Is this BETA1.0 the one that presented on GDC?

#21 Just as a FYI to you guys who think that shit is being held out. Trust me it isn't. I am not an employee, just a contractor who got brought in to make a pretty looking demo (the Undercity) and I can quite honestly say a few things here:

1) Trust me when I say that the entire T3D team is putting in crazy hours. There are plenty of times I have talked with someone at GG @ 2am via IM about a bug, issue or something to tweak. In fact I had a decent coversation with Tom this afternoon about lighting and a few items related to it in SVN (and how it pertains to the demo level I created). To be honest I was surprised Tom was on and working (hell I was only working because my kid was napping) but there he was. Anyway the point is that they are working crazy hard to deliver a solid engine and a good beta experiance for you guys and keep in mind it is only Beta1. There are more bells to be added and whistles to be tuned.

2) You guys were not lead astray with what was in Beta 1. Like Tom said its pretty much everything that was done and ready on Thursday.

3) To put the whole "South Seas Demo" to rest, it's a special creation the Sickhead Games team on their own on their own dime and on their own time to further show off the work that they have done in Torque3D. While it is a fantasic demo and I would love to have access to it (its not even in SVN in case you guys are wondering if its being held back) I don't. But that doesn't mean that there aren't a bunch of great other demos that GarageGames had created that are just as useful. In the mean-time to help flow some information around I long ago created a thread called The Inner Workings of the Undercity which outlines at least what went into the creation of one of the demos.

4) With regards to performance, that's part of what the beta is all about, not just getting your help on bug submissions and feedback but finding out how to better optimize the engine to ensure that it can hit a wide range of systems and allow for the engine to robustly ramp its feature set up as it goes. I have had a chance to see the performance from GDC to now and I can honestly say that a lot of effort has gone on even in these few short weeks to make it perform better (ie 10x faster at least).


So smile, nod and continue to poke at T3D with a pointy stick. I know everyone working on it wants to create a fantastic product that will be thoroughly enjoyed and turn the world on its head with its attitde of Torque. So do not think that you are being led astray (trust me if you were I wouldn't be posting this).

#22 I have got answers of my questions from all of u, thanks!
The purpose of this thread is just to remind guys from GG that whether they throw out a wrong version of T3D beta build, and need to bring us an right one:)
Now i'm sure that what we got is just what GG want us to get, so there's no doubt.

Good Product Really!!We'll all take best effort to make it a wonderful engine.

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Just stop this topic, do something really necessary to T3D, go back work guys, thank u all for this discussion:)
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#23 @Logan Foster: I am wondering, do you use the same version exec as we have? Or do you have some older version what contains a more stable version of JUST the features that you need? If T3D development is anything like other projects I had worked on, many parts are being constructed separately and T3D was only a name until this first beta (or internal alpha stage).

Also that Undercity looks like some very awesome level design!

#24 To All you T3D enthusiasts and especially the developers working on this. I'd like to say two things....
Firstly: As I'm a developer myself and I know what hard hours people work to roll out a product. One thing that GG should have done instead of rolling out the Beta because every Tom Dick Bill and Harry wanted it they should have pulled back on the rollout date and put it forward on a different date. This allows the developers to fine tune those little things that don't work and allow people to get into the engine, to test out the tutorials and what not and then give feedback on smaller things that don't work. So considering all the people working on this engine got it out for everyone else screaming everyone should thank their lucky stars they did.

However....on a second note yes it is annoying too many things aren't working especially some main things that have been addressed...like unable to bring in your own terrain with masking, unable to bring in your own foliage through the replicator, roads not working correctly etc etc. However again this boils down to my first point where the guys at GG shouldn't have released it when they did. It should have been rolled back.

All in all the engine is brilliant and with time and of course many late hours on the developers part it will become a very robust engine that people should be proud of and proud to use.

So everyone...take a deep breath, think of the poor developers working on this day and night for you and think your lucky stars you have got a great engine! In the meantime apart from debugging this Beta why not create assets, sounds, etc etc to go into it. Take your mind off it for a while while things get tweaked and better!

Regards
Shez

#25 @Huan Li: Discussions such as this one allow fellow like minded individuals a chance to share opinions and ideas not truly related to any 'set' subject or question. Even with your original questions essentially answered early on, many other people have had a chance to voice personal views and opinions, and receive counterpoints to such. That is a good thing!

#26 Perhaps they should have had some type of application process for the beta. Weed out the people who dont understand the difference between beta and feature complete versions of code...

In actuality most people are plotting along just fine, reporting problems as they are found. So from my point of view the beta program is doing great. A greater number of names I know from the T3D private forums are NOT complaining about anything not working correctly.

#27 I think that much of this is that we as GG product owners have (dispite the odd hiccup) been subjected to fantastic products, TGE and TGB for example, and we expect the same for T3D, the problem is its still beta and the product is showing potential only. I'm sure that if things dont work perfectly then the GG crew and the other who are working on this will be at least equally as disapointed as we are likely to be.

I'm also fairly confident that even after release some of the next updates over the comming year will provide even more shiney things.

As far as the demos are concerned, i'd love for sickhead to package up their demo somehow for release just to let us see what IS possible, i'd love to run round that undercity first person too, maybe they will be released as demos when the final release is ready, who knows :)

#28 @Richard and Shez: I was able to import my own terrains with and without masking, using the heightmap and opacity maps generated by Grome. It definately does work. I was also able to get ShapeReplicators working (didn't try foliage replicators) though they didn't work until I reloaded the map. I didn't see them at all the first time, reloaded the map and they were there. So it does, *sort of* work.

#29 @Caypso

I actually use whatever they have available for me in SVN. Due to the constant refining and updating of features its pretty much impossible to use an old EXE without paying the price. So in short I have used the same tools you guys have in the Beta and continue to use the new tools that you guys will eventually see released (but only because I need it to do contract work for GG).

One small benefit of this is I do get a chance to throw feedback at the T3D team with regards to bugs, issues or things to potentially improve. So its pretty much my contribution to the beta and ensuring T3D is awesome.

Thanks for the level comments.

#30 Too lazy to read every single post but... the beta was released 3 days ago (or something). It's Sunday... yesterday (Saturday (hint: week-end (hint2: people don't usually work on week-ends))) people from GG/associates were answering posts with bug reports... today (Sunday (hint: still week-end)), same thing, and I see some posts at stuff like 6am...

You really think that's usual from any kind of company? That you just go get any beta software and it instantly works, and everybody is just waiting in front of their monitor for you to post a bug report and have it fixed in 5 minutes?

So ok, maybe you expected more from the beta, but after all it's a beta... If you are annoyed by bugs, try to help and fix them. From what I see here, it's not like GG is not doing their best (and certainly more than they are supposed to do). If you didn't want this to happen, you could have waited for the final release...

#31 Re: Foliage replicators, I definitely suggest if you want full scene foliage or the like, go look at the GroundCover threads here in the T3D forum and use that *instead* of foliage replicators (except possibly for very specific needs in small areas) as it's quite a bit more suited to doing large scale scene foliage. It's also not too hard to hook it up so that certain layers in the GroundCover will be placed based on terrain materials.

#32 We used the GroundCover system for Lore Aftermath on InstantAction and I honestly have to say that it kicks the crap out of the old crappy FX Foliage Replicator system from TGE. Groundcover is far more robust, user-friendly and optimal for a wide range of user needs.