do not seem to be ported at all (maybe they are already fully compatible but it is not mentioned). For a newcomer in 30-days evaluation time, it is very hard to find "TGEA Ready" or "TGEA Certified" resources. At first sight it felt TGE contained more features than TGEA. The project ELIXIR seems promising about this though.

25) Are there special licenses for people interested in using parts of TGE/TGEA in their own engine?

26) Do TGE and TGEA core game-engine team members interact a lot in the TDN (making posts, updating topics, etc. )?

27) If TGEA is not multithread by default, does it gain any advantage of the multi-core architectures being more and more common (including XBOX360)?

#7 I'll try a little bit again.

Quote:23) Is there a free trial version of Atlas or the game engine itself? I found the in-game feature demo but it gives me nothing about the tools or how easily the demo was done.

I believe the water demo is included in the demo version as well. You should be able to change it by editing the main.cs file in the TGEA directory. The defaultGame should be "terrain_water_demo" for the terrain demo. It's been a while since I downloaded the demo to see exactly what it included, though.

ATLAS terrains are created in a separate program. The most common is L3DT. Once they are created in the application, they can be used in TGEA. There is not an internal editor for ATLAS terrain.

Quote:24) Is there a list of the TDN custom resources of TGE that had been fully ported to TGEA? TGEA seems to have many default features added to TGE but many custom resources do not seem to be ported at all (maybe they are already fully compatible but it is not mentioned). For a newcomer in 30-days evaluation time, it is very hard to find "TGEA Ready" or "TGEA Certified" resources. At first sight it felt TGE contained more features than TGEA. The project ELIXIR seems promising about this though.

There is currently nothing like this. Maintaining it would be a nightmare, comparing resources between builds. Especially as the resource developers often move on to other projects or engines and it sits, stuck in the version they developed it for. Resource cleanup is something that needs to happen, but it is a huge, huge mountain to tackle. One of the reasons that TGE seems to have more features or resources is that it has been around *MUCH* longer and had many more developers throwing time at it over the years.

Quote:25) Are there special licenses for people interested in using parts of TGE/TGEA in their own engine?

Not that I know of. But this discussion would best be brought up through dialogue and negotiation with GG directly.

Quote:26) Do TGE and TGEA core game-engine team members interact a lot in the TDN (making posts, updating topics, etc. )?

Not really. Most of the core engine dev's are working on engine development, patching, upgrades, etc. If something new and fancy is added, then the devs may kick it over there. But they spend their time in the core of the engine development and maintenance cycle. Many of the topics on TDN do not directly relate to the core developers anyway. Just like many of the resources are not a part of the core engine tech, but are definitely cool features.

#8 Follow up of 26's answer) How "Woah! This resource should indubitably be part of the core engine!" resources are detected and processed to the Core Engine team?

#9 We keep track of important resources and point the team to them. If it falls into compliance with the core architecture and vision of the engine, then the resource or pieces of it may be included. Often game or genre-specific features are not added to the engine.

#10 Follow up of 23's answer) After having generated an ATLAS terrain and imported into TGEA tools, can it be edited? If yes, what the internal tool offers? Can we change the texture and add shaders by example? By experience, having to go back and forth between different editing tools to do minor changes destroys the beauty of a production pipeline.

I am currently trying the standard edition of L3DT while waiting for a Trial of the professional version.

#11

Quote:We keep track of ...

"We" refers to Admins of the forum?
As a member of many online communities, the interactions inside TDN is important to me. So far i get helpful answers at lightning speed here. :)

In Ogre3D community, the lead project manager does incredible amount of support in the forums (65000+ posts) to find problems in the engine and notice interesting features.

#12 Admins and employees. There's a lot of community interaction between GG and the community. But most of the engine developers are deep in development. I'm sure they lurk, but they do not often post.

Have you looked at TDN? It is a wiki and so there aren't as many interactions as on a forum system. There are talk sessions, but most people update and go.

