"Gears of Torque" TGEA demo

Hi

TGEA (Torque Game Engine Advanced) shows a Gears-of-War-Level.
I'm very impressed.

Watch the Video


Any chance to do this with A7/Lite-C ???


Moderators: Move this topic to "Tools" if you want... no problem...

Wow, I am really impressed. Look at the shadows everywhere! The level is big and open and shaders look impressive.

I did not know that TGEA is that good. I am almost converted

Hm its good...but somehow I'm not that impressed by it!

and yeah i think its also possible with a7...just wondering how much fps you would get...

Scorpion: Can you compile such a level for the community and make a video of it?

sorry but i don't see anything awe-inspiring.

frank knows i say "a7 could do it" a lot and we have a few disagreements as to how much should be integrated into the engine and how much should be left to the user, but this here is nothing special and could be done with very little programming work ( <100 lines contest, anyone? perhaps something similar. no joke*) and is mostly a matter of artwork.

characters don't even cast shadows.

it is nice, though, and should set an example to some to rely more on art and less on integrated shaders.

julz

*jcl said the standard include files that come wtih gs don't count towards line-count.

I'm not impressed either, but not because it doesn't look good in terms of level design or the 3d model.

The resolution of certain things is a bit low, like the trees for example. The little gameplay that is shown is quite horrible, but visually it's looking not bad. Now before you say this is nitpicking take a look at Gears of War itself and you'll see that it's not on the same level. Especially the post-processing shaders are missing.

By the way, is there somewhere a higher resolution movie with this for download? Perhaps part of why it looks low-res is because of the video resolution.



If you provide us with the art or a exported version of the level, sure why not? I'm not sure if it would run 'out of the box' or need adjustments to get good fps, but basically it shouldn't be impossible. Needless to say someone should do this to prove it I guess.

ok, maybe Julz can compile such a level.

I agree with JulzMighty that this level looks good because of the artworks. But I already mentioned the shadows above.

Even Scorpion (he just told this would be possible in A7) asked in a thread this question:
"btw...is there already some kind of shadowmapping that could used in a7..with acceptable results? and if not(I guess so? )..."

This means he is aware of the shadow problems. So I would like to see it. I mean: shadows and shaders at the same time, normal-mapping, bloom, hdr, vegetation, a big level with good scene-management.
And please remember the render-speed of the small venice-demo with only a watershader without transparency.

Did you see the 'Warehouse' demo too? It's not perfect, but it does have very nice lighting and shadows and runs at very acceptable speeds on my PC. I think if one were to add some nice models with better animation and perhaps additional shaders it could very well look even better.

actually i am not impressed either. :p are those shadows realtime? doesn't look like it. the character doesn't seem to get affected by shadows but maybe i didn't see it properly because of the bad video quality.

omg did i sound a bit too braggy? I don't have the time nor the models/textures for such a demo...

But really look at the ressources we have: Bloom shader, metal shader and all kind of normal and env shading. And we have got also a powerful scripting system... so there is nothing this engine does not have.(and what I see by dexsoft and sometimes in the showcase the user are doing really great work with models, too)
The biggest problem would be 'real' shadowmapping. because there was nothing done( that was contributed) in a quality could be used in a game. but it _can_ be done in this engine!

Just do it.

And regarding the questions towards resolution, game-play, fps and all the things coming up in every such discussions:
This is a pre-alpha video. It is even a leak of an internal video. The demo is not finished and there will come something bigger at GG as far as I know.

Scorpion:
Maybe you are right, maybe not. I can't tell because it is pure theory. I want to see it!

Start to move the camera in this demo. It is jerky. And look at the FPS. They are sometimes high sometimes about 30 FPS (without any shaders applied).

And look at the Ask-Conitec Forum. Almost all users were disappointed about this and the venice demo. Some of them even immadiatelly bought another engine after seeing those (I know 3 of them).
Something went really wrong with both official demos.

I watched the movie and i'm also impressed.
If you played Gears of War on the XBOX360 like i did, you will notice that the quality is almost the same.

This shouldn't be a 3dgs vs. Torque thread IMO. I always hear "3dgs can also do such stuff" but i never saw someone showing me a proof for this. How should people believe that it can look like this?
Even if it does, you always have to sum up the time and work you put into such a project/graphic/whatever. Some engine are just easier to use than 3dgs while other are not, that's fact.

Yeah thats true...GS is great for programmers, but in this community are not so many skilled artists and that is representing for the enigne.

Scorpion: Yes, I very much agree with you. A higher degree of artistical freedom in a tool-set will automatically attract more artists. They are not dumb and they try different tools and watch the market.

Well I don't want to sound rude but imo the warehouse demo really wasn't a good example for the A7 capabilities. If you disagree have a look at that again:


And for a level that consists of only one medium-sized hall with not overdetailed interiors and except for that just some sprites or a skycube to fake some view the performance wasn't overwhelming at all...

Concerning the Torque video I have to say it looks nice although I also think the character isn't affected by shadows and light of the level. In addition to that there isn't much to show rather than an empty level and you can't tell much about the performance because you don't know what for a system was used to play this. But as it's only some kind of pre-alpha it definitely is looking like something promising...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

Great demo.

I don't see any realtime shadows, too. What would it look like with realtime shadows? What would the frames per second look like then?

This is a good question, Pappenheimer, we don't know.

But real-time shadows are no problem today as industry shows. Even indie engines like S2, C4 or Unity3d show this easily. I am pretty sure that TGEA can display real-time shadows but how fast this is? We will see.

I already mentioned. This is a work-in-progress demo. There will be more.
But I like to see such great scenery with good lighting, even if it is only static shadow-mapping.
Try to find a tool-set that can combine static shadowmaps with normal-mapping. I asked this question everywhere (Leadwerks, Irrlicht, A7, C4, Lawmaker). There are only a few engines that are able to do (TGEA, Source and UE3). The last ones use directional shadowmapping for this.
The developer of C4 said he will ever and only support dynamic shadows. This is the future and yes, he might be right in the long term.

Some of you know that this is not easy. A7 real-time shadows have many problems with camera volume or with affecting geometry behind walls and similar. Engines like C4 use shadow zones and other optimizations to prevent that. Then it renders where it should render and it is faster because of better culling.

This is only an example that beautiful real-time shadows don't have to be slow. So the FPS-comment is not always a reason to stay away from modern technologies.

It's just about acknex and fps :P

A7 - Not out of the box if you want to use models - but with static meshes and / or blocks it works.
But at the moment (and since month) the A7 mesh Compiler is not really usable. I hope that this will change in future.

But we are combining normalmaps and static lightmaps in our actual project, so you should know it better.

At all:
It´s a really big hassle to get such nice visuals with A7. Even if you combine normalmapping and static shadowmaps, you´ll have to tweak a lot of values.
We´ve coded a small editor to solve this problem but it´s still a pain in the a**...

I also think it´s possible, but it´s not easy for an artist.
In fact, it´s quite "impossible", if you won´t go deep into HLSL.

This is possible with A7, and probably most other engines. I don't see any realtime shadows. I currently have envbumpmapping + static shadowmaps as an option for my levels in A7 so what I see there isn't a problem. A7's only problem is that a very small fraction of the users can import worlds like that because you need 3ds Max and the Max2GS and Max2Mdl exporters alongside Ventilators plugin, and you have to export all your models twice with different uvmaps for shadowing. This takes a bit of knowledge, never mind the talent and skill needed to develop the art in the first place. Hopefully the new FBX import will materialize more quickly in terms of functionality and ease of use and everyone will have the benefits of an easy scene import to WED. However, I do agree that A7 is slower than other engines in terms of similar scenes... Although I don't know if it's slower than Torque.

i wont make it dependent on 3ds max. any other package can be used to create content. its only a question of the users abilities here. a7 can show such, too

Any other package can create whatever 3ds Max can do, but it's not really that, it's the exporting your scene(80+ models ect.) into WED part that ultimately counts. As far as I know, Max is the only program that had this support for years due to the Malabar plugins. I think this is the great set back of A6-A7... but hopefully Conitec can make a the FBX importer real solid in the coming months.

"deep into HLSL" is a subjective exaggeration -- how far is deep? and with such a simple language, how deep do you have to go before it's a bad thing? but i don't want this to be a torque vs a7 thread either so i won't argue about it from an engine sense, and will just discuss the video.

now, what's in the video? nice art, yes. but there are NO dynamic shadows. the static shadows there are smooth but very low-res. it must be one of two ways: they compiled a static shadow map for it, or they use realtime shadow-mapping, but the latter is unlikely because there isn't anything dynamic about it.

what else is in it? normal-mapping. environment mapping, i guess. dynamic lights for the gun-fire, but like any well-made game they only put as much detail in as they need -- no dynamic shadows cast. people often want every light to cast shadows, but even most games on ps3/360 make as little use of that as possible for the sake of speed and putting resources into visuals that make a bigger impact.

now, not for the sake of argument but for the sake of learning: whats wrong with create_meshes and using shaders on level geometry? i know there have been some issues with tangent, but what besides that? i haven't done any block shaders myself, but the manual makes it seem very simple as to how to combine static shadow maps with shaders. and yes, i know static shadows in a7 atm don't look great. i'm asking from a technical point of view.

julz

A7 can do it? sure. but then even Notepad can do it with a lil help of gcc. yes it's exaggerated, but face it: if you have to alter value x, add feature y with dll z and spend 500 hours of coding power to get an industry-standard feature like usable real time shadow mapping into acknex, or even replace the renderer (like SPHERE for a6), you could almost as well start with notepad and gcc.

it's not a question if you could do it, it's a question of - how easily can i use it? how fast is it? what does it cost? if you are not a hobbyist, not playing around with a toolkit for fun but to realy finish a commercial game, and you are developing to a tight schedule, why would you make games based on an engine where you would have to code anything pretty yourself? how efficient would that be?

you could walk all the way to china, for sure, but if you can go there by plane, what would you decide for?

realtime shadow mapping has nothing to do with the topic of this thread -- that video.

download the shader workshop. in half an hour or so you'll be writing your own varieties of shadow mapping shaders.

julz

i do not _want_ to because i can choose from cheaper, more artist-friendly tools that bring it all along. out of the box. without coding. at incredible framerates.
coding should be for game play, game logic and customisation only. if you have to code your tools, eyecandy and even proper entity managers yourself, why should i buy it?

everyone is free to choose. that's market economy.

