Please show me *ONE* impressive demo...

#21 Benjamin: The legions videos, is there any other links with better quality you know of ?

#22 Just to clarify my opinion, I like the Torque engines thats the reason i bought all of them.
But if you take a look outside the GG pond, there alot of new players there and all of them do not use
duct tape thats the hard truth.

#23 Actually, most games use duct tape whether or not the engine does. And many engines haven't been taped simply because they haven't produced any games. But you can bet that the programmers using those engines for a game will be taping the hell out of the final product. Take C4 as a nice example. It is an extremely clean codebase to work with. It provides a lot of nice bang for the buck. But once you start making your mega-excitable sweet MMORTSFPS, you'll begin taping the edges or staplegunning on new, outside tech which may or may not work without a little split and prayer. TGE's tape comes from it being a commercial product before it became a commercial engine, and so the tape shows and scares off a number of people. They deserve to be scared. Game development is a rather large, scary endeavor.

My estimation on your lack of understanding project completion came from your post, not such things as forum posting. You seemed to assume that making a game as trivial as MBU for the XBox 360 was something that a child could finish while beating the tin pail on his head with his sister's headless Barbie. Because of this assertion, I questioned your knowledge of what it takes to complete a game and to ship it. Not any other reason.

#24 David is really spot on except for one point:

All games are duct-tape ;)

#25 I rarely get annoyed by forum threads, but for some reason, this one really burns me.

The original assumption that TGE couldn't possibly produce graphics on par with modern, successful MMOBLTs seems to completely ignore World of Warcraft, GuildWars, and the upcoming Chronicles of Spellborn. TGE could easily render WoW quality images (even better in my opinion) with the stock engine. With a few minor tweaks, TGE could even match GuildWars. And from the early screens of Spellborn, I haven't seen anything exceptionally flashy.

All three titles are high profile MMOOTC games, but even they don't sport the latest and greatest graphics technologies. And that hasn't hurt them one bit. Blizzard has earned heaped-up millions of gold pieces for WoW -- and GuildWars hasn't done too bad either. So what's keeping regular old TGE from making a gigantic splash?

We are. No one else is to blame.

Of course there is a good reason why we aren't producing WoW with TGE. The sad truth is that most Torque developers don't have multi-million dollar budgets and 10-man art teams.

That's pretty much it. As a result, a growing number of people don't take Torque seriously and instead, they give themselves one more reason not to finish a game of their own.

Anyway, that's my two copper pieces.

Sorry if this post offends anyone.

Buzzwords used in this post:
* MMOBLT -- Massively Multiplayer Bacon Lettuce Tomato
* MMOTC -- Massively Multiplayer Online Over The Counter

Relevant image links:
www.btinternet.com/~ajrdriver/ondefense.jpg
gamer.no/bilder/spill/world_of_warcraft/34.jpg
www.spoiled-brats.com/_gfx/guildwars.jpg
www.tanuki-studio.com/albums/Guildwars/ale.jpg
pcmedia.gamespy.com/pc/image/article/673/673070/the-chronicles-of-spellborn-2005...
www.eurogamer.net/assets/articles/a60274/ss_preview_ringfell_camp_night.jpg?slid...

#26 Well put Aaron - And by the way... I play MMOBLT every day with my wife when we walk home for lunch. Great game.

#27 Yeah, my family tries to make a habit of playing MMOBLT at least once a week.

#28 @Benjamin

Sounds cool. Post some screenshots. ;) Bacon is beautiful.

@the Ether

More relevant image links (TGE-powered):
www.reallyreallygoodthings.com/screens2/Tunnels001.jpg
www.reallyreallygoodthings.com/screens2/warehouse005.jpg
www.stickmanstudios.co.uk/screen11.html
www.stickmanstudios.co.uk/screen3.html
www.garagegames.com/images/ul/1985.shot4.jpg


[Edit: added the bit about the lovelyness of bacon]

#29 Can I make an MMOTLT with Torque? It is widly established the success of the MMOBLT on Torque, however GarageGames seems intent on ignoring the vegetarians. Also, do I need to make source code modifications to remove the Bacon references?

How can I get Tofu to work with Torque? I only have Blender...

#30 @Aaron: Amen to that. However, there's no need to exagurate:

Quote:
With a few minor tweaks, TGE could even match GuildWars

No offence really, but I'd like to hear about those minor tweaks.

OT: TGE is an incredible deal when you compare it to other engines in the same pricerange. It's even sharper than some of the high-cost engines. I think that sums it up.

#31 Hi Stefan,

Primarily, I was thinking of Manoel's Cg water resource. With the right normal map and locked animation/flow, it also makes a good ice surface. Even though TLK isn't really a minor tweak, since John K. has done all the major work, it's pretty easy for licensees to implement.

