Why WAS Torque3D documentation so poor?

#281 Well, it's been quite a while since this thread (the latest in a long line of threads requesting, demanding, pleading for, and offering money to get docs) was started. While the one and only set of docs that were released are better than not having docs at all, I can't help but feel that the game we put out would have been so much better if we had actually had the tools necessary to complete it with an engine product that sells for $1000.

It's been a long road of hope, disappointment, excitement, disappointment, anticipation, joy, disappointment, and a few broken commitments from the higher ups at GG. My instructors never heard from GG past the initial contact, and even went as far to message Eric several times after, with no results. I messaged Eric and received a promise of reply from Mich, and got nothing afterwards. After another couple of months I'm rudely rebuffed here for suggesting unpaid interns.

So much for the desire to win back my school and fellow students. I'm posting this to let those at GG know that there are ramifications to your actions. Out team is switching over to Unity, free or Pro, it will be worth it just for the docs and tutorials. Our school is now starting to move away from Torque and is heavily considering Unity and possibly UDK, although Unity is winning.

I regret being forced by my institution to purchase this software, and I can only hope that within six months, all new students will be running an engine that at least cares enough about existing customers to put out the materials that allow them to use it effectively.

Sorry Eric, sorry Mich, and sorry to the Torque fanboys (believe it or not, I used to be one here at the school. I fought Unity with everything I had.), but my class, my fellow designers, and I deserve better than this.

#282 @Tom - I understand where you are coming from. Torque/GarageGames has been a major disappointment. I'm giving the 1.1 release a chance and if it doesn't absolutely blow my socks off, I'm moving on to Unity. Unity is already a great product and it gets better and better.

#283 @Tom - I think there may be a communication issue regarding contact with your instructor. The last e-mail I have is on March 15th where I asked your instructor if they were available for the following week at 2:00. I didn't get a reply. I then sent you an e-mail on the 24th letting you know that I hadn't heard back. I don't have any other e-mails from your instructor. I'd still be willing to talk with him.

Is there a broken promise that I made that you can point to? I'd like to do my best to fix it if so.

I will check in with Mich on why he didn't contact you.

I'm not sure about the unpaid internship issue. We simply aren't allowed to have them anymore. It's a mandate from HR that I can't go against.

#284

Quote:I'd still be willing to talk with him.

@Eric - I can't speak for others, but I believe there are others that feel the same way I do. Enough talk. We have been promised the world from GarageGames time and time again with nothing to show for it. I personally don't believe a thing that is said by GarageGames. I am optimistic that we will get COMPLETE documentation and STABILITY with the 1.1 release.

Please don't let us down. I don't want to believe I wasted over $2000 on garbage.

#285 I have personally known 29 people to purchase T3Dpro that have left it behind to use Unity or UDK or some other engine.

The latest person's remarks from a few minutes ago..

Quote:
[21:28] ANONYMOUS: hi eb, you that are a experient user of torque 3d, do you know about the license limitations, what i can do with a torque3d license if i'm not going to use it anymore? i gave up trying to learn it :(
[00:41] eb: it is a non-transferable license..
[00:41] eb: what part of it made you give up ? or was it just not worth your time ?
[00:42] ANONYMOUS: too difficult without a proper documentation, or code examples, i feel like i need to figure out everything alone reading crude code from the source
[00:43] ANONYMOUS: i just got 1 week with unit3d for example, and i'm doing what i couldn't do for months
[00:44] eb: I understand -ANONYMOUS-
[00:44] eb: it is like a giant locked box of tricks when without docs
[00:44] ANONYMOUS: yes, and they never do the documentation, i think it may be a obstacle for their 250$ hourly rate, and $9900 initial trainning fees
[00:45] eb: rofl! ..you may be right!

Anyone not doing the math:
That is $29,000 worth of unhappy licensees that I know personally. In fact..I now know NO ONE else, on a personal level, that is using T3D.

//Edit: I have to add this in so my position and points are clear:
..imo, it's not about anything besides the fact that those people will carry a bad-word-of-mouth against torque and that does nothing to restore any reputation to the company. Also, those people will not be making games with T3D which means 'no splash screens being seen by the public', which in turn, could have led to more licensees. It's a small marble that rolls into a huge-beneficial-boulder, but without that marble in place...that system fails.

