I have been working with the Torque Constructor right now. Here is a little review if you are interested:
The tool is together with the Lawmaker-editor one of the best world editors I used so far. It works very fast and reliable. CSG subtracts don't produce texture movements like WED often does. CSG subtract creates perfect brushes. There is no need to find work-arounds. You can just use it.
Texturing works fast. You don't have to open a properties window like you do in WED all the time. You just see all properties at the left side of the window.
Shadowmaps can be created in a second. Just press a button and you see lights in your windows. Every window can show wireframe, solid, textured, light-mapped and dynamic lighted scenes.
The real-time preview is fantastic and you can move through the scene like you do in a shooter: when you press the right button then you can just move around with WSAD and look with mouse movements.
It is rock stable and did not crash a single time.
I created a house with 6 rooms in 2 floors. It was fun, really. All my friends from MSN already know it
Here is the result:
And now to answer the most important question: "How can I get a level to Gamestudio?"
I exported it to map and imported into WED. It did not work. Then I imported into Quark and exported again as a map-file. Now I was able to load it into WED but all textures are gone. And all lights suddenly have the same color and same range.
So I had to re-work the level and got this in the 3dgs engine (A6.5):
This is not an optimal work-flow. But there are interesting things:
Even when you use many detail-brushes and rotated blocks you will realize that the level compiles much faster as the same level that you create with WED.
I don't know a good reason for that. Maybe it is because of the better precision of the Constructor. Maybe it does a better job with coordinates than WED. WED often has some strange floating numbers instead of integers when you look into a WMP file. This happens even if you use vertex-snapping.
At the end I wish that I could do all level editing in Constructor. But converting files to WMP needs some re-work.
So my idea is:
Create levels in Constructor. Prototype lighting and textures. But do the final texturing and lighting in Gamestudio since you cannot transfer them.
Maybe there are some of you with ideas to overcome this problem? Maybe some experienced Quark users around here can help me?
