Torque - TGEA with new website and new infos

The new TGEA engine has been announced. Here is a link of the new website with new videos, new projects and new images:

http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque/tgea/

Have fun!

It looks promising. I will check some of my artworks there today.

Regards,
Frank

I forgot to mention:
This is not advertising. This thread is to discuss about TGEA features, the videos, new projects and demos.

Please don't talk about personal issues here and don't start an engine flame war!

Thanks

Looks like many improvements have been made since the last release.
I have used Torque only once, but lost interest because of lacking docs.
However, according to the comments there is also a better and more complete documentation now.

As far as I know from reviews the previous releases suffered from severe bugs and obfuscated source code (like TGE did).
Whereas the latter is a nearly insoluble problem, the bugs were most probably fixed.

In any case the new videos and screenshots evince that very good results can be achieved.

I especially like these MegaTerrains. When geometry instancing was supported (I didn't find any information about that) impressive nature scenes could be achieved.

It's really just an observation, but I do wonder why this isn't considered an advertisement... Perhaps we should change the rules and allow this advertising of other products instead, because we already had countless threads of Torque in the past. Any 'news' about an update is sort of promoting it too, I have no problems with that at all though...

Phemox:
Please stay on-topic! You can make a new thread for "changing forum rules".

Ferriswolf:
Yes, they have many improvements like polygonal collision detection and new terrain system.
They also have a foliage replicator. This is some kind of geometry instancing. But I don't know about its performance. But the new game "Legion.." from GarageGames will tell us.

I rendered a few of my models today in TGEA 1.7 and it works fine. Shaders are easy to setup, just a few lines in the material file. The engine writes the needed HLSL code then automatically from the info you provided in the material file.

The documentation is better than before. But there is still room for improvement in my humble opinion.
Workflow is not perfect but the result is quite good. It looks professional to me.

Scripts are easy to read. I don't know the engine source code so far.

going to check the demo out...

very impressive demo where i am not even able to move around

and i dont find any trial of the software itself??

Oww right, I forgot that it's forbidden to disagree or agree with you or even post in your thread, my bad. Geesh...

Run that demo again and then press F11.

After pressing F11 you get a menu where you can change the world. You can change camera speed in the menu (camera is too fast). After pressing F11 again you can fly around.

But the forge demo does not showcase terrains. Probably they will show more demos soon.

help me, i cannot find the demos, only the old ones. where are the new TGEA demo downloads?

Ello, go to the garagegames website and download the free trial
(TGEA Demo)

When starting the demolevel, press F11 to start the World editor. You can play around with the loaded level or go to File -> New Mission to start a new Level with Terrain.

Press F4 to place objects, F3 to edit them and F11 to switch to switch between edit mode and play mode.

EDIT:
Broozar, the Forge Demo is the new demo. It looks like a small watchable demo only, but just press F11 inside and then start a new Mission.

After pressing F11 you can open a mission. With that demo comes two mission, and one of them has a terrain.

see? it runs well on linux. yay for garage games!

actually, if you want a good example of what Torque can pull off, here's an mmo someone made with it (yes it's torque, GarageGames mentions it on their website):

http://www.dreamlords.com/

More difficult to use than normal Torque and does not offer the same cross platform capabilities as TGE. Besides you can Mod TGE to have shaders so I have never understood the reason why you would ever buy TGEA. GS out.

check the features and you'll see:
http://garagegames.com/products/torque/tgea/featurecomp/

There is some good looking wet rainy shader of Torque3d:
http://vimeo.com/2814500

More infos about the developer of this shader are here:
http://www.garagegames.com/community/blog/view/16083/2#comments

If you did not follow the news: The upcoming Torque3d version will have a
significantly higher price. But they told it will be a cheaper upgrade path from
TGEA customers. The feature set of T3D is not officially announced yet but it
is told to read Collada files, gets better documentation, more modular source
code and lots of new shaders (ambient occlusion as an example).

But it also has to face a hard competition now. Unity will enter Windows
market, C4 got a great terrain (with option to sculpt caves, overhangs) and
Shiva is very cheap now.

hmmm the engine is definately worth the price

Sure, if you are a pro-PRO programmer or have a team of one or are just suicidal or like fixing a broken software or like snobby fanbase or absolutely pathetic customer support or engine documentation that fanboys think is 'complete or better' but is absolutely useless or.. umm.. nevermind.

You know what? Everyone should experience GarageGames. Go ahead and buy it.

I fully agree with ortucis. :p

Have to agree. I've owned TGE for 4-5 years, TGEA since it came out in EA - own the Commercial license, TGB Pro Commercial since it came out in EA (as T2D). Bought Showtool, Torsion, and most of the other tools there.