#286 I am certainly not happy with how my T3D experience has gone.

Make it at least $30,000 worth of unhappy licensees.

I have owned torque since 1.52, I guess. I bought TGEA but never
used it. I was just getting back into things when the first T3D beta
came out. I bought into all the hype about a new team with new vision
and new financial backing and a new dedicated documents writer, and a lot more programmers and a lot more features and and and.....

Certainly T3D's interface is much better and it has a hell of a lot of
great features. Can't say you haven't delivered on that.

But, all those features are no good to me, personally, without documentation and no bugs. I can certainly say you have not delivered on that.

Personally, I don't care why the documentation is incomplete. I don't care that it is "better than it used to be" (what kind of ridiculous endorsement is that, anyhow? "Our old documentation completely sucked, and this only sucks because it is incomplete so you should be happy!!??!")

I only know I was promised the "best documented engine in the industry" when I bought T3D and like a naive fool, I believed that the person making said promises had the support of the torque team to back up his promises. I think I would have been better off
if I never read any of the flowery posts made by various employees of Torque about how great it would eventually be. I should have made my purchase decision on what existed, not what was scheduled.

I am going to try Unity myself, while I wait for T3D to be "doc complete". I no longer care about the approximately 3000 dollars me and another programmer have spent equipping our selves with Torque stuff. Maybe by the time T3D is bug free and doc complete, I won't need it anymore.

I no longer do, or ever will again, trust any promise/feature list/time line/marketing scheme or any thing else that anyone at Torque tells me I will get, until after I see it complete. (all due respect to the many hard working people over there who have never made any claims and not delivered on them).

On that point, I would like to say that there are many great people at Torque always trying to help, and I have nothing but high regard for them. This is solely a rant against (I guess) the corporate decision making process of Torque because somehow, in a way or for a reason I don't understand, the big picture seems never to be handled correctly.

It seems to be the case at Torque where current management always talks about how "it was those other guys who are no longer here who screwed it up" and "we, the new guys are going to make it right". Well, I hope so. But, so far, it hasn't happened. Maybe the 3rd try will be the charm.

I know, I know... "it will all be better now because we, the new guys, have a whole bunch of people working on documents and we have a QA lab and we have this and that....

I hope so, but I ain't gonna hold my breath.

And, for my final unrelated rant: pricing. My friend paid $900 for T3D. He was not a torque or TGEA owner and narrowly missed the first discount window which would have made it $800, I believe. Then we watched as T3D was offered for $500 on a couple of different occasions
for limited time periods. It sure made us feel stupid for being "early adopters". I am sure it was a great thing for people who couldn't afford $1000, but all it did for me was simply reinforce my ever increasing feeling that I had swallowed Torque hook, line and sinker and was being happily reeled in.

Even when/if T3D becomes document complete, stable and essentially bug free, I doubt if I will ever so naively pay for *anything* from this company as I have done so in the past.

I don't expect any reply to this, but with my current decision to try Unity, I thought that the time had come to put my 2 cents into the conversation. With any luck, this post will be taken as an impetus for positive change at Torque, becuase really, I like Torque and never wanted to use Unity, but for the moment I feel like I have no other good choice.

#287 @Steve - Maybe not expecting a reply, but I'd like to provide you with one anyway:

1. I know I did not deliver on my hyped promise of documentation for the engine. I know, even when the name isn't mentioned, that people are referring to me directly. I did not deliver, and should not have made a bold statement without 100% confidence that I could have hit that mark. To you, and anyone else who would seek this, I apologize. I know it disrupted your development career and that is not acceptable

2. "With any luck, this post will be taken as an impetus for postive change..."
Absolutely, I feel more motivated than ever. It's not so much that my ass is on the line for the next documentation delivery. I treat it as the team's reputation.

3. I don't expect anyone to just see my words and have complete faith in them. I'll just keep working with the new team of writers to produce results, and not flowery statements (as you put it).