Supply the textures and 3D models and I'll try.



Regardless of how nice their demo looks (I agree on that), it's strikes me how fps suddenly don't really matter when it's about Torque and some kind of 'leaked' demo where basically nothing happens accept some simple animations. And yes, I know the two tech demos for GS are 'final', but then again I really don't have fps issues with either of the two demos. Both are well above 60fps all the time.



You do realize that actual games do not write themselves???

I strongly agree with you, what other tool you recommend for Windows?

I think Conitec is trying to improve the tool-set, but they should improve or rewrite WED first. It's very annoying that after the engine close from full screen, the texture in WED disappear and refresh views not work!

Yeah , Torque has definately left gamestudio way behind. The torque engine , it's tool set , and it's many diff engines , including the torque XNA , are all far superior than gamestudio's outdated A7. If Conitec doesn't get on the ball , I dont really see GameStudio surviving much longer , it's almost irrational to use it at this point , there's just so many superior alternatives which are sometimes even cheaper. I've grown used to using gamestudio , and i'm very familiar with it's interface , so I still use my A6 for development , however , I dont plan on ever getting A7 , as when I get some free money I will more than likely be buying TGEA. And it's not just the engine , it's its GarageGames comitement to it's software , when you go to Graragegames website , it's full of content , they have a couple of different engine editions , tools , content packs (from models to music and snd fx , ect...), Torque books , and even games , they will actually publish your game if it's good.

Gamestudio still has it's horrible homepage page with A7 , and thats it. It's the same as it's always been , and so is the engine , a completely outdated pile of crap. Sure there's the AU Resources , but name one thing other than scrips thats usable from there ? I honestly dont see any reason to even use gamestudio anymore , other than because i've grown accustomed to it over the years , but if I was getting into game development , I would have to be insane to choose gamestudio over torque. I dont know , I've used gamestudio for about 5 years , and have always loved it , and in fact always prefered it over torque , but recently it really seems like the Torque people are really pushing their technology , making it better , more user friendly , and reaching out to higher demografics , allowing you to publish for PC , Mac , and now even Xbox360 , while with gamestudio you still can only publish for Windows and A7 actually become much less user friendly than A6 was , I dont know , but it almost looks like Conitec doesnt really care for Gamestudio anymore, I dont see any desire from them to push it above it's competition , it's like they just kinda keep it alive and resell it with a couple of upgrades here and there every couple of years.I can almost assure you , that unless gamestudio makes some major changes , In the near future , it's going to be left forgotten in the past.

Now on to the changes , HERE IS WHAT GAMESTUDIO NEEDS (Lite-C wasnt it)

In-game Editing - the ability to move stuff around , change parameters , edit scripts , behaviours , lights ,ect... , in real time , and have be saved into your level.

Shader Editor - with precoded shaders , for all the common shaders (normals mapping, parallax , bloom , bump mapping , ect...). All shaders should have fallbacks , this is such an important feature thats lacking , the current gamestudio shaders are unusable as they will only work on a handfull of cards.

Post Processing FX - Precoded post processing fx , which you can just add through interface and tweak through sliders.

Usable Templates - Templates that arent a pile of turds , templates that are actually usable , something you can use in a game , and can tweak through UI. The current gamestudio templlates are a joke , they are useless , I dont even know why they include them , they dont work , they are a complete mess. Having a set of good templates is invaluable to an indie developer who doesnt have the time and recources to sit down and script everything from scratch.

Usable AI- Ai that actually works , Ai you can just plug and play , why isnt this already implemented ? Gamestudio has been around for like 10 years , why hasnt decent AI been implemented into it ?

Shadows - We need good Dynamic shadows that work properly.(not sure if this has been fixed in A7)

Content - A decent model pack , texture pack , music pack , and sound fx pack. Why is it so impossible for Conitec to provide the bare basics to start making a small generic game with GameStudio. This models they include , they are something else , They are so outdated it's insane. The sound fx, the textures , it's all a pile garbage , it's useless , it makes the engine look bad , and it makes u feel like you will never be able to make a decent game with the engine once u run a level made with the provided models,textures,sounds, and templates. The engine should come with some decent usable media to get you started, or at least provide you with some good gamestudio ready packs , kind of like what the torque people have going. I didnt mind the warlock model when i first got into gamestudio , but it's been 5 years and the new model included in A6 was cyberbabe , LOL , what a joke.

Seameless tie of Wed and Sed , into 1 editor. Would be very nice if you could have these 2 in one editor , where u could open sed inside wed through a panel or something.

Well , I think i'll stop there , theres more stuff that can be added , but I think those are the main things which would help breathe some life into this aging and dying beast. Many of this things have been asked for in the past , and none of them were part of the big A7 update. I really feel like these are the things that would make gamestudio great , it would make it feel fresh , updated , and with those things included , gamestudio would still be in my opinion the best 3d indie game engine. I just hope conitec looks around at how the torque people are handling business and what the gamestudio users are asking for , and gets the hint , because lately it's felt like the community has been talking to def ears , and many of us are starting to lean more and more towards other alternatives.

GS will not disappear I believe.

In fact they created a new language, that is what other all in one tools not done before.

Most other company with good tool-set like real-time world editor, terrain editor, shader editor, etc. are come out less then a decade, at that time GS has thousands of users.

So I think if Conitec should trash the WED and MED to create something more competitive.

Otherwise we will see a cheaper GS in future and GS will survive

I absolutely agree with the last few posts, especially with Broozar and WhyDoIDie. Just ask a random artist to import a model into A7 and apply a decent shader plus tweaking the material until it looks good. He will fail.

So what remains? A bunch of Lite-C fans. Did you read the website from Conitec? They advertise Lite-C as something similar like C++ but call it a bit more easy. They admit that it almost became C++. So an ambitious programmer could also use the little remaining step and program Ogre, Irrlicht, TV3D (very easy to code) or C4.

I agree with you (fogman, William and more) if you say: "It can be done in A7". I know that. I know about plugins like Sphere, Ventilators tool and more. I know about custom shaders more or less useful.
But this is not my point. With the same amount of coding you can integrate all that into Irrlicht, Ogre, TV3D or C4. You could even make it with notepad, OpenGL and a free compiler.

The excuses like "give me the artwork, and I'll do" are somewhat funny. There are many artworks available at 3drt, TS, Gamebeep, Dexsoft and more. Many of them are even free. And if somebody starts with a promising project, then I am willing to sponsor more free stuff.
So just do it. No more excuses. Start and make it!

This is not true. Blitzbasic did the same way before. Conitec could have learned from their failures.
They created an object oriented modern language called "BlitzMax" for their game-engine and it failed. Why should a user learn a complex new island language if there are others like C#, Java, Delphi or C++ available?

Let us think about it more deeply. What is our goal? We want to render nice contents at the screen added with good music, sounds and effects. So what will our customer see? Graphics. What else? Customer will listen to music, sound and will try to control through keyboard, mouse or gamepad.

So what is important for the final result? Rendering, sound playing, input of control data. The programming language is only a develeper tool. It could be exchanged with everything else like C#, LUA or Angelscript.
The best compiler with super optimized code will not help you to make a competetive product if your renderer is weak.

Didn't read all posts, so I just comment my own 2 cents.

The gameplay is okay, it seems that there is nothing new. The artwork is great, the shaders are great.

The shadows are not real time. The whole thing might not be realtime!

I'm not impressed. It doesn't show nothing more than "Look I know how to use great shaders and put nice artwork and call it a game!".

They re-created this scene with own textures and models. They made tons of good normalmaps, some of them even from high poly models.
They created and animated a new character model.

Probably you have no idea how much work this is.

I could say the same about your works if I would be that ignorant or arrogant. But I know that programming, modelling and animating are jobs and all of them need a good amount of work and much time.

frank, you should be able to create such levels already with your skills. appying shaders is not the problem, those are already in the a7 library

That's the expected reaction when I post

In fact I haven't state that the new language is an advantage, just "all-in-one" tools not done before. BlitzMax only come with a text editor and without 3D engine.

And C# is not exist yet at that time when Conitec create lite-C I think.

I agree all post before, and I already stated that, user friendly tool-set, high performance and easy to use engine is the key to success. Programming language factor is not play so important role nowadays I think.

at the moment the main problem of gamestudio is the map compiler. it doesn't work properly for polygon soups. once it works (hopefully soon) it will be much easier to do something like that in gamestudio. it also shouldn't be slower then. outdoor levels like in the video don't make use of portals or anything.

and like already has been said it can be done already with some workarounds (i have seen a video from david lancaster for example (he didn't show it on the forum yet) which i found much nicer than this one).

Thanks Ello.

But how do I apply shadows (even if they are only static) in such a big outdoor level like they did in the demo? How can I setup the scene-management to display big levels like this with good performance?

Is there really a bloom shader in the official download version of A7? I did not find it.

not sure if it's the one but there is one at
<GameStudio Directory>\code\pp_bloomblur

Do you use official version or Beta?

no , its a7.07 .

you can apply materials as well as actions easily to a bunch of selected entities.

Meh, it seems that the art is the key to victory. I know how much art this kind of scene requires and how long and hard it is.



ignorant and arrogant? Wow. I'm not either, I'm pretty open. It's true that I may not be able to create such artwork, without some help, but I know that the scene there is nothing, but great and clever use of artwork and shaders. There is no A.I. or other advanced programming, at least I didn't see any. Tell me if I'm wrong.

Now, let's not make this as an flamewar/fight and deal my critics like a man. It's not your game or anything.

This pp_bloom is really nice and much better than the one come with A7.

I just curious as Conitec is in game tool industry over a decade, what is the obstacle to copy the idea from other tool makers like Unity, S2, BV, etc....and Blade3D is catching up...

Lack of money or lazy

No, you are not wrong. This might be true. I also don't see AI and such. But you missed the topic. This is not a game. It is a video of an unfinished demo.

Just ask yourself is there any advanced AI in the official Conitec warehouse demo or in the venice demo?

Propably not. But AI is not only thing counted as advanced programming.

To me, I still ain't impressed. It has great graphics. So what, there is shop near me with the same quality and better. It's propably just me, but if I put up demo, even tech demo, it should show at least that everything is balanced.

Great graphics means great programming.
Great programming should always mean great graphics.

The demo shows great graphics, but not great programming. Let it be unfinished or not.

