Constructor abandoned

#21 DeleD is free. There are exporters for several formats including dif and collada that work with torque. (been using it for years) It's specifically a low poly modeling package and it's easy to learn.

#22 @Mike, their Torque Exporter is currently not available. Collada exporter work just fine?

#23 "@Mike, their Torque Exporter is currently not available. Collada exporter work just fine?"

I am also interested in the answer to Britt's question. Have you used their Collada exporter yet Mike?

#24 It's not? Hmm, I'll check with that. I can attest that the collada exporter does indeed work.
(checked. You are correct as they are getting it ready to rerelease as open source. Ask on the forums for it to get them to "speed up" the process)

This was exported as collada and imported into Torque.

(just don't judge my umm...artistry?)

#25 Done a quick collada export using the "Neuschwanstein" scene that comes with DeleD to T3D. Textures don't automatically copy over? I had to manual copy them to my T3D directory. Then I just set the collision to visible mesh in T3D and mess with the scaling a bit.

#26 When you export, just tell deled to export the textures to the same directory as the dae. As for Nashwanden, there are several places where the default texture is still used. That texture is a .bmp that torque doesn't recognize.

#27 Excellent! This seems like it will make a decent replacement for Constructor. I still wish Garage Games would renew the Constructor project though and make it compatible with Torque3D. I wouldn't even mind it if they released a new version of Constructor as a tool in their marketplace and charged $100 or so (as long as they released regular bug fixes and added features every now and then). Though, I am confident they will never renew this project again.

#28 Agreed Weston.

It would be nice to have one tool to do both collada, and dif's as well as .dts instead of several tools.

And while we're on the topic (i hope you're reading this fellows at Garagegames) it would be nice if GarageGames adopt an Unreal/Unity/Shiva mindframe and produce ONE engine to handle console support and OS (Xbox, PS3, wii, mac, pc for example) instead of several. (Yes, I know this is the wrong forum to mention this but I had to throw my $.02 in)

#29 The write once publish everywhere is still about where it was when Java promised it back in the day. The specifics of the platforms still require porting in Unity, UDK, and Shiva. Shiva's actually gotten to the closest with UDK doing a great job between desktop and mobile as well. Moving between Desktop to Android to iOS is still pretty messy depending on the features in your game and the device targets. It's a hard problem to solve. You can end up crippling your software to the lowest common denominator between the target platforms or you can introduce portability complexity. I've always given kudos to the teams at Unity/UDK/Shiva for their attempts in this area. They've inched closer to the dream, but not at the expense of crippling their product for their users.

To answer the questions about us picking up Constructor development again, we will not be continuing on this codebase. We have deprecated the DIF format with Torque 3D and there is little reason to continue on a product that explicitly publishes to a deprecated format.

To the people who have requested open sourcing Constructor in the past, we would need to ensure that any proprietary/sub-licensed code is stripped from the codebase before attempting such a project. That would require a strong code analysis to ensure that we are not violating any licensing agreements.

#30 @David

Quote:To answer the questions about us picking up Constructor development again, we will not be continuing on this codebase.

Any chance of expanding the current Sketch tool in T3D with more Constructor features?

#31 Not currently. Sickhead had looked at doing just before the closure but we had to reprioritize upon reopening and getting 1.1 final out the door was part of that push. It had been in beta way, way too long.

Personally, and this is not any sort of GG official statement, I would like to see the sketch tool scrapped and replaced with something akin to Sauerbraten's modified octtree format. It is much more visually intuitive than the current sketch tool. It's also more intuitive than Constructor, IMO.

However, that would require a lot of work to implement and we are not working on anything like that for T3D at this time. But *I* think it would be a cool addition to the engine.

#32 Why not just make a new Constructor like tool for Torque3D (not .dif). I know it would be a bit of work, but worth it in the end, especially if you charge for it.

#33 It doesn't really make sense for us to spend resources creating a modelling tool, which isn't our wheelhouse to begin with, that probably only a few dozen people would buy. Especially when there are so many other modelling tools out there that do the job much better. That was a large part of the reason for the Collada support that was added to T3D.

#34 Well then how about working on some Nvidia Optimus support for T3D? I'm sure that would make sense to more than just a few dozen of your customers.

#35 @Weston - take a look at this #6 link and see if this is a fix for you.

On topic... I use Constructor, love it.. some of it is far easier than 3D world Studio.. I usually export to .map then use deled to import the map, then export out to Milkshape to apply anything like collision, and then export to dts

long procedure I know, but if I'm making a pack, I get to export in various formats, where some formats are not supported.