Going heads down again, a lot has been accomplished since this thread started, but I still have a lot of work to do. Thanks to everyone for the feedback and motivation...I read each post, sometimes two or three times, to make sure the comments burn into my brain.

#288

Quote:My friend paid $900 for T3D. He was not a torque or TGEA owner and narrowly missed the first discount window which would have made it $800, I believe. Then we watched as T3D was offered for $500 on a couple of different occasions for limited time periods. It sure made us feel stupid for being "early adopters". I am sure it was a great thing for people who couldn't afford $1000, but all it did for me was simply reinforce my ever increasing feeling that I had swallowed Torque hook, line and sinker and was being happily reeled in.

This is a good point, especially after hearing the promises Eric made before GDC about changing the focus to one of retention (making existing customers happy) as opposed to the acquisition of new customers.

It still 'seems' to me that more effort is being put into grabbing new customers than in rewarding the early adopters and long time loyal users.
But like others, who haven't jumped ship 'yet', I will wait and see... maybe they will give us early adopters free upgrades through version 2.0 or something... (although I doubt that... they probably don't have records of who is and who isn't an early adopter. I just know that it is very unlikely that I will lay out any more cash for the next paid upgrade. )

And I thought that other promise around gdc time was that no new version would come out without complete documentation? Does that mean that there will be no beta 2, since a beta is still a version, and it doesn't sound like the documentation is going to be complete until 1.1 final?

#289 Well, I do appreciate you taking responsibility for your statements Michael.

But getting back to Torque management, even though your statements may have been over-hyped, I attribute that to the enthusiasm of youth. You should have been given what you realistically needed to do the job, and instead, from my point of view, you were left out to hang. We are being told lately that you now have those resources. I do hope so, and really, not just for myself...but for you too!

I sense that it has been a learning experience for you as your first experience outside of Full Sail, and that is a good thing. For me, however, it is just one more disapointment with Torque going back all the way to 1.5.2. I can not tell you how many times I have felt like I was being told bullshit by Torque people. I could necro literally 100+ threads wherein (as far as I am concerned) users were told either
1. figure it out yourself
2. what do you expect for such a low price?
3. we are working on it, but not done yet
4. that's not our responsibility

As I said, for some reason, I thought that had all changed when Torque got that influx of money and hired a whole bunch of people. It was not like I didn't have my knowledge of Torque's past to influence my decision, but I think partially I was a victim of T3D's new features, specifically how much easier the interface was for me to work with , and the art pipeline. T3D clearly kicks all ass over the older versions, and I certainly can't complain there.

My post was mostly motivated by frustration, as I am sure you can tell.

And it is not just frustration with the documentation.

I cannot lay all of T3D's problems at Michael Perry's feet.

It is how long this whole thing has been going on now as well.

It is how long new features have kept being added and old bugs left in or new ones created along the way.

It is how many add_ons for T3D are now $200 or $500 when $100 used to be an expensive add_on (and yes, i know that is not Torque's fault, but it is still frustrating ).

It is seeing all the users of other torque engines complaining in the other forums, even though I don't own those engines (I know, this is pure emotion on my part ).

It is seeing what I consider to be inappropriate/slow responses to posts in the forums (or no response at all!), because there is no employee who has been given absolute responsibility for that task (as far as I know). There is no official mechanism to ever escalate an issue to the highest levels of management and get an official response. One just has to hope if you complain enough that you will get an answer...or should I say a solution. Anyone can give an answer.

It is the lack of reasonably priced support and or training!

And finally, perhaps, it was the pricing as well. It was a real kick in the nuts to pay $900 for something and feel like you are a valued early adopter and then see it offered for half price. I remember Brett's pages long post on how it would be impossible for Torque to continue if they charged anything less than $1000 for it. (In Torque's defense, i do realize that the game engine world has changed a lot in a year. It has been turned on its ass what with free Unity and whatever UDK's current scheme is.)

Almost every single thing that I have tried to do in T3D, i have had to figure out on my own, via forum posts, searches, or 3rd party books. Even something as simple as knowing what a check box will do when you check it...I have to figure out. I guess if you already know, its self evident, but if you don't, and you can't immediately see what it does, you are lost. And, God help you if that box somehow has a lot of other implications that affect other aspects, such as I experienced with changing the near clipping settings. Since I have never tried Unity, perhaps I am going to find out that it will be the same there, and I will have to come back and post an apology here.

