iTorque2D and Platform Starter Kit - First Impressions...
by _Dan_ · in iTorque 2D · 01/29/2011 (2:19 am) · 43 replies
Hi all,
This is my first post, I signed up last night. :-) I bought iTorque2D last night along with the Platform Starter Kit, here's my noob view of the whole thing. I have written this in an unbiased way, please don't flame me as I genuinely feel there is value in sharing what I have seen so far. I really would like answers to my questions as well, if there are any. :-)
Firstly though, so you know a little about me, I'm a microsoft technologies solution consultant / lead developer (C#) by day with 12 months exposure to xCode and Objective C. I've been coding for over 20 years. Enough of that, here's what I think so far.... :-)
I knew of GarageGames from years back with the early versions of the Torque game engine. I was looking for something that would get me into game generation on the iPhone/iPad quickly, even though I have a good grasp of Objective C i really didn't want to be building up a library of gaming functions for another platform. I code for a living and the thought of doing all the grunt work for a hobby project as well kind of bores me, hence why I'm here.
My reasons for buying Torque over other engines I looked at? Well, I coded through a few iPhone game dev books, this was my initial idea - take a simple engine and expand it. Most of them appear to have little optimisation, which you would expect from example code, but also the ones I tried were buggy and too limited.
Then I looked at SI02, which looks amazing. I've exposure to 3D coding, no problem with any of that. I stumbled across SOi2 when I saw a book on Blender/SI02 and iPhone game dev. Looked perfect so I downloaded the engine, only to find that the licensing model has changed and it now costs a fortune. Also the engine calls home every time you compile so you have to be always connected to develop with it. Oh and if a new version is released you need to download that before you can do anything else, you essentially are coding against a moving feast because any new version would potentially break code you've already cut and tested. In the end SI02 was nothing more than a wasted month acquiring Blender skills from a book that was completely out of sync with the current version of the engine in question.
Then I stumbled across iTorque. Looks good. I remember Torque 3d was a complicated beast years ago but at $99 I'll give it a pop. I'll also get the Platform Starter Kit, that way I can knock up a Mario-esque platform for the missus and see how the scripting on game entities works as well. Essentially a paid tutorial with some reusable assets, can't go wrong here, I thought...
Ok so xCode 3.2.5 is installed along with the iPhone 4.2 SDK, all working and tested since Apple released 4.2
Install iTorque. Nice and easy.
Read
Read Code
Code
Looked at the example game in iTGB and then loaded it up into xCode. Missing Base SDK. No problem, double click the project and set Debug, Release and Shipping versions all to use Latest (4.2) - still no worky.
33 errors and hundreds of warnings....
A quick look on this forum tells me that the default project is using the wrong compiler settings, so double clicking the targets and setting their compiler to 'latest' fixes that. This is not a setting I've played with in the last year, I didn't even know it was there. I suggest that this is fixed in the download to stop other people having a Friday night full of developer toys out of pram ;-)
Ok, so now everything is up and running, the example runs on the phone and in the simulator, and of course within the iTGB environment. I've dragged some trees into the scene and had a play, looks good so far - we're on a roll :-)
Time to read the documentation, or skim it at least and work through a few tutorials. On to the iTorque documentation - I'm still looking for all the checkers art and the Project/Resources drop down menu from the Component Tutorials / Adding Assets / Importing Resources section. Are these part of iTorque2D?
Ok. So I gave up last night and went to bed. Don't get me wrong, I've not been put off yet! I was expecting a bumpy landing as this is a huge engine and will take a while to wrap my head around it. So, I will check out the forums in the morning. Hence this post.
Now for the questions...
HORROR! What's all this about buying an engine from GarageGames and the devs are no longer working there? Have I purchased something at end of life with no support? Is that why iTorque is $99 ?
