Torque 3D Goes Open Source...

Discussion in 'General Gossip, Troll Wars & Game Development' started by NovoGeek, Sep 11, 2012.

  1. NovoGeek

    NovoGeek Gamer One Of Us

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  2. TheThinMan

    TheThinMan Paranoid Conspiracy Nut One Of Us

    Is there a "pop finger out of cheek and twirl in air" emoticon?
     
  3. PeterM

    PeterM (name subject to change) One Of Us

    MIT license, so someone could for example port it to console?

    I know very little about T3D I'm afraid, but is the engine good?
     
  4. NovoGeek

    NovoGeek Gamer One Of Us

    @PeterM: Yes ... yup ... uh-huh.

    The Engine is not bad at all ... a lot of the original community has gotten behind the Community Edition (which was only available to people who purchased the engine) and they have done a lot of performance and functionality enhancements.

    The Community Edition also got access to the Mac port of the code and is busy getting that working ... so there is huge momentum in getting T3D ported to Linux and Mac.

    The engine comes with a full editor and has the potential with the right people and community to become the best open source engine ... well hopefully.


    I am kind of in two minds myself ... I am one of the original purchasers of the Studio License of the engine and now that it is open sourced ... I feel a little cheated ... but I understand that it will definitely be better for the engine in the long run. :)


    We'll see how it goes ... will keep you all updated.
     
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  5. shadowcode

    shadowcode Is this what you want? One Of Us

    From what I remember (been 7 years) it was a full fledged engine, with strong scripting (torquescript was kinda nice) and networking support. That was before all those fancy things like shader support and I believe they completely rewrote the terrain code to support modern stuff (like paging, and maybe dynamic deformation). Back then they used OpenAL for audio, but the implementation was pretty barebones. Not sure if/how they improved nowadays.

    Thing is, who's going to use this engine nowadays? Amateurs and indie startups are likely to stick to Unity3D, others might settle with the Unreal Engine. I *think* both have better tools than T3D (but back then there were hardly any tools, just an in-game editor).
     
  6. luggage

    luggage Industry God One Of Us

    When I used it Torque didn't feel like an engine. It felt like a highly modifiable game.
     
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  7. NovoGeek

    NovoGeek Gamer One Of Us

    @shadowcode and @luggage: it has come a long way since those early days and too me it now feels more like an engine then a game mod.

    I am however no expert ... and would like to see what some of you think when the final Open Source release happens.


    I myself have started venturing off towards a more Java orientated route (primarily because that is what I do professionally) ... but that is just me. :)
     
  8. IFW

    IFW Not allowed to say NFTS are shit One Of Us

    Having had the misfortune of working with Torque professionally.. All i can say is "no thanks!".

    It may as well be "no source" as it needs re-writing from scratch.
     
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  9. NovoGeek

    NovoGeek Gamer One Of Us

    When last did you use it?

    That is what the whole Community Edition is about ... it is having a huge refactor and optimisation of the code.

    Anyway ... I guess we all have our favourites. :)

    Don't think I have found mine yet. :deadcrab:
     
  10. NovoGeek

    NovoGeek Gamer One Of Us

  11. duracell

    duracell Industry Legend One Of Us

    I'm trying to understand how the editor works - brushes and stuff...
     
  12. NovoGeek

    NovoGeek Gamer One Of Us

    In what way?


    There is a whole lot of documentation about the various editors:
    http://www.garagegames.com/documentation/torque-3d


    There are also a fair amount of video tutorials on you tube as well:
    http://www.youtube.com/user/garagegames?feature=CAwQwRs%3D


    If you have any specific questions, I can try and answer them here, or you can join the Garage Games Community and there are always people around who can help.


    HTH. Q
     
  13. morgolock

    morgolock Troll One Of Us

    I like Torque. I worked with TGE for about one year on two different projects.

    1) We tried to build a casual MMO platform around TGE but the project was eventually canceled. This project was heavily based on Linux.

    2) The other project was a strategy/adventure game that was shipped without problems. We had to do deep modifications to the engine and the editor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uwwm-NRPGM

    My experience with Torque was good, I remember there was a great community of developers using it and lots of resources.
     
  14. Sairon

    Sairon Ossom One Of Us

    Used "Torque Shader Engine Advanced" ( or at least that's what I recall it was called at the time ). A perfect example of what happens when there's zero consideration of architecture / design.
     
    Last edited: Oct 6, 2012
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  15. morgolock

    morgolock Troll One Of Us

    I didn't use the "Advanced" version, just TGE. Do you know what were the differences between TGE and its advanced version?

    In those days, I think the price of TGE was about 100 US $

    I wouldn't expect an example of engine architecture in a product you paid 100 dollars...