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Torque Engine: Advice on the purchase thereof
halkun
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have been working on a software project that, when finished, will be the beginning of my independent game publishing career. As of right now, I've been using CrystalSpace as my engine of choice. There are several reasons for this. First being it is very cheap. Coming down to brass tacks, you really can't beat free.
To assist in my development, I took about five months to collect up a toolset and learn the basic ins-and-outs of each. These were also free Open Source programs found about the net. Blender became the key center-point of development, with external python scripts to help glue one technology to another.
On top of CS, I've been using CEL, (actully CELStart, -the Python scripting front-end for CS), but I have started to run into heavy brick walls. The game I'm working on is an adventure game, which is a few steps removed from a JRPG experience. CEL seems to be more geared towards FPS games, racers, and simple adventure games like Tomb Raider where scripting sort of pushes the game along.
It's getting to the point now where between the engine limitations, and my top-heavy content, CS isn't looking like the right engine anymore.
I was looking at Torque.
Now, I don't know much about it. I only know it was the "Tribes Engine" at one time, which resulted in Gabe getting kicked in the Mean Bean Machine a few years back. Looking at the page, I have found it to be really what I'm looking for.
Or is it?
I have to admit $150 is a good deal. I can handle the non-transferable license and logo requirement at the beginning of the game. (Heck, if the engine is that good, I'll be proud to put it there.) The toolsets look really sexy, and it also appears to be pretty easy to migrate to.
Now, for the bad part.
I'm not a very powerful programmer. To give an example, if I were a wizard, with Merlin on the one end of the spectrum, I would be more like the guy from "The Last Unicorn". I can accidentally turn unicorns into maidens, and have the ability to pull odd creatures from my hat. I may also have the ability to teleport, but only with a lot of smoke and I'll most likely wind up the kitchen.
If I bought Torque, what do I get? What kind of development community will I find? Is if fun to play around with, like a "Gamemaker" environment? Can I do real stuff too. If I were to use Linux as my main development platform, are there any tool limitations I'll run into?
I can also gave more information on my project if anyone's interested.
To assist in my development, I took about five months to collect up a toolset and learn the basic ins-and-outs of each. These were also free Open Source programs found about the net. Blender became the key center-point of development, with external python scripts to help glue one technology to another.
On top of CS, I've been using CEL, (actully CELStart, -the Python scripting front-end for CS), but I have started to run into heavy brick walls. The game I'm working on is an adventure game, which is a few steps removed from a JRPG experience. CEL seems to be more geared towards FPS games, racers, and simple adventure games like Tomb Raider where scripting sort of pushes the game along.
It's getting to the point now where between the engine limitations, and my top-heavy content, CS isn't looking like the right engine anymore.
I was looking at Torque.
Now, I don't know much about it. I only know it was the "Tribes Engine" at one time, which resulted in Gabe getting kicked in the Mean Bean Machine a few years back. Looking at the page, I have found it to be really what I'm looking for.
Or is it?
I have to admit $150 is a good deal. I can handle the non-transferable license and logo requirement at the beginning of the game. (Heck, if the engine is that good, I'll be proud to put it there.) The toolsets look really sexy, and it also appears to be pretty easy to migrate to.
Now, for the bad part.
I'm not a very powerful programmer. To give an example, if I were a wizard, with Merlin on the one end of the spectrum, I would be more like the guy from "The Last Unicorn". I can accidentally turn unicorns into maidens, and have the ability to pull odd creatures from my hat. I may also have the ability to teleport, but only with a lot of smoke and I'll most likely wind up the kitchen.
If I bought Torque, what do I get? What kind of development community will I find? Is if fun to play around with, like a "Gamemaker" environment? Can I do real stuff too. If I were to use Linux as my main development platform, are there any tool limitations I'll run into?
I can also gave more information on my project if anyone's interested.
halkun on
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For some reason, I had decided against it, but I forgot why.
It's not a bad engine, just make sure you know exactly what you're paying for. Don't expect miracles.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
They upped the price to $150? That means it's even more of a rip-off when I got it!
Go get OGRE or IrrLicht, they're free and more powerfull, and have more documentation and user/developer support. Where as Torque has almost none.
