Gears of Torque" TGEA demo

#1 This demo, among others normally not available to the community, was available for "hands on" time at GDC 2008, and was quite impressive. This is one of the reasons why attending GDC can be very important: you get to see a lot of cool stuff non-attendant developers won't.

#2 As Michael mentioned, this was an early version of a demo that was shown at GDC. We do have plans for the demo, so stay tuned!

If I recall correctly, that demo was done with "old school" TGEA (probably 1.03, with some customs mods), and doesn't really even show the power of TGEA 1.7 as it stands :)

#3 Stephen

Sounds great. Can you say something about the used techniques behind? Please.


Greetings

Thomas Bang
Germany

#4 Honestly, we're not -quite- ready to talk about it yet as far as I am aware. I've nudged our team to see what they want to do, but it may be a few weeks while we continue to work on the demo.

While we didn't secure the video or anything, we didn't really expect folks to discover it quite yet--nice 'net hunting!

#5 Looks really nice. In terms of visual techniques, it looks like some pretty straight-forward bump mapping with possibly some specular Phong-lighting. You can tell they're using a custom material due to the fact that it doesn't sample ambient light from the shadows of the interior.

#6 Wow looks awesome. This is the kind of stuff tgea needs to get people to take notice :) Love the blood splatters and over the shoulder cameras :)

#7 It would be something awesome to get an expert from-the-guys themselves view of how to accomplish those kinds of visuals and squeeze the most performance and pizazz out of the engine, what a selling point this video would be for TGEA.

I'm most interested to know the modelling techniques and materials :) Like, are those stairs difs or dts. I didn't see the normal camera bumping on the stairs, was an invisi ramp used? And so on.

Just throw the level designer to us in an open interview format and we'll take care of the rest ;)

#8 I know there was a thread here on this last year, but I'll be darned if I can find it. The older video (linked in that thread, IIRC) told how many polygons, man-months/weeks to create and so on. The scenario itself has a 180,000 polygon count and dev time of "13 man-months". The character body took 4 man-weeks and the head was 3 man-weeks.

The level and characters certainly do look sweet.

#9 Thats a fantastic demo... i wished Sickhead had done it.

There is nothing i noticed that was far from stock TGEA graphics functionality. They did implement some custom character control and camera work and the blood splatter effect to get the GOW feel, but thats all i would say as far as engine changes.

The key to that demo is the extremely well produced art. Bravo!

#10 If only Stephen could add "and yes, the video was made upon the Open GL renderer" ;-) (j/k)

Nice job guys. Great art.

#11 I'm looking foward to this 1.7 release. Now if only I could find a serious 3d artist that won't give up after making half an object.

#12 Tom hit it on the head, it's just good production value. There is no reason (from what is seen in that video) that you can't match that in TGEA.

#13 Has anymore info on the video been release? also are they still going to release some of the code as a resource? and did it have a skin shader on the model?

thanks for your time

#14 What happen to the release of this game? are you switching it to TX3D?

please if someone has info on this please post.

thank you

#15 As far as I know, this was only a tech demo to show off torque and never intended to become a full game.

#16 @Kory: James is correct. It was only a tech demo and was never intended to become a full game.

#17 Thank you for the update,I talk to Brett Seyler about two or three month ago and he said they where thinking about releasing the blood and camera view code for a resource. Do you think that GG still has that on their list.

thank you guys/gals for your help
Kory

#18

Quote:What happen to the release of this game? are you switching it to TX3D?

Quote:As far as I know, this was only a tech demo to show off torque and never intended to become a full game.

Exactly. Plus, the licensing cost would be horrendous to use the GoW name, trademarks, and the like. Why reinvent the wheel anyway?

#19 Thanks Cory I understand, What i really was looking for was the FX blood splash effect and Roadie Run, and to see if they where going to put it into 1.8 for the demo.

I talk to GG about it.

thanks again

#20 The blood splatter can be easily reproduced using the full screen FX resource and coding a custom effect:
http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=15254