Questions before buying
by Simon Bradley · in Torque Game Engine · 10/03/2008 (6:34 am) · 3 replies
Hi there,
I am a professional programmer developing corporate applications and due to the tedious nature of this work i like to do games in my own time for a bit of fun programming.
My first attempt at a game was done in c++ with the dx api.
After a while i realised it would take till the end of time so i then went for Dark Basic Pro. It was ok but i spent most of my time developing functions for handling the things that it did not do to my satisfaction.
So I'm looking for something that might actually allow me to build a full game in my spare time and thats how i came across this website.
So i have a few questions:
1) Can i import a model from Lightwave or even little old Milkshape with a full rig and uv texturing?
2) What is the scope of the collision detection? e.g. could i do a sliding sphere over a moving mesh.
3) Can i have axis independent, gimble lock free rotation?
4) Will i need to handle timing myself? i.e. if the frame rate drops will i need to control my motion values accordingly.
5) If i decide i don't like the way the engine implements any of the above things is it possible to add my own code to handle it instead?
Sorry if any if these questions seem silly but i have no experience of a proper game engine.
What i really want is to enjoy the artistic side a lot more than i have been able to in the past and spend a lot less time coding or flicking through math and physics books. Any comments would be much appreciated chaps.
I am a professional programmer developing corporate applications and due to the tedious nature of this work i like to do games in my own time for a bit of fun programming.
My first attempt at a game was done in c++ with the dx api.
After a while i realised it would take till the end of time so i then went for Dark Basic Pro. It was ok but i spent most of my time developing functions for handling the things that it did not do to my satisfaction.
So I'm looking for something that might actually allow me to build a full game in my spare time and thats how i came across this website.
So i have a few questions:
1) Can i import a model from Lightwave or even little old Milkshape with a full rig and uv texturing?
2) What is the scope of the collision detection? e.g. could i do a sliding sphere over a moving mesh.
3) Can i have axis independent, gimble lock free rotation?
4) Will i need to handle timing myself? i.e. if the frame rate drops will i need to control my motion values accordingly.
5) If i decide i don't like the way the engine implements any of the above things is it possible to add my own code to handle it instead?
Sorry if any if these questions seem silly but i have no experience of a proper game engine.
What i really want is to enjoy the artistic side a lot more than i have been able to in the past and spend a lot less time coding or flicking through math and physics books. Any comments would be much appreciated chaps.
#2
I came from a situation very similar to yours, it appears. I tried writing my own engine on the DX SDK, and after a few months of hard work I had some basic pieces that looked like a Sega Genesis game. Torque will give you a huge leap forward in terms of functionality, but you seem to be going into it with the right attitude. Torque is not a "magic bullet" that can make any game you want with little-to-no effort, but it will save you years of your own time in functionality that you don't need to write yourself, which is where you would be without it.
I highly recommend the two books by Edward Maurina, they can be purchased from the GG store.
10/03/2008 (8:07 am)
Quote:4) Will i need to handle timing myself? i.e. if the frame rate drops will i need to control my motion values accordingly.Torque handles timing for you at an engine level using a "Tick" system where each object is given instructions to advance itself in time. This will present a smooth user experience without you having to worry about scaling things based on the frame rate.
I came from a situation very similar to yours, it appears. I tried writing my own engine on the DX SDK, and after a few months of hard work I had some basic pieces that looked like a Sega Genesis game. Torque will give you a huge leap forward in terms of functionality, but you seem to be going into it with the right attitude. Torque is not a "magic bullet" that can make any game you want with little-to-no effort, but it will save you years of your own time in functionality that you don't need to write yourself, which is where you would be without it.
I highly recommend the two books by Edward Maurina, they can be purchased from the GG store.
#3
I'm going to buy tgea today.
10/09/2008 (3:39 am)
Thanks for the responses chaps, this sounds like what I need.I'm going to buy tgea today.
Associate David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake
There is a LW exporter from gnometech.com and a Milkshape exporter that ships with the engine. You can get them from the Artists page as well so that you can test them and load models into the demo version of TGE. You will have to make sure your rig is setup correctly. The best documentation for setting up a correct rig is for Max and in the Artist's section, though the Gnometech site also has example models so that you can see demo rigs. You will have to unwrap the UV of your model.
2) What is the scope of the collision detection? e.g. could i do a sliding sphere over a moving mesh.
The basic collision detection built into the engine for DTS models is bounding box collision. You can, however, implement polysoup for polygonal level collision.
Yes, Torque uses Quaternions to avoid gimble lock.
I'm not sure on this one.
You get the complete source code to the engine. What you do with it will depend upon your experience with large codebases, and it sounds like you're well up to the challenge.