Mix that together with the spell effects from Faust Logic, and some of Tim Aste's particle effects and toss in the DRL stuff from Paul Jan for good measure -- and TGE starts looking like it could compete with GW graphics. Just my opinion though.

I may be misguided, but I honestly believe that most people are responding to the quality of the art assets in those games (WoW/GW/CoS) rather than the rendering capabilities of the engines.

I hope all that made sense.

Aaron E.

#32 I agree with what you said about people comparing art assets to the engine rendering capabilities. It was one of those things when seeing Tim Aste's original works where people were saying "OMG! Torque!" and he was like "um...yeah...it is what I'm using right now." Now he's part of the GG big picture on the art team (and for good reason). The RTS envoronment pack is another example of excellent work that was done with TGE that floors people who see it. Illumina, Air Aces, etc do the same thing because they have great artists.

But looking at engine features out of the box and comparing industry terms is as deadly as comparing 3D graphics packages on the same criteria without artists.

Uh, we bought Modo because of the cool UV features...how do I get it to animate? Buy Lightwave or 3DS Max or another bigtime Modo supported application. WHAT?!?!? But I paid money for THIS!

Yes, and Modo is EXCELLENT at doing what it does and it has only gotten better in 201. But it won't make your art for you. TGE won't make your game for you. Neither will GameMaker, no matter what its reputation among jaded programmers.

#33 Yeah, all I can say is check out the screens of Monster Island to see the difference a few resources and tweaks can make, and have a look at the RTS Environment pack. The second one especially shows the difference the *artist* makes. And to think he did that in just 90 days!


That, and take a look at the king of all MMOGS : WoW. The graphics are quite basic and undetailed. Art style however makes it look brilliant, and gameplay brings the players.

#34 I'm a little hesitant about the new resources that are popping up to improve TGE's rendering. They tend to break cross platform ability, have extremely high demand on system resources given the amount of eye candy they offer in return and are generally prone to problems. Though Monster Island does look very nice, screenshots don't indicate performance, stability and playability.

There are many great games published with TGE that are fun to play and engaging. I haven't seen one mind blowing game in terms of visual appearance, and I doubt I ever will. People should accept the fact that TGE's strength lies not in its rendering capabilities but in its stability, feature set and maturity.

Rocket Bowl is an excellent example of a game that's fun to play without the need for fancy rendering. Though it was disappointing to find out in ran poorly on my brother's PC which was a P3 800 / 512MB RAM / 64MB Geforce 4 video at the time. Especially given the fact that UT2K3 ran very smoothly on the afore mentioned system.

Clean well structured head code, performance / optimization and available documentation should always be the priority when choosing an engine to work with... In my opinion.

- Tim

#35 *WARNING SLIGHT HIGHJACK*

Yes, unfortunately I currently don't have a demo to release, and have distributed various screenshots because I really don't like using the time that I have to work on the game to work on videos. I do have a couple fairly basic videos, and since I haven't felt it necessary to learn how to set up cam paths they are just raw in game clips cobbled together...but they do indicate that CNMI is a playable game and not just some carefully rendered in game stills.

I'd be the first to admit that the combined resources *do* have an effect on frames per second, but not at least to the point of me wringing my hands in worry. I have what I would consider and average game system (P4 HT 3.2-over 2yrs old, 768MB Nvidia 7300) and I average 40 to 65 fps in levels I consider 90% complete. Complete, for example, being up to a dozen AI bug creatures attacking, several vehicles, fifteen to twenty "physics" objects (i.e., similar to rigid body physics, but base on the original vehicle code) vegetation, buildings, etc. Like I said, I am very comfortable with these numbers at this point considering that nearly none of my interiors are optimized (that is, no LOD), I still have a wide range of texture resolutions, a few still as high as 1024x1024, some of my view distances are 1200 to 1800 with fog out nearly that far, etc.

I guess what *I'm* trying to say is that I have absolutely *ZERO* education and training in computer programming and game design and yet CNMI seems to be creating a little buzz. What is possible with Torque (or any Game Engine for that matter) in the hands of someone who is as motivated as I am, *AND* has the skills to go along with it?

*END HIGHJACK*

Here are the vids (each one is a little different):

Video 1 - 16mb WMV
www.reallyreallygoodthings.com/screens2/CNMIVID.wmv

Video 2 - 32mb MPEG
www.reallyreallygoodthings.com/screens2/CNMIVID2.mpg

- Alan

#36 Wow! I wasn't expecting this many responses. Thanks to everyone that contributed such helpful info. I am still not completely sold, however some of the links did look promising. I have the MBUltra demo for xbox360 and it does look quite nice, but the geometry is so simple its hard to compare that to a character driven game like an RPG. That Lounge beta was really well done. It had an original look I wouldn't except from torque (ie it didn't look like tribes). Those legion demo videos look cool too. Oh yeah, and Tim Aste's work is amazing but it'd probably look that good in any engine. Some of the others I had seen already, but thanks for the links anyhow. Still, only Orion was able to actually link to a downloadable real-time demo. I need to see how the engine runs, so screenshots or low-quality videos aren't really too helpful to me. But thanks anyway.

