Surix:

Id imagine anyone with a remotely modern computer could play DungeonQuest at full framerate.

It's unplayable on my ATI Radeon x1400.  I get maybe 10 fps.  I can play Civ IV and Oblivion, but not Dungeon Quest.  Ben's admitted on his blog and his only post here that I'm not the only one with this problem and he's putting out an update soon.

At least you can run it. It crashes immedialty on my machine. (Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB Ram, 6600 PCI-X, with ,NET 2, DX RT, and XNA all up to date).

 Also I thought everything they create was supposed to be in 4 days, there a few things borrowed from previous projects.

ECHS BACHS:

I Looked Over the TGEA Site and it Mentions an Extra 360 License ... No Further Info (?)

???

 

We've had a Torque Game Engine-Advanced (C++, unrelated completely to Torque X) with an XBox360 platform layer for almost 2 years now available commercially. It's designed for a different market than XNA, and isn't a part of the Creators Club package.

I think maybe I am in a different position from many others on this forum, in that I am completely new to XNA and Torque.  I am not interested in rolling my own engine if there is something out there already does, this so for me Torque is potentially just what I want.

 My issues with Torque at the moment are that there is just not really any documentation, which makes it so hard for a newcomer to get started, particularly if they are trying to learn XNA at the same time.  Also it's trying to understand where Torque stops and XNA starts. 

As an example you need to use T2DSceneObjects in torque to take advantage of the torque functionality, but they do not allow textures to be loaded at runtime (there is no fromfile() method on a T2DStaticSprite).  So to get round this I would have to create a custom class, probably based on a T2DSceneobject, but create methods to allow me to load the textures at runtime and render them.  But if I am going to go to the trouble of doing this maybe it is easier just to use XNA completely - Texture2D objects already have a fromfile() method so I don't need to work out how to do that, and there is generally much more documentation on XNA than on Torque.

Now perhaps there is a way to handle this above example much more easily, but the point is if I can't find out how to do it, and there is no documentation - but I know there is a standard XNA object that does do this, suddenly the benefits of Torque X become less clear.

I am still really interested in using Torque X, but in its current state (and I do appreciate it is in Beta still) it's tricky to learn.

CrimsonShortOne:

 

As an example you need to use T2DSceneObjects in torque to take advantage of the torque functionality, but they do not allow textures to be loaded at runtime (there is no fromfile() method on a T2DStaticSprite).  So to get round this I would have to create a custom class, probably based on a T2DSceneobject, but create methods to allow me to load the textures at runtime and render them.  But if I am going to go to the trouble of doing this maybe it is easier just to use XNA completely - Texture2D objects already have a fromfile() method so I don't need to work out how to do that, and there is generally much more documentation on XNA than on Torque.

Now perhaps there is a way to handle this above example much more easily, but the point is if I can't find out how to do it, and there is no documentation - but I know there is a standard XNA object that does do this, suddenly the benefits of Torque X become less clear.

I think this decision was made primarily due to cross-platform (XB360) interests--we wanted to have a pipeline for content that allowed for auto-generation of assets, and expected all assets to be avalable at implementation time. I've asked around the office if there is a relatively streamlined way of adding this functionality, so hopefully will have an answer for you!

TorqueX might be worth it for me to investigate once it has documentation oriented to someone who'se never coded a game before (but knows C#). It's not enough to just tell someone put such and such code at this location. I want to know why it goes there and what you're trying to do. TorqueX should also support 3D objects with animation, not the hidden functionality it currently has.

The thing is, I've seen a number of game engines over the years look promising on their feature list but failed to deliver. Axion comes to mind. TorqueX sounds like it may well succeed in delivering its promised feature list, but until it actually does, I'd rather invest my limited time learning XNA, which already supports 3D models, can support scripting and music on Windows platforms (you need to know how to bring in C#'s compilier and the MS Media Player object), and even networking and database support via the .NET framework. It's less a case of Not-Invented-Here as it is An-Invention-Not-Yet-Completed (in my view).

Valrith, I think this is the most informative Torque-X thread of them all. You are doing a very well job , why not open up a separate thread here on XNA where you can post some of the Documentation since your doing it in this thread anyway.

I'm still in the process of getting my hands dirty with XNA and C# but have always been interested in Torque and will definitely be using it at some point. 

