TSE - Experience so far?
by Andy S. · in Torque Game Engine · 10/26/2004 (1:09 pm) · 8 replies
Hi everyone,
I know maybe the wrong forum but i wanted to ask here about TSE because i think a lot of the EAs still use TGE mostly and check here often ;-).
I wanted to ask about your experience with the TSE so far. Are there any big problems now? As the terrain is being completely redone, does it mean right now TSE is only capabale of oing indoor (don't think so the demo has a bit of outdoor)? Also what about the vehicles? do they work? and the scripting in general?
Hm well generally speaking i just wonder if i follow the guide to port from TGE to TSE, does the fps example then work? What are the main issues at the moment? Would you recommend to start off with TSE now? Or still wait until Milestone 2?
I have gained quite a bit experience in C++ (was a total beginner when i got TGE), of course i am far from being really good but i manage to get things going somehow so far ;-)....and it's been fun. But van a realtive new c++ guy get anything out of the TSE now?
I am very grateful for all your experience reports....i am trying to decide wheter i should get TSE now or later (milestone 2).
I know maybe the wrong forum but i wanted to ask here about TSE because i think a lot of the EAs still use TGE mostly and check here often ;-).
I wanted to ask about your experience with the TSE so far. Are there any big problems now? As the terrain is being completely redone, does it mean right now TSE is only capabale of oing indoor (don't think so the demo has a bit of outdoor)? Also what about the vehicles? do they work? and the scripting in general?
Hm well generally speaking i just wonder if i follow the guide to port from TGE to TSE, does the fps example then work? What are the main issues at the moment? Would you recommend to start off with TSE now? Or still wait until Milestone 2?
I have gained quite a bit experience in C++ (was a total beginner when i got TGE), of course i am far from being really good but i manage to get things going somehow so far ;-)....and it's been fun. But van a realtive new c++ guy get anything out of the TSE now?
I am very grateful for all your experience reports....i am trying to decide wheter i should get TSE now or later (milestone 2).
#2
Code was okay too, but that's probably because what I ported was mainly GUI's and stuff like that. When I got to the part where I was going to get it going multiplayer then the bugs did shine and I ran into problems.
I also had problems with interiors and couldn't use the ones we made since they were too complex (fixed that though). Purple lightmaps, flickering errors with bumpmaps on PS 1.3 hardware.
What my team is going to focus on now is a techdemo rather than a working build. It looked nice (except the terrain and the non-existant water) but didn't work most of the time.
10/26/2004 (1:52 pm)
I don't have as much or even close to as much experience as Bampton and his team has. For me the transtition between TGE and TSE scriptwise was pretty ok. Code was okay too, but that's probably because what I ported was mainly GUI's and stuff like that. When I got to the part where I was going to get it going multiplayer then the bugs did shine and I ran into problems.
I also had problems with interiors and couldn't use the ones we made since they were too complex (fixed that though). Purple lightmaps, flickering errors with bumpmaps on PS 1.3 hardware.
What my team is going to focus on now is a techdemo rather than a working build. It looked nice (except the terrain and the non-existant water) but didn't work most of the time.
#3
On the other hand if you're doing work on shaders you'll want to get TSE to do that part of your development. Personally I'm doing some shaders so I actually develop those on TSE while I'm currently doing the core of my development on TGE. When TSE gets a little more mature I'll probably move entirely over to TSE.
As for terrain, it certainly works in TSE. I understand there's some really clever stuff yet to be added but for now it certainly operates ok.
10/26/2004 (9:10 pm)
I'm finding TSE to be very exciting as a glimpse at what's going to be possible. I'm not planning to release my game for a while yet so I'm targetting it towards TSE since I figure it'll be ready before I am. However I'm currently writing my game using TGE. Why? There's a lot of stuff still not working in TSE and it's still changing quite rapidly. That's to be expected since it's an "early adopters" release. Just don't go into it expecting a completed system just yet.On the other hand if you're doing work on shaders you'll want to get TSE to do that part of your development. Personally I'm doing some shaders so I actually develop those on TSE while I'm currently doing the core of my development on TGE. When TSE gets a little more mature I'll probably move entirely over to TSE.
As for terrain, it certainly works in TSE. I understand there's some really clever stuff yet to be added but for now it certainly operates ok.
#4
Somewhere i read that vehicles do not work at all in TSE right now, is that true?
@ZIK: What about the collision issues Tom mentioned....did it work for you (terrain collision)?
Having two builds of my game at the same time was also something i was thinking about, one in TGE and one in TSE. Still i have a few more questions: When will milestone 2 be out? I understand there is no date, but are we talking about months or rather weeks....this year or the next? And does the art pipeline already work ok? So i could already create content for the TSE version of my game which would save time when TSE will be "finished" so that i could concetrate then on the game/coding? Are the private forums for TSE active/many people there? Are there already resources which are only shown to TSE owners?