I do recognize/hope that Eric is trying to bring about a lot of changes. I really hope he can do it, and is given the resources he needs to do so. Still, I do not feel that he has addressed all of the issues I have brought up above, and so far his programs have not had (imo) measurable results.

I am no longer willing to sit around and wait for T3D to become what I need it to be. T3D is a great product, if and only if you don't need anything from anyone. If you can sit down and read every line of source and every line of script and understand it, easily, then I would say T3D is great for you.

In the meanwhile, as I said before, even though I recognize that this is not what you could call a happy post, I do hope that anyone who reads it can get beyond my frustration and if they feel any of my complaints are valid, use them to effect positive change.

#290 Reading through 15 pages of comments, I can take away one thing: People here have an enormous respect for each other. If nobody cared, they wouldn't post such heartfelt and lengthy replies.

@Steve and others who feel the same, as a Torque developer, thank you very much. Action is what is required and action is what is happening. I just hope that we can show you that before you give up on us completely.

If it would survive in the mail, I'd send those with a bad taste in their mouth some homemade lemon sorbet, man I love that stuff!

#291 @Phillip - I think a lot of us are waiting to see how 1.1 is. If it is stable and FULLY documented, I'm going to stick around. I really want Torque to succeed as I really think it has a lot of potential. Unfortunately, Unity appears to be managed by some VERY talented and organized people. The gap between Unity3D and Torque3D is growing by the day. I remember looking at Unity and thinking, "How cute. Mac users have a nice little game engine." Now Torque doesn't compare with Unity in features, documentation and stability. I guess it so frustrating to realize that I could have bought a pro Unity license for less than I have wasted on Torque. But, I really believe it is do or die time for Torque and I hope they will deliver. Otherwise it is $$$ down the drain.

#292 Jon, they might. There is always the possibility that things change. I'm new to buying Torque, and I've heard of the legendary horrible docs and stuff but I'm optimistic about it.

I'm also waiting for 1.1, or at least until I can get source to at least play with some features in script. I think Mich is doing a decent job. I'm glad early docs were released and I'm awaiting the next ones.

At the risk of my posts sounding like I'm a Torque fan-boy, I am HOPING for these things. I'm lucky to have other things to do now though, if I wasn't working on other things then I'd probably rather upset too, so I can definitely understand the concern. Just look at it this way, if T3D 1.1 doesn't have good docs, then the binary edition is probably going to be trashed. At least I'd see that as the next move from the decision maker (Eric I think).

Overall I think it's really just up to that. I moved to Torque because I know it is CAPABLE of doing the game I wanna make next, and although the seasoned veterans to these forums will say "that's what we all did", I really don't want to have to dig through source and all these forums to find my functions...really...

Mich, I hope you well, Eric, make the good decisions. I know what developing something is like, and things don't always work out. As a matter of fact, when developing things a lot of promises will be broken, but that's how it goes. I wish you guys well, and although this is coming from a new Torque guy, this is also coming from an at least somewhat experienced game developer: Good Luck, I hope everything goes well. Try not to make too many promises, but do keep us posted. I'd offer to help with docs if I could, but I'm not a very advanced cpp guy and I've got a lot in my plate already. Once again, Good Luck.

#293 Well, after looking around both the Torque forums and the Unity forums I have come to the conclusion: if you want the source code get Torque, if you actually want to complete something get Unity. I am literally 2 hours away from buying Unity 3 pre order and never looking back.

I have yet to see anything from Torque over the last 6-7 years that shows me they want to keep users around. The focus seems like it is only on acquiring them.

So long Torque...

#294 Hey Jon,

I won't take any position here because the thread has already gone OT way too much... just a word of advice: don't put any money in Unity unless you are really positive about it. The Pro has only a few more features but they can be added in your game afterward... first off have a game 90% done. Unity is a different world having different needs and approaches so it can easily become very difficult to manage, all depending on your overall expertise as a software engineer. The pipeline is great but... a lot of the Pro features rely on the artist while in T3D this is made way more transparent to you (speaking of real time lighting). I'm just saying... be careful and cool down before putting any money in it ;)

~Pino

#295 Offtopic -- Get the game play and levels done with Unity free version, purchase Pro version when you are ready to release it. That is my plan anyway.

