Wheres the progress?
by Sam Guffey · in Torque Game Engine · 01/12/2003 (11:47 pm) · 4 replies
I guess Im the type of person that likes to see results and to see where things are going over a period of time. I've looked through the open issues list here and havent seen the changes I really expected to see. I know Tim G is working on the vehicle collision issues but how is that going? I know it might be something that takes time but please keep us informed on the progress. There are other issues that are there that seemingly havent even been looked into. I may be wrong but just by looking at the page I would assume they havent. Im just concerned thats all.
I look over the HEAD change list also but most of it dont make much sense to me in its relevance to the current issue list. Are certain GG members/assosiates assigned to certain files they can work with? Dont get me wrong but it would seem as they would want to tackle to big stuff first before worrying weather or not the Texture Manager printed console messages if the texture wasnt present.
Sam
I look over the HEAD change list also but most of it dont make much sense to me in its relevance to the current issue list. Are certain GG members/assosiates assigned to certain files they can work with? Dont get me wrong but it would seem as they would want to tackle to big stuff first before worrying weather or not the Texture Manager printed console messages if the texture wasnt present.
Sam
About the author
#2
Torque is _mostly_ complete. There's stuff like weather and the terrain manager to (maybe) add, but it's a working, stable engine. At this point in its life cycle, we should be seeing slow, incremental updates, not massive growth - not to say growth is bad, but Torque is in many ways feature complete. The adding of many features is best left to the individual developer, because those features would otherwise introduce unnecessary complexity and cruft to the code.
Also... Don't forget that the GG people are doing lots of other stuff, beyond just coding. For instance, they recently were involved in the IGC.
Still, it's good to see you're paying attention to the change logs and such. There is probably a ways for the community feedback aspect of this site to go, but I'm satisfied with it...
01/13/2003 (12:19 pm)
And...Torque is _mostly_ complete. There's stuff like weather and the terrain manager to (maybe) add, but it's a working, stable engine. At this point in its life cycle, we should be seeing slow, incremental updates, not massive growth - not to say growth is bad, but Torque is in many ways feature complete. The adding of many features is best left to the individual developer, because those features would otherwise introduce unnecessary complexity and cruft to the code.
Also... Don't forget that the GG people are doing lots of other stuff, beyond just coding. For instance, they recently were involved in the IGC.
Still, it's good to see you're paying attention to the change logs and such. There is probably a ways for the community feedback aspect of this site to go, but I'm satisfied with it...
#3
I think that the "progress" I would like to see are in the tools for the most part. Good stable feature complete dts exporters for all mainstream viable packages.
A more feature complete interior rendering engine that supports some of the more glaring basic functionality like working doors, transparentcy, etc. Torque is way behind even HL in the interiors because Tribes2 was focused on exterior game play.
01/13/2003 (5:47 pm)
Ben has a point, there is already alot of Tribes2 cruft in the code that is not applicable to lots of peoples projects.I think that the "progress" I would like to see are in the tools for the most part. Good stable feature complete dts exporters for all mainstream viable packages.
A more feature complete interior rendering engine that supports some of the more glaring basic functionality like working doors, transparentcy, etc. Torque is way behind even HL in the interiors because Tribes2 was focused on exterior game play.
#4
Sam
01/14/2003 (10:34 am)
Im not at all asking for features, I think as it stands its all ok for most games. There is an issue list for each milestone and its this list I'm inquiring about. All Im really saying is that in the head update log I dont see any fixes for the current issue list yet. Version 1.2's release date is based on version 1.1.2 and HEAD. So if the issue list stays as is, so does the version. I assume.Sam
Torque Owner Steve Baines
Default Studio Name
I think that the fact the developers are fixing the 'little things' is actually a very good thing, since the 'big things' are built on top of them.
In programming generally, people are often so keen to work on cutting edge 'cool' stuff that they can't be bothered to fix the known bugs in the 'little stuff'.
The problem is that whilst each of the little bugs may in itself be fairly inconsequential, when you've got a whole load of them they tend to interact in horrible ways and cause much bigger problems which, because they are the result of several different little mistakes, can be a nightmare to track down and are a huge waster of time and effort.
So yes, it's great to see new whizzy features, but personally I'd rather have a rock-solid system to work with than one that's slightly more advanced in terms of its feature list, but where half of it doesn't work properly.
The fact that the little things _are_ being fixed, even though they don't add to the length of the feature list, tells me that the developers are commited to keeping Torque as a genuininely useful engine.
Cheers - Steve Baines