TGEA new update terrain system

#1 If GG can implant half of what they listed for it then GG's solution will be better. You will be able to able to achive a much higher texture resolution on GG's solution then Dekker's solution that has a fixed texture resolution. Not to mention with GG's solution theres no "issues" surrounding its use. Where Dekker's solution is covered in alot of secreticy and potential illegal use.

Me personaly I am just waiting for GG's solution as it does everything Dekker's does and more. And on top of that it doesnt cost me $900 to $2k to get ahold of.

#2 Dekker Ying's solutino is pretty cool, and it handles paging right off the bat, I'm not sure if GG's will handle paging. I don't have access to the beta, but if I recall the wording correctly it mentioned that the terrain would make it easier for people to build their own paging terrain system. Didn't sound like it was a functional version to me. Probably allows you to line up the terrain and have multiple terrain blocks.

The legality question with Dekker's code though would make me want to wait on the GG version regardless. Would be nothing worse than shipping a product and then having legal issues from some company who he stole the code from, etc. I'm not sure what the deal is with his code, it could be 100% legit. But I was one of the people who he was trading emails with and I was considering purchasing a license from him, but I got scared off by what appeared to be shadiness, I also received one of the do not tell anyone you have this, do not mention it emails from him, but he didn't ask for an NDA, in fact he asked me what an NDA was. So something appeared amiss.

Having played with his demo, I can say, whoever wrote the code (likely Dekker) was a good programmer and did a solid job on it. If it weren't for possible legal hurdles I'd recommend it to anyone. It's solid.

#3 Yes, Dekkers code is very solid. well programmed and built. right now i am talking to the owner of the code right now, believe it or not. not going to mention any names at the moment. but the code is being stripped down and attempted to be recompiled. so far with many errors. but fixing it one by one. but either way looking at Dekkers version. it seems to be very promissing. i hope GG will either add it to there codebase. or create something at least similar to it.

#4 Nice. Yeah it definitely was well written. It sounds to me like the legal issues may have been worked out. If that is the case, then its a great solution.

#5 Grome Editor will be available with support for Torque Game Engine Advanced.
Follow this link for the GDC official press release.

#6 I saw this, but honestly other than paging of terrain, which Im sure is one of GG goals(how could it not be), Im just wondering why anyone would want to pay any money for this unless there are things visually that I'm not seeing in these pics. For instance T Squared is a talented man from what Ive seen in the forums(as are many other posting in this thread), and there are shaders, that do similar things like the work of Ves, and the stuff Ive added to it, besides that there are many things that make me wonder about the legalities of Dekkers code, and releasing it. But for him there is nothing that i think can be done where he lives in a different county(Im assuming because of the foreign characters on his page), i would wait until GG releases the next update and see what need to be added, with all the talent around here I'm sure the proper adjustments can be made to make everyone happy without having to worry about legal issues;)

I think we should all wait, but that is just my opinion:)

#7 You can't legally own any code produced in ANY commercially licensed game engine unless it's seperate from the rest of the engine which the EULA covers. I haven't seen the above mentioned code, but it being seperate from the rest of Torque sounds very unlikely.

Looking forward to GG's addition, btw. Sounds nice if it turns out to be what was planned.

#8 I've looked at the code. The code was written seperate from the engine, with only very few engine code modification was done to produce this system. I believe, he had registered the code, which was apart from the TGEA engine, to his name.

#9 Woot. got the code to finally compile properly and working :)

#10 I wouldn't recommend using any of Dekker's code until the final legality of it is known.

#11 Is there a planned date for the next version's release ?(sorry if I missed it somewhere)
....I hope we get the release before Q3 of 2008.

P.S. Grome looks nice but $300Euro for a TGEA-terrain editor is a bit "off kilter".
Had I the need for Grome by itself, I would not have to say such a thing.

#12 @Stephan Goebels: wow it seems really like the perfect editor i was hoping to see around... anyway I have to say that also in my opinion the price of $300 is a bit too much... at least for a indie...
I think with an indie license at the price of $100 you can more than compansate the lower price with the big increase of sales O think you would obtain...

JoZ :)

#13 I like Dekkers code. the terrain is a mix of the legacy terrain and atlas. more like legacy with the in game editor, and like atlas with clipmapping.

#14 Ive never seen Dekker's terrain system before for TGEA? does look impressive :)

As for both Grome Standard & Pro, certainly worth the money - what you have to remember your getting similar usability of Torques Legacy editor but with the power of Atlas in realtime.

So unlike some terrain programs, you can go in, adjust and edit with brushes both the heightmap and opacity masks, but also use procedural and various erosion filters.

It even supports Collada files as default for object placement, so you could position your buildings or content, generate a lightmap before even going into Atlas, and then later potentially convert Gromes instance output to something suitable to copy into a Torque mission file.

#15 Dekkers code allows you to do EVERYTHING real time, just like legacy. which i like a lot.

#16 I thought people were gonna release the source for his Terrain System? Or am I wrong?

#17 Adam, I thought that as well and I'm still waiting too....

#18 I think they changed their mind(s)...as to avoid any legalities that may/could occur and also to protect the interests of the few who did pay $.

Either way...lol...1 guy has made such a ruckus AND a nice terrain package.
I hope that the staff of GG has something comparable in the next release.

But...so far there are no terrain-improvement-images or date of release from GG afaik.

So I would jokingly say: Dekker 1 | GG 0

#19 Lol, for every month over GDC end date, add another point for Dekker

#20 Dekker has refunded all money, he owes no one anything anymore, Chris Newman is the registed owner of the code right now. He was going to release it. but GG wants it. They dont want him to release the code as a resource anymore.