Introducing myself, questions regarding future development.
by Steven · in Torque 3D Beginner · 11/01/2012 (10:32 am) · 6 replies
Hi Everyone,
New to the community, new to game programming, new to torque but not new to programming. For the last 12 years I've been working as a developer in the financial sector - building backend components for real time services and applications.
I recently decided I'd like to learn more about game programming and make it a life time hobby, there's so much to it I'm confident I'll be entertained for many years. And who knows, maybe it becomes my full time job some day.
For the last three weeks I've been studying all different type of engines out there. I think I tried around 20 different ones. http://devmaster.net/devdb/engines.
At the end I decided to use Torque for different reasons, but mainly because it's open source now and I can see what's going on under the hood or add new features if I wanted to. So, this will be the engine I will spend a lot of time trying to understand, learning all kind of concepts (rendering, scene management, ...) and trying all types of concepts and mini-games.
To the torque-team, many thanks for making the engine open source and keeping the community up to date:
http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/131875
Now to some questions:
Where does torque need help?
How can a developer increase the chances of making something that will be added to the main trunk?
How can I make sure others are not working on the same fix, feature I'm working on?
- I've seen many people already started forking the github repo and working on many things. What are the chances of those changes being includes? E.g adding CMake support.
https://github.com/losinggeneration/Torque3D/tree/cmake
That's it for now, but I'll definitely be around for a while.
Steven
New to the community, new to game programming, new to torque but not new to programming. For the last 12 years I've been working as a developer in the financial sector - building backend components for real time services and applications.
I recently decided I'd like to learn more about game programming and make it a life time hobby, there's so much to it I'm confident I'll be entertained for many years. And who knows, maybe it becomes my full time job some day.
For the last three weeks I've been studying all different type of engines out there. I think I tried around 20 different ones. http://devmaster.net/devdb/engines.
At the end I decided to use Torque for different reasons, but mainly because it's open source now and I can see what's going on under the hood or add new features if I wanted to. So, this will be the engine I will spend a lot of time trying to understand, learning all kind of concepts (rendering, scene management, ...) and trying all types of concepts and mini-games.
To the torque-team, many thanks for making the engine open source and keeping the community up to date:
http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/131875
Now to some questions:
Where does torque need help?
How can a developer increase the chances of making something that will be added to the main trunk?
How can I make sure others are not working on the same fix, feature I'm working on?
- I've seen many people already started forking the github repo and working on many things. What are the chances of those changes being includes? E.g adding CMake support.
https://github.com/losinggeneration/Torque3D/tree/cmake
That's it for now, but I'll definitely be around for a while.
Steven
#2
11/01/2012 (11:42 am)
The CSA is live and available under your profile settings. This allows us to confirm that the things that are submitted are yours to submit or that you have the authority to submit them.
#3
While I agree on the metrics you provided as example, they are very subjective, what if I believe increasing usability would be a complete revamp of the editor interface?
I see for example one of the most requested features is Linux support. DirectX11 is also in the list.
How is the community/committee planning in managing those bigger tasks? if at all? Without any guidance as how to contribute I can imagine people starting their own branches and overlapping over each other.
My only suggestion at the moment would be consolidating the road map/next steps in the GitHub wiki. That way developers could at least show interest in supporting a specific topic (Linux, net subsystem, DirectX11 shader subsystem) and make others aware that there's someone working on it or that there is someone officially assigned by the committee for the task.
11/01/2012 (12:18 pm)
Michael, David, thank you for the replies. I'm bookmarking the links.While I agree on the metrics you provided as example, they are very subjective, what if I believe increasing usability would be a complete revamp of the editor interface?
I see for example one of the most requested features is Linux support. DirectX11 is also in the list.
How is the community/committee planning in managing those bigger tasks? if at all? Without any guidance as how to contribute I can imagine people starting their own branches and overlapping over each other.
My only suggestion at the moment would be consolidating the road map/next steps in the GitHub wiki. That way developers could at least show interest in supporting a specific topic (Linux, net subsystem, DirectX11 shader subsystem) and make others aware that there's someone working on it or that there is someone officially assigned by the committee for the task.
#4
11/01/2012 (12:59 pm)
Steven makes a good point. A road map would be very helpful for those with the talent to implement changes and would give the community an over all idea of what's coming. 
#5
11/01/2012 (1:02 pm)
A roadmap is in discussion and will be forthcoming. It's early days yet. 
Associate Michael Hall
Distracted...
Pull requests will be evaluated by the Steering Committee for:
- Code quality
- Useability and/or applicability of the Pull Request for general usage.
- Community Interest. The community can vote for features they wish to see added to T3D. This voting feedback does not create any guarantees but will be used by the Steering Committee in their evaluation process.
You will have to agree to GarageGames CSA agreement in order to absolve GarageGames of any legalities if your code is to be introduced. I'm not sure if the CSA agreement page is live yet or not...The Steering Committee should try to be transparent in the things they are working and/or deciding upon. See the committe meeting notes/minutes. As far as keeping up with what other community members are working on and/or planning to contribute that would have to be determine by following the Pull Requests and Issues sections of GarageGames' Github page and also taking note of community members who intend to work on specific issues.