RTS Kit for Torque3d - not a minor issue for this user
by Norm Koger · in Torque 3D Professional · 05/29/2009 (3:37 pm) · 4 replies
I _really_ need some kind of estimate of when some form of RTS kit will be available for Torque3d. I know it's not first priority at Garagegames, but I still need some kind of estimate. A non-binding guess would do. We all know that no estimate in this industry should ever be binding. If you want to take this off-forum, I would be happy to non disclose - but I need to know.
Since the release of the first beta, I've been playing with Torque3d. The experience has been very interesting, but also very frustrating. It is clear that there is much to like here. But the damned thing is almost impenetrable. One of the reasons is the basic structure of the product - both a strength and a weakness. Because of the break between the scripting and the c++ stuff, it's very difficult to analyse the logic using Microsoft's more advanced IDE tools - something I have come to view as being as natural as breathing. And because of the, er, somewhat limited state of official documentation, it is quite difficult to experiment in any productive way. The fact that searches of these fora constantly lead to areas that are off limits doesn't help. For someone doing a simple fps game, who doesn't mind using the world editor as his primary scenario (level, mission, whatever - pick your term of choice for a datastructure describing a situation) editor, this looks like a way to get something up and running fairly fast - particularly the newer game designer who hasn't had time to grow accustomed to serious debugging tools. Even in its current state, I would not hesitate to recommend Torque3d to an aspiring FPS developer. I plan to turn my high school age sons loose on this thing over the summer.
But: It is NOT easy to debug this stuff.
Those of us who want to do something other than FPS really need a script base resource. In my case, I really need some form of RTS kit - because that (roughly speaking) is what I do.
Am I capable of getting something up and running without an RTS kit? Sure. I've been a professional (as in - making more money at this than my university professors) game developer since Reagan was president. My first commercial game was published in 1987. I've been beating my head against SDK's and API's since before those terms were in common use. I still remember DirectX as a Godsend, and I still have one of the Microsoft produced pre-release DirectX 1.0 SDK CD's with the black/yellow radiation symbol on it. But with Microsoft sliding into the annoying habit of "deprecating" about one major API per year I decided I was ready to let someone else worry about the low level stuff. Torque looked like it had real promise for freeing me from spending 25% my coding time just running uncle Bill's red queen's race - trying to stay ahead of the wave of deprecations. But after two weeks of effort I am wondering if I am not after all better off maintaining my own engines even at that cost. Stripping out DirectMusic in favor of OpenAL and dropping in something like Raknet to replace DirectPlay are starting to look trivial compared to trying to figure out how to manhandle Torque into the basis for some kind of RTS engine - particularly as I have about 90,000 lines of personal C++ library code (counting semicolons only), much of which will have to be integrated somehow. The siren song of potential cross-platform capability keeps me banging away, but... Perhaps 20+ years of game development experience has left me with the wrong skillset for this. Dunno. I am beginning to wonder if I can even answer this question without either better docs (and I have a pretty good idea of how long that would take - so I realize this is a non starter) or sample code in the form of an RTS kit.
So: RTS Kit? And please - either lose the product specific "private forum" structure, or modify your search engine so that it does not return hits in areas unavailable to the searching user. Having half my search engine hits going to dead ends is absolutely infuriating.
Since the release of the first beta, I've been playing with Torque3d. The experience has been very interesting, but also very frustrating. It is clear that there is much to like here. But the damned thing is almost impenetrable. One of the reasons is the basic structure of the product - both a strength and a weakness. Because of the break between the scripting and the c++ stuff, it's very difficult to analyse the logic using Microsoft's more advanced IDE tools - something I have come to view as being as natural as breathing. And because of the, er, somewhat limited state of official documentation, it is quite difficult to experiment in any productive way. The fact that searches of these fora constantly lead to areas that are off limits doesn't help. For someone doing a simple fps game, who doesn't mind using the world editor as his primary scenario (level, mission, whatever - pick your term of choice for a datastructure describing a situation) editor, this looks like a way to get something up and running fairly fast - particularly the newer game designer who hasn't had time to grow accustomed to serious debugging tools. Even in its current state, I would not hesitate to recommend Torque3d to an aspiring FPS developer. I plan to turn my high school age sons loose on this thing over the summer.
But: It is NOT easy to debug this stuff.
Those of us who want to do something other than FPS really need a script base resource. In my case, I really need some form of RTS kit - because that (roughly speaking) is what I do.
Am I capable of getting something up and running without an RTS kit? Sure. I've been a professional (as in - making more money at this than my university professors) game developer since Reagan was president. My first commercial game was published in 1987. I've been beating my head against SDK's and API's since before those terms were in common use. I still remember DirectX as a Godsend, and I still have one of the Microsoft produced pre-release DirectX 1.0 SDK CD's with the black/yellow radiation symbol on it. But with Microsoft sliding into the annoying habit of "deprecating" about one major API per year I decided I was ready to let someone else worry about the low level stuff. Torque looked like it had real promise for freeing me from spending 25% my coding time just running uncle Bill's red queen's race - trying to stay ahead of the wave of deprecations. But after two weeks of effort I am wondering if I am not after all better off maintaining my own engines even at that cost. Stripping out DirectMusic in favor of OpenAL and dropping in something like Raknet to replace DirectPlay are starting to look trivial compared to trying to figure out how to manhandle Torque into the basis for some kind of RTS engine - particularly as I have about 90,000 lines of personal C++ library code (counting semicolons only), much of which will have to be integrated somehow. The siren song of potential cross-platform capability keeps me banging away, but... Perhaps 20+ years of game development experience has left me with the wrong skillset for this. Dunno. I am beginning to wonder if I can even answer this question without either better docs (and I have a pretty good idea of how long that would take - so I realize this is a non starter) or sample code in the form of an RTS kit.
