Yay questions

#1 Hi,

1) Not too familiar with Shelled. What I can tell you is that any type of radar/compass control will have to be coded into the engine yourself. Not via script, via source code. There are a few resources around the place to help with that.

Rear view mirrors for cars are easily achievable, you just drag out a simple GUI object with the GUI editor. This will have a significant performance impact as it requires the scene to be rendered twice. The size of the mirror will determine how much of an impact.

2) Torque supports the Theora video codec. This can be used to play video's within a GUI screen. Video texturing is not supported out of the box however there is a resource that almost has it working.

Streaming audio is supported. Torque supports the Ogg Vorbis and Wav file formats.

To be honest with you, I've found the video and audio support in Torque to be a little troublesome.

3) It's possible but would require some work. There's a few resources that come close to this type of functionality.

4) Big enough for a medium sized fps game. TGE uses 'GeoTerrain' which is the repeated terrain you would have seen in Shelled. This terrain can be sculpted and painted via an editor (there's also procedural methods available). I find the GeoTerrain system to be quite powerful and trouble free.

TGEA also has GeoTerrain but has another terrain method known as 'Atlas'. This terrain can be, for all intents and purposes, an unlimited size. This is what you want if you want HUGE terrains. The setback is there is no in game editor, all Atlas terrains have to be created within an external program (such as L3DT) and imported into the engine. There's still a few bugs with this terrain system.

5) Custom code, not core functionality.

#2 1: Go grab it, it's a fun little game.
What I was refering to was the multiple render viewpoints, when you fire in shelled the main camera tracks your shot from the shot's perspective, but if you hit a button it shifts back to main view with the shot's view in a small window.
So it's a basic gui window to add a secondary camera render, right? Can the render settings be altered for the second viewpoint, like dropping detail settings and max view distance down, for increased performance (or is the constant swapping of render settings a bigger performance hit?)

2: Interesting. So if I wanted to allow players to watch/listen to their own video/music file's they'd have to convert them to a .ogg file, or does the engine support other containers? No system installed codec support?
I take it DVD playback (relying on a system installed codec) is also a no go out of box.

3: Figured this one was a little ambitious. Old idea from the duke3d security cameras and monitors.

4: So in TGE it's fixed size while TGEA can have variable size ones? I'll have to play with the demo more and try to figre out how big the terrain tile is based of the orc model size.

5: Ahh, and I assume it's not compatible with TGEA's atlas? A little disappointing, I was hoping for the ability to allow player alteration of landscape in and island setting (settling the island, digging down hills to make room for buildings).



Just trying to nail down the core funtionality before I decide on a game concept and go with it.

#3 1. Melv wrote a resource which has a secondary view-port. You would have to code your specific functionality just like Joshua did in Shelled.

2. You are definitely correct about DVD playback and such. They would have to convert their files (or you would have to add a conversion library into the mix).

3. There is a resource for rendering Theora movies on in-game objects. You could look at it to find the hooks to use Melv's resource on a surface.

4. Answered above. Test to see if it is big enough for you.

5. You would have to write a rather large chunk to add the functionality to the level you want it. The legacy terrain has an add-on resource for deformable terrain (as well as the world editor functionality for a template interface).

#4 1: So, is it core or not to have multiple view points? How easy is it to add in? I don't want an impromptu lesson in cat herding just to add a rear view mirror.

2: Figured as much. Could probably make a conversion plugin for VLC player. I wonder how hard it would be to have TGE send commands to VLC and get back the audio and video, extending the supported codecs and containers greatly.

3: That's what I was hoping to hear.

4: I did check, 2048meters to a side, roughly 1.27 miles. Found a pdf guide ("TorqueNotes") that states the terrain tile can be scaled up to 8x it's normal size, though clipping issues abound.
No go on a big island game, though a small one could work. Ah well, a racing game is a bit more appealing to me for some reason.

5: Thought so. Ah well, TGEA's interesting but I really can't justify it, not till I get a handle on TGE, or any engine really.


Thanks for the info, just need to figure in a $150 expense so I can finally get started on what I promised I'd do nearly a decade ago, get started on a game.

#5 1) There's a GUI object that allows you to render an additional viewport. This viewport can be sized and the rotation and FOV of the camera can be adjusted. This is only a 2D GUI element though, it cannot be applied to 3D geometry or used as a texture. So it would be fine for use as a rear view mirror however you couldn't apply it to a moving object or use it as a security camera and the like. This type of functionality would have to be coded in yourself.

#6 2. You can't use VLC with closed-source software. It is licensed under the GPL.

#7 Oye...
Thanks for mentioning that, I was under the impression the GPL wasn't THAT viral, and that using an external API like libVLC doesn't require GPLing the entire program. The GPL licensing faq says otherwise. It seems it's the LGPL that allows it.
Lovely, there goes that idea.

#8 It is not that the GPL is viral so much as people always want to use it with easily susceptible licenses.