I hope you catch my drift

Well before critiquing the demo too much , Lets all load our included gamestudio demo , then see the video of the demo again , so we can compare. LOL.
I'm not saying the vide is the ultimate thing i've seen , I would say for now Crysis is the winner in that category , it definately looks incredibly nice , As if it can be done with gamestudio , yes , it can , we all know it can (or at least pretty close), the biggest problem i have with gamestudio and shaders is the lack of fallbacks and such , where if you get a shader from the wiki , and build ur level with it , it might not work on the next guy's computer , and fixing that requires a lot of programming that general users like myself arent really familiar with. It was the same problem with Sphere , it was a beautifull plugin , and really made gamestudio look like a next gen engine , but in the end it became unusable because of it's lack of support for wide range of video cards , it's many bugs , and lack of fallbacks. I'm not saying gamestudio is too behind as an engine , but as a tool , specially as a tool geared for the non programmers (i.e. the artists and hobyists) , still , I do believe that making a level like the one in the video is possible , the question is how much extra work it would involve to put it together with gamestudio than with torque , as from what I see torque has a much more robust and userfriendly shader system than gamestudio , with a very nice fallback system so your shaders are backwards compatible all the way down to shader model 1 , which was the point of my post.

TGEA's Shaders:

TGEA - Custom Materials

TGEA - Procedurally Generated Shaders

and crysis does? well, i think not. those are games you need to by a new computer for, in most cases , at least if you want to play it fluidly

I don't think that the shaders are the problem of the Crysis performance issues. Crysis needs a multi-core processor for all the scene-management, AI, physics and similar stuff. I am sure they have good shader setup with fall-backs like TGEA has.

The system of procedurally generated shaders is also very good. In TGEA you can add in your material a normal-map texture and it automatically genereates the needed shader code for it. If you add a spec map another part of code gets attached.

Other tools like Gamecore use tons of conditional statements in a multi-purpose shader to reach the same goal. There is much more possible with shaders than we see in our Wiki.

This kind of shader code, material code and application of shadows is a proof of good programming other than Inestical said in his last post.
In the TGEA editor you can place any polygonal model and press the re-light-button to get new static shadows. This is good programming as well.

This really shows what your real problem is... If you own A7 commercial or pro you don't really need Sphere anymore, in fact it won't work. Ventilators tool is awesome indeed, but only if you know how to properly use it, same goes for the whole A7 engine. It's not Torque and it's not Beyond Virtual.



But the ones that would fit into a 'next gen' demo as you would like to see are never free.



Which is mainly why a lot of us say that these kind of demos would theoretically be possible with A7 too.

Then show me a level with parallax-mapping plus real-time soft-shadowing. Sphere was able to render this a few years ago. I did not see such a project from you, from Conitec or anybody else.



So you say that all users of this engine don't properly use it? Otherwise we would see similar project like we can see on other engine forums.
I visit them all often when I do announcements. The world is not standing still.



Ok, I understand. You will not create it. So you don't have to find more excuses.
If it really would be possible then somebody would have made it for the last "create something good-looking" contest. The best of the best did not make it. So I understand your situation



And this little word "theoretically" is the point. There is no proof. Are all A7 users dumb or lazy? I don't think so. So there must be another reason for it.

I offered my help and my contents even for free to many users. I offered Slin (an experienced shader coder) complete model packs to make a few scenes.
I contributed textures, models and levels to some other projects.

But still I achieve something better in shorter time in other free tools like IrrEdit, C4 or in the demo version of TGEA as you can see at our Dexsoft page.

I would use A7 render images for advertising if they would be superior. I am no fanboy, I use what works best for me.

About the video:
it looks all nice but they just show very little. If the level really is big, why don´t they show those parts?

Gamestudio gave me a great introduction into gamedevelopement and that is what I really like it for. It is very easy to use in the beginning and gets harder when you want to do more than template stuff but stays always doable.
Lite-C is a really small change for beginners but opens a lot of possibilities for more advanced users and I really like it for that.

Why_Do_I_Die, why do ou say that hobbyists want to create levels and models? I think most users here are wether beginners or people that like to write some nice scripts and sure some others but I think that those are a minority and are already using other engines. I have a lot of fun to create codes to improve the visuals at the moment and I just don´t want to have an engine that already has all that usable through a few sliders

This thread is already off topic now so I´ll go on with that
I would try to create a similar scene with gamestudio if there are people contributing the models for it (I don´t have the money to buy them) and someone who wants to do the leveldesign.
I would do the Lite-C and the shaderpart. If there really is some interest in this, I would start to build up the base and then have the leveldesigner bulding the level and telling me what he needs. I would like to leave the design part completely up to the leveldesigner and it would only get a graphicsdemo for now.
I could also combine shaders with lightmaps using another uv-set but am not able to create the lightmap and such. Other than that I would stick to stencilshadows (maybe with a little blur...).

The whole thing could at least end in some nice shaders for the wiki and hopefully a level with great graphics.

Phemox: If you would simply start then you´ll get enough artwork from Frank.
He has made an offer and he won´t disappoint you.
To say it with HeelX: "Seriously".

But I´ve to say that DavidLancasters work has the same or even more potential as this demo.
Regardless if it´s done with Notepad or Unreal.

Hey Slin, you know that I offered you help and model-packs. We talked about it once.
Maybe you and fogman should work togehter on a project

...

I always have to smile when I read such discussions. They follow the same pattern. One of our fanboys, either Wicht or Frank, posts a link to a Torque demo, then Wicht and Frank assure each other how they are impressed and how A7 can never do it. Then follows a lengthy discussion whether the demo is impressing or not, and whether A7 can do it or not.

For ending such discussion once and for here's how to do a demo that neither Torque nor Crytec can emulate. Start SED and open "pong.c", then click the black triangle and wow! Now you fanboys, how would you do that in Torque??

That should hopefully end this amateurish discussion.

questionable. normally, you start with playing games, you get inspired, then you say to yourself, "hey, i wanna do a game like quake/halo/WoW/crysis", that's the way it starts. you begin with a visual experience. that's why the mod/mapper scene is so big and popular: the game mechanics are already there, scene management, tools. now you can alter the look of it by transplanting your own model creations. the scripting work that must be done is more a burden to most users/beginners than a wanted feature. they just want to drop in.

but that's all not the topic. if i buy an engine, i expect a ready-to-run, easily accessible, intuitive toolkit that does all work for me that i do not want to do. i do want to do: artworks, game mechanics/gameplay, tell a story/provide entertainment. i do not want to be forced to modify the toolkit for months to fit my needs and demands in terms of graphics, speed, feature xyz.

@phemox: what you don't tell, games don't write themselves. well, i want to make games. not just fiddling around with a toolkit that happens to provide me static shadows on models with a 2nd uv map by a 3rd party plugin by a very experienced user after the next release of the engine has already arrived.

@tobias: wicht, frank and i are no fanboys. we have followed 3dgs for a rather long time. we watched it grow... more or less. but too little happened in the last few years. we set our trust in this toolkit, in jcl, in the development staff. but there comes a point when you can't hold back your frustration, when the limits become a burden to you, when adjusting the model to the 3dgs requirements/limitations needs more time than the actual designing and creation process.

Hey, this took a long time. We awaited your comment Tobias. I can assure you, that we have the same feeling like you: Yes, it is always the same. Your comments are similar in each of these posts

But you are wrong in different areas. I will only comment one point here: fanboys. I am not a Torque user and I am no fanboy at all. I see problems and advantages here and there. When I say, that I like procedurally made shaders then I am not a fanboy of this technology. I don't even use it. I just like this feature.
Maybe you can understand the difference now a bit better.

I am sure that Wicht would have told you something similar.

By the way, your post did not contribute a single line to this topic (just like my comment to your post , sorry for that).

if all the assets are already done, i could do the level design. im not the bringer in creating assets, but design i can do... if you have someone better, then please use him. the better the final result, the better for us^^

Often is really seems to me you don't want to make games, but rather have a nice engine that can do what the big guys do. I understand 3dgs has it's flaws and yes lighting and so on is one of them (at the moment I'm still using A6 even though I will eventually buy A7), but why even bother complaining when you are or could be happy with a different engine? One that's perhaps more expensive, more artist orientated, more like the Cryengine 2 or whatever floats your boat better.

I really think a lot of people here have difficulties taking the engine for what it is, apart from the fact that most people here have little skills to begin with. I'm not talking about making single textures or models, I'm talking about making actual games...

It's easy to complain about how an engine sux because it doesn't have feature xyz. Instead, you should look at what ís possible with the engine. People tend to not do this at all in these kind of discussions. Sure, I'd love to have better lighting in 3dgs, but it's not like not having that stops me from making or trying to make games.

I really don't understand how people can buy an engine like this and just sort of hope that 'someday' it will become a AAA competing thing, more or less assuming it will have the infamous 'make game' button.



I thought you had a torque license?

I agree with you, I am a newbie in game making, but I have idea and want to deliver my concept easily, I want to focus in programming game logic, and the engine is the tool to deliver, without pain to "blend" things together and deliver an up-to-date technology result. Maybe this is what we are looking for
Reference

what engine did you create a complete game with machinery_frank? to me it seems like you are a model creator who wouldn´t need an engine at all but only a model viewer with fancy shader support.

Phemox, did you talk about yourself here?
Wicht made a complete shooter game without usage of templates and contributed it for a contest with moving elevators, weapons to pick up, switches for the doors and more.
Broozar made games as well and contributed to many projects like the last christmas project from HeelX.

I programmed, modelled and made level design for Dexon Knight, Betti and other games. I created even some simple shaders.

So this statement was a bit off.




You cannot understand? I try to explain. All of us bought this engine several years ago. The advertising of the web-page mentioned all the features you need to make a competing game at this time. Then we were in hope that it will involve over time.

No we have experience with it and we have work-in-progress projects (like we have at Dexsoft). So it is hard to just switch to another one.



No, you mix this up with another person. I only work sometimes with the demo, with Constructor or with the trial version of Showtool. But maybe I buy TGEA anytime in the future.

if you want so, a game engine is just a model viewver where you can do some more things, called game play. the more of these pretty models and shadows the engine can handle, the faster, the better it is. AI, gameplay etc. is a game programmer's thing, not an engine programmer's. they have nothing to do with the engine.

