When will the 1.02 out?

#61 @mb - No I don't think they do. Most of the resources don't even work in TGEA (except for 2). But they have a finished product. :)

#62 By the time TGEA is finished it's going to be last-gen. Don't wait for it. Move to another engine if you can't work with what you got.

#63 Umm..does not having 1.02 out stop you from producing a good game? I really don't understand what doesn't make TGEA feature complete. This is kind of a ridiculous thread.

#64 Hehe its already last-gen or further, but my crew and I invested a lot of money into GG products and just want the same love all the other products are receiving for TGEA. If it's just minor tweaks and stuff shouldn't have to be in QA status for months on in, I could see if it was something like real-time lighting system with shadows working on everything like they supposed too(talking out my arse here hehe).

@Andy That looks mighty impressive and hell even Bioware using it gotta be something good. But I know the licensing on it is probably unreal(tm)

#65 There are extremely valid reasons why it's being delayed, and you will all be very happy when you find out why.

Please be patient.

#66 I agree with Matt, I would like to know what absolutely critical features TGEA is missing right now.

ADDED: Oh man, Stephen that's just teasing. You're killin' me here.

#67 Could you please give some hints Stephen ?

!! now i cant sleep again :)

#68 @Mark - It's the "make my game for me" effect... if the engine doesn't include all the features they want for their particular game then the engine isn't a "finished product".

#69 @Tom - I don't know if I agree with that. A lot of the advertised "features" for TGEA don't even work. To me, that's an "unfinished product". But don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining that the features don't work, I just want some idea on when bugs could be fixed.

#70 @andy

You think that there's no bugs in their engine, that it's completely perfect and you won't have something that you will want to do that it can't do? I seriously doubt it. They don't even have a downloadable demo available, and you have to 'contact' them for pricing. I think you're just in awe of their nice screenshots, which btw can be done in TGEA just as well with good graphic artists/programmers.

Their PDF also mentions:

Quote:
Simutronics recognizes that different projects have different financial requirements. While you should expect
pricing commensurate with an industry-leading complete development platform, we are prepared to be reasonably flexible in terms of pricing (mix of up-front fees, annual maintenance, and/or royalties) and payment timing.

You're right things are missing in TGEA:
paying out an annual maintenance
TGEA: free updates + source to update by yourself if you want

paying out royalties
TGEA: you can sell you game by yourself and not pay royalties.

I wonder if you even get the engine source.... oh in the pdf:

Basic HeroEngine License : no source
Source Code License: you get the source
Back Office License: for billing, customer service (in-game and for billing issues), and marketing tracking

Guess the 'source code' is extra too.

#71 Don't get caught in a "grass is greener" effect. Trust me, you've got a good thing going with TGEA.

On another note Andy, I've had some success porting resources over from TGE to TGEA, and I'm sure Tom or Phil could handle anything necessary. Maybe point out some resources your particularly interested in?

#72 @Stephen Seems like the "Push Button Make Game" is being implemented. :)

Guess we'll have to wait and see.

PS. Hold on don't you have to pay royalites to GG IF you make crap ton of money off your game. Unless that changed and I didn't see it.

#73 @Mark - I wish the commander map would port from TGE to TGEA (http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=5277) if that can import I will shutup forever. I will salute GG and TGEA everyday, I promise! That's the only major milestone that isn't working because of the GFX.

#74 @Mark - I wish the commander map would port from TGE to TGEA (http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=5277) if that can import I will shutup forever. I will salute GG and TGEA everyday, I promise! That's the only major milestone that isn't working because of the GFX.

#75 Sorry about the double post. I tried deleting the duplicate but it won't let me :(

#76 I've been trough switches as well - and I got to the same conclusion as Mark. The grass is rarely greener on the other side, especially not when you've learned the first engine and how the internals work. I will probably never use anything else but Torque, but that's my choice.

There are missing features (no matter what some of the fanboys tell you) but you need to work around those and design your game without them in mind. If your "dream" game requires that very feature, you'll have to get dirty and implement them yourself. Sad but true, but that's how it works.

#77

Quote:
PS. Hold on don't you have to pay royalites to GG IF you make crap ton of money off your game. Unless that changed and I didn't see it.

Not for the last 4 years or so, no.

@Andy: Not picking on you directly man, please don't take it that way, but take your particular "request", and magnify it by the 900+ TGE community resources, as well as several underlying TGE "candy" example implementations, and then you will release that ultimately, no matter what we put in TGE-A, someone will be complaining that the resource/capability/effect/underlying "candy" system wasn't ported.

That leaves us in a no-win situation. Ultimately, the "Advanced" label on TGE-A wasn't just thrown on there for marketing purposes, and we do our best to make sure people understand that TGE-A isn't a game maker, but the message doesn't always get across.

#78 @Stephen Zepp - I never take anything you say the wrong way, no worries on that. I understand the "candy" part and the request I mentioned isn't even a TGEA function. It's more of a wishlist I guess. Been trying to make that one resource work for nearly a year without success.

I don't really complain about missing features, even though I mentioned it, I was just making a point. I don't complain about it because there's so much more implemented into TGEA that I need more than getting the world map editor to work or little things like that.

#79 I'm only entering into this conversation to try to explain what I think the customer's expectations (at least mine) versus reality. I generally like TGEA, and for the early-adopter's fee it was an added bargain. I've also had some good (non-TGEA) help from Stephen, Tim A., Ben and others so I'm not out to burn any bridges.

Videos like this GG TSE demo make it seem like TGEA is further along than it really is. An optimized ATLAS, full screen f/x, arguably shader 3.0 stock materials and some bug fixes would make it feature-complete, IMHO--all of which are shown in that video.

Videos like the above promises a nice new car on eBay but after buying it we find out the A/C doesn't work, there's no radio like the one in the pictures, the engine burns oil. Sure, we could have it all working if we "fixed it ourselves", but we bought it because we thought it was in good shape!

I'm not unhappy, but it was rather embarrassing to show the bosses that video and come to find out once we got our hands dirty it wasn't quite what we expected -- even with adding our own customMaterials.

I do agree that the definition of "feature complete" varies wildly. Optimized ATLAS, full screen f/x and some bug fixes would do it for me, personally. Some better documentation would be nice (for all I know full screen shaders are already implemented--just can't find any info on it).

It'll be interesting to see what comes out of GG w/TGEA 1.02.

#80

Quote:
Optimized ATLAS,

Not sure what you mean here--the Atlas in that video is decidedly old, and un-optimized.

Quote:
full screen f/x

Again, not sure what I'm missing here. If you are talking about the motion blur shader--that's simply a custom shader. You have full capability to put any motion blur algorithm you wish together and make a custom shader just like was in the video using the custom materials capability.

The Glow buffer is a full screen shader effect, and demonstrates exactly how to do any full screen capability you wish.

Quote:
Some better documentation would be nice

Point noted.

In general, the demo video you see linked above is much less capable than the current state of Atlas and TSE today.