So: RTS Kit? And please - either lose the product specific "private forum" structure, or modify your search engine so that it does not return hits in areas unavailable to the searching user. Having half my search engine hits going to dead ends is absolutely infuriating.
About the author
Professional game designer since 1987, with 11 mainstream titles released over the years. M.S. Physics. Software developer for SSI, TalonSoft, and now Storm Eagle Studios.
#2
>...what makes you think the RTS Kit is going to get an upgrade at all?
A search of these fora/forums. Specifically: www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/93005/1#comment-627967
>...have you looked at Torison [sic] yet?
I've been using Torsion. It's the only reason I haven't thrown in the towel completely.
>You realize that 90% of your above post is purely rant, and could be removed in favor of something much more constructive?
Indeed. The bandwidth required to distribute the post might well be enough to melt the polar ice caps - or not. Even a cursory reading of the "rant" should indicate that I am giving consideration to just what is constructive right now.
This is a serious issue. I am not playing at this. And I realize that a "rant" is a good way to get attention from folks who have the power to address the issue. Q: How do I know this? A: Experience in supporting actual customers of actual commercial products.
05/29/2009 (4:20 pm)
<sigh>>...what makes you think the RTS Kit is going to get an upgrade at all?
A search of these fora/forums. Specifically: www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/93005/1#comment-627967
>...have you looked at Torison [sic] yet?
I've been using Torsion. It's the only reason I haven't thrown in the towel completely.
>You realize that 90% of your above post is purely rant, and could be removed in favor of something much more constructive?
Indeed. The bandwidth required to distribute the post might well be enough to melt the polar ice caps - or not. Even a cursory reading of the "rant" should indicate that I am giving consideration to just what is constructive right now.
This is a serious issue. I am not playing at this. And I realize that a "rant" is a good way to get attention from folks who have the power to address the issue. Q: How do I know this? A: Experience in supporting actual customers of actual commercial products.
#3
05/29/2009 (4:46 pm)
Was the RTS kit even developed internally? But I agree that we need documentation and resources that can speed up the process of learning how to make big departures from the example FPS game. 
#4
Not saying either way, but a plan is not a promise (a very big distinction as you definitely know) and Mich also mentioned that these simply are the ones talked about in the office. Right now we're focused on getting Torque 3D released, more specifically working towards a Beta 3 release... The Racing kit has been talked about in a bit more detail (recently Brett posted roughly about the status on this and when you can possibly look for it), beyond that we don't really have much to say about any other kit at the moment.
You have some very fair and good comments, though I personally would have to completely disagree with your statement:
A rant is often the easiest way to get dismissed as someone simply wanting to rant about something and/or vent frustration.
It seems like you may have some really good feedback on what you expected Torque to be and what it could be to help you but all I got out of your post was it needs better docs or an RTS Kit... definitely no new revelation (as I'm sure you can guess) :)
Mich is indeed working heavily on the docs and you should see some updates from him soon, he recently got back from vacation where he got married, so the status beyond his initial doc release has been stunted (for completely valid reasons we can agree). You probably have some very solid feedback that could help him, on what docs would be most useful for you (not in context to an RTS Kit) as well as to us on how Torque could cater to you better as an engine and with tools.
05/29/2009 (9:43 pm)
Quote:We are also planning for the following:
*Racing
*RTS
*RPG
I'm sure there will be more, but those are the ones most discussed in the office.
Not saying either way, but a plan is not a promise (a very big distinction as you definitely know) and Mich also mentioned that these simply are the ones talked about in the office. Right now we're focused on getting Torque 3D released, more specifically working towards a Beta 3 release... The Racing kit has been talked about in a bit more detail (recently Brett posted roughly about the status on this and when you can possibly look for it), beyond that we don't really have much to say about any other kit at the moment.
You have some very fair and good comments, though I personally would have to completely disagree with your statement:
Quote:And I realize that a "rant" is a good way to get attention from folks who have the power to address the issue.
A rant is often the easiest way to get dismissed as someone simply wanting to rant about something and/or vent frustration.
It seems like you may have some really good feedback on what you expected Torque to be and what it could be to help you but all I got out of your post was it needs better docs or an RTS Kit... definitely no new revelation (as I'm sure you can guess) :)
Mich is indeed working heavily on the docs and you should see some updates from him soon, he recently got back from vacation where he got married, so the status beyond his initial doc release has been stunted (for completely valid reasons we can agree). You probably have some very solid feedback that could help him, on what docs would be most useful for you (not in context to an RTS Kit) as well as to us on how Torque could cater to you better as an engine and with tools.
Torque 3D Owner Tim Dix (Raverix)
I do agree that the search engine should not return links to items you don't have access to, or at the very least, let you know what access you need from the search results so you don't click on links that won't let you in.
As for your difficulty in debugging, have you looked at Torison yet? Wonderful for torque script debugging, coupled with Visual Studio for debugging your C++ code should give you all the tools you need. Did you have a specific problem with these?
Edit: You realize that 90% of your above post is purely rant, and could be removed in favor of something much more constructive?