As you can see above and at our website, we made games at Dexsoft with Gamestudio and with Director. Because of that we know what we are talking of.

i guess you all need to look at this now

don´t you only provide models to your partner who is the one who actually works with the engine?

No, it is not that simple. We are only 2 guys working on the games so we have to do much more than specializing in only one field.

But since I am a software programmer for about 20 years this is not a big problem. If you don't believe, here is the web-page of my software-company creating business software. You can also get our nutrition software there, if you understand German language:
http://www.geppert-software.de

Ok, "fanboy" is maybe not the right expression. But any forum I know has a few people like you or Wicht. You obviously arent using Gamestudio, the Dexsoft game was not made by you. So I ask myself - why is someone who doesnt use Gamestudio spending such a huge amount of his time on a Gamestudio user forum, telling in different variants and more or less disguise how bad Gamestudio is, or doing similar things like the downrating of users recently? I mean - what do you get from it? I have also used Torque but I have never seen you on the Torque forum. So it's an interesting question for me, why are you people spending your time this way?

Sorry for being offtopic. May the discussion continue.

it´s not that i don't believe you. i just got the impression that you only make models.

did you use any other engine for a full project already? because playing around with importing some models doesn't tell much about the overall workflow.

engine comparisons would be much more helpful if done people who did complete projects with several engines. :P

Are you able to read, Tobias? Look a few post over yours and you will see what games I, wicht or Broozar made.

"Wer lesen kann, ist klar im Vorteil!"

And I also described why we are interested in new features and that we have current Gamestudio projects in work.

Better read, before you post!

No, I don't see what game you made, but please let us know. What exactly did you do for which game?

That would be a troll, not a fanboy.

I absolutely agree with you. Making a certain (maybe small game) in each engine is a very good way to create engine reviews. But it also takes much time to do so.

Another possibility is to see what other users do or just look at finished projects of a technology. There are many engines that sell good amount of games. Here are a few examples:

A game from Quest3d called "Audiosurf" can be bought at the Steam-Portal and sold in some months better than the Orange-Box.
http://quest3d.com/index.php?id=209

There are a few interesting projects at Unity3d.
But most of finished games are at GarageGames. GG even works on a multi-player shooter (similar to Tribes2) that will be launched very soon. They work on a new engine release but will only publish it after they made a game with it on their own. So the technology will be industry-proven.

Besides that I like the C4-engine, but I know only work-in-progress projects so far.
Gamestudio also had a good bunch of published games in the past. But currently it became a bit quiet.

But don't forget the huge amount of Ogre games, among them very professional top-sellers.

GS vs. Torque
Fanboys vs. Trolls

really funny...

Believe it or not. The goal is to make a good game. The used Engine and Editors are only tools to work with.
Frank (and others) is right... you need a lot of models, textures, sounds, music and.. very important to many genres... a good and fascinating story. If you are a ambitious developer like frank and me you have no time to find workarounds. You want to use finished and working Shaders, Postprocessing-Effects, Shadows, 2.UV-Sets in ONE model, Scenemanagement, Painting and Texturing of Terrains and so on... all things in a Realtime-I-Give-You-Visual-Feedback-In-No-Time-Editor.

Such Software is a real timesaver. Now it is possible to concentrate to other important aspects of the game.

The Programmer-Side of GS is good. The rest is spooky. I can not use a tool like GS with my dream-project in mind. It's impossible. That's my objective opinion.

My goodness, Tobias. Is it that difficult to scroll this page a bit up? Here is what I replied to a post of Phemox:

"Wicht made a complete shooter game without usage of templates and contributed it for a contest with moving elevators, weapons to pick up, switches for the doors and more.
Broozar made games as well and contributed to many projects like the last christmas project from HeelX.

I programmed, modelled and made level design for Dexon Knight, Betti and other games. I created even some simple shaders."


And you can also check the link in my signature.

I thought Betti was made by DEX? And Wicht does not even own Gamestudio, at least I remember that he told so?

@Spirit: Knowledge is power!!!
I worked with my own A6 Pro Licence. My A6 Pro is now Pappenheimer's A6 Pro.

I have also knowledge about A7 Com because Lutz_G (a new user here) works with A7. He is living five kilometers from me.

Yes. Betti was made bei Dejan and I came later to it. I re-worked more than half of the levels and did the translation into German language and I did the audio-job to record some voices for another game of Dexsoft.

Dexon Knight is the game where I did more modelling, programming and shader work. But nevertheless most code is from George, David, Dejan and a new Indian programmer. We sometimes pay people to do work for us. So we can do some other tasks to get the money back we spend for game-development

The only of those I ever heard of is Betti, but I also always thought DEX had programmed it. What part of Betti have you programmed and what shaders - if you don't mind me to ask?

Tobias, again, read the post above yours. I am tired of repeating me all the time.

So you're saying you know A7 from using the copy of Lutz_G?

If i visit Lutz_G... yes... i work sometimes with GS. But only on his PC. And he is always behind me to learn something from me. That's it.

And by the way... i dont use warez. I buy the software i need.

Machinery_Frank, forgive me but I am just curious about your claimed involvement in A7 games because you are very vague about the kind of that involvement. You are certainly able to tell which part of the game you did or are doing. Such as "I did the movement code of Betti" or the like. I know that you are doing textures and models and are selling them, and they certainly can be used in a game, but that's not working with an engine.

Wicht, so you know A7 from visiting Lutz_g and playing on his PC while he is standing behind you? Then of course I have to bow to your deep knowledge of game engines, and hope that Lutz_G learns something from your remarks while he is standing behind you.

O.o this discussion got really senseless...
Everyone here knows that there are things which could and should be improved on A7. Frank, Wicht and broozer know 3DGS for quite some time now and each of them already worked with an other engine. Even if Frank just uses those engines as a nice modelviewer and he considers them better than 3DGS for that, why shouldn´t that be true?
I consider such threads usefull because they can give me a little overview on the engines next to 3DGS and they show me always why I like 3DGS
But they shouldn´t end like this...

Tobias, again and again. Read the posts. I already wrote what Wicht did with A6. So he has enough experience to teach something.

You want more details? Do you say I am lying? What kind of a suspicious boy are you?

Ok, here are some more detailled examples: I created materials and shaders for water, lava and cubic environment mapping. I created code for dynamic lighting (some kind of special light-management to support more than 8 lights).
I made complete levels, applied actions and tested them. I made models and textures for it.
I made a terrain shader as fixed function pipeline code with the needed action.

Do you remember the German game magazine for Gamestudio? I wrote half a dozen articles there dealing with shaders, textures and code.

But again, I don't know why you are such a strange guy that I have to tell you things over and over again.

Edit by Mod: Don't insult other members!

Frank: I will leave you alone because I think this discussion indeed became too personal. I dont know the German magazine but when that game you mention comes out and there is indeed lite-C or shader code from you in it then you have proved your case.

I should probably not have been this insistent but I just hate trolls.

Tobias: Your last post is a pure insult after we mentioned tons of examples. I am sorry for your bad behaviour. Learn some manners!

And again: Look at the post above yours!

So, youre three guys mocking the shyt out of each others... nice^^

i know, nobody is interested in what i have to say probably because you all share that "black metal" thought, just with game desing, but belive me when i say, i know exactly why im still using game studio.
i downlaoded the torque demo to play around a little, and i actually got some results. not good ones, i admit, but thats not the point here.

the thing is, torque has, like A6 (dont own A7 yet, but ill get it later this month i think) up and downsides.
for one its damn ahrd to use. but that maybe just me...

i finnished several projects with game studio. i worked on several gamestudio projects with others.

heck, what youre about to see this summer from heelx and my little self shows that i know what im talking about when i say, that gamestudio is, for now, the best engine to create an indie game with.

and everyone who helped me "code" monsters has to agree here

thing is, of course gamestudio has its setbacks. but every engine has. i havent used torque enough to know my way around, and i havent used any other engine ever except gamestudio.

but what i can do with this engine is amazing, if you know how. when i look at people like slin, heelx or lenny, i know that this engine is the right thing for me.

and instead of arguing who has the biggest ballz and why, you should go and use them-.-

sorry if that sounds harsh, i dont want to isnult anyone. its just the same discussion every month since A4 times. anyone here remembering pretender? he was that kind of guy aswell...

Spike, don't worry. You did not insult anybody and we like your posts

I agree with you on most what you said. So there is no need to fight. Finally you are not insulting and you are no fanboy. So I appreciate it.

And if we are off-topic enough to talk about community, then I would like to add: I am happy to see really good and rather positive posts from WhyDoIDie. I remember some times with more aggressive posting and this has changed in the past and present.

Just wanted to say something positive about some users here

Ouhauerha.

Tobias, I´ve worked together with Frank and DEX has worked with him, too.
It´s absolutely childish to focus on such peanuts.

I can understand his oppinion about engines as well as I can understand all the other oppinions. Because everyone has different priorities.

Now i'm irritated.
Can't you simply say which engine is the best? I don't know which i should use, UnrealEngine3 or Cryengine? Please help me!

Oh btw is there a website to the project of this video (yes there is a video in this thread)?

Sorry ChrisB. Up to now there is not much info about this project. Actually it is still secrete. This video was not an official one and the people from GarageGames replied in their forum that it was not meant to be seen by so many people.

But they also said that they will tell more about that soon.

Which engine is the best? This is very simply: the engine that works best for you is the best. It could be Unity3d on Mac, C4 if you want to have great rendering options, Ogre if you have some good C++ programmers and Torque Game Builder (the 2d engine of Torque) if you want to make a modern 2d game
And it can also be Gamestudio if you want to learn game-development with many examples and with huge community on smaller scaled projects or cartoon games. But you already know this.

If I may summarize your point Frank?
Ok, thanks:
- You are impressed by the huge outdoor level shown in the video
- You are impressed by the quality of the artwork (models, textures etc.)
- You agree that there are no real-time shadows and that fps doesn't matter as this is only "leaked" through from GG internal
- You want somebody to do this with Gamestudio but with real-time shadows and good fps?

I cannot follow you in that aspect but I guess that is not the real point in this discussion, which, by the way, turned into a personal bashing thread on the level of a kindergarten argument.

I agree very much with you in your last reply Frank. The right engine is always, and I'd like to stress this, the one you like most and which fits your needs most. However one should never stop trying out new things (imho).