XNABlade3D:

...If someone was making a simple 2D game, it would not make sense to roll your own. Microsoft are saying "Save yourself some time while the others slog away at an engine", so why not take advantage of it. :)

That's just another way of telling everyone to buy your product (Blade3D) ;) I do suppose TorqueX, with its Torque Builder and all, is great for 2D stuff, while your Blade3D what-not is great for abstracting from a lot of 3D code. And, like TorqueX, focus more on your game, not your code :]

I do not endorse kittens.

I dont know a whole lot about Torque X then what I have read here, but from what I can tell, it has steep learning curves.

 

I am pretty new to C# and Xna, as i have been using V Basic, and I want to learn as much as I can, so I think that building my own engine will be good for me.  Plus, it might be fun to find out all the bugs and fix them, and be able to customize the system the exact way I want it to be. 

Ok here is my take on it. I use Torque X, i paid for it and i dont have the source code, i jsut have the builder. Im a highschool student and for what i want to do (build my small portfolio and learn a bit in the process) its great. But for all you out there that want to change the gaming world with a new animation system, or physics system, or some new thing never done before, dont expect any engine to help you out with that with out editing alot of source code. Really when it comes down to it, the reason why its so had to "innovate" the gaming world is simply this: To do something no one has done before, you must create your own engine from scratch, to really take full advantage of your ideas.

 

Conclusion

Torque is great for anyone who wants to make games with differnt ideas but who still think inside the box (but remember there is nothing wrong with pushing those lines)

For others who want to break the whole mold, do it your self, and if you really want to go wild, find a group or company and use a real engine not xna. If you are going to change the gaming world dont start with some small xbox 360 arcade game, take the gaming world by storm.

I am voting for "Roll your own" :)

I think that XNA is perfect tool for making game from scratch. A lot of helpers, many things simplified. So, i think, with C# you don't need a lot of time for engine. But TorqueX is confused me. They wrote, that this is the best ( or speedest? ) managed engine in the world. But their demo give me slide_show fps even on GF 8800 GTS. - So, i think they lie. I am also think, that for every game you need some specific engine, cos every game has features, that can be realised only with this feature_oriented engine. You just need some real helpers, that is equal for every game. ( Sorry for my English, i've tried to write correctly )

I think the biggest reason I shied away from it is the cost.. Honestly. I do this for fun, and I have never made a dime yet off anything I have put out with xna or c++ or.. I looked at torque long and hard, and then I kept seeing all the add on packs. $59 for this! $39 for this! $49 for this! Ooh! Only $29 for this.. There are a minimum of 10-20 packs out there for TX priced anywhere from $10 - $100.. I know content shouldnt be free, but still. It seems like to take advantage of shaders, you can buy that add on for $50! Plus the indie license.. plus.. Sure you dont need them all, but..

For the small hobbyist which seems to be most of the people on these forums, thats just too much. I know I cant afford it. Aside from all of that though, I downloaded some version of the TGB, dont remember,  but I do remember it telling me to add code here, add this there.. Sure, it looked good after following that tutorial.. but.. ummm.. I dont know what on earth I did.. The docs and the samples and all just didnt teach anything. They told you to put this here, and watch it work.. but why?

The other thing that bugged me, and this is just personal choice, I felt like I was cheating. I wasn't a programmer.. I used a game builder to make it.. At the time, I just couldnt get past that especially since I had been trying to teach myself to make games for so long, it would have felt like giving up. Ah well, I might try it again.. But can you point me to the FREE samples and starter kits like on here? I dont see any over there..

 

My problem with using TorqueX at this point, having used it a bit more, is that I don't want 90% of the stuff it has. That extra bulk is just getting in the way for me. I can write up a slim little game framework that matches everything I used in Torque in less time (and with less frustration) than trying to deal with TorqueX's extra bloat and strange (in my opinion) architecture and API. Once that become apparent to me, I gave up on TorqueX and started making my own framework which, in my opinion, has just about surpassed TorqueX in the areas I care about. Just another take on it. Some don't like it because it feels like "cheating", some just want the challenge. I'm a picky API guy so I choose to make my own library that works how I want it to and without all the extra junk.

When your hobby is one of programmatic curiosity & exploration, there's a perverse nerdy enjoyment in rolling your own. Using someone else's engine can be a little self-defeating in that regard.

It depends on what you're in it for; if you just want to get a game out there ASAP, your decisions will probably be different from someone motivated by the simple enjoyment of a hobby. I'm sure Torque X is better than anything I'll make anytime soon, but for me that's beside the point.

Stephen Zepp:

Obviously I'm biased, but I've noticed a massive majority of posters here commenting, or implying, that they are rolling their own engine(s) for their games.