Also, CrystalSpace stinks.
To answer your questions:
If I bought Torque, what do I get? - You get the game source (not the engine source), and the level editor. Pretty much what you see in the trial download. You'll still be using Blender to model, and you'll have to get another obscure third party scripter that I think has been abandonded by the developer, is really hard to find, and has no documentation.
What kind of development community will I find? - Torque has a development community?
Is if fun to play around with, like a "Gamemaker" environment? - Oh yea, that's pretty much all you can do.
Can I do real stuff too. - If you can find documentation, sure, you can try.
If I were to use Linux as my main development platform, are there any tool limitations I'll run into? - Torque works on Linux? If it has a Linux version, you'll get the game source and the level editor.
Here's some more information...
Most of my game takes place on an island that is about 25 square kilometers. There are two main characters, but one doesn't speak English. This means that I'll need the ability to print Unicode in the GUI dialogs. I'll also need some way to transition from an expansive outdoor envirnment to a (most likely) BSP-rendered indoor environment. I'll also need to be able to script my characters to play various animations at particular spots. I need an exacting control of the camera, and also the input requires text to be written for interaction. I was just intrested because the PA game uses Torque. I'm confused as I don't think we are talking about the same engine.
The link below takes you to the island, just so you can get an idea of the artwork involved.
Click here for linky
In a perfect world, an engine like what marrowwind used would be cool, but blank so I can generate my stuff from scratch.
I think the Torque engine is great. I really don't think you need to be a programming wizard to get away with a fairly complex game. I'm by no means a programmer, but the Torque scripting language was fairly easy for me to pick up. The most complex thing I've ever written was a simple Capture the Flag script, but I'm sure you could make your adventure game fairly easily. The Torque scripting language, if I remember correctly, is similar to C, so it's pretty powerful, too.
You should pick up modelling, texturing, and animating in Torque extremely quickly since you are already familiar with Blender. IIRC, you only need to download one Python script for Blender and you're ready to export all your brand new textured models with animations and everything directly into Torque. My favorite Blender model was Gingerbread Dan, which was basically a little gingerbread man that I modelled, textured, and made simple walking animations for.
And... I just realized that I haven't really been answering your questions, so now I'll try to do that.
What you have to work with when you buy Torque is the "Mission Editor" which is basically your all-in-one map editor/gui editor/ particle effects/weather/ interiors/ plants/various other tools, etc bundled together. F1-F12 each take you to a different editor, and you can easily control and manipulate all aspects of the game world. You still have to use something else to write your scripts, create art, buildings, etc. but everything else can be edited realtime in the game engine and you can "play" whatever changes you make immediately. I don't really know if I'm being very clear, so here's an example: say you make a little town and drop your ninja protagonist in it. You load the mission and play it. You decide that you don't like some things, so you press, say, F5, (I forget which key does what anymore) and you move the buildings around, then lower the water level of a pond, flatten a hill, make it rain, add some more enemies, get rid of a few trees, etc. Then you go back to "game mode" and re-spawn your ninjadude without having to reload the mission or whatever. It's very easy to work with, and you don't have to learn a ton of console commands: it's all very easy to do what you need to with just the GUI.
The GarageGames community is amazing. There is a ton of documentation on garagegames.com and there are active forums where indie game developers share code and whatnot all the time. That made things a lot easier for us.
About Linux: I'm not sure. We were using our crappy school computers running Windows 98. :P
I'm positive Blender will run natively on Linux, but there might be a different problem. One program we had to use was QuArK (QUake ARmy Knife) which we used to make buildings that would have interiors and other such things that couldn't be done with blender. I mean, you literally couldn't make them with blender, they actually had to have a different file extension, or Torque wouldn't have correct shadows (which actually were "baked" into the buildings). So I don't know if QuArK runs on Linux, or whether there is an open-source tool that you can use to create the same files. I remember GarageGames working on some program like this, except it was supposed to be a lot better (QuArK was a serious pain to use, that was the only area we had problems with). It's probably out by now, but it costs money, which isn't exactly the open source you were hoping for. I dunno, things may have changed by now though.