What's all this I read about the Platform Starter Kit that I purchased not working with iTorque2D? I've emailed the guy who (I think) created it asking for a copy of the iPhone version but have yet to have a reply. If it's not compatible have I burned that money? Can I get the iPhone version, or a pointer in the right direction please? Is there a guide for installing this with iTorque as the readme says it's not compatible? Something the website should have mentioned before purchase I think, especially with the 'no refund' disclaimer at purchase! I'm sure this will be easily resolved, I can wait while I play with the core engine...
Do I have the right documentation? I purchased iTorque2D and the PSK and downloaded the iTorque documentation from the 'My Products' area - is there another version of the docs that refers to assets in the engine I purchased, or can I download the checkers images, the raincloud particle settings etc from somewhere on this site? Could someone post a link please?
Is the default project going to be updated to remove the compiler issues that new users experience when first loading up into xCode?
Are people working on removing all the unused variables and the 400+ compiler warnings? I've always considered compiler warnings == errors and with a code engine that I've paid money for I'd expect the code to have no warnings. Just my opinion.
Can anyone point me in the direction of a good iTorque2D resource with examples? Are there any on the web that you would recommend?
As I said, I was expecting a bumpy landing but I think so far I've made a good decision. Time will tell, in the meantime I'll go back and have another bash with it.
Nice forum by the way ;-)
D.
This is my first post, I signed up last night. :-) I bought iTorque2D last night along with the Platform Starter Kit, here's my noob view of the whole thing. I have written this in an unbiased way, please don't flame me as I genuinely feel there is value in sharing what I have seen so far. I really would like answers to my questions as well, if there are any. :-)
Firstly though, so you know a little about me, I'm a microsoft technologies solution consultant / lead developer (C#) by day with 12 months exposure to xCode and Objective C. I've been coding for over 20 years. Enough of that, here's what I think so far.... :-)
I knew of GarageGames from years back with the early versions of the Torque game engine. I was looking for something that would get me into game generation on the iPhone/iPad quickly, even though I have a good grasp of Objective C i really didn't want to be building up a library of gaming functions for another platform. I code for a living and the thought of doing all the grunt work for a hobby project as well kind of bores me, hence why I'm here.
My reasons for buying Torque over other engines I looked at? Well, I coded through a few iPhone game dev books, this was my initial idea - take a simple engine and expand it. Most of them appear to have little optimisation, which you would expect from example code, but also the ones I tried were buggy and too limited.
Then I looked at SI02, which looks amazing. I've exposure to 3D coding, no problem with any of that. I stumbled across SOi2 when I saw a book on Blender/SI02 and iPhone game dev. Looked perfect so I downloaded the engine, only to find that the licensing model has changed and it now costs a fortune. Also the engine calls home every time you compile so you have to be always connected to develop with it. Oh and if a new version is released you need to download that before you can do anything else, you essentially are coding against a moving feast because any new version would potentially break code you've already cut and tested. In the end SI02 was nothing more than a wasted month acquiring Blender skills from a book that was completely out of sync with the current version of the engine in question.
Then I stumbled across iTorque. Looks good. I remember Torque 3d was a complicated beast years ago but at $99 I'll give it a pop. I'll also get the Platform Starter Kit, that way I can knock up a Mario-esque platform for the missus and see how the scripting on game entities works as well. Essentially a paid tutorial with some reusable assets, can't go wrong here, I thought...
Ok so xCode 3.2.5 is installed along with the iPhone 4.2 SDK, all working and tested since Apple released 4.2
Install iTorque. Nice and easy.
Read
Read Code
Code
Looked at the example game in iTGB and then loaded it up into xCode. Missing Base SDK. No problem, double click the project and set Debug, Release and Shipping versions all to use Latest (4.2) - still no worky.
33 errors and hundreds of warnings....
A quick look on this forum tells me that the default project is using the wrong compiler settings, so double clicking the targets and setting their compiler to 'latest' fixes that. This is not a setting I've played with in the last year, I didn't even know it was there. I suggest that this is fixed in the download to stop other people having a Friday night full of developer toys out of pram ;-)
Ok, so now everything is up and running, the example runs on the phone and in the simulator, and of course within the iTGB environment. I've dragged some trees into the scene and had a play, looks good so far - we're on a roll :-)
Time to read the documentation, or skim it at least and work through a few tutorials. On to the iTorque documentation - I'm still looking for all the checkers art and the Project/Resources drop down menu from the Component Tutorials / Adding Assets / Importing Resources section. Are these part of iTorque2D?
