Do any of you guys/gals use Torque3D or Blitz3D
polycounter lvl 17
Just curious if anyone has any experience with these game engines. I'm helping a friend with his endeavors in Torque 3D and hopefully soon the shader engine.
and I was just curious if anyone else dabbled here and there with the engines
I took a class in college on Blitz3D and so far I like torque a LOT more.
and I was just curious if anyone else dabbled here and there with the engines
I took a class in college on Blitz3D and so far I like torque a LOT more.
Replies
Alpha release in October. [/pimp]
apparently torque has an horrendous art pipeline
We have used both Torque and Blitz3d at work.
We use it for educational purposes,so for that use theres no need to go into great detail much of the time,for example with the shader side of the engines,no guns here etc etc ,also all programming isn't done at our studio so I have no idea how easy they are to work with in terms of programming.
But from an art side they both have there advantages and disadavantages.
The bare bones of blitz3d:-
Advantages:- All art work can be done in Max,which means you can render/edit the scenes without to much hassle to make movies,which are then programmed into the engine via dummy points(or hotspots) placed in max.
Disadvantages:- is very limited,has very poor collision detection,No alpha sorting,no debugging system meaning you have to go back through all animations in the scripts to track down a crash,which even then doesn't give any info on what the problem maybe so its a guessing game,or at least it is until you get familar with the crashes. Generally its a very frasturating engine to work with.
Basically with Torque I didn't make anything specific for it,also i used it for avery short time (2 weeks) we acturally had to convert art assets from Blitz3d to the Torque engine as the client decided they wanted MAC versions of there product.So with that in mind:-
Advantages:- Terrain Generation is much easyier and adaptable,Better collision detection model,Much more powerful than blitz.Comes with its own editor,real time engine making organision and keeping things together really simple. Smoother animations.Lots more Documentation online to help you if you get stuck.
Disadvantages:- Due to the naming conventions used to Exsport Torque assets you can only exsport models with a small number of collision sides(I say this beause I can't remember how many sides of collision your allowed,but I think its something like 7 or 8 polygons). To counter this you must use the old Half-life editor called Hammer or Quark (quake army knife) to make interior scenes.
All in all,Id choose Torque over Blitz,despite the need to use/learn other programs like hammer or quark to make interior scenes and enviroments.
The Animations seem to run smoother in Torque than Blitz and the terrain generator is alot of fun to play with.General collision is much better and reliable and because of the initial folder set-up for the inbuilt torque editors its easy to keep files and folders organised and together.
Also for me its plus taht it runs on Macs
Though to be honest ive seen the videos of both engines in there full glory and they both look to be able to do the job,but as has been said there are better engines out there than either of these and for no extra cost.
John
-Tribes 2 when it was released was a totally unplayable mess. Probably not the engine's fault, but still...
-My friend and his programmer buddy took almost a month to get a character running around in-game. I don't know the programmer guy, so maybe it was his fault. That said, there are other engines where it is very easy to get assets working in-engine.
-I think this may have changed, but having to use the Garage Games website to sell your game was rediculous. I was given the impression that access to documentation on the engine was also restricted unless you paid extra.
-It didn't seem to have any in-built physics.
It seemed lame from what they said, but it could be okay. There are a lot of options out there now like Ogre 3D using Newton that are nice, free and full featured.
Here is a Useful CGtalk thread about a lot of the game engines out there, one of which, 3impact I tried the demo for and liked.
It seems that most people go with Torque simply because it is the first engine they come across. I think it is worth checking out a lot of different engine options if you are going to commit thousands of hours working with it.
Things are hard to get ingame with Torque,think my co-worker spent 2 days solididly trying to figure out how to get chracters ingame he did it eventurally but once you the know the work flow its pretty fast to work with.Same as anything really.
Worst thing IS the name conversions for everything and making sure there was no typos in object names and such or else it would either throw a fit or just not work.
But it still seemed more stable and better than blitz and at least when it came up with any error it gave you some idea what was wrong.
Also there a modelviewer program avalible,which lets you view everythings thats needed for the model to work in the torque engine,we used this as a debugger/checklist,if it showed up in the viewer fine,but not in the engine istelf,we knew it was a file or programming related problem,rather than an art prob.
John
Blitz3d is a stable full-featured product that is still being updated, though it will soon (Q1/Q2 2007?) be overshadowed by Max3d, the 3d module for the newer BlitzMax product. It is adding all the pretty shaders and things that people like now, I am waiting to see how it turns out. The progression of the product line was BlitzBasic (2d only)> Blitz3d (BlitzBasic but with added 3d)> Blitzmax (OpenGL multi-platform module-based language/engine with C++ features).
It is possible to make a good game in Blitz3d, the features, tools, and support are there, though I would recommend it more for smaller projects and prototyping. It is lacking in certain areas.
The community and documentation is great, and the developer Mark Sibly reads and posts on the forums all the time to respond to issues and bug reports.
I have not had much experience with Torque, I do know someone who has been working with it for a few years. It seems like it has potential to make a game IF you have a great programmer who is willing to put a lot of effort into it. It -is- based on an old engine and I hear the documentation is terrible. You might want to check some of these reviews: http://www.devmaster.net/engines/engine_details.php?id=3
Your going to have to know C++ to make a good game in TGE. There have been some fun games made with TGE and TSE the shader engine. You dont need a team of coders just at least one with some chops to get in there and rock out.
For 2d though id recommend TGB. I've used it for over a year now and am working on a game atm. Mostly arcade style top down shooters but thats whats fun to me. In fact my Avatar is the ship.
TGB is much simpler to use and as long as you can script you can make a game. C++ isn't as big a deal in TGB but its still nice to know if you want to change the source. I just wrote some custom targeting functions.
I have heard both sides on touque but really I haven't found a better engine for the price. Personally I think its a quality engine and worth the dough.
- Jesse