I finally came to GS a year or so ago because of everything ortucis said, plus the constantly changing licensing issues. Torque3D looks to be okay, but at a stiff price (even upgrading from TGEA), and everything they've promised for Torque3D to justify the price increase are the same things they promised for TGEA and TGB Pro that we didn't see happen.

Read the EULA closely and see what you think. And check the forums for people who complain about the lack of documentation to see what the fanboy responses are. The original GarageGame founders even got out of there last year and have started a new company. That should say something...

I often read something like that, also in the C4 forums. But I wonder how they manage to finish so much games with it. There must be something we miss here. Even professionals made games with Torque lately (Hinterland as an example).

You have to be well rounded when it comes to game development, it takes more than one area to make a game and to make one the way you want takes time.

How much time do you have?

Thats why teams or groups of people make games to save time .....most definately not money thats for sure hahaha ;p

Professionals even made games with C++ from scratch lately.

hehe the basis for all games and applications

While this is somewhat funny you missed my point. Not only professionals are making games with this technology. The game Buccaneer sold at Steam was even made by 2 artists.

I like how Torque fans post the truth.. oh well, here's a lie from the artists themselves..



Read more, and find out how they never had any experience with Torque. They just jumped into the awesome bandwagon called TGEA and VIOLA!.. the masterpiece was born..

BRB, purchasing TGEA and a few hundred 'Packs' from their store. Also, trying to build few contacts who can slave for me in my pursuit of infamy.. err.. fame, I meant fame..

I did not see why this is a lie. Maybe I missed something.

I know about some problems and bad workflow, the lighting issues, DIF conversions and others in Torque myself.

But again, there are a lot of good games finished. I often wonder myself why they did chose Torque over other alternatives. Maybe it is the renderer, the option to release on Mac, the initial price, I dont know exactly.

We will see what happens with Instant Action and Torque 3D.

Looks nice so far...

You didn't. I however, missed the [/SARCASM] tag. Still, that quote pretty much proves that it is impossible to create a proper game on Torque without an army of pro programmers.


As for T3D, I am sure it will be great and a huge success (with the amount of hype GG generates, I'd be surprised if it isn't). Besides, I am not saying you cannot produce a game AT ALL with Torque. I was complaining about everything else that is wrong with that company.

Allow me to quote a post from that link on GG from David (Community Manager):


No offense but this is the same bullshit they have been feeding for years to the community. They actually expect community to come out with fixes, tutorials and addons for their engines while they spend money advertising/creating useless stuff like InstantAction while they have no money left to actually support the engine that makes them money in the first place.. wth?

They have ported it for Wii/Xbox, they have ported it for Mac, they have it for Windows.. and I have read from both sides (excluding Wii/Xbox since haven't seen anyone create anything for it) how the engine refuses to work properly (esp. on Mac, it's broken, Linux is just.. well, forget that).

So the spend money on porting it here and there, coming up with stuff like InstantAction, while they have no money left to actually provide a decent customer support? I also remember how they were happy that after the huge investment they got claiming how decent docs and customer support is right around the corner for all customers. Hilarious stuff, but they actually tried, half heartedly, to create an updated doc for TGE before it all went dead again and they just decided to make it better in T3D instead.

Oh and did I mention how the exporters for models in 3d apps were actually being updated by the users while they had old broken plugins listed for downloads in some god forsaken location you had to search around to find in the first place?

Anyways, I don't want to go into even more detail on the subject since I know it's all going to be useless. So whatever, enjoy the engine, have fun.

Ortucis, I understand your points very much. I also have my doubts regarding IA and T3D. Did you see that id Software is making their own online gaming platform (QuakeLive)? We could try to guess who wins more attention, id or GG.

And when their Instant Action mission fails then the IA investors will probably stop pouring more money into GG. T3D will be more expensive and has to fight against Unity3D then. It will be hard for this company.

My personal issue with Torque is the lack of decent tools (shader preview, material editor / library and similar). Unity3d and C4 can easily beat this.

This will be an exciting year for 3d community. Newtek is working on a completely new Lightwave, 3ds Max gets very interesting features. Modo comes up with 401. Unity3d will be on Windows, T3D might release. C4 gets extremely professional features these days.

I am looking forward to all of this.

http://www.terathon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6369
This thread says it all. :p

I agree with everything you said. As far as tools are concerned, the terrain editor in Torque was fun, for first 10 mins after which I discovered how pathetic the tool is overall. Forget low res PNG texture support for like 8 textures (who does that?), the terrible GUI and any way possible for a first timer to even know what is the 'right' way to even do something simple as adding water to the terrain was just pita.

Anyways, I am just pissed off cause I wasted a lot of time and money on GG being new to all this (and taken in by hype of course). I apologise if I offended you or someone else.