Ok. So I gave up last night and went to bed. Don't get me wrong, I've not been put off yet! I was expecting a bumpy landing as this is a huge engine and will take a while to wrap my head around it. So, I will check out the forums in the morning. Hence this post.
Now for the questions...
HORROR! What's all this about buying an engine from GarageGames and the devs are no longer working there? Have I purchased something at end of life with no support? Is that why iTorque is $99 ?
What's all this I read about the Platform Starter Kit that I purchased not working with iTorque2D? I've emailed the guy who (I think) created it asking for a copy of the iPhone version but have yet to have a reply. If it's not compatible have I burned that money? Can I get the iPhone version, or a pointer in the right direction please? Is there a guide for installing this with iTorque as the readme says it's not compatible? Something the website should have mentioned before purchase I think, especially with the 'no refund' disclaimer at purchase! I'm sure this will be easily resolved, I can wait while I play with the core engine...
Do I have the right documentation? I purchased iTorque2D and the PSK and downloaded the iTorque documentation from the 'My Products' area - is there another version of the docs that refers to assets in the engine I purchased, or can I download the checkers images, the raincloud particle settings etc from somewhere on this site? Could someone post a link please?
Is the default project going to be updated to remove the compiler issues that new users experience when first loading up into xCode?
Are people working on removing all the unused variables and the 400+ compiler warnings? I've always considered compiler warnings == errors and with a code engine that I've paid money for I'd expect the code to have no warnings. Just my opinion.
Can anyone point me in the direction of a good iTorque2D resource with examples? Are there any on the web that you would recommend?
As I said, I was expecting a bumpy landing but I think so far I've made a good decision. Time will tell, in the meantime I'll go back and have another bash with it.
Nice forum by the way ;-)
D.
#2
What I know is, GG have a QA system so they won't release the latest version of any engines until they really tested it out. The error you are seeing is due to the fact that the engine is based on an older IOS SDK because the latest engine version haven't pass QA yet which to me is a bit silly, they should really have some kind of quick release for these type of errors since Apple requires you to build your game with the latest IOS SDK. First impressions are always the most important.
But overall, having heard what happen with them when still under IA, I can understand all the problems them would have had working and trying to put out new release of the engines. So I think it will be a better experience for devs like us using their engine with the new owner supporting and being a part of the community. So I hope you stick along with the community and see how the engine evolve.
People in the forum are really supportive and have been one of GG strength so if you are stuck with any errors just ask.
Aun.
01/29/2011 (4:34 am)
@Dan - I have the same feeling too when I started using iTGB quite sometime ago. While most of the errors I can fix easily myself since I've been working primary on the IOS but I would have love to have a better experience than this. What I know is, GG have a QA system so they won't release the latest version of any engines until they really tested it out. The error you are seeing is due to the fact that the engine is based on an older IOS SDK because the latest engine version haven't pass QA yet which to me is a bit silly, they should really have some kind of quick release for these type of errors since Apple requires you to build your game with the latest IOS SDK. First impressions are always the most important.
But overall, having heard what happen with them when still under IA, I can understand all the problems them would have had working and trying to put out new release of the engines. So I think it will be a better experience for devs like us using their engine with the new owner supporting and being a part of the community. So I hope you stick along with the community and see how the engine evolve.
People in the forum are really supportive and have been one of GG strength so if you are stuck with any errors just ask.
Aun.
