Torque X 3D Update - October 14
by Adam Larson · in Torque X 2D · 10/15/2007 (10:32 pm) · 22 replies
Hopefully this will be the last update before we can get something out for you guys to start playing with. I know people were expecting this to happen a bit sooner, and, well, so were we. Development stalled in the last month because I have been out of the office to take care of some family issues (nothing too serious now that it's over, but it did require me to miss work for 3 weeks).
As it stands, we're looking to be code complete by the end of this week, at which point we'll send it off to QA. There's still some bugs to be fixed, and documentation to be written, and it may not pass QA, so I can't really give an exact date on when it will be out. But, it's definitely getting closer.
There hasn't been much new exciting stuff put in since the last update, partially due to me missing those 3 weeks, and partially due to the fact that most of what we've been doing is just clean up and minor fixes. So, no fancy screenshots or anything. I just wanted to let everyone who's patiently waiting know what the current story is.
As it stands, we're looking to be code complete by the end of this week, at which point we'll send it off to QA. There's still some bugs to be fixed, and documentation to be written, and it may not pass QA, so I can't really give an exact date on when it will be out. But, it's definitely getting closer.
There hasn't been much new exciting stuff put in since the last update, partially due to me missing those 3 weeks, and partially due to the fact that most of what we've been doing is just clean up and minor fixes. So, no fancy screenshots or anything. I just wanted to let everyone who's patiently waiting know what the current story is.
About the author
#2
( hmm..... so there's really no images ? )
Aun.
10/16/2007 (12:24 am)
Thanks for your hard work ! Really looking forward for this. ( hmm..... so there's really no images ? )
Aun.
#3
Do you think you can post a video?
thanks again
10/16/2007 (5:28 am)
Thank you for the update, let keep our fingers cross that they pass the QA.Do you think you can post a video?
thanks again
#6
All the best to you and your family!
10/16/2007 (12:11 pm)
I can't wait to see this but sometimes there are things in life that are more important than coding.All the best to you and your family!
#7
10/16/2007 (12:18 pm)
Not that i want to detract from the work that is being done - but motivation is certainly attained from wonderful imagery!
#8
10/16/2007 (12:33 pm)
Great news. 
#9
Will it be possible to render a full screen 2D scene over a 3D scene?
John K.
10/16/2007 (4:15 pm)
Great news! We're all very excited to see this. Will it be possible to render a full screen 2D scene over a 3D scene?
John K.
#10
10/16/2007 (5:28 pm)
@John: Yes. In fact it's be possible to render multiple 2D and 3D scenes overlaid in any order and in any size/configuration on the gui canvas. It's also possible, with a custom material, to render 2D and 3D scenes to textures and use them however you want in a 2D or 3D level as textures. The only limitations there are system resources and developer imagination.
#12
Don't know if you can officially answer this or not, but if you can I'd like to know if GG has seen an alpha or beta version of XNA 2.0 to start updatin TorqueX to it?
10/17/2007 (6:35 am)
@Adam - Hope all is well now with the family. Keep up the good work!Don't know if you can officially answer this or not, but if you can I'd like to know if GG has seen an alpha or beta version of XNA 2.0 to start updatin TorqueX to it?
#13
We have not. But, from what I hear, the engine should work with XNA 2.0 since most everything is backwards compatible.
Actually, a couple of the features in XNA 2.0 are already provided in Torque X, and will need to eventually be ripped out. There's some hackery that has to be done on the clipmap currently to circumvent some XBox specific render target issues. Also, apparently XNA is going to handle device resets automatically, which basically makes the Torque X resource manager useless.
And the engine should be set up to add networking fairly easily. Everything is tick based and input is handled via an input manager. So with the features that XNA is providing, I think getting a Torque game networked will be fairly straightforward.
10/17/2007 (1:39 pm)
@JonathonWe have not. But, from what I hear, the engine should work with XNA 2.0 since most everything is backwards compatible.
Actually, a couple of the features in XNA 2.0 are already provided in Torque X, and will need to eventually be ripped out. There's some hackery that has to be done on the clipmap currently to circumvent some XBox specific render target issues. Also, apparently XNA is going to handle device resets automatically, which basically makes the Torque X resource manager useless.
And the engine should be set up to add networking fairly easily. Everything is tick based and input is handled via an input manager. So with the features that XNA is providing, I think getting a Torque game networked will be fairly straightforward.
#14
Thoughts?
10/18/2007 (6:44 am)
Have you guys been actively testing your various kits and such on the 360 or just on the PC? I'm curious because I've noticed a HUGE difference in performance when porting my games to the 360, which have caused me to actually build newer games differently to account for this.Thoughts?
#15
10/25/2007 (4:48 am)
Oh yes, I've been proceeding under the assumption that performance would be acceptable if I keep my own code in check, but would be interested to know the answer to Jonathon's question as the TorqueX engine side of things needs to be reasonably performant on the 360 as well.
#16
Well i'm waiting for Torque X3D i heard the best bet is to keep working on your game in TGEA and port it over, is it going to take alot of coding to port your TGEA game to TX3D?
thank you for your time how did the QA go?
11/09/2007 (11:40 am)
How does the terrains work, can you use L3DT? Also can you use higher resolution texture like 4000 x 4000? Well i'm waiting for Torque X3D i heard the best bet is to keep working on your game in TGEA and port it over, is it going to take alot of coding to port your TGEA game to TX3D?
thank you for your time how did the QA go?
#17
11/19/2007 (12:49 pm)
So it's been over a month since the last update. How's it going? Did it pass QA?
#18
11/19/2007 (8:05 pm)
I'd like to know also. I can't wait to get my hands on this.
#19
I would like to think that it does - and we no longer have to have c# express.
Sean
11/20/2007 (2:20 pm)
I guess the question for this week, is will it support xna 2?I would like to think that it does - and we no longer have to have c# express.
Sean
#20
11/21/2007 (7:29 am)
I would hope it actually doesn't support xna 2 atm. The reason being is that I wouldn't want to wait for GG to have to go through and modify the engine to suit 2.0 and force us all to wait for a released 3D version. I'd rather have the released version of the 1.0 stuff and then get an upgrade to 2.0 after xna 2.0 is fully released (and out of beta). 
Torque Owner Alienforce
DLN
Keep up the good work.