I think everyone had brought up some good points. The main one being that the current popular MMOGs like WoW have low-end graphics. I understand this. But a game of this scope could take years to finish, and I just want to make sure TGE/TSE will hold up against the test of time. If I were releasing a game today, I think that the TGE could stand up, but just look a little dated. But will that still be true in a year or two, when everyone is playing PS3 and using next-gen graphics cards?

Pat, I agree that graphics demos are just that: little shinney demos. But they demonstrate the raw power of the engine. Obviously all the snazy shaders and particle fx wouldn't run full speed with a complete game engine, but they can still be used as a benchmark. And as others have said, sometimes its easy to focus on the quality of the artwork and not the actual engine. I am aware of all this. I was just hoping there was some tech demos I hadnt seen.

David, thanks for the helpful info. Minions of Mirth looks like a good proof-of-concept in terms of developing a MMORPG with Torque. Granted, it doesn't look as good as WoW, but it is top-notch compared to other indie projects. To answer your questions, yes we have a small team together right now and are currently in preproduction. I am heading up the programming end, but I also have 3d experience as do the artists on the team. A major concern of mine is how much tweaking must be done on the torque engine to support a MMO game with a unique feature set. If we might be better off using low-level tools and building up instead of the other way around. I have looked into pretty much all the other engines on the indie market but many of them are lacking in one way or another. Torque seems like a good all-in-one solutions, but even at that, heavy modifications would need to be done on an already massive codebase. I like some of the stuff I've seen from TSE, but its also been in the "early adopter" stage for quite some time. I dont want to start coding a game using a beta and then run into problems mid-development.

Even with all that being said, I think you guys actually convinced me to give Torque a second chance. Even if torque doesnt match up with HalfLife2 or the upcoming Gears of War, I would much rather have a decent looking fully playable game finished then a PS3 quality tech demo with no real game. I am definately going to take that into account. Thanks again for your support.

#37 Andres, with the money you save on buying TGE, even if you also buy TSE, compared to licensing one of the engines with the flashy demos (as has been mentioned, it has more to do with art and assets budget than tech in itself...), you could contract out a graphics programmer to do all eye candy stuff technology in a way that's more tailored to your game. Plus, you'd have money left over to contract out for some outstanding art assets...
That is, if you're in the kind of position where you can consider licensing source, unreal, etc.
And btw, none of those engines give you any of the foundation for doing an MMO, far from it actually.
Licensing middleware always implies a lot of "tweaking" as you say, although I'd rather call it normal gamedev programming ;)
In any case, whatever approach you take, any game you plan on shipping is going to a be a lot of work, programming, gameplay/design and assets creation wise, and that's just the production part of things.
MMOs are one step beyond a lot of games, and is a very difficult market to boot, especially if this is your team's first game...

#38

Quote:Oh yeah, and Tim Aste's work is amazing but it'd probably look that good in any engine.

Doesn't this pretty much make the most important point?

#39 @Rubes

:)

#40 @Andres

I work for a game company that is making an adventure game with next-generation graphics. We purchased a license for an amazing looking engine. Beautiful looking. Amazing physics. Easy to use scripting. Not half a million for the license, but not cheap. $20,000.00. Certainly not a small chunk of change for an independant company, but really a wonderful deal for an engine that looks on par with Doom3.

We are now switching to Torque Shader Engine. Since it's releasing any day now in a final version. Why? Bottom line: mission editors, documentation, developer community, stablity, access to engine devs, license price, gui editor, books, ports to consoles, and most of all... a company that has been around for 7 years and isn't going to be swallowed up or disappear on you.

Take the Reality Engine. Swallowed up by EPIC, and now the licensee's get a 50% discount on upgrading to the Unreal 3 engine if they want to keep developing with the Reality Engine. Greeeaaaatttttt, thought you had an engine licensed and now you get to come up with $250,000 for a 50% discount on Unreal 3. Wonderful.

Honestly, if you are going to spend 2 years on a game... don't kid around with yourself... you are NOT going to find an engine that puts you as far ahead in your development time as TSE... and that's just a fact. You will need to change some features of the engine... but that is going to take way less time and money to change TSE than to build an engine from scratch or to adjust as much on a more expensive engine. And let's face it, the cost saved on a more expensive engine you can spend on content or coders to adjust the engine.

TSE is going to be finished any day now... and you might as well save yourself some money and buy it EA while it still is. Cause the truth is... if you are a good businessman... you will pick TSE. It just makes good sense.