I also agree that Gamestudio might not be the most artist-friendliest engine around. You need some scripting knowledge to apply a shader (afaik) and you need to tweak some values etc. to get the right result.
Plus you have no instant visual feedback, well ok in MED you can apply some material settings and even load a shader but alleged it looks different than when using the engine. But I have no experiences here.

At the moment I personally cannot work with A7 as much as I would like to (writing Abitur at the moment) but I also see some things which could be improved further.

Still lets take all a deep breath and let this settle for a while. There is no use in asking what who did in which project. If a user says he has experience and can tell from that, why not let him speak?

Oh and before anyone asks: No I haven't finished any project with Gamestudio yet.

Xarthor:
Yes. You are absolutely right, with almost all. Yes, some insults turned this thread into Kindergarten. But now through the help of users like you, fogman or spike this became better again.

You misunderstood one point though: I don't want you to create this level with real-time shadows. If it looks the same with static ones then I would be impressed as well.

But you are right I also mentioned the real-time shadows. This is a good feature. But it came up as Phemox started to compare sphere with A7.

Nevertheless I think this is a a very important feature today.

What's stopping you? As far as geometry goes, this is definitely possible with A7...

No. I tried it. I imported static geometry in WED and compiled some shadows and it is a mess.
Some free tools like IrrEdit do it without any problems though. Torque Constructor also can read my machines and render static shadow on top. I made a few images to show that in different forums like here:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=488848

But normal-mapping on top of this would be even better.

Ok , lets put this into perpective. There are a lot of tin heads here who are saying that adding shaders with gamestudio and all that other nice stuff me , frank and a couple others are asking for is cake , that it's only a couple of lines of code here and there. Well , please prove us wrong , I would be happy to have you people create a torque type shader interface for gamestudio , with support for all the base shaders that work on a wide range of video cards , with shader fallback for shader 3,2,and 1 , and if possible even to fallback to no shader and just model and diffuse texture if the card doesnt have shaders. And have this awesome system integrate into gamestudio , shaders and the like throw gui system and save settings on the click of a button. This , is , according to you all , only a couple of lines of code here and there , then why not provide us with this couple of lines of code since your all programmers and thats what you do ?

Every single plugin for Gamestudio that has been done , from sphere , to InstenseX , to the ingame edit tool , have taken have taken months , and some even over a year to code , and all have had bugs here and there and havnt really been fully stable plugins. It seems like it's a TON of work to make this plugins , they're not cake , and they've usually been done by the best programmers we have in our community. Considering this , I think you can now begin to see why we consider this engine/tool features so important , they require major programming and a lot of time and effort , it's not something you can code in a weekend and continue on with your project. We go back to , well , why not just code the whole engine from scratch ? If we are going to code all that other stuff , we might as well just code the whole engine ? Why are any programmers even using gamestudio ? Thats a joke , if your a programmers there's much better alternatives , in fact , if your a programmer i dont even know why u need a premade engine advertised as " make games with no programming" LOL.

I'm personally looking for a program that will allow me to make my projects with the least amount of technical problems , the more the software can handle on it's side the better . Now some years ago Gamestudio was the best option available , it had a powerfull yet simple scripting language , and it's editors were pretty up to date, it was in fact much easier to work with than torque. The problem is , as time has passed , engines like torque have started raising the bar , adding many new features , and improving their editors , making their software take care of most of the complicated technical programming in the background while the user can worry about their projects design , art and the like. This engines are really geared towards the indie developer , and most indies dont have studios with programmers who can take care of all the complicated stuff , so , the simpler things are , the more features integrated out of the box , the better , since then we can focus and making our games , which is the reason people like me and many indies purchase this all in 1 game development studio , so we wont have to worry about the engine , and can focus on the game. I hope I have gotten my point across to the programmers , who dont seem to understand what me and a couple of others are saying , and again , I will be waiting for that cool shader tool , since you all keep saying how easy it is to implement the shaders for A7 , please to prove us wrong and give us that very simple and easy to make tool that would be incredibly usefull to most of the gamestudio community. If you cant do it , then realise your wrong , and stop with the nonsense.

Can you show us the results?

By the way, did you also try not importing static geometry, but instead make a level in WED yourself? Perhaps you failed simply because it didn't import properly?

Ill make one why do i die..

right along with the make AAA game button, and the add BLUUUM button, and lets nto forget the mmo click together gui, cant forget that..... wait, why dont we just have conitec make the games for us, since we want our shaders built in, why dont we just have the whole game build in, and all you have to do is take credit for it :P YAY!

one issue with that.... thats not how games are made. When making a game, YOU CHOOSE what shaders to put in and YOU implement them the way YOU seem fit. As far as sphere and intense x go, they are much more than simple shaders to implement in your game (and btw bloom, normal mapping, detail mapping, and reflective water all are)

Sphere is a whole graphics engine rewrite. Matt wrote his own dx renderer for it, so its just not simply "some shaders"

IntenseX.... hmmmm who woulda thought that a program that allows you to build a game with an incredibly easy interface would take 6months to a year to finish.... especially when most games take a year or more to finish.... what a surprise.

Think about it for a second, people have this notion that just because we use an indie engine that things shouldnt take as long as the big games take to make but really its just the opposite. Do you really think if someone put as much effort into making a game as the AAA people do that it wouldnt look nice an A7. No, its just no one has the motivation to stick with a project and as indies we dont have the freedom to spend 8 months to 2 years on one project since we dont get paid as we go. Thats why all our games look like shit, not because of the game engine we use.

Stop whining like a little kid.

"Stop whining like a little kid."
Right after you stop being a retard.
"Ill make one why do i die..
right along with the make AAA game button, and the add BLUUUM button, and lets nto forget the mmo click together gui, cant forget that..... "
Well the point is that , Torque ALREADY HAS that, it has the shader editor , it supports shaders and fallbacks , it has bloom , it has ingame terrain editing (actually had it for a long time already) , Has better templates than gamestudio , better content packs , better engine versions , even a 2d version of the engine for the casual game developers , ability to publish for pc and mac , soon xbox 360 version of the engine to make games for 360. There's just so many places where gamestudio is falling behind , and thats the point. Torque is actually cheaper than gamestudio , more advanced , and it includes the source code. This is coming from someone who hated Torque and always praised gamestudio over it, but that was before torque brought out it's scripting language , and all of the above mentioned improvements. It's incredible how many people here dont get the point , making it sound like we're lazy and dont wanna do things ourselves , we're indies man , i pretty much work on things single handed , i do my own modeling , level design , texturing , scripting , and game design , I dont have time to create the development interface , thats why I PURCHASED one instead. In the long run , Conitec is only hurting itself , cuz as I stated before , nowadays , who in their right mind would choose gamestudio over torque ? There just so many more possibilities over at garagegames , one would have to be a fool to come here.

I couldn't agree more with you, besides if Torque really is this great (and I'm sure it is, trust me ), then why don't we ever see Torque-made games by the people that complain? Ow wait, this probably means Torque sucks too??

As I've said before and I'll continue to say this regardless of how many 'games' people have or have not made, these people really have other problems. In fact, why didn't some of them switch engines if they truly believe 3dgs is "crap"? I don't want to discuss this any further actually, because a lot of it simply doesn't seem to make much sense. Apart from that, there's more you can do with any 3D engine than just trying to emulate Doom3 or Gears of War. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I am saying however that any comparison between 3dgs and Gears of War (mind you that's the Unreal 3 engine we are talking about) is... completely insane basically.

Well PHeMoX , maybe thats because you've missed the whole point of the conversation. And I've never been the "gamestudio sucks" type , in fact ,the complete opposite, but I'd have to be blind not to see the differences between the current gamestudio and torque versions , it's like the torque people logged into the gamestudio forums , read the user requested features , and added them to torque , while the conitec people just had a good laugh and completely ignored them.

I have been using Game Studio since A3, And I can tell you these same discussions took place back then.
The Truth is Game Studio has been in a lot worse situations, IMO. Game Studio is actually on the right track. Plus we have the greatest community in the Indy world. Either way, the "Make Game" button is actually going to be revealed this month For Game Studio, Not Torque

Yes, I know and it's all because of some kind of idea you had that 3dgs would someday get the magical 'make game' button. Or at least it sounds an awful lot like that to me, no offense.



Right, but maybe I didn't. In these kind of discussions people aren't really interested in what an engine can actually do, they are only talking about what an engine should do and how it's lacking. I've never said 3dgs is perfect, torque is not perfect either, I did say though that 3dgs probably can render the same amount of geometry and so on as this torque demo does.



You're talking as if A7 and Lite-C never happened. You are basically talking as if Conitec did nothing the last couple of years and I really don't think that's fair.

"You are basically talking as if Conitec did nothing the last couple of years and I really don't think that's fair."
Well they might have as well not done anything , all they did was add lite-c to A7. A6 was a big step up for gamestudio , C-Script was well implemented , Shader support was added , Sed was added (i think it was in a6) , and over all gamestudio was in the right track , things were looking good , and I had very high hopes for A7. Thats was my problem , I thought we already had a good engine , a good render , a good scripting language , and good third party support for making plugins through C++ and other languages through Dll. The last thing I thought GameStudio needed was Lite-C , much less have it basically be the only major new thing to A7. To me , there really was no upgrade , A7 is basically A6 with Lite-C , why in the world would I be happy about that ?

On another note , who said anything about a "make game button" ? All I was looking forward to was better shader implementation and solid fallbacks , now shaders were already implemented in A6 , it's only obvious that the next step would be to make them as compatible with as much hardware as possible by adding fallbacks , how is it you people dont feel the same way about this ? And how is asking for that asking for a "make game button" ?

Do you realise companies pay over half a million dollars for engines like Unreal 3 , project offset , Doom Engine ? Do you know why ? Because it's a very complete , solid , technologically advanced game development suite. Game companies feel having solid development software is so important they pay over $500,000 for it. Are you telling me those people are stupid ? They would be better off coding it all themselves ? Or are they smart , and understand that investing in a good and complete engine will shorten a game's development time immensly ? I've never asked gamestudio to be Unreal 3 , or even compared it to it , I'm comparing it to another engine , which is in fact , cheaper than gamestudio is (considering you need pro to get all features for gamestudio) , I'm comparing it's features , it's incredible to me that anyone with a brain would argue that gamestudio doenst need this features THAT OTHER ENGINES ALREADY HAVE , and that we are lazy and want a make game button by asking for them.