#3
There are many gotchas still with 1.4, but try dropping into IRC and hang around for a bit. There are a few of us who use iT2D, so you might get some answers to problems if we can do some live debugging :)
(irc.maxgaming.net, #garagegames)
01/29/2011 (7:43 am)
The current version is a remnant from the before-time, so I hope they can release a beta of 1.4.1 to all licensees. I know they've mentioned a couple of weeks or so to *go into* QA, so I'm assuming it's not 100% ready for testing (or beta).There are many gotchas still with 1.4, but try dropping into IRC and hang around for a bit. There are a few of us who use iT2D, so you might get some answers to problems if we can do some live debugging :)
(irc.maxgaming.net, #garagegames)
#4
@Aun - Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the fair view and remaining faith in GG.
@Ronny - Good call on suggesting IRC. It should not be a crutch for new users when the engine fails, but this is a critical time since we are in between a bugged release and 1.4.1
@Leon - Glad to see your first post in almost two years. Welcome back =)
01/29/2011 (8:12 am)
@Dan - Many thanks for the first impression. These kinds of posts are invaluable to me while working on iTorque 2D. Even now as we are getting to the home stretch of 1.4.1, this reminds me of some of the most obvious and immediate usability issues people have with 1.4. I'm happy to say that when I do a fresh checkout on a clean machine, none of the issues you ran into are a problem anymore. I think the OOB experience with iT2D is a lot better and the new docs should hopefully get users off to a running start more quickly.@Aun - Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the fair view and remaining faith in GG.
@Ronny - Good call on suggesting IRC. It should not be a crutch for new users when the engine fails, but this is a critical time since we are in between a bugged release and 1.4.1
@Leon - Glad to see your first post in almost two years. Welcome back =)
#5
I ran through the Aquarium tutorial, after digging around in the iTorque folders I found the artwork for this was zipped up. This wasn't stated in the tutorial though and I wasted some time here trying to find the resources.
The tutorial itself went some way to answering some of my questions but I found some problems with it. The 3 most important I've listed below. These were really infuriating, wasting much of my day but hey-ho, that's dev I guess (not much fun though). Any ideas and help with resolving these would be very much appreciated.
1. If you press edit level datablocks on the menu and add assets in a different sequence to how you loaded them in as images then they appear to just not show when you run the level. For example, if you add beam.png, wave.png and then bubble.png as images and then add them to the datablock in a different order it appears not to work. I had to do this a few times to get them into the level and working properly.
2. Quitting and reloading the editor during the tutorial to load up changes you are making was a shock, I've never seen an environment that needed that before. However, no problem doing this - I can see how the process works. The real issue here is that every time I load up a project into iTGB i get doubles of all my static sprites, scrollers and animations. I've looked in the datablocks and other cs files and they are not duplicated anywhere in there (that I have seen). This caused me a real headache as just when I got particles showing on the device (see 3 below) I noticed the duplicates and deleted a set of them, only to see I had deleted the wrong set of duplicates and had to start the tutorial over again! That reminds me, is there a 'delete' in the editor or do we only have cut?
3. Particles & scrollers. Happy with my little swimming fish, using a datablock to define their behaviour, I moved on to the wave scroller. For some reason this was double the size of the image with the new second half of the image being completely blank. I had to double click the static sprite and save it in the editor to reset the scroller image to normal. I had to do this with every image used in scrollers and particles. Maybe when you add an image this popup should just appear? Anyway, I added the bubble particles next, making sure that all my particle and scroller images were in the level datablock in the right order, and copying over the .eff files in the particle folder to teh correct location. The particle emitters are nice, I like the way you can see them WYSIWYG style in the editor. However it would be nice if you could see them when you clicked 'play' to test them. I was expecting the particles to appear in the build in preview environment. Not sure what I'm doing wrong here. I managed to get the bubbles and beams working on the device with no problems though - after setting all the compiler and sdk versions for this new project so it would compile.
So, all in all there's a few minor issues, which to be fair may be my ignorance/lack of experience. There do appear to be a few things that are fairly serious though, the duplicating assets problem and this stuff with particles.
Not too discouraged but a little frustrated, I looked at the next tutorial, the rainy day example with the growing flower. I'm still working through this currently but I've stopped to write this post. I'll detail my experiences with RainyDay after I've made a quick coffee... ;-)
IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE - Still no contact regarding the Platform Starter Kit - anyone got a version that works with iTorque? Can I get a refund if it's not compatible? A little help here please?
