LawMaker info

#41 I also evaled Lawmaker... and have nothing but positive things to say, not only for the engine, but for the team there, in particular, the person who was my contact point throughout the eval...

Quote:Think about it before you buy it: Torque and Ureal both gives you the souce code when you buy the engine. On LawMaker you pay $300 to play with the engine.

whoever said this has only one thing right (don't hit me now :) )... the part about thinking about it before you buy... i think you should do this on any license purchase...

as far as the part about $300 to play with it... well, imagine a game developer who is not interested in playing around with modding the engine... an engine for which he is considering spending, not only an additional $1200 dollars for... but also investing more of his/her valuable time and effort in getting familiar with...

imagine this peron might want to verify that the engine will do exactly what he needs without having to go into the code and break stuff :0)...

maybe this developer is interested in making his/her game, above all, and getting it out the door as quickly as possible...

taking all that into account, if you can afford it, the $300 doesn't seem much worse than $250 for the indy TGE/TAT license... well, maybe just a lil worse, seeing as you can't sell stuff with it :) but the guys over here are willing to work with you... and so far, i've been impressed with the attitudes i've seen over there...

also... the people at Lawmaker are also receptive to publishing projects they feel are worthwhile...


don't write em off so quickly... i haven't... in spite of the fact that i opted to recently license TSE/TAT, instead of going for the Lawmaker license right away :)


hey, once they get everything finished (docs especially) i think Lawmaker will rock...


** added **

i looked briefly at C4... i could never get comfortable with the fact that in the C4 demo, the closer you got to the big rotating fan in the cavern entrance, the slower it rotated... the farther back you got... the faster it rotated...

this was something i noticed from an old demo that seems to still exist...


--Mike

#42

Quote:Only supports pixel shader 1.1 - 1.4? That's really bad.

They claim to do HLSL as well, so why does it matter? Does anyone actually write shaders in assembly these days? That's just wasted time if you ask me.

compile ps_3_0 MyPixelShader(); // Yeah baby!

#43 Michael: I havent seeen any submarin pics from you made with LawMaker yet :)

#44 Aha! Official response from the Law Maker team. They say it's not limited to 1.1 to 1.4.

#45 :) Doing fine. FPS adventure style in LawMaker and a more casual game prototype with TSE

#46 Hahahahaaaa... hey there AF, how're ya doin...

now you know me... and therefore you know that that would've been the second thing i
would've done with the engine... if not the first :)


gimme a sec... lemme find one already posted somewhere...

** added **

i was sure i harassed the Blitz forum with a shot in one of my defection threads, but i couldn't
find one... so i uploaded this shot from Lawmakers level editor i had lying around...


for those interested, i was able to construct some simple level geomtry, shade it, and add a light
or two in about an hour after i installed the eval and read over some notes...



it was really easy enough to go totally mad and emulate the over speculated, wet look of DOOM3
that i always wanting to do so badly :) real time lighting and shadows there...


ok... now, to be fair to Torque, here's one of the same, badly bumpmapped sub in TSE...



--Mike

#47 Awesome work Michael. With your sub game how will you handle waves?

#48 Looking great! Looking forward to see more.

#49 Wow.. thx guys...

i really have a lot more work to do before anything is final... these are just prototype models...
the hull form of the Type23 has a wider sail, and the geometry up front is uvmapped poorly... both have to be redone... and right now, the game is shaping up as a 1950s spy sub thing as opposed to WWII Atlantic or Pacific game/sim (which i toyed with extensively) in order to avoid direct competition with a few other works in progress that i'm aware of...


also, i really need to look at some posts from expeienced art types on the topic of making decent looking shadered scene elements... even the guys who like the plasticy wet look of DOOM3 would run away from my stuff right now... and i couldn't blame em :)

Matt... i'm still working with learning TSE, i just got the license last week or two, but right off the bat, i don't think i'll be able to do the water by messing with the exisitng waterblock... i'm just barely able to mod existing shaders at the moment, so i'm shying away from that course right now...