 With Torque X not directly supporting 3D quite yet I can of course see the reasons why people might not be exploring it, but with that reason aside, is there a specific issue with the engine itself that is having people roll their own, or is it lack of knowledge regarding what it's about?

The main reason I ask is that if it's lack of knowledge of the engine (Torque X) itself, I'd be more than happy to answer and explain whatever I can--I just need to know what needs to be known, so to speak!

 The thing I really like about XNA is the flexibility of the framework.  The great thing is that it can be first used to program simple 2D games, and much of the same code will overlap to more complex 3D games.  It also has great documentation and the intellisense in Visual Studio makes it very easy to code and debug.  Plus I have previous experience with C#, so learning XNA has been a breeze.

Learning a 2D only engine seems like a bit of a dead end.  The only 2D games I play are either older titles (Diablo II, Fallout II, Baulder's Gate), or 2D games with a lot of great hand drawn artwork (Aquaria).  I want the flexibility to build whatever game I want and it feels less risky building for a framework/platform that is backed by a multi-billion-dollar company.  For being essentially free (for Windows users at least), XNA offers a lot of power.

My main problem with Torque X is that it seems very limited. I understand that using pre-existing engines saves on development time, but I hate losing the hands on feeling it gives to program everything yourself.

 It's the same problem I have with flash: I'm too inexperienced with it to be able to know how to take control of it. It controls me, not the other way around. As a result I'm never going to learn flash unless I have to.

 Programming everything myself gives me the same sense of control over my project that creating every single pixel of my graphics in paint gives me. It's mine and I had control over every aspect of it.

 

If I were to use someone else's engine, the implementation of it would have to be similar to XNA: The engine gives me preset functions and classes for the type of game I'm making that I can manipulate at any time, with extremely well done documentation and every line of code is commented in extreme detail. None of the "This sets our variable" type useless commenting I see so often, but rather "This sets our variable to a predefined value that will tell the blankety blank component to do such and such so that the thing will do such and such, producing XX result."

The cool thing about Torque is the way GarageGames set up their pricing.  It is a full 3D game engine which runs on the Xbox 360 almost for free!  The source code for the whole engine is too cheap to pass up.  Therefore, if you want to make something your own, go ahead.  Everything else already supported is the kind of stuff which belongs in a real engine.  There is an active community out there constantly making it better, too.  When I first started playing with the Torque Game Engine for Windows, it wasn't much further along than TorqueX.  Water and vehicles are about all I'm missing right now.

Honestly, with TorqueX and some direction, a talented team of 5-10 could whip out a real Live-enabled FPS in a month.  Maybe not Call of Duty, but definitely a Duke Nukem 3D clone.  Note, I used the words "direction" and "talented".  Learning anything which is complex requires effort.  It usually doesn't require as much effort to understand how to use a feature of an engine as it does to code that feature for your own engine, though.

For example, I don't really understand how clipmaps work, definitely not well enough to write the code.  TorqueX has them built-in, but a change between XNA 1.0 and 2.0 broke the Xbox implementation.  Because I had access to the source code, I fixed the bug in less than 2 hours.  I don't want to guess how that compares to the time it would have taken me to research and implement clipmaps.  (Researching clipmaps was actually what clued me into the latest TorqueX 2.0 and its enhanced support for 3D)

Anyway, if there is any real doubt as to the power of TorqueX, especially the 3D, check out the community game I have submitted, FPS Demo Using TorqueX. It has been accepted onto Live, so more than one person thinks it's viable :)  See this post about the submission itself: http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/12124.aspx

DevMan

 

Nick Gravelyn:

My problem with using TorqueX at this point, having used it a bit more, is that I don't want 90% of the stuff it has. That extra bulk is just getting in the way for me. I can write up a slim little game framework that matches everything I used in Torque in less time (and with less frustration) than trying to deal with TorqueX's extra bloat and strange (in my opinion) architecture and API. Once that become apparent to me, I gave up on TorqueX and started making my own framework which, in my opinion, has just about surpassed TorqueX in the areas I care about. Just another take on it. Some don't like it because it feels like "cheating", some just want the challenge. I'm a picky API guy so I choose to make my own library that works how I want it to and without all the extra junk.

Absolutely agree. I can roll (and have been) my own 2D API using XNA in far less time than it takes to decipher the ins and outs of how TorqueX works under the hood and make it work for what I want. Not only that, but my purpose-built API will serve my needs far better by simple virtue of the fact that it IS purpose-built for my needs. Most of it is bits and pieces from game concepts I've put together since discovering XNA. A growing physics library from a number of games, a particle engine from another, UI framework snatched and streamlined (read: rewritten) from a contract I worked, etc.