Well, I hope some of that was comprehensible and you got what you needed out of it. Basically, if a group of high school kids can play around with the Torque Game Engine in their spare time after school and successfully learn how to use the mission editor, learn to use Blender to create textured, animated models and import them into the engine, and learn the scripting language, then you will definitely accomplish a lot with this amazing game development platform.
Edit: Now that I read rayofash's post, I start to question my memory and opinion on Torque. Last year there was a pretty active development community, I think. Also, I thought you got the engine source... I'm not sure though because we never really messed with that.
Also, DUH, I don't even think Torque runs on Linux, so my whole paragraph on Linux compatibility is useless.
Now that I think about it, maybe Torque wasn't as great as I remember it to be. I do remember hating having to use third-party crap like QuArK just to get working buildings and things into Torque.
Sigh... maybe we wasted our money on Torque. Now I'm thinking that maybe Torque was easy for us to pick up just because it was simple and not very powerful. I would have liked a more unified set of tools to work with. I don't know any more. I think I just got on a roll and remembered how awesome it was hanging out with my friends that I forgot all the frustrating crap that came with it. Also, if there are free game engines that you can use, I don't know if Torque is worth $150. Well, all I can say now is, go to GarageGames.com, download the TGE demo thing, play around with it, and search the forums to see if you find the information you need. The demo really isn't that much different from the full engine, and it's free to boot. Just use that to get the hang of it and see if you like it.
So what I'm trying to say here is, take my post with a grain of salt, I'm just a high school student, so I don't really have any experience with these types of things, and I think I just made Torque seem better than it really is.
Edit 2: That island you've got there, Torque can take that bitmap and use it to create the world map directly from the Mission Editor without any other tools like Geomorph. Just some information you might find useful.
Near as I can tell, there are about three different levels of technical sophistication you can use to make things with TGE. (Also note that they now have a Torque Shader Engine which might cost more. My computer doesn't support that so I never bought it. Maybe TSE is what you're talking about which costs more.)
On the low end of the tech tree, so to speak, you can use TGE as a freely-redistributable game engine and you basically "mod" it. There are books around, like 3D Game Programming All In One, which walk you through the process step by step. If you're doing this then you don't actually need engine source code because you won't be modifying engine code. The game relies upon scripts for nearly everything. Very few behaviors or event models are actually hard-coded -- most everything is dispatched via scripts. It's been a long time since I've looked at TGE so I wish I could say more or say it more precisely.
TGE and TSE are essentially the engine from Tribes 2 after years of polish and modification (TSE more so than TGE), so as you can expect, the engine handles both interior environments and large outdoor spaces very well. Scripts are compiled at run-time so after you write a script you can remove your plain-text script and just distribute the compiled version.
If you have ever played with BlockLand -- go look at some of the advanced mods people are able to do. All of that is done at essentially this level of access to the engine.
As you get better, you can start to learn little pieces of the engine source, so you can start making modifications. I never got to this level, despite being a CS grad. I never should have bought an Xbox 360. X__X
Once you buy a license you also get access to the protected areas of the forum and to the online documentation. The people on the forum are EXTREMELY knowledgable, and surprisingly motivated to help people. I know there were several instances where I had asked naive is-this-possible questions and had answers from GarageGames staff (as well as experienced forum members) within a few hours. Also, people there like to type LONG answers. If you look at my early posts on this forum, I had most recently been hanging out on the GarageGames forums so it took me a while to stop making every post a wall of text.
Most importantly, remember that this is a full-featured game engine and as such it will not be an easy point-and-click affair. Set your expectations at a reasonable level. One or two people together aren't going to be making a full game - you will be making a game prototype. As long as you don't obsess over polish and just work to get the general "is this fun or not" gameplay elements hammered out, you'll be able to make something.
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I own it, I know what there is. You might be able to get by, but check out the free options (OGRE and IrrLicht) first.
Edit: I think it's possible to get the engine source, but I don't think that's what you want.