I think you are all insane to think this way , no matter how much you like programming , but I can imagine how you can not miss this features if using gamestudio for you means typing in SED all day long , then i guess all you really need is notepad and a compiler , right ? But for people like me , who use Wed , Sed , Third party modeler tool , third party painting tool , and basically work on all aspects of a game , the more feature rich the editors , the better , the faster and easier things can be done , the better.

And again , I am not critisizing gamestudio , I am critisizing A7 , I've been using gamestudio since A4 , and have always loved it , I hated the A7 update , and feel in the time of A6 and A7 , other very competent engines have emerged , and torque has updated quite a lot , and I feel A7 is staying behind , and is no longer the best choice as an indie game development suite. And to be honest , the engine i'd really like to give a try is Unity , but I dont have a mac , so i'd say Torque is my next choice. Still , I'm not saying gamestudio is crap , just the A7 update , I guess it's only a matter of opinion , but it's true nevertheless.

Phemox is totally off in at least 2 points:

He says that the "evil" Torque trolls did not make any games. First of all show me your game!

Then I can tell you that Wicht (as an example) made games in 3dgs and showed me about 5 different prototypes in Torque (working projects). Sure he works hard, found problems to solve and has to get help in the Torque forums. But he works on it rather than spamming only one-liners in forums like other do here.

Kiyaku also made several prototypes in TGB, TGE and even TGEA. I could see some of them and they look amazing. Even his 2d game "Angela's world" has re-made in TGB. I am sure he can provide you with images, I know a few of them.

Your assumption that I have no idea how to import static geometry and such show quite clearly that you don't have much experience with WED and Gamestudio. Even the fanboys know that the level- and shadow-compiler still is buggy. That shadows often become very distorted if you import static meshes, no matter if they are imported from mdl or from other formats.

And you suggest me to make the entire level in WED from blocks. Then I understand you perfectly, still living 10 years ago.
Time has changed, games use more details today. Even old games like Unreal Tournament 2004 used huge amount of detail-meshes in BSP levels.

But I talk only for myself. If you want to make another tetris game, then you don't have problems in WED. Everything is fine then.

And your question why some of us do not switch has been answered before, but you just forgot. Some still have projects to finish in 3dgs. We are not any trolls from outside, we are just CUSTOMERS daring to talk about some issues. Is a customer forced to throw a product away if there are some problems?


WhyDoIDie:
I understand you perfectly. If someone claims to be a skilled programmer who is only impressed by (advanced) programming like AI (Inestical as an example) then he will not have any problems to work through Irrlicht, Ogre or TV3D. I read tutorials of all 3 and I am a C++ newcomer (but with about 20 years of pascal experience). It is a piece of cake. And programming these tools offers a lot of freedom and is even fun.
And yes. If the same programmer claims that shaders are piece of cake then it will not be a big issue to make such fallback shaders with conditional statements or a good material-editor.
But all that is still missing.

And yes, tools like GameEdit or the first alpha shader editor took several years and are still not finished or even dead projects.

I can tell you that I was so amazed about GameEdit, about IntenseX and other promising tools.
Ok, some of you could make it in a few weeks how they sound here

I prefer tools for making games, not only a programming language because I know how hard it is to program software. I do that myself for my company. That is why I never would choose Ogre although it is a superior rendering engine.
And this is the point we are talking here, we don't complain about programming at all. Programming is only one tool of a few others that you need for making games.

I have to agree, that im also not fully convinced about the "new" features from A7. i havent bought it yet, justbecause i see no difference except an awfull level editor. however, i, as designer, dont really know the new features, simply because they are code and shader based.

but when slin showed me some stuff hes currently doing (that come close to that implement my shader for me thing why_do_i_die is requesting) i said to myself. okay, now i need that engine.

ive downlaoded the A7 demo yesterday, and ran a project of mine im currently developing in secrecy.

the results you ask?
more than just impressive. the cozen graphcsi style looks brilliant with the shaders added i got from slin, and even WITH the added shaders and all the effects, full resolution (as much as my monitor supports, that would eb 1600*1200) and everything set to high detail, the game run FASTER than with A6.

that tells me that there is a progress.

nothing more to say for now

edit: in fact, some things: the shaders:
Normal mapping with bump and specularity, water shader, old film shader (post processing) and of course some toon shader )

Great. I am looking forward to see your shots. I understand your excitement.

I even know this situation. As we changed "Dexon Knight" to A7 we also had better rendering speed. This is because of the ABT and because we have small outdoor levels.

But I also know an indoor project that became awful slow after converting to A7. This is because of the lack of BSP and no other indoor scene-management option like zones, portals or similar.

So this means: A7 up to com edition is only suited for small games and outdoor projects (like you can see in the last official demos as well).
For indoor you need the pro and I know not a single demo that can proof if the new A7 bsp really works (especially in combination with shaders on level geometry).
So it is hard to upgrade to A7 except you do small outdoor levels or puzzle games.

In your case (and in Dexsoft's case) everything was fine. And I am happy for us, really

very true!

i am not interested in achieving or coming near to AAA quality at all because you will never finish anything as a lone wolf if you have to do characters and models with doom3 quality (which also is outdated already). with better graphics you also need better AI, animation, physics, sound and so on to make it not look awkward. that's why games spiral to 20 million dollar budgets.

which doesn´t mean that some features like nice realtime shadow mapping wouldn´t help. such shadows wouldn't add much work.

like already has been mentioned, the map compiler is faulty. it doesn´t produce useable results if you would like to use meshes.

and you call this a good engine? are you serious? the map compiler is faulty, i heard several complaints about the speed of lite-c, and the graphics you can produce with the out-of-the-box-tool feel like a decade behind. after all, it's not free, you pay for this. no open source project would be allowed to be released in that shape.

like you can see from my name, iuselitec. i like it a lot. it isn't slow. it doesn´t come with the map compiler. i don´t need it. i only did a quick test with the demo and read complaints by others.

open source most of the time gets released early and often. it´s an important motto in the open source world. early means incomplete and not fully working.

You are both right. Lite-C is fast in small projects. But bigger projects like GameEdit moved from C-script to C++ because of very long compiling times and 5-times longer starting time compared with the old C-script version, when it loads into the engine.

Maybe this will be improved though.

the compiling time issue will be fixed in the next release and it only happens with certain projects with lots of numeric constants. i didn't have any problem with it and my project isn't very small.

that is good news indeed. doesn't solve the map compiler issues though.

So, hm,
I am using GS ince the first A4 version. I always used Extra-edition. So I can't tell anything about shaders.
But I have to say, that I was very disappointed from the upgrade to A7. First I was happy and said, juhu I can import meshes and compile shadows with them.
But I saw the results and my eyes became seriously ill.
Ok, for an absolute hobbyist the extra A7 engine is enough, because I have nothing to do with gamedevenloppment except in my freetime.
But I thought since A7 came out, to change to another engine like Torque, because they brought a ready to use product. A7 is not a complete product. Every opensource programm is more complete than A7.
I don't like products which features are updated on a such slow time.

Hm, enough,
MfG
Patrick

Uuups... I was amazed, when I read over the new features of tgea. And I was shocked, when I saw the video "gears..".

Most of the really impressive screen shots of the 3dgs galery came from projects which are never realized (like sunset down).

Maybe this is a time to think about a change.

If I am right, the "Venice Demo" and the "Warehouse Demo" should be the new flag ship demos of 3dgs?
They are very good looking... for 3dgs ... but compare it with "gears".

Imho, Conitec can't pay as the needed money to get an AAA quality demo for Gamestudio. You need professionals for this and professionals are.. expensive.

Maybe that is the point. If you need quality, you need time and money. Most of these three are mostly seperately seeded along the broad range of Gamestudio developers and this community.

The reason why most of the "outstanding" screenshots and videos which are not done by Conitec or by people who were hired by Conitec, is that these people/teams/studios/companies like to make a living from it or have other reasons that require them to do such quality (for their portfolio, kick other a%%'s or just for research and satisfaction).

If Conitec would give a 3rd party a budget of 12k Eur (or 16k $) for one month of work I guess you would get a super kick ass demo. Just my thoughts.

true. but even those great artists couldn't fix the map compiler, increase fps to, say, irrlicht level, use a shadow system for alpha-trasparent-skinned trees without serious changes in the toolset (plugins, rewrites, bla). yesterday i played CSiS, our upcoming space action shooter based on A6, and it almost knocked me off the chair, the visuals our team has produced, mostly BoH_Havoc, has not yet been ever realized in 3dgs in realtime (at least that i know of, you know, i like to criticise a lot, so if i say so, i mean it) and it runs really smoothly. but i know that it took us literally years to get there, the plugins that were written, the endless hours he must have spent on the shaders and hanging over gpu books. but even he cannot build a hard edges feature for models, he must take detours to get there. several pp effects need their own dll. the tricks micha had to invent for the MP part are numerous.

the point is, whatever we did in 3dgs, we mostly avoided its own features and had to take detours. otherwise we could never have achieved what the project is about to become. that is not what you can call a "workflow", is it?

Nope. But there MUST be a reason why you stick on Gamestudio, fella. And as long you evolve with it... keep on going!

with blender's split edge modifier (which allows hard/soft edge workflow like in maya for example) you don't need detours for getting hard model edges. except if blender is a detour for you.

i don't believe that irrlicht is much faster than gamestudio. irrlicht uses a simple octree, gamestudio uses an ABT tree which is quite similar. because the map compiler doesn't really work for meshes at the moment, people often use single models for whole levels which don't get split up then by the ABT tree. so (like in the venice demo) there will be no frustum culling and no front to back sorted drawing.

the map compiler is a problem. i think conitec should just release the specifications of the wmb format. then maybe (i don't know how complex the wmb format is) a blender exporter which completely gets rid of the need for a level compiler could be done quite easily.

I guess you already asked for that, did you?

i mentioned it in a beta forum thread today but jcl didn't answer during the afternoon and now is weekend.

i should have asked sooner (at the beginning of a7) about this. the possibility to directly export to wmb from applications like blender would be great even if there were a working map compiler. i could imagine that it wouldn't be that hard to do because it would only be about exporting. i don't care about compiling a BSP tree and light mapping would get handled by blender.

i am not sure though how complicated the wmb format is, if it contains any encryption or keys or anything like that and if conitec is interested in having it open. if i remember correctly in a6 or a5 times there already were some enquiries about it and conitec didn't seem to be very eager to give out informations back then.

we could also try reverse engineering but this would be a lot of maybe not so fun detective work. hm... with open source software you don't have such problems.

