Poor Compatibility
by Wesley Howe · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 12/18/2007 (10:06 pm) · 5 replies
I am a relatively recent licensee of TGE and TGEA. A newby here.
I have been having my troubles getting started. Not because I don't know C/C++, though. I was able to set the project up and compile TGEA in a reasonably short time. Before that, I had no problems getting TGE to compile and run.
I am just getting stuck trying to make something simple, a non-FPS starter in script. What keeps biting me is that the sort of things I want to start with were written for TGE. I can run them on TGE, but I keep getting bitten trying to make them run with TGEA.
I posted a question in the thread Book: 3D Game Programming All-in-One (Torque) here: www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=70215, because the demo is the very first one in that book. After a week, not a nibble.
It works fine under TGE. After a lot of effort, I got it to compile and almost run using TGEA, but I am stuck because the server returns an error CR_SERVERFULL, for no apparent reason. If I could get this working, I could use it to add one part at a time until I got what I wanted working, because I would have a fallback. My other option would be to start with the demo shipped with the program and try to reduce it to a simple base, which in this case is some terrain, a player that will move and a camera.
Why wasn't TGEA designed with defaults that allow all these simple TGE scripts to run unmodified? Even if it was filled with default placeholders like the no material material, it should run. Or error during the compile with something meaningful, like it does when it mentions that OpenGL is not available. I was able to find and fix that.
This is really a very poor way to start a relationship. Someone should have taken the time while developing this to make it run old scripts. I admit that I would not like GG to become a slave to backwards compatibility ala microsoft and DOS at the expense of performance, but TGEA users should be able to leverage the vast lode of resources that have been developed for TGE. I understand why source level changes would require significant work perhaps to port, but everything I was led (or led myself) to believe about the platform when I decided to buy it was that it was like TGE with a better engine under the hood.
I don't want to start with an FPS, or the racing game, just a simple guy walking about that I can build on. I don't need fancy art, and that orc is fine for a player, but can someone please help me get this demo working (just some ideas where to look) or point me to a suitable small demo walk-about script that works in TGEA?
<* Wes *>
I have been having my troubles getting started. Not because I don't know C/C++, though. I was able to set the project up and compile TGEA in a reasonably short time. Before that, I had no problems getting TGE to compile and run.
I am just getting stuck trying to make something simple, a non-FPS starter in script. What keeps biting me is that the sort of things I want to start with were written for TGE. I can run them on TGE, but I keep getting bitten trying to make them run with TGEA.
I posted a question in the thread Book: 3D Game Programming All-in-One (Torque) here: www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=70215, because the demo is the very first one in that book. After a week, not a nibble.
It works fine under TGE. After a lot of effort, I got it to compile and almost run using TGEA, but I am stuck because the server returns an error CR_SERVERFULL, for no apparent reason. If I could get this working, I could use it to add one part at a time until I got what I wanted working, because I would have a fallback. My other option would be to start with the demo shipped with the program and try to reduce it to a simple base, which in this case is some terrain, a player that will move and a camera.
Why wasn't TGEA designed with defaults that allow all these simple TGE scripts to run unmodified? Even if it was filled with default placeholders like the no material material, it should run. Or error during the compile with something meaningful, like it does when it mentions that OpenGL is not available. I was able to find and fix that.
This is really a very poor way to start a relationship. Someone should have taken the time while developing this to make it run old scripts. I admit that I would not like GG to become a slave to backwards compatibility ala microsoft and DOS at the expense of performance, but TGEA users should be able to leverage the vast lode of resources that have been developed for TGE. I understand why source level changes would require significant work perhaps to port, but everything I was led (or led myself) to believe about the platform when I decided to buy it was that it was like TGE with a better engine under the hood.
I don't want to start with an FPS, or the racing game, just a simple guy walking about that I can build on. I don't need fancy art, and that orc is fine for a player, but can someone please help me get this demo working (just some ideas where to look) or point me to a suitable small demo walk-about script that works in TGEA?
<* Wes *>
#2
I am pretty frustrated with the whole mess. There are three books about Torque, all of them based on TGE. Ogre has one book, a lot of game engines have nothing. And with this much third party documentation, GG releases a product called TGEA that won't run the simplest application in one of them? Hello foot, accept thy bullethole with grace and dignity.
12/19/2007 (4:46 pm)
I understand the graphics will be different. But the same script that runs on TGE when run on TGEA gives me a server full error. Shaders is why I wanted to stick with TGEA instead of TGE. But from what I see, TGEA is far from a TGE product upgrade, but rather a somewhat parallel product, and instead of porting, it looks more like rewriting.I am pretty frustrated with the whole mess. There are three books about Torque, all of them based on TGE. Ogre has one book, a lot of game engines have nothing. And with this much third party documentation, GG releases a product called TGEA that won't run the simplest application in one of them? Hello foot, accept thy bullethole with grace and dignity.
#3
TGEA is almost a complete different beast then TGE. Compelely different rendering backends and such.
If your looking for a simple starter kit then trying going with the FPS starter kit that was ported to TGEA. Theres also a raceing kit and others to look at.
12/19/2007 (5:42 pm)
TGEA isnt a upgrade from TGE. TGEA is a seperate product and should be treated as such. Even though alot of things will work fine from TGE to TGEA it shouldnt be assumed all will.TGEA is almost a complete different beast then TGE. Compelely different rendering backends and such.
If your looking for a simple starter kit then trying going with the FPS starter kit that was ported to TGEA. Theres also a raceing kit and others to look at.
#4
01/03/2008 (10:04 am)
Don't be so quick to condemn TGEA. It was my experience that the scripts and examples from 3D Game Programming All-in-One were so full of errors that they are almost completely unusable.
#5
From what I can tell the torque scripting is the same it's the engine code side thats not going to work with the resources built for TGE, opengl and such... and most books are full of errors, but I did like GPGT and I use it all the time with tgea. Now I just wsh there was a book for making good atlas terrain.
01/03/2008 (10:16 am)
Yes, it takes much more time to condemn TGEA. :) (joking btw)From what I can tell the torque scripting is the same it's the engine code side thats not going to work with the resources built for TGE, opengl and such... and most books are full of errors, but I did like GPGT and I use it all the time with tgea. Now I just wsh there was a book for making good atlas terrain.
Torque 3D Owner Marc Dreamora Schaerer
Gayasoft
We didn't have much problem porting different codes and script implementations from TGE and even TGB into TGEA, that were not related to the graphical aspects.