The thing is, I'm not a point-and-cliker. I know how to set up a dev environment in Linux and can produce projects centered around make. From a management standpoint, I run the development of Q-Gears though, admittingly, I was kicked out of the source tree ages ago. (I had developers that came onboard that were much more advanced, and were getting tired of fixing my "improvements" to the codebase.) I was shoved into the PR/Managament position when the deveopment grew beyond what I could code.
This is another summer project for me. The thing is, my data is "Top heavy". That means I have a metric crap-ton of content already that I have to shoehorn into a game. Things like script, storyboards, plots, episodes, and such are already written down on paper starting about two years and some change ago.
What I ask of the engine isn't really complex. Much of it is heavily scripted machinima scenes. It's the control of a scene that I'm really looking for. The input system is also very unique, requireing a parser in two different languages. (English/Japanese). The system is designed to be played from a gamepad, so the Japanese input system needs to be very custom.
The island is going to require the most detail, and I have the tools/maps for that already. I just need to know, for example in the picture above, can I fill that volcano crater with water and have a waterfall coming down the side without having to rip open the code because the external scripter is too slow, or unable to do it. I would like to know that during the opening scene, when I have a helo landing on an oil rig, and can easily lock the camera to the helo and do a trackcam around in mid-air, or do I have to put a thousand camera positions in the script file (That I pre-rendered) in order to get my artsy shot.
Now, I'm not one saying "I have this really awesome idea for this game, but I can't code, can you help?" or anything. Trust me, with Q-Gears I get about 10 requests for beta-testers a month, and another 4-5 wanting to help with the engine but "don't know a lot of C++".
I just don't want to blow $150 only to get stuck with a bad investment. I guess the thing is, I never actually seen "Tribes" or "Tribes 2" and I thought it was just a FPS capture-the-flag game with outdoor environments, like Unreal 2.
You see, I quit playing PC games around 2001, so I don't know what's up nowadays. The most I've ever seen a computer do on the side of pretty is FF12. I'm not stooting for that kind of graphic quality. Maybe FF8, but with less angst. ^_^
If you can figure it out with little documentation, a small but somewhat active development community, and no support from the developers (my license didn't come with support anyways), then you will be ahead of most people who have bought a Torque license.
But at the same time OGRE and IrrLicht are just as powerfull, and you will be using the exact same tools to make content with it (Quark, DevC++, Blender, GIMP, etc..) and it has a more active community and support from the developers. Plus it's free, and you will have access to the engines source and be able to use 3rd party plugins. And you can develop for Windows, Linux, and Mac.
IrrLicht: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/
OGRE: http://www.ogre3d.org/
I've actually seen more done with IrrLicht than I have Torque:
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/screenshots-projects.html
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14941
http://sio2.g0dsoft.com/modules/wmpdownloads/
http://www.thegreatstudio.com/cubo!/cubo!.php
OGRE can do pretty amazing graphics (so can IrrLicht, but all the artists seem to have flocked to OGRE), but i've never gotten anywhere with the engine:
http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?set_albumName=album07&option=com_gallery&Itemid=55&include=view_album.php
All of those engines (including Torque) can do everything you have asked for. Some can do them better than others, and some are harder to develop for than others, the only problem is deciding which one to use.
Regarding support from developers: did you also notice the link they provided to the private Torque Game Engine or Torque Shader Engine forums? There's your support. As I said earlier, several times I asked a question and got informed, long answers from both GarageGames employees and other forum users.
Sorry for the pushy tone there, but I think it's deserved -- "no support from the developers" seems misleading, if my GarageGames forum experiences from 2005 still reflect current reality.
So I'll amend that advice: if you can get by with support from a forum -- if you don't need a formal support contract with support techs available for you to call on the phone -- then this could work.
Also keep in mind you should have your sights set on game prototype. The Torque Game Engine is powerful but it's not already tailored to a specific game type. If there already exists a moddable game that's very similar to what you want, you could mod Half Life 2 or Unreal or something similar to get what you want. If you're designing something that's rather unique, you already know you'll have to do a lot of work on your own.
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I don't think those are what I'm looking for at all...
OGRE3D is just a 3D rendering API that sits on OpenGL or DirectX. There is no sound, ai, or scripting front-end.