DevMan:

Anyway, if there is any real doubt as to the power of TorqueX, especially the 3D, check out the community game I have submitted, FPS Demo Using TorqueX. It has been accepted onto Live, so more than one person thinks it's viable :) 

Just an FYI - acceptance of the game doesn't mean the reviewer personally likes it or TorqueX, just that it meets the criteria you selected for it. You could submit a game that just randomly changes the color of the screen and, as long as it didn't crash and was labeled correctly, it would have to be accepted.

DevMan, I would be careful how you market your game submission.  Saying it's a TorqueX demo and then having it not work on anyone's Xbox could be construed as bad publicity.

Devman  see http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/12124.aspx for more information on what Shaw is talking about.... your 'game' is not working well...

Stephen Zepp:

Obviously I'm biased, but I've noticed a massive majority of posters here commenting, or implying, that they are rolling their own engine(s) for their games.

 With Torque X not directly supporting 3D quite yet I can of course see the reasons why people might not be exploring it, but with that reason aside, is there a specific issue with the engine itself that is having people roll their own, or is it lack of knowledge regarding what it's about?

The main reason I ask is that if it's lack of knowledge of the engine (Torque X) itself, I'd be more than happy to answer and explain whatever I can--I just need to know what needs to be known, so to speak!

 I'm not sure how many people share the same view I have, but one of the reasons I make games as a hobby is because it offers a chance to learn new things and face new challenges.  Since my primary goal when writing a hobby game is to see what *I* can do with the XNA api, or the DirectX api, or the super awesome text adventure engine system that will take the world by storm and make 3D games a thing of the past..., and as such I prefer to make all the little parts. (Even if X does a better job).

Mind you however, if it came down to making a game on a deadline, I'd probably look into something like Torque X a bit more closely.  Of course in that case, I'm not hobbiest, but some kind of profesional, so I'm not sure a person in that scenerio is the intended target of your question.

 

As someone that has transitioned away from the roll-your-own methodology to TorqueX, I can say that TorqueX is the way to go in the long run. The primary reason that I abandoned my own engine is that creating a more complex game in 3D with animations, scene graph, physics, particle and sound effects turned out to be a bit more then I could handle alone and needed to focus more on my game instead of the plumbing.

With that said TorqueX is a complete departure from traditional game engines with its aggregation methodology for creating objects and is a little difficult to wrap your head around in the beginning. Once learned, the aggregation method is the only way to go and with the soon to be released TorqueX 3D Builder life will be a lot easier. Without the 3D editor it has been extremely difficult to work with TorqueX and documentation on 3D development is non-existent but I must say that this engine has a lot of potential.

Another thing I'm really looking forward to is the release of John Kanalakis's book (The Complete Guide to Torque X) and is scheduled to be on the shelves within the next couple months. Definitely going to be a must have for TorqueX development!

John  

My case is similar to a previous one: what I needed to do was very simple. I tried to make it by using Torke X editor but I got frustrated because of the lack of time (I started to make my DBP entry a week before the deadline...). For me, was simplier and quicker to make the things by my own than using Torke X editor. But, as I said, that was because of the simplicity of my game. I think that the good way of doing things is by reusing others. If I need to make a big game, I'm sure that I'll use Torke X or other game engine which save me from doing all from scratch.

The only reason I was trying to roll my own is because there is not an editor for making 3d works, special effects, and drag and dropping in 3d models and placeing them in the world.  Actually, thats all the more engine I require.  The biggest failure of Microsoft with XNA so far is that they should have had that in version 1 of xna(as a template) like the racing game or space war or whatever.  That way, TRUE rapid indie development could go on.

So is Torque X 3d going to do that?  Will it allow me to build worlds and scenes and then export it as a project so I can open and run in game studio and hand edit the code it generates and the files it creates - I am picturing a save menu where when i save it, it generates or updates the project, just like GSE does and puts out a file for the terrain maps and such.

That's all we really need IMO since then we could open up the project code it generated(the engine source along with created elements from the gui engine) and we can go alter classes and objects from there.  Just having that would be a HUGE time savings of about a year or two for rolling your own because then if you didn't *quite* like what it generated, say for physics, no problem, you go in and edit it and resave to your project.

Is that anything on the market yet?  Torque, Blade3d, Visual3d.net?  Last time I checked they were all in various stages of development and none of them usable(or didnt look easy to use).