01/30/2011 (3:25 am)
Thanks for coming back to be guys. I've had some time to look at iTorque a little more now and have a few more questions, along with my previous ones :-) I would use IRC but I think posting here would benefit other new users starting fresh on the current version.I ran through the Aquarium tutorial, after digging around in the iTorque folders I found the artwork for this was zipped up. This wasn't stated in the tutorial though and I wasted some time here trying to find the resources.
The tutorial itself went some way to answering some of my questions but I found some problems with it. The 3 most important I've listed below. These were really infuriating, wasting much of my day but hey-ho, that's dev I guess (not much fun though). Any ideas and help with resolving these would be very much appreciated.
1. If you press edit level datablocks on the menu and add assets in a different sequence to how you loaded them in as images then they appear to just not show when you run the level. For example, if you add beam.png, wave.png and then bubble.png as images and then add them to the datablock in a different order it appears not to work. I had to do this a few times to get them into the level and working properly.
2. Quitting and reloading the editor during the tutorial to load up changes you are making was a shock, I've never seen an environment that needed that before. However, no problem doing this - I can see how the process works. The real issue here is that every time I load up a project into iTGB i get doubles of all my static sprites, scrollers and animations. I've looked in the datablocks and other cs files and they are not duplicated anywhere in there (that I have seen). This caused me a real headache as just when I got particles showing on the device (see 3 below) I noticed the duplicates and deleted a set of them, only to see I had deleted the wrong set of duplicates and had to start the tutorial over again! That reminds me, is there a 'delete' in the editor or do we only have cut?
3. Particles & scrollers. Happy with my little swimming fish, using a datablock to define their behaviour, I moved on to the wave scroller. For some reason this was double the size of the image with the new second half of the image being completely blank. I had to double click the static sprite and save it in the editor to reset the scroller image to normal. I had to do this with every image used in scrollers and particles. Maybe when you add an image this popup should just appear? Anyway, I added the bubble particles next, making sure that all my particle and scroller images were in the level datablock in the right order, and copying over the .eff files in the particle folder to teh correct location. The particle emitters are nice, I like the way you can see them WYSIWYG style in the editor. However it would be nice if you could see them when you clicked 'play' to test them. I was expecting the particles to appear in the build in preview environment. Not sure what I'm doing wrong here. I managed to get the bubbles and beams working on the device with no problems though - after setting all the compiler and sdk versions for this new project so it would compile.
So, all in all there's a few minor issues, which to be fair may be my ignorance/lack of experience. There do appear to be a few things that are fairly serious though, the duplicating assets problem and this stuff with particles.
Not too discouraged but a little frustrated, I looked at the next tutorial, the rainy day example with the growing flower. I'm still working through this currently but I've stopped to write this post. I'll detail my experiences with RainyDay after I've made a quick coffee... ;-)
IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE - Still no contact regarding the Platform Starter Kit - anyone got a version that works with iTorque? Can I get a refund if it's not compatible? A little help here please?
#6
Here's how it went for me...
o Opened up a new project, called it rainyday.
o Checked it was an empty template, no assets loaded. Perfect.
o Tutorial says to drag the background image into the editor. Tried this in every way I could see possible, into the scene, into the toolbox on the right - not happening.
o Right click the image and save, then load it into iTGB
o Add it to the level datablock using the toolbar button.
o Save the project.
The tutorial states you should set the size of this image to width 100, height 75 which clearly does not fill the viewable area.