I hope i get a few answers again, but i think i will buy it soon ;-)
10/27/2004 (7:50 am)
Wow thanks a lot for your answers....really good the community here. Actually I am very close to buy the TSE already now because i want to play with the shaders, find out how they work and so on....i have no timeschedule at all, for me TGE (and also TSE) is only a hobby so far,so i can live with bugs and probably waiting time if i cannot fix something on my own. Somewhere i read that vehicles do not work at all in TSE right now, is that true?
@ZIK: What about the collision issues Tom mentioned....did it work for you (terrain collision)?
Having two builds of my game at the same time was also something i was thinking about, one in TGE and one in TSE. Still i have a few more questions: When will milestone 2 be out? I understand there is no date, but are we talking about months or rather weeks....this year or the next? And does the art pipeline already work ok? So i could already create content for the TSE version of my game which would save time when TSE will be "finished" so that i could concetrate then on the game/coding? Are the private forums for TSE active/many people there? Are there already resources which are only shown to TSE owners?
I hope i get a few answers again, but i think i will buy it soon ;-)
#5
I didnt mean to imply that there were any collision issues, just that I didnt know if it worked or not because I hadnt tried it. From what Zik says it sounds like it works fine :)
I dont think there are any times released. Best just to accept that things will happen as fast as they'll happen and that GG are trying their best to get it done as quickly as they can.
The art pipeline does work. As far as .dts goes, the same exporter as for TGE works. You have to add some datablocks for the materials but that's pretty easy. For .difs theres a new map2dif you have to use, which means you need a seperate .dif for TGE and TSE. You could create your assets for TGE then getting them in TSE is just a matter of writing the datablocks and re-running map2dif on your .maps.
I dont think there's much in the way of resources for TSE yet since its still too early. A lot of the TGE resources are still relevant and dont take long to update for TSE, though. The TSE forums are active, though.
T.
10/27/2004 (1:36 pm)
Andy,I didnt mean to imply that there were any collision issues, just that I didnt know if it worked or not because I hadnt tried it. From what Zik says it sounds like it works fine :)
I dont think there are any times released. Best just to accept that things will happen as fast as they'll happen and that GG are trying their best to get it done as quickly as they can.
The art pipeline does work. As far as .dts goes, the same exporter as for TGE works. You have to add some datablocks for the materials but that's pretty easy. For .difs theres a new map2dif you have to use, which means you need a seperate .dif for TGE and TSE. You could create your assets for TGE then getting them in TSE is just a matter of writing the datablocks and re-running map2dif on your .maps.
I dont think there's much in the way of resources for TSE yet since its still too early. A lot of the TGE resources are still relevant and dont take long to update for TSE, though. The TSE forums are active, though.
T.
#6
10/27/2004 (4:18 pm)
Andy, come to think of it I haven't tried terrain collisions in TSE. Terrain renders fine though. The code base of TSE isn't that different from TGE in most areas so I don't think you'll have major problems moving between the two. The real differences are in the rendering, texture handling and terrain as far as I've noticed. There are some detail differences in the rest but nothing a decent coder won't find trivial if you're moving between the two. This is all from a C++ perspective BTW - if you're working with scripts it's even easier.
#7
10/28/2004 (7:49 am)
Tom and Zik, thanks for your opinions, it was very helpful for me. I think i am going to buy TSE within the next few days and give it a try ;-)! I think i can only win, this way i get early access to new tech and still i can continue work on my game plus i can already create and test the new content and most ptobably also most of my scripting....so thanks again guys ;-) 
Torque 3D Owner Tom Bampton
We started the port a month before IGC. This was quite crazy, but then we're a crazy bunch of guys. Getting things running initially was pretty simple. We ported over all our scripts without much bother. Things got a bit tougher when we started porting the C++ code, but for the most part it went really smoothly. Until we started running into bugs in TSE. What specific bugs these were are mostly irrelevant since they're all fixed now. A lot of them were of the very nasty hard to fix type, including a show stopper that we discovered at midnight on the wednesday before IGC. In the end, we went right down to the wire, Matt was still working on BB til Saturday (1 day into IGC) when we had a final build.
The moral of this extremely abridged story is basically if you are on any kind of time restraint and you're not able to fix issues as they come up (and judging by your post, and the kind of things we ran into, I dont think you'd be able to fix them) then TSE is probably not worth starting with as it stands now. However, if you're on a longer schedule and can wait for someone else to fix the things that you can't, and you accept there will still be bugs for a while yet, then start with TSE. You may even want to think about having a TGE and TSE build of your game. Once you have any major C++ code running on both its pretty easy to keep both builds in sync.
As for your actual questions, my knowledge of TSE is pretty much limited to what we used for BB. It does have terrain, but whether it works is another question. I know it renders since we had hell removing it for BB, but as far as collision etc goes i dont know.
As far as getting anything out of TSE goes ... yeh, you would get a lot out of it. Besides, if it turns out to be too tricky for you now (which it probably wont be), then at least you can still keep track of it and just dive in when you're ready without having to buy it and wait for it to check out of CVS.
Hope that helps a bit,
Tom.