On The Fence

#1 I'd say you have just as much chance getting noticed by anyone if you're using another engine. Sure it's disheartening to hear about GG ripping all of the TGE/TGEA games off their site, and blatantly ignoring TGE/TGEA games (other than their own) for IA, but who's to say the next publisher won't do the same? I'd say go ahead and finish your game (if you can ge the tracked vehicle code working somehow) and take your chances. The game looks pretty nice, and is different in style than most TGE/TGEA games. If GG treats you the same way we've seen and heard of them treating others, then just tell them where to stick it. For all we know, the stories we hear could be the minority...

#2 BTW...how is the tracked vehicle code not working? I remember that being a kit one could purchase years ago, but never knew it had been added to the engine. Do you have a demo we can check out, so maybe someone can assist you with your problem?

#3 All I will say is don't waste your time with the CSK...

I'm actually not too concerned with GG/IA, I'm just focused on making a fun game. After that we'll see what happens.

#4 I'm not sure if there is any other engine out there that will have working tracked vehicles out of the box for you. Either way, your going to have to do some work to get things working on your own.

#5

Quote:Sure it's disheartening to hear about GG ripping all of the TGE/TGEA games off their site, and blatantly ignoring TGE/TGEA games (other than their own) for IA, but who's to say the next publisher won't do the same? ... If GG treats you the same way we've seen and heard of them treating others, then just tell them where to stick it.

Where do people get off saying this kind of crap? If you don't have anything constructive to add to the conversation, just don't post.

Quote:From what I have read on this forum, it would seem that GG has little to no interest in helping promote indie games developed with GG's software.

What would you like them to do? Advertise your game on their website?

www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/16105
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/15819
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/15757
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/15547
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/15462
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/15445
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/15383
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/15217
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/15023
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/15004
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/14873
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/14729

Unfortunately the "Made with Torque" page was one of the pages that was not taken over to the new site, but it is returning (with a bang no doubt!).

I am sure that GG would be interested in hearing other people's thoughts on how they can promote games made with Torque better. However, the majority of your game advertising/distribution is up to you or your publisher.

With regards to the problem that you have with your vehicle code, have you tried to get help from developers on this forum? I suggest that you create a thread explaining the details of the problem you have and look for a resolution.

#6 Yeah, you're just spreading FUD. I wouldn't expect GG to foot the bill for your advertisements, but they've done a great job exploring the games made with TGE/A. I don't blame them for not blessing every project as soon as they start, because a lot of projects don't continue to completion. Why are they going to take time away from developing T3D to bless a game that may not even get made?

They have a good approach now, IMO, and they're doing more than I would expect of them.

#7 I share your disappointment with the TGEA 1.8 - mostly on the front of Documentation and the problems that were happening with the TDN, I came on just as these problems started from what I understand so it seemed a lot more frustrating to me.

I'm also jumping to Unity3d though, for different reasons such as being able to export native 3d studio max buildings into my game with no questions asked. Torque exporters limitation of 8 details per mesh kills us, and Torques constructor application is buggy too. We want to use 3d studio max for its job, drawing shapes and we want our game engine to do its job, draw what we want! If the poly count is too high, building is too complex we should be able to draw it anyway and resolve the problem our own way.

Chris

ps: We are nowhere near the 80% mark like you so its much easier for me to say this, we have zones with spawning fighting server side npcs and path finding, player accounts and authentication, just enough to test out Torque which runs like a champ 100% of the time minus the show stopper problem of not being able to export our structures

#8 @ Chris Given

I use 3ds max to Export my buildings to constructor with now problem.
Been doing it for months and months now. Im Using the exporter written by Ryan Mounts

#9 @Chris Given:

You can export your DTS with no collision meshes, and turn on polysoup which will use the actual geometry for collision.

#10 Can one of you send me the 3ds max exporter you are using?


termls1@gmail.com , 3ds 2009


Thanks!

#11 This is the Link to Ryans Blog
Thats is for exporting difs straight out of 3dsmax .

But what Jaimi is saying is also true. You can just export with no collision meshes as a DTS,
and turn POLYSOUP on. And instantly you have collision.

#12 @ Phillip OShea - "With regards to the problem that you have with your vehicle code, have you tried to get help from developers on this forum? I suggest that you create a thread explaining the details of the problem you have and look for a resolution."

-- If that would have worked I wouldn't have created this thread. Just give me one TGEA game that successfully uses tanks? And keep in mind that I need realistic tanks.

@Chris Cain - "Yeah, you're just spreading FUD. I wouldn't expect GG to foot the bill for your advertisements, but they've done a great job exploring the games made with TGE/A. I don't blame them for not blessing every project as soon as they start, because a lot of projects don't continue to completion. Why are they going to take time away from developing T3D to bless a game that may not even get made?"

-- Actually I'm already having great success with "spreading the word" about my game by creatively using other games sites. My problem is with TGEA tech "show stoppers", and that is forcing me to look at other engines.

I am at the conclusion that I am just using the wrong engine for the kind of game I am making.

#13 @GI_JOEJK: Have you looked at the Tank Pack?

www.garagegames.com/products/tankpack

#14 @Jaimi McEntire:

I have had a lot of intense conversations with people who have had some success with porting it over to TGEA. But from what I've heard, the setup is a "hacked" character rig and not a true "tracked" vehicle rig. This posed some issues that kept me from exploring this resource.

Plus I've seen better "tread" vehicle results from other engines...

#15 @GI_JOEJK:

Thinktanks at InstantAction uses TGEA. It's not a realistic tank simulation by any means, but it's an example.

Bottom line, is that your talking about a pretty game specific feature. Your going to have a hard time finding any engine that is going to give you out of the box tanks. Tank simulations aren't one of the more popular genres, and an implementation on them would be pretty game specific.

#16 @J.C. Smith

I am totally willing and able to invest time and money to get this game specific feature. The problem is (as the engineers I work with tell me) is the badly mangled "spaghetti" code in TGEA. In fact, I do not believe that realistic tracked vehicle code is possible in TGEA without re-writing large chunks of the engine. And this is not an option.

Btw, Red Crucible is not a "tank simulation", it will ultimately be a 3rd person "combined arms" war game... http://www.dpl-media.com/OLD_rcm_media.html

#17 GI_JOEJK, sorry, that comment wasn't directed to you. I was talking about Joe when he said that GG ignores everyone's games except for their own. I don't believe that and I think that they do as much as one would expect.

As far as tanks go, I think you're just as well off with TGEA as with any engine. If you feel it isn't up to the task of making a "tank simulation", then you'll find no engine to be capable of such. Almost undoubtedly, you'll have to do approximately the same amount of work for any engine to get tank physics in.

I recommend just getting your programmers to go into the C++ code and trying things out... experimentation with backups is a great way to figure out how to get stuff like this to work how you want it. That's how I worked on the physics for my specialized player class. I basically just hooked up controls how I think it might work, made it do about what I wanted, and then tweaked it from there till I got my end result.

To be honest, the first thing I would try is making animations for a forward animation for each track, and then just hooking that up to make the tracks look like they're moving... and then just simulate maybe 6 invisible wheels to do the physics... then you just make the animations go forward for forward movement, backward for backward movement, left played backward & right played forward for left rotation, and right played backward & left played forward for right rotation.

Something like that is bound to work somehow. I fail to see how it would be too much different in any other engine, though. I'm thinking that you'd end up doing about the same process in any engine as you would with Torque... unless you find a tank simulator engine (in which case, you'd have to add in any other stuff you need, where you'd run into the same problems...)