First of all, I never said 'evil', that's what you make out of it. Apart from that, you've misunderstood my comment, but I doubt you'd understand anyway.

I've shown screenshots of work in progress on my website in the past. For various reasons I have not shown them here on the forums, mostly because it wasn't finished anyways. I definitely could show a few screenshots of my latest projects, but except from the fact that it proves that I am working on games, it doesn't prove A7 is on par with Unreal Tournament III, nor Torque for that matter and so on. The graphics really are okey, but no way near AAA. So, in a way it would be a waste of time showing my work in progress anyways because it would never be 'good enough'.



I never said WED blocks, I haven't made a level with blocks since the last version of A5. I in fact wondered if you tried to make a level inside WED instead of importing. You can stitch together models in WED too you know, instead of importing geometry. You should have figured that out by now.

Okay, I explain it more deeply for you:
The advantage of static meshes in Torque Constructor, WED, Lawmaker or in the Irrlicht editor is: You can compile static shadow maps on top of the geometry. Every static mesh can cast and receive shadows (at least it should work like that, if the shadow compiler works properly and it does in all of the mentioned tools except of WED).

Now try that with models! It will not work in WED.
You have to bake shadows in another application. And since MDL 7 does not support more than one uv-set you have to find external rendering helpers as well.
If you bake everything into one texture then it will have very low resolution.

I hope that makes it more clear for you.

and then the conclusion is,

GS needs a better light mapper, a better map compiler, and better editors.

radiosity lightmapper(beta),importing lightmaps from fbx(beta) ,Importing several UV coordinate sets for model textures(?)

are listed in forecast, but i think still there is alot more new things needed.

Yes Quadraxas. This is a nice summary.

But don't rely on forecast features. Sometimes they vanished from their lists and sometimes they took 2-3 years to finish in the past.

Besides that an indoor scene-management is needed that works well with shaders.

two are in beta, though. that's pretty promising. and i think there's enough demand for the second UV set that it'll almost definitely make it in.

julz

Yes, it does make it clear for me and yes this is the one point of critique I agree with. However it's not entirely true that it can't ever work with models, I've got per pixel lighting working (sort of as I'm not a shader guru) and stencil shadows work fine here, as said before though this is with A6 not A7. If the compiler is broken, it definitely needs a fix but I'm sure Conitec is working on this. As for the lighting issue, I hope they add that soon to A7, it will be a immediate reason for me to upgrade basically...

All this said and done though, as far as A6 is concerned suggesting that it's impossible to make nice games with A6 (or A7 once the compiler issues are fixed if that's a actual 'show-stopper' thing) is a bit weird,

Cheers

Yes. Absolutely. But the issue many customers have: A7 is at the market since July 2007. It has been announced in January 2007 and the beta was more than one year ago.
It still offers features that simply don't work, is still an incomplete and faulty release.
I don't blame JCL, he did not make the compiler and does not work on the tools. But it is a problem for Conitec and Gamestudio and of course a problem for customers working on real projects.

Pure forum users not working with A7 don't have to care about that. So I fully understand that users like Phemox don't have much trouble because of that. But I hope that users like him get a bit more understanding for the existing problems of A7 users with real projects that way.

Just out of curiosity, what are you always talking about that WED can not work properly with shadow maps? I am working with WED since 3 years and A7 WED since 1 year and it casts and receives shadows on top of geometry fine so far, and obviously for other people also, so what problem have you specific?

Just import a static mesh in A7 and compile shadows! I am not the only one having problems with that. Even the beta forum was full of images describing this problem. Try it yourself! It will work with simple cubes but not with static models.

We already described that in all details here and on other places in this forum.

Excuse me, I import static meshes and compile shadows all the time, and see nothing in the bug forum about this "full of images describing this problem", so I really do not know what problem you have. Does if happen with some mesh you imported? If you have a problem, have you made a bug report to Conitec?

@Spirit: OK... place some models in WED like Houses, Trees, Stones... something like this. Calculate the static shadows and show us a screenshot.

I was talking to Frank.

Ok, then I repeat the same as Wicht, We are all interested in a screenshot showing us how it works. I promise to make you screenshots of the problem especially for non-believers like you

And why should I write that in the bug forum when Conitec already is aware of this problem? They know of it since the beginning of A7.

Dude... what is your problem????? I already said I am using A6, not A7 and I am making games.

I know it doesn't show much, but here's a WIP:

( here's the direct link, somehow the image feature of the forum seems messed up; http://www.innervisionsoftware.com/Screen6kopie.jpg )

ok, sorry. I just tried with the trial version, created simple hollowed block and inserted some mdl models. Every world building process cancels with E701 error. I even cannot create a simple room.

When I remove static meshes then it works but lighting is wrong in the corners. UV-map of light-map leaks the light.

So even without static meshes it looks worth than A6.

I am looking forward to Spritit's shots. I have to give up. It simply does not compile at all.

Double-master-Dude... what is yours?

I just begged for your understanding of A7 customers. I know that you are NOT an A7 user and you do NOT know about A7 problems and because of that I would be happy if you do NOT talk about a software that you do NOT understand. I begged for your understanding that we HAVE problems and they don't vanish if you TALK them AWAY.

Well it seems that this discussion is again going the same strange way that similar dicussions always seem to do.

Frank, you claim WED has a bug. I have not encountered that bug so far and politely ask what you mean. You give a vague answer that you wont provide details but everyone knows this bug and Conitec knows it too. But this "bug" is not in the bug forum and is not on the bug list, so apparently Conitec does not know it. And I see lots of levels with fine shadows on the forum, so apparently other WED users also dont know about that mysterious bugs you always claim.

So again if you know there's a bug why dont you report it? How should they know without you reporting?

Of course you can always produce some screen with some bad looking shadows, but you can do that with any tool. And of course I can show screenshots but I guess any other user can do that likewise, just import something rock or house in WED and compile the level.

If you think you need my screens, ok, then I'll upload some.

Hey spirit. You made vague replies. Just show us a screenshot! Everybody here knows that you cannot.

Like whatever... you are using the trial version of A7 so what makes that any different??? Where are your A7 projects? What do you really want anyways, I already agreed upon the fact that A7 has it's problems....



Now, temper temper, you haven't shown yours either.

My report has been written 2 posts above and some other users also told about this problem. Even very skilled users like Ventilator mentioned this problem.

You can call me a lier but you also tell us that Ventilator is lying? wow, hard stuff.

Phemox: Just stop it! I can use whatever I want. Dexsoft has one! (1) license of A7. So I have to use the trial version if I am on another computer. And everybody can do that. Even you could check it if you really would be interested in this technology than only in flooding the forums

And I mentioned above why I cannot show screensthots. It is called E701, a compiling error in A7. Try it yourself. How can I make a screenshot of a level that does not compile? My goodness!

Sure, Frank. You are really sort of a strange guy.



Thats with the beta version but with 7.07 it looks the same. Imported static mesh, took 5 minutes to create. Every newbie can do that.

Yes spritit, as strange as every other user here having the same problem. I am sorry and I hope you forgive us all

Since you believe to be the only one to get it to work you must be a genius or you are the strange one here. I am not sure. I let other people decide.

No Frank, I'm not a genius. Everyone can do that in 5 minutes. Even you.

I did check A7 out when it was released, I really liked the performance improvements, but decided to stick with A6 for my current projects.

Dexsoft may have a license, but apparently you don't, or what? I can't smell if you're at home (where your license is) or not, so don't overreact because of my interpretation of you using the trial edition. Besides, we all sort of know that usually the trial edition isn't the latest version...

OK, here a screenshot from Torque's Constructor.

@Spirit: Can you do this with A7/WED? I'm very interested.

Spirit, don't be that arrogant! Not every user (including me) can do that. The reason is simply: We are not beta-users. We use official version of Gamestudio!

I am happy that it works better in the beta but that is no reason to be insulting and arrogant.

Edit: By the way, Spirit, your shadow looks bad and there is only a default texture on the object. This is a bad example.

The trial is the official version every potential customer will download and check out. No beta.

I wasn't talking about the beta, I was talking about official updates. By the way, this topic is getting out of hand... It's the last post of me here.



Yes, it is indeed.

Even i can do it and use WED never for game projects...
But i don't see the point in this discussion everyone is claiming he is right but nothing changes...
I think frank is kinda right since A/ has several bbugs and they wont get away by talking but one other true thing is that i never had problems to solve such a bug problem in some other way.
And this screenshot wicht has shown us is definitly possible with A7 just have to realize that you have to do some things yourself with a bit work of coding and thinking.
And i am not a beta user (even though i could if i wanted to).
If you really want some examples i will show you but i tihnk its kinda senseless...

Please peace. I dont want to offend someone and I didnt intend to let Frank look like an idiot. I just wanted to know what that mysterious bug is that he alwasy talks about.

Maybe there is really a bug and then Frank you should definitely report it to Conitec. I have just showed that apparently other people have no problem with that "bug".

As I said my screenshot has nothing to do with the beta version, it can be taken in all A7 versions, I do that all the time.

Again, if you want to help conitec and there is a bug you should report it and let them know. Vague talking about "bugs" has the only effect to scare people away from Gamestudio and if that is your intention you should clearly say it.

Wicht, are those shadows realtime or static?

This is not true spirit, read this thread! Other users also mentioned this problem, not only me.

urgh. i don't like this thread and regret taking part in it... probably my last post here...

the beta doesn't have a different map compiler but conitec is working on an improved version.

i wasn't able to get any usable results from the map compiler so far (when using meshes! blocks and BSP probably still work fine - i haven't tried this for over a year since i am not interested in BSP). often i get crashes or the shadows and tesselation look totally messed up. with some geometry it works better but there still always are shadow errors which make the result not really usable.

conitec knows about those problems. there have been several threads in the beta forum about this with screenshots.

spirit, your image doesn't show much. can you provide a download of the wmp file so that we can fly around? (and since you seem to have beta forum access you could look for those threads if you are interested.)

Since spirit is too lazy to read I will repeat some other users here:

at the moment the main problem of gamestudio is the map compiler. it doesn't work properly for polygon soups. (Ventilator)

like already has been mentioned, the map compiler is faulty. it doesn´t produce useable results if you would like to use meshes. (Iuselitec)

There were more like Broozar who also mentioned it and even more in other posts.