#296 Thanks for the advice. I'll start with the free version and move up later.

#297 I have played around with Unity free version for some time, some things are easy to do (as are somethings in T3D) other things are impossible without massive engine changes (T3D can be tweeked at source lvl to acomplish the same results) Unity seems a lot easier to prototype single player FPS's or other Single player stuff, purely because of the weight of doccumentation out there.

However I am firmly sticking with T3D, I have been disapointed with the doccumentation but am working my way threw 'The Game ProgrammersGuide to Torque' while this is 1.5 or some other low version of Torque, most of the concepts still hold true and much of the doccumentation, examples etc. still work great. My advice to anyone who is new to T3D is to get this book and study it, some things have changed some things now don't work at all like they did or have been removed but much of this book is a gold mine to understanding Torque in all its incarnations.

---------------------
D.R. Pemberton
www.deadlyassets.com

#298 I agree with David. This book has a lot of information and also the appendices on the disk are great sources to get you started.

I have looked into unity and found out htat I can achieve much better results with T3D (with my limited artistical skills) the I get in Unity.

On the other hand I had to dig throught the T3D source code to get the info I needed, but since I am purely a programmer this was easy for me. At this moment I am playing with T3D for about a year and I have my game logics almost ready and completely to my wish-list.

#299 Thanks Jon for making this thread and for everyone participating. It's critically important to have a transparent line of communication between the developers and consumers. Otherwise nothing would be solved.

TLDR; I have the same concerns that everyone else has here. I have the real life experiences of being screwed over by another company (a real cash grab), which is still felt and do not wish it to happen to anyone else.

I released one game in 2002 with a bunch of other really great guys, it won a game of the year, got a lot of press, I was on TV, it sold terribly (we didn’t make anything) and for some reason we pushed on. We've been working a new game since 2004, through many ups and downs. We were originally using a heavily modified IDTECH2 engine, getting it close to a mix of IDTECH3 and 4 when Half Life 2 and Doom 3 were released; it blew us out of the water. Our CTO found an excellent engine which did everything that we needed. We secured an extended eval and took the engine for a spin, it completely changed the way we had to develop games. The toolset was better than anything we've seen, so we went for it. We dropped $5000 onto the engine. We were all in our early 20s, working 'burger flipping' jobs, all recently got married, all living in basement suites. Then we started to run into issues; poor documentation (only the basics were covered), poor developer/consumer relations and then poor performance when you started to do more complex gameplay code. The developers then packed up and ditched the company, leaving our small community to try and fend for ourselves. Everything fell apart over the course of 2 years. we stayed until the bitter end. It really ended up turning into a cash grab, where we were strung along for as long as possible. Some of the developers tried to sue, but it didn't stick in court.

#300 After spending years of trying to raise capital, fighting with the engine, fighting with even getting a prototype done I dropped everything and decided to start over. I met an artist, and started to work with him to build up a small team of other artists and paid them (through me working a lot of overtime at my full time job) to do the art that I needed. Fast forward to 2.5 years later and last month all my (35) characters were wrapped up and I'm ready to code. I haven't coded in 8 years, and even then I did very little.

I searched a lot of engines, even going back to the IDTECH. Originally I was going to do Torque X, and oh man. Then I heard of Torque 3D and through my various contacts I was able to try out one of the earlier betas. The tools were awesome, once I got used to the Collada exporting that was awesome as well, the engine was rough, but promising. I still kept in contact with the friends I made from the other engine fiasco and they moved on to UDK and Unity. Other developer friends warned me about Torque through their TGE/A experiences. I took the risk and picked up the Binary version of Torque 3D, been enjoying the tools and, like everyone else here, have been waiting patiently. I had to self learn everything, I hope to release my self learned stuff for other noobs to use, but it won’t be any real help if it’s not part of the Torque documentation. That’s where noobs go (some of the time ;) ) first.