I for one am definitely following two tools at the moment, A7 and Unity3D (2.5). Unity 3D will also let me mess around with JavaScript (which I did a bit when working on Flash) so I am definitely looking forward to the commercial edition (I hope it's NOT lacking shaders though).



PS: Will Autodesk consume Newtek? :P But then again, Autodesk pretty much owns the CAD market like Adobe does 2D.

I see. If you prefer scripting over programming C++ then this is a logical choice. Maybe you also should look at Shiva. It is similar to Unity3d, less expensive and supports more platforms (even Linux).
But Unity3d is also very impressive. The editor is the best of all indie tools. And the workflow is great as well. You can change a texture or model in external apps and when you switch to Unity it just reloads the assets. Perfect. Shaders are just a dropbox away in your material panel, just like in Shiva or C4.
Gamestudio is somewhat similar, you have to rely more on scripting, tools are a bit older. But you should compare yourself if Unity goes public on Windows.
But Unity is more expensive than GS and Shiva.



I dont think this will happen. They just released news about their new product "Lightwave Core". And I really hope that they continue to stand against Autodesk. Newtek and Luxology are our hope to have a little bit competition and affordable prices.

I have browsed through Shiva page a few times but I didn't see any Mac support. Even though I am interested in Windows only atm, I would like to work with Mac ports as well, I don't really care much about Linux though. Is there a proper Mac support for Shiva?



So far I have only been working with trial betas of 3ds, I was about to get the commercial edition but then I saw (today actually) that Unity 2.5 will be out around the end of Feb, so I have decided to wait and compare both. Like you said, I am more into scripting than messing around with C++ (the reason why I didn't progress much with C4 :P) so a big plus on Unity's side atm is how instead of a custom script I will get to learn a useful scripting language (since I design Flash sites, I can really use some extra learning :D).

So, keeping watch on the news for release..

I don't know why so many people keep whining about Torque.
It is well known that the documentation isn't the best of all, but it contains all functions the engine delivers. If people don't get informations about the engine and it's pro and cons before buying it, they shouldn't complain about wasting money.

I'm still statisfied with Torque, especially with TGB.
TGEA is great to make nice looking games and you don't always need to know C++ to modify the engine. The most stuff is also shared in the community so you just have to recompile. And you can also create awesome stuff just with the scripting language.

I admit that i had problems to start with torque too, but after i bought a book about how to work with torque, i fully understood the engine and am happy with it.

Currently i'm also working with Unity (got the commercial version and the pro beta version).
I like it so far, it's really like 3dgs, just in a much better way.
It always depends on the game style you want to create. I'm focused on 2D and 2.5D games and both are easy to create with Unity, cause you get a Ortographic cam just by one click, and you can have 2D physics.
Though i don't like the scripting yet. It's kinda weird.

The big boo about this engine is the price difference to get shadows and shaders. The Pro would be awesome for many games i have in mind (really crazy ones) but it's too expensive right now for me (for ME, not in general).

the big boo about this engine? it's one of their three supported languages. it's a python dialect with static typing.

their javascript implementation (which is also a dialect which isn't prototype based for example) is written in boo by the way.

unity commercial supports shaders but no render to texture.

I don't understand why people expect to create the new gear of war with torque. I mean just to accomplish crappy game like wii sport company invests and hires programmers, artists and such. You expect to be able to compete with them just because you paid few hundred buck on a software. This is just wishfull thinking. Even team which purchase unreal engine need to tweak it and create their own tools. You will never find a game engine which suits perfectly to your need that the reason you have to choose or you do small game with the workflow limitations and such or you start almost from the start with a 3d library such as ogre or irrlitcht.
But basically if you don't know how to tweak the source code, it may be always some problem.

torque source is a spaghetti mess though and if you want to work with engine source you can get better for free.

You missed the whole point why GG + (Insert the name of their software) is a waste of time and resources. Just in-case, here > http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/15999/

I still don't get the problem.
I don't care if the website isn't as cool as before with less features, or if T3D becomes more expensive, or whatever.

They deliver a great tool, they have a huge and great community that doesnt really need their website, they help each other with many resources and so on. Nothing changed in making games with TGEA or other products from GarageGames.

People should do more gamedesign and less grumbling.

Kiyaku,

They said you dont have problem when you have Pro-Pro teams or when you are a Pro-Pro programmer you can't understand the problem when you have/are one.

I wether have a pro pro team with me, nor am i a pro pro programmer.

Sorry to say but Torque anything sux!!!!!! You have to buy everything from a good scripting IDE (torison) to a model viewer (showtool) which really should come with the engine and don't tell me to buy it before I down it because I am an owner of TGEA and Torque 1.5.2 and yes I still think it sux and was a huge waste of my time and hard earned money! The community is also garbage, because most times when you ask for help all they do is tell you it's somewhere in the forums and the forums are a HUGE mess!