As an experiment at this point I closed the environment and then double clicked the project file to load it back in. The background image is now duplicated in the right hand panel.
o Loaded the flower image into the environment in the same way as above, added to the datablock and created an animation for it as described in the tutorial - no problem with this.
o Added the animation to the level datablock as well
o Saved everything
o Did the above with the raindrop. Added to the datablock again. Saved everything again, no problems.
o Added a flower to the scene. Added a raindrop image to the scene as well, set the background layer to 31. Ran it up to see they were visible, everything looks ok. Great stuff, however that duplicate thing is getting me down though because I don't know if this means my project files are corrupting every time I quit the environment - Therefore at this point would have to say I can't warrant using iTorque for anything other than simple prototyping. Not something I would expect from an engine that I have purchased.
o Added the cloud, added it to the level datablock, created a link point, added a particle effect - all ok. On a roll now!!!
o Added a default Particle Emitter to the Particle Effect I just linked to the cloud. Selected the raindrop image and started to play with the particle engine. I've wasted many hours playing with particles in the past and this engine is no exception - dragging myself back to the tutorial I set everything as it should be and have a LINEX emmiter producing lovely raindrops from the cloud. All linked and looking fab.
o Test in the editors build in preview, clicked play.... can't see the particles as mentioned in my previous post.
o Saved everything and tried again. No luck.
o Hit 'Build Project', previously doing this causes a beach ball and then xCode opens. Nothing happened with this project, restarted a few times. Made sure xCode wasn't already running. Nothing happens.
o Browsed to the xCode project for my rainydays and opened the xCode_IPhone project. Set all the SDK and compile options, again, and then built it and ran up in the iPhone simulator.
That's as far as I've gotten. I've had enough right now to be honest as the console is telling me that there is no emitter for my particle effect - even though I can see it emitting raindrops in the editor and everything has been saved a number of times.
What am I doing that's so wrong here? I'm following the tutorials, which appear to be lacking accuracy and detail. Is there another resource I should be leveraging to get up to speed? Can someone point me in the right direction?
I can't help but feel that iTorque is not a finished product, I purchased what was represented as a finished, working game engine with an addon kit for platform game generation. It appears that this is not the case. What worries me is that there was a disclaimer before purchase that stated no refunds would be available. I'm wondering if I've been duped now. I'm sure this is not the case but at this point that's on my mind.
Is there a bug fix version I can get my hands on? Is there another editor that doesn't have these problems? I wonder if I have an old version maybe as people appear to be releasing apps with iTorque.
Thanks for any help in advance,
D.
01/30/2011 (4:52 am)
Ok, the next tutorial in the documents for iTorque is the Rainy Day example, with a cute cloud that drops rain on a little flower and makes it grow. My view was that this example will open the door to object interaction and show me how I can start to build up some simple game logic - awesome!Here's how it went for me...
o Opened up a new project, called it rainyday.
o Checked it was an empty template, no assets loaded. Perfect.
o Tutorial says to drag the background image into the editor. Tried this in every way I could see possible, into the scene, into the toolbox on the right - not happening.
o Right click the image and save, then load it into iTGB
o Add it to the level datablock using the toolbar button.
o Save the project.
The tutorial states you should set the size of this image to width 100, height 75 which clearly does not fill the viewable area.
As an experiment at this point I closed the environment and then double clicked the project file to load it back in. The background image is now duplicated in the right hand panel.
o Loaded the flower image into the environment in the same way as above, added to the datablock and created an animation for it as described in the tutorial - no problem with this.
o Added the animation to the level datablock as well
o Saved everything
o Did the above with the raindrop. Added to the datablock again. Saved everything again, no problems.
o Added a flower to the scene. Added a raindrop image to the scene as well, set the background layer to 31. Ran it up to see they were visible, everything looks ok. Great stuff, however that duplicate thing is getting me down though because I don't know if this means my project files are corrupting every time I quit the environment - Therefore at this point would have to say I can't warrant using iTorque for anything other than simple prototyping. Not something I would expect from an engine that I have purchased.
o Added the cloud, added it to the level datablock, created a link point, added a particle effect - all ok. On a roll now!!!
o Added a default Particle Emitter to the Particle Effect I just linked to the cloud. Selected the raindrop image and started to play with the particle engine. I've wasted many hours playing with particles in the past and this engine is no exception - dragging myself back to the tutorial I set everything as it should be and have a LINEX emmiter producing lovely raindrops from the cloud. All linked and looking fab.
o Test in the editors build in preview, clicked play.... can't see the particles as mentioned in my previous post.
o Saved everything and tried again. No luck.
o Hit 'Build Project', previously doing this causes a beach ball and then xCode opens. Nothing happened with this project, restarted a few times. Made sure xCode wasn't already running. Nothing happens.
o Browsed to the xCode project for my rainydays and opened the xCode_IPhone project. Set all the SDK and compile options, again, and then built it and ran up in the iPhone simulator.
