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.