The Ogre community is a completely different beast than closed-source communities. Actually, that can be said of most OSS communities compared to closed-source communities as a rash generalization. Irrlicht, CrystalSpace, Nebula, etc have a lot of dev-to-community interaction. Mostly because the community is often the dev team or may potentially be the core dev-team down the road. OS communities are quite different, but that doesn't mean that we (and other communities) could not learn from them.

EDIT:
Because of the LOD-chunked nature of ATLAS terrain, there is not an editor for ATLAS terrains. You would have to go back to L3DT, make your changes, and export it. Much like you would have to do with a model in Max or a texture in Photoshop.

#13 It is troublesome about L3DT, it is very hard to tweak gameplay of a racing map this way. :(

I saw screenshots of an in-house terrain tool for 1.3.X, how is it now? about here

28) How would you compare torque's tool to L3DT? One of the reasons we might move to Torque is the world editor. At first sight in the link above, it seemed to have similar tools to edit the terrain but 1.3.X is a while ago i believe.

In the terrain editor of TGEA:
29) Can i paint a sparkling snow material using a shader on the terrain?
30) Can i add bumpmap/normalmap on precise areas?

Beside the world editor:
31)Ever heard of any integration of ScaleForm in TGE or TGEA?

#14 That's TGE's terrain editor. Legacy terrain is implemented in TGEA. Download the demo for it, press F11 and then use the menus to switch between editing terrain and painting it. The terrains are not as large and not as detailed as ATLAS terrains. They are also not as pretty.

I believe you can set the material shader for the terrain bitmaps, so a sparkling shader should work. In the legacy terrain, your materials would be mapped to the texture, not the area. So bump/normal mapping would affect everywhere where the texture is used rather than specific detailed areas.

I don't know of anyone who as implemented Scaleform in TGE/A. It would be a cool integration, though. their products are pretty slick.

#15 Thank you very much.

32) What is the production pipeline for artists? Is everything done in a Modeling tool (including shaders and texturing) and then itis exported to a DTS / CS format? Most researches i do bring me to restricted areas for trial or empty documentation. I tried Torque Show Tool but it is for TGE only it seems.

33) In the terrain painter seems only to be able to load png and jpg and not CS files with material scripts, is that normal?

#16 Thank you very much.

32) What is the production pipeline for artists? Is everything done in a Modeling tool (including shaders and texturing) and then itis exported to a DTS / CS format? Most researches i do bring me to restricted areas for trial or empty documentation. I tried Torque Show Tool but it is for TGE only it seems.

33) In the terrain painter seems only to be able to load png and jpg and not CS files with material scripts, is that normal?

#17

Quote:32) What is the production pipeline for artists? Is everything done in a Modeling tool (including shaders and texturing) and then itis exported to a DTS / CS format? Most researches i do bring me to restricted areas for trial or empty documentation. I tried Torque Show Tool but it is for TGE only it seems.

Strange. If you click the documentation link, you should be able to access all of the major documentation.

DTS's are the mesh format that is exported for use in the engine. There are a variety of programs that have exporter support. I do not believe any of them support exporting the materials.cs file, which is a TorqueScript file for material datablocks. Torque Showtool Pro is for TGE, you're right.

Quote:33) In the terrain painter seems only to be able to load png and jpg and not CS files with material scripts, is that normal?

I believe that you can define inside the materials.cs script file what shaders to use with the terrain textures. It is a script file and not an image file, so the terrain painter does not load it like a .jpg or .png. Instead, once you define the shader and the texture, the engine will map it during a render pass.

#18 About 32)For modeling is it something like :

Modeling Tool
         \
          >---> Code material scripts ----> Import in game and test
         /                                                                
   Shader Tool

or

Modeling Tool
         \
          >---> WYSIWYG Torque material tool
         /                                                                
   Shader Tool

#19 It's the first option. You code up the material scripts. WYSIWYG would be great, but it doesn't exist right now.

#20 About 33's answer)
I tried to modify TerrainMaterial and i noticed it uses 1 shader for the whole terrain.
I saw in this link that there are several shaders loaded to an atlas terrain, are they 1 shader per texture? Because i need different shaders for each terrain textures otherwise my rock will be sparkling too. If Atlas does that, i like it.