That's as far as I've gotten. I've had enough right now to be honest as the console is telling me that there is no emitter for my particle effect - even though I can see it emitting raindrops in the editor and everything has been saved a number of times.
What am I doing that's so wrong here? I'm following the tutorials, which appear to be lacking accuracy and detail. Is there another resource I should be leveraging to get up to speed? Can someone point me in the right direction?
I can't help but feel that iTorque is not a finished product, I purchased what was represented as a finished, working game engine with an addon kit for platform game generation. It appears that this is not the case. What worries me is that there was a disclaimer before purchase that stated no refunds would be available. I'm wondering if I've been duped now. I'm sure this is not the case but at this point that's on my mind.
Is there a bug fix version I can get my hands on? Is there another editor that doesn't have these problems? I wonder if I have an old version maybe as people appear to be releasing apps with iTorque.
Thanks for any help in advance,
D.
#7
Welcome to the world of Torque. You are starting to hit some of the bug with the current version of iTorque, most of which can be solved.
The bugs are listed here:
http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/56/12359
My advice is to run through those and see what applies to your problems - the particles not showing on the iDevice should be in there.
Cheers
Scott
01/30/2011 (5:13 am)
Hi Dan,Welcome to the world of Torque. You are starting to hit some of the bug with the current version of iTorque, most of which can be solved.
The bugs are listed here:
http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/56/12359
My advice is to run through those and see what applies to your problems - the particles not showing on the iDevice should be in there.
Cheers
Scott
#8
The editor is also a mess once you add many assets. I'm trying to fix that:
The core of the editor is mostly Carbon on Mac, so the code is verbose, ugly and trickier to improve. Rewriting bits in Cocoa is a longer term project, but would be quicker than waiting for the next generation of the engine. I'm tempted.
A lot has been fixed for the forthcoming 1.4.1 release of iT2D, including the most important problem: Being able to compile a freshly generated project. Out soon, I hope!
01/30/2011 (5:43 am)
Drag and drop doesn't work in the Mac version of the editor. I did some investigation of the source way back. Guess what? There is none. Drag and drop was never implemented in the first place. So technically it's not even a bug. It's worse :)The editor is also a mess once you add many assets. I'm trying to fix that:
The core of the editor is mostly Carbon on Mac, so the code is verbose, ugly and trickier to improve. Rewriting bits in Cocoa is a longer term project, but would be quicker than waiting for the next generation of the engine. I'm tempted.
A lot has been fixed for the forthcoming 1.4.1 release of iT2D, including the most important problem: Being able to compile a freshly generated project. Out soon, I hope!
#9
Is there a list of fixes/features for the new version?
01/30/2011 (5:50 am)
'Out soon' - When is that? Weeks, Months or Years? Not wanting to rock the boat but I just paid for this and at present it's starting to look broken and unusable.Is there a list of fixes/features for the new version?
#10
www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/123945
I'd like to think 1.4.1 will be out in the next month or so.
However, you can still develop great games using Torque (shamless Plug):
Invaders World Tour itunes.apple.com/gb/app/invaders-world-tour-3/id403754945?mt=8
NeoDefender 2 itunes.apple.com/gb/app/neodefender-2/id403744473?mt=8
01/30/2011 (6:24 am)
Fixes:www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/123945
I'd like to think 1.4.1 will be out in the next month or so.