IrrLicht is a .NET engine. That is worthless to me as I run linux. (I love how people claim that .NET is cross-platform and in the same breath say it's for win32) I don't have a windows computer.
I'm looking for something like the morrowind engine, but less sandboxed when it comes to scripts. (i.e. the ability to open files and such). Something where you have an editor that you can edit the world and script from within. I don't really want to touch an executable or compile anything. I mean, if it comes with a scripting language where I have to recompile the executable if I want to add commands, that's fine. My biggest gripe with CrystalSpace is that once you hit the wall with CELStart, you are pretty much coding the engine beyond that. Below CELStart is CEL, which gives you hooks to the internal engine, but it's a pain to "export" and new CELStart command not only for difficulty reasons, but also political (I have to submit my changes back to the CEL tree or offer the engine source code. I'm not keen on coding CEL, I'm keen on coding my program)
It would be nice for it to run on Linux, but I can build an XP box if I really need to.
The downside is you'll have to buy a book, but this book does a great job of walking you through building a simple game using the Torque Game Engine -- but without access to the source and without recompiling anything. You just edit scripts with a text editor, and create other assets with special programs (like Blender, for creating poly meshes.)
Worst case, you spend $35-ish on this book and waste a month learning an environment you won't end up using.
And best case, if you find that the version of TGE in the book works well, and you understand things well enough to know that you can be productive with it, go ahead and pay $100 or $150 for an indie license for TGE or TSE so you can publish.
I own a copy of this book, btw. If you lived in the Omaha area I'd let you borrow my copy for a while. :-)
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If you want to do something other than a standard fps or a racer, chances are you will be modifying the source-code directly, which of course is included (have no idea where rayofash got the idea that it wasn't). The source code is somewhat of a mess, however. They've just added new stuff on top of the old, and it is in a need of a cleanup.
The audio code isn't the best one around. One could implement FMOD instead to have a more robust base than OpenAL which is used.
The exporting and importing of graphics will be a pain in the ass. I guarantee that. And if you want to be certain that everything will work correctly, you are recommended to use Quark for everything larger than your player. Quark was made for Quake 1. Not pretty.
Overall, your game will look like it was made five years ago, and still make the best of computers weep. TGEA, the new engine formely known as Torque Shader Engine, is supposed to be better with this, and look miles better, too.
On the plus side, there are lots of helpful people on the forums that can help, and resources that you easily can implement in your game (for the most cases). Many resources do not work for TGEA, though, or are made for an old version of TGE, which will result in compile errors. For example, I implemented a reworked base for the audio-side of the engine, and I was welcomed with over 70 compile errors on my first try.
If you have any other questions about Torque, I can hopefully answer them for you.
Dunno of that's the Tribes community or GG's fault, though.
If you're ready to just get going on content and have had enough of learning exercises, I use Irrlicht, and I can tell you it does not need .NET. I wouldn't use OGRE either. It works very well, but I hate that API with a passion. The OGRE community, however, is excellent. Even if it doesn't have sound in it, OpenAL or FMod aren't hard to add.
If you want to get hardcore, you could program your own engine in C++ with SDL and OpenGL, which do everything you want when combined correctly. SDL is a pleasure to use in comparison to OGRE, and it's cross-platform as all get out.
As for Torque, I haven't personally used it, but some people swear by it.
IrrLicht HAS a .NET API. IrrLicht is C++. It also has Python binds, and few others.
And when I bought the Torque engine they had me connect to a repository to download all the source, and it was hard because there was little support for it and at the time I had never done anything like that. But it wasn't the engine source. Just the game source. Like with Quake 3 now, you can get the engine source or the game source. People want the game source unless they plan on modifying the engine (changing sound engine, modifying multiplayer code etc...).
Are we talking the game source or the engine source? When I bought it the engine source wasn't available, but it very well could be available now.
Are we talking the game source or the engine source? When I bought it the engine source wasn't available, but it very well could be available now.[/QUOTE]
Engine source, and you have always been able to get it, as far as I can tell. Otherwise it would be mighty useless to something larger than a simple Tribes 2-mod.
I think I might have to take you up on that. It includes a demo version of the engine?
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