i am looking at the possibility of adding a mesh just above the water, in the immediate view area... if i can get a translucent bumpmap shader, and deforming that (either a via animation, or in code) to simulate waves in the immediate view area... then subclass the existing waterblock to include the new mesh and code in the functionality to keep it with the view... not too sure if this is gonna work, but i got it going well in another engine, which i'm probably gonna release my first version with...

it's gonna take a lil while before i'm really comfortable enough with TSE to plan anything firm, but i'd like the second version to be done in TSE... 'xcuse me, TAT :) ... it's still not out of EA yet, so stuff could change... (Ben might add waves for me), but the net code in Torque is just too nice to pass up...

i'll post any progress i make with the waves in the thread on the TSE forum...

thx again guys for the comments... lemme give the thread back to the original topic before i get fined for hijacking :)


--Mike

#50 I've been looking at the LawMaker engine, but its really too early to say how good it is or if its even better than TSE (Im just not gonna call it TAT, you should do that same). On paper, the features sound great, but I need to see some real time demos to back all that talk. The one feature that sounds nice is editing lua scripts on-the-fly without a restart or recompile. I notice with Torque and a bunch of other engines, half the time I spend just copying assets -> editing code -> recompiling -> waiting -> restarting engine -> waiting -> engine crashes -> repeat. But unless you're doing a standard FPS, I dont know how useful LawMaker will be without access to the source code.

#51 Mike,

From your posts, looks like the reason you aren't going with LawMaker is the lack of documentation. I'm curious if LawMaker is that great why you've purchased TSE?

Steve

#52 Hiya MT...
i've had a license for TGE for quite a while... l'm slightly familiar with the way TGE does things... and w was intending to license TSE months ago... so Lawmaker would've had to been ready to run, and knocked my socks off, so to speak, in order for me to choose it over TSE...

there were a few things that were still under development with Lawmaker that made me choose to license TSE and hold off on Lawmaker at the current time... the docs being the primary reason... other things i can't really go into due to my obligations to the nda agreement i entered into in good faith with the makers, but in my case there one specific thing that was on the calendar...
if you really want first hand answer to your question though, i suggest you request an evaluation period... then you'll see first hand why i think it's so great...


hiya Andres...
you don't mind if refer to TSE as what it is, do ya... and when TAT comes available, and i start using it, then i'll refer to that as what it is... fair enough :0)

Quote: On paper, the features sound great, but I need to see some real time demos to back all that talk.

well, if you need to see some real time demos, then you should submit an evaluation request... i mean, if you are really that interested in seeing what all the talk is about...
otherwise, allow me to suggest, that you might be better off concentrating on making your game with Torque, whichever version of you have a license for... and ignore this topic...

MT and Andres... it's not a matter of which one is better or worse... nothing is quite that simple... it's more a matter of how capable a coder and artist you, the developer are... and which one you feel most comfortable using...

that's the best answer i can give you all... beyond that, you'll have to explore the different options yourself... obviously, you both have some reason why you're even entertaining looking at another development tool, else you wouldn't even be interested in or responding to this thread... if you are really unsatisfied with Torque, for some reason or the other, then all i'm saying is, that Lawmaker may be another option you might want to explore...

all i can do is offer up an opinion based on my experience with both... i really don't want to be put in the position of having to defend either Torque or Lawmaker... if you are familiar with me, then you know that i have no allegiance to any camp... the game engine that does what i need to do with the least compromise will be the one that i license and use...

the one you use should be based on the same reasoning...

good luck

--Mike

#53 Mike,

Thanks for the information. Sorry, wasn't intending to put you on the spot. I've seen your subs in many game engines now since you seem to be members in many of the communities I'm a part of as well (3Impact, BV, C4).

I may give LawMaker a shot.

Steve

#54 @Eric

I see you are the newest registered member at Darkroom studios.