So I hope this stops now, Spirit.

Ventilator, I can not provide a download because I took that huge machine from a CD ROM with 3DS MAX models and its copyrighted. But you can do that with any model, just scale it big, import in WED, and compile the map. Its really 5 minutes. The WED was from version 7.07, I didnt use the beta WED because I know the beta compiler is still unfinished. Only the shot was taken with the beta engine because I copied it in my Gamestudio folder. The map compiler was from the release.

I have never encountered any major problems with WED importing static meshes and shadow mapping. Of course I use the release version and not beta. I do not think Conitec is aware of any bugs in the release version.

here i am, back from hiatus, im so overstressed right now.
anyway, i returned with a abtch of shots.

NOTE: those shots are ALL incomplete, and in a very very early stage of development. everything you see is pure level geometry, createin in A wich blocks, rendered in A7. they are empty, lack any detail whatsoever and have errors.

the old film shader scales wrongly and causes an error in the normalmapping.

some other things about this project: as you can see, those shots are pretty empty, with some strange texture work. but dont be mistaken, this will change. the game wont probably be done for another 1 to 2 years, so dont come with empty levels and stuff.
im posting them for something else, namely stats - and here they are:

FPS in A6 without old film shader: 22-35, depends on level and scene
FPS in A7 with old film shader: 28-42, depends on level and scene

my machine:
PC Pentium 4 with 3.5GHZ SIMULATED Dual Core, Geforce 7800GS (AGB) with 256MB ram, shader model 3.0, 1GB of RAM

Those shots were made with the A7 TRIAL Version.

Im not saying this proves anything about the good or bad stuff of A7, it just shows that there are improvements over A6, and thats all i know for now^^

here we go:

shot of an outdoor area. you can see the water shader, old film and wrong normal mapping. the screen is stretched due to a shader error. there is also a heavy particle rain, thats not visible somehow because of the wrong old film shading.
A6: ~25FPS A7: ~28FPS


Indoor Aqueduct Area. Same Shaders as above.
A6: ~32 FPS A7: ~38FPS


Another Angle from the Aqueduct. Same Stats as above


Same shot without Old Film shader. No Framerate Improvement if shader is deactivated (Maybe 1 frame)

thats it from me^^

That was my original question that started all the screenshot posting: Are you indeed using WED and found a bug, or are you just repeating what other people say?

When you are a WED user yourself and found a bug then I say it the third time, report it to Conitec.

But just spreading rumors about bugs is not honest.

@slin: These are static shadows. It's senseless to use such a model (orc) with static shadows...i know this. It was only a quick render for this thread. I need less than 10 sec. to calculate these shadows.

I dont need 5 minutes like Spirit.

Spirit: again, read the posts! We talked very detailed about Dexsoft, the game Dexon Knight (made in A7) and Ventilator wrote a few posts above:
"Conitec knows about those problems. there have been several threads in the beta forum about this with screenshots."

So what will be honest if I repeat to show Conitec the bugs again and again they already know of?

Read and reply after reading please!

Frank, if I understand this right, your were talking not about bugs in the release, but in the beta version? And you have not encountered bugs yourself, you're only talking about bugs other people talked about?

Now I'm confused. You have always made here the impression that you are a power user of Gamestudio and are yourself knowing of "bugs" in the release version.

tried to get those shadows from static meshes. i dotn get any shadows at all. can anyone tell me EXACTLY what i need to set, flags or anything?

sounds pretty noob-ish, i know...

Spirit: You still understood everything wrong. And you still cannot read.

At Dexsoft we work with A7 and we experience bugs like every other A7 user, period.

This is the topic of this thread and we came to the point that it does not work. Spirit mentioned that it works better in the last beta but still there are problems.

I talked with users like Slin via MSN and they also replied that still problems exist with self-shadowing, shadow resolution, tesselation and similar.

Frank, if I understand everything wrong then please explain it patiently. I just wanted to know what mysterious bugs you were talking about. But whatever you answered it was always different.

First you claimed that WED can not compile shadows on imported meshes. I showed you a screenshot that WED compiled fine on imported meshes without any problem.

Then you claimed that the map compiler has bugs that everyone knows including Conitec. I look in the bug forum and no one has reported a map compiler bug nor is it mentioned in the bug list.

Then you claimed that you know from the bugs from other people who were talking about bugs in the beta version. But you are no beta tester so bugs in the beta version should not be your problem.

Now you're claiming that you found your mysterious "bugs" at Dexsoft and I still do not understand: When you really found a bug, why the hell dont you report it? How else should Conitec learn about that bug, do you think they read this mess of a thread?

I just made some tests with the mapcompiler:
-you can see each polygon because of a bad (none?) interpolation of the selfshadowing
-the shadow resolution is even on the highest setting quite bad
-there are shadows at position which are in the light and also the other way around

all in all it is not that great -.-

Slin, shadows are only interpolated when you set the smooth flag. Thats the only flag I have set in the screenshot.

You showed a beta image with bad low resolution shadows. Ventilator asked for a better view or real-time version and you ignored that.



This problem has been mentioned even one year ago as I still was a member of the beta forum. The problem exists since the beginning of A7. Because of that you will not find much posts in the bug forum. The bug is more than one year old!



I mentioned that about 5 times in this thread but you still are ignorant or not able to read. As you can see above and from other posts (like Ventilator): This problems is a WELL-KNOWN problem from the beginning of A7. I won't tell it to them for the 20th time.

Please read this post this time and don't ask the same questions again and again!

Well, I'll stop asking as apparently there is no answer.

Spirit, I have the smoothflag set, but it is still bad:


Do you call this good looking?
And you can see a wrong shadow on the right.

No prob Spike, thats what you do (hopefully I dont forget a step):

1. Get a static mesh. Mine was 3DS and without textures, so I import it in MED, scale it BIG, and save it as MDL (1 minute).

2. Open an empty level in WED, Import that MDL.

3. Select the whole model, assign a texture from standard.wad and set the smooth flag on the texture.

4. Place a light and make sure that its range (the yellow circle) is over the whole model. Or set sun and ambient in map properties. (1 Minute)

5. Save and Compile. Simple Map, Mesh Mode, Don't Snap Vertices. (2 Minutes).

6. Start Engine and press F6 for screenshot.

Slin, check material. The steps on the ball do not look like static shadow at all. They have nothing to do with the map compiler but are just DirectX shading from the material. Geometry has no Gouraud shading, therefore the steps. Set the diffuse color of mat_shaded and mat_flat at zero.

Finally this thread becomes somewhat useful...

There is no material, but just give me a few minutes and I´ll create a shot just rendering the shadowmap, then we´ll see if it was the map compiler or not

sorry but i just thought that was funny: "this is the topic of this thread". the topic of this devastated thread is actually the "Gears of Torque" demo, which exhibits static lighting on what might-as-well-be level geometry, normal mapping, and nice artwork.

if people aren't feeling more than a little bit silly by now, then i calculate the average age of posters in this thread to be: 9 (which i know it isn't).

julz

Thanks for being insulting Julz. I think this was the strongest insult so far.

But I agree in one fact (though you could have brought it without being personal anyway): The thread is about showcasing the video. But most of the thread has dealt with realizing something similar in A7. This was my intention to tell to Spike and maybe you did not get this intention at first glance.

Nevertheless you don't have to be 9 years old to talk about issues that come up when you create static shadows.

By the way: Your post did not contribute at all. You insulted all people in this thread and you did not talk about shadows, the demo or solutions how to get static meshes into A7. You are a pure spammer this time.

i didn't mean to come across insulting frank, and you have my apologies. it wasn't directed at you; instead your quote was used to illustrate the direction most people appear to think the thread has taken in general.

i'm not saying anyone here has the maturity of a 9 year-old unless upon realising how far off-topic they've gone over and over again (particularly the repeat-offenders) they don't feel a bit silly.

most of this thread seems to be about rendering static shadows on static meshes, which doesn't have anything to do with that video. static meshes are an avenue they may have taken, but given the simplicity of most of the geometry it might as well be level blocks.

i'm not a pure spammer, you're just feeling hurt from my comment. i contributed to the thread by assisting people in adjusting the path this thread is taking without fueling the fire of the argument with personal opinions about it.

i hope i'm a lot more clear now.

julz

Yes. This is more clear to me.

I am also not sure how they made it. But look at the video again. There are many detailed meshes. I don't think they are made out of blocks.

But we should not start so much guessing. We will see when GarageGames offers more info or even the level itself to the community. I am looking forward to that and I am excited about it and I will analyze its structure for sure.

you're right, a lot of the scenery would be better suited to static meshes, and given that torque supports them they probably are.

and i'm glad you can understand where i was coming from.

is the demo itself made by GarageGames? many of the comments in this thread seem to imply it is.

julz

Here are two quotes from Stephen Zepp (Garagegames Employee) about the video:

GarageGames is involved in this demo but probably there is another studio behind the content displayed in this. But this still is only guessing since there is no official information currently about this demo.

GarageGames works on a game called "Legions - fallen Empire". It is some kind of Tribes3, made with their shader engine and will be published soon via Instant Action as a game playable through web browsers.

Besides that they work on new engine versions based on a new code. So they re-write the complete engine code.
Juggernaught is the base that should power all three engines (TGE, TGB and TGEA) with their base functionality. It is told to be component based software. Then they can improve shadows only in Juggernaught and all 3 engines can take advantage from this.

But they said, Juggernaught will first power at least one internal produced game before it will become public for all. So they want to achieve that their code will be battle-proven.

I think, this is a good approach.

cheers. as a company they seem quite capable; the fact that they've published loads of indy titles themselves is also quite cool and is a good selling-point for the engine, especially if my assumption is correct that they lean towards (or even perhaps publish exclusively) torque games. not that everyone who makes a torque game would be able to publish through them, but most people are either a n00b assuming they'll be good enough to get a deal or a veteran who actually is

julz

Today (Apr. 5th 2008) TGEA 1.7 is Officially Released!
Here is another video.

"MegaTerrain" TGEA Flythrough Demo Video

Fine, but I think everyone will appreciate a new thread now. This one has become too messy and personal so Im now doing my moderator duties, and when there is more discussion about how to make static shadows in WED then the WED forum is the right place. Wicht put your Torque posts in a new thread. This one is coming to an end.