However, you can still develop great games using Torque (shamless Plug):
Invaders World Tour itunes.apple.com/gb/app/invaders-world-tour-3/id403754945?mt=8
NeoDefender 2 itunes.apple.com/gb/app/neodefender-2/id403744473?mt=8
#11
www.garagegames.com/best-of-torque/iphone
The Mass Effect spin-off was made with a very early version of the engine.
01/30/2011 (9:20 am)
More games listed here:www.garagegames.com/best-of-torque/iphone
The Mass Effect spin-off was made with a very early version of the engine.
#12
01/30/2011 (9:37 am)
Interesting, were the others developed in 4.2 with T2d 1.4 or an older version with less/different issues?
#13
01/30/2011 (9:48 am)
All pre-1.3 versions of iT2D were definitely rough. And by "rough" I mean they were more or less straight desktop ports. Luma got into updating it from 1.3 on, and that's when it started getting fast. The script engine was also improved to run uncompiled scripts for debugging - and it was just as fast as compiled.
#14
01/30/2011 (9:54 am)
So it sounds like it's almost the right time to get on board. Is it worth my while using the windows editor on a virtual PC to get around some of the issues I've noticed? Has anyone tried this? I'd be interested to see if it works well before setting up fusion or parallels...
#15
01/30/2011 (10:02 am)
The issues you report might be intrinsic to the editor itself (at least some look familiar), but I think there are some problems with the Windows version of the editor saving files the Mac editor can't load. Also to be fixed in the next update.
#16
The reason I would release the same build going through our QA is to give everyone a chance to see what the new demos look like, preview the docs and check to see if the bugs being fixed are exactly what they wanted. If a showstopper bug appears in our QA or the "unstable" community build, we get a chance to address it before we let the final build out the door.
01/30/2011 (5:50 pm)
@Dan - Quote:'Out soon' - When is that? Weeks, Months or Years?The goal is to get a build into the hands of QA on 2/7. If the first 24 hours go well, then I will release an "unstable" build of 1.4.1. By unstable, I mean it has not gone through our full internal QA process. I would call it a beta, but that term is almost useless at this point considering how it has been butchered over the years.
The reason I would release the same build going through our QA is to give everyone a chance to see what the new demos look like, preview the docs and check to see if the bugs being fixed are exactly what they wanted. If a showstopper bug appears in our QA or the "unstable" community build, we get a chance to address it before we let the final build out the door.
#17
A build considered "ready for the show" with us and QA having the quest to proof you wrong if there is something wrong ;)
01/30/2011 (10:30 pm)
Sounds like the term Release Candidate would be appropriate in such a case.A build considered "ready for the show" with us and QA having the quest to proof you wrong if there is something wrong ;)
#18
Alpha builds were for internal use :)
01/31/2011 (3:07 am)
The original use of beta had the same purpose as a release candidate: Throw it at the oublic and take note of issues they discover, release if none found.Alpha builds were for internal use :)
#19
I also do not believe that the platform starter kit is all that compatible with iTGB, however it being TorqueScript perhaps it would port easily.
I will also say I have had iTGB since the pre 1.3 days and it is much much better. It really only needs a few tweaks and it will be great. I personally have not had many of the issues some have, but also this is a tool for an experienced coder (like you)
@Mich Why don't we get an RC version or beta version, ie before it goes to testing?
02/03/2011 (8:42 am)
@Dan I like to use Torsion (not a plug i use it) for editing Torquescript. I also have tried to do lots of work on the PC before moving to the mac but thats me, it works well either way. I also do not believe that the platform starter kit is all that compatible with iTGB, however it being TorqueScript perhaps it would port easily.
I will also say I have had iTGB since the pre 1.3 days and it is much much better. It really only needs a few tweaks and it will be great. I personally have not had many of the issues some have, but also this is a tool for an experienced coder (like you)
@Mich Why don't we get an RC version or beta version, ie before it goes to testing?
#20
02/03/2011 (9:06 am)
@Henry - You will. That's exactly what I said in my last post, but the caveat is that it has to go through 24 hours of our own testing. This will ensure we do not send out something completely unusable. 
Torque Owner Leon