XNA 2.0 Platformer Starter Kit

#1 www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=73046

#2 "Soon"

#3 Any news on this John?
On this or the 3d editor! :P

Henry

#4 Here is Dro's update on the process of converting the PK to TX2.0.

#5 I know, Ive been speaking with him to try to sort it out and get a full port of the demo not just the starter but im still interested to see whether a product people paid for is going to be updated or left to the community.I do realize that the starter kit isn't down to John but he mentioned it in one of his blogs.

#6 Unfortunately, these are the things that drive people away from Torque.

It's all well and good saying they're busy bees etc etc, but they really need to get one item fixed, finished, polished and completed instead of many "bits" of things half done and left (thats how it comes across anyway).

I am continuing on with Torque as I have struggled through to where I am now and moving forward ok, but I wouldn't do it again.

Having seen the way things go and the time it takes and then to only get something that is half working is to time consuming and frustrating. There just isn't the required level of documentation and help people need. We can't even search the forums efficiently where a lot of really kind helpfull people have put a lot of their time and effort in to try and make things better but most of it is probably never found and seen.

I am sure most other engine efforts out there suffer the same in some form or other, but I can only comment on my experiences.

Coding is hard enough as it is, the experience here and with Torque needs to be as simple and easy as possible otherwise people will come, look and then leave. That would be a real shame as Torque has massive potential.

Sorry if it all seems so negative, but it is frustrating at times...

#7 It just seems they have too many active projects to keep up to date correctly with the amount of people they have at their disposal. As TX wasn't picked up by many people it seems to be at the bottom of the pile, although i know John is working hard at it its been 2 months(?) since the release and comments were made saying "You can run the converter or just wait a short while for the official upgrade". Which to me meant a couple of weeks, not months. Unfortunately i think far too many people in the community share our views.

#8 It rarely pays to try and be all things to everyone. They need to decide on one tech and finish it completey without compromise and then (and only then) move on to the next.

Words are bounded around such as "soon" and "shortly" but obviously their dictionary has a different definition to everyone elses.

I don't want to be negative about TorqueX, but due to the mass of documentation, websites, blogs and books about XNA, I bet most people have found it easier and quicker to actually learn from scratch and produce something with that than Torque.

I have high hopes John's forthcoming book will help address some of the issues (it certainly sounds great so far) and people will come flooding to Torque becuase it does deserve to prosper. I like what I have learnt and seen so far, it's just such a struggle at times to get there....

The forums need a better structure and search facility too.

#9 As someone who's been using TorqueX for about 3 months, I can tell you for certain that I would not be half as far if I were using XNA without Torque, and my game would be nowhere near as robust or extensible as it is thanks to TorqueX. Saying it provides no benefit over XNA is just silly. I think you underestimate the amount of work it takes to build and maintain an engine on top of XNA.

I don't know how other people learn, but good examples work best for me. The TankBuster and FPS demos are great examples, GreenRobot is good, and the Platformer Starter Kit was a big help to me regardless of which version it was written for; it's solid example code.

There's definitely an information gap with TorqueX, there's just much less TorqueX information out there than there is for TGB or TGE. The biggest issue for me is that I can't filter out non-TorqueX results in the website search. There's so much information on every other product that TX-related results get lost in the crowd. Usually it's faster to just open a TX forum, Ctrl-F through the thread titles for whatever keywords I'm looking for, and repeat for every page of threads in the forum. Which is ridiculous.

This is all pretty off-topic for the thread, I just wanted to chime in as someone who has found TorqueX extremely useful but longs for a product-specific website search.

#10 No one said it didn't provide any benefit over XNA.

And due to other, better websites and support forums on top of all the other information and examples including free source code for complete games, not just demos and tutorials, XNA is probably a better way for a lot of people to go.

As I said, I don't want to be negative about TorqueX as I do believe it to be a great product which will (hopefully) only get better. They just seem to leave things always half done and in the air for too long with no solid feedback to the end users and then move on to something else.

I am hoping that the big push now towards 3D isn't going to leave the 2D side twisting in the wind and a long wait for the platformer update to 2.0

#11 WORD!

#12 Well myself and a friend finally found time to get it converted over, ill put up details on the TDN soon.

#13 Excellent news, well done. Can't wait.