[Official] Construction Collective
Well, I'll try to keep this short...
I'll probably leave out a few things I wanted to say, but hopefully you'll get the gist.
Long story short, I'd like to put together a team to develop construction as a standalone game.
We will be using the TGEA engine (http://www.garagegames.com/) - as well as TGE alongside to provide for those with older computers if we can manage to have the legacy and shader work as compatible servers - which we will already have ready with some construction-related changes as a basis for the project. At this point nobody should need license to the engines, as what our job will be is basically to create a mod.
First and foremost we'll need a scripting team, which I know some of you here should be up to. It's alright if you don't have the strongest grasp on it, as we'll be working as a team and can toss around help where it's needed, could be a good learning experience.
We will need to create all our own content for the game, so we'll need someone capable of creating new 3D models for whatever variety of packs and whatever else we need.
As far as the 2D work goes, I could do quite a bit of it myself, and it wouldn't hurt if any of the other guys with photoshop and some visualization skills had a hand in it.
There's also audio, mapping, concept art/ideas, and even recruiting and PR to be thought of. If you have an ability that you think might be helpful and love construction, don't be afraid to speak up.
Further down the road we'll probably port it to other games as a full mod and catch other random people who'd prefer to play it on those.
I know there are some of you who'd prefer to just say it won't go anywhere or that it'd be better to just be done on an engine designed for it, but just... :simma:
If this does turn out to be successful we'll have a team together that should be willing to take it to a new level; not to mention the potential growth in userbase that could lead to the possibility of something big.
The project team will of course be volunteers, as I don't have the cash to pay you, but on the off chance that the game does bring in revenue, you will be given your fair share.
Edit: Little side note on starter goodies: We'll have a Dev blog on the site, some private forums, at least one dedicated server for the game and the team will have web hosting for whatever (pretty much as much space and bandwidth as you want).
I'll probably leave out a few things I wanted to say, but hopefully you'll get the gist.
Long story short, I'd like to put together a team to develop construction as a standalone game.
We will be using the TGEA engine (http://www.garagegames.com/) - as well as TGE alongside to provide for those with older computers if we can manage to have the legacy and shader work as compatible servers - which we will already have ready with some construction-related changes as a basis for the project. At this point nobody should need license to the engines, as what our job will be is basically to create a mod.
First and foremost we'll need a scripting team, which I know some of you here should be up to. It's alright if you don't have the strongest grasp on it, as we'll be working as a team and can toss around help where it's needed, could be a good learning experience.
We will need to create all our own content for the game, so we'll need someone capable of creating new 3D models for whatever variety of packs and whatever else we need.
As far as the 2D work goes, I could do quite a bit of it myself, and it wouldn't hurt if any of the other guys with photoshop and some visualization skills had a hand in it.
There's also audio, mapping, concept art/ideas, and even recruiting and PR to be thought of. If you have an ability that you think might be helpful and love construction, don't be afraid to speak up.
Further down the road we'll probably port it to other games as a full mod and catch other random people who'd prefer to play it on those.
I know there are some of you who'd prefer to just say it won't go anywhere or that it'd be better to just be done on an engine designed for it, but just... :simma:
If this does turn out to be successful we'll have a team together that should be willing to take it to a new level; not to mention the potential growth in userbase that could lead to the possibility of something big.
The project team will of course be volunteers, as I don't have the cash to pay you, but on the off chance that the game does bring in revenue, you will be given your fair share.
Edit: Little side note on starter goodies: We'll have a Dev blog on the site, some private forums, at least one dedicated server for the game and the team will have web hosting for whatever (pretty much as much space and bandwidth as you want).
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I'll just be a "knucklehead that has no imagination but can script ok."
I've never programmed a game before. Also, if we do help/become a main dev, do we have to pay for anything?
It probably wouldn't look right on a 80x80 basis anyway.
So please, Don't be afraid to step up, this could very well be the next-gen of construction
Who knows, with your help, it can be done.
You'll pretty much just have to know the same things you know with modding T2. You won't need to pay for anything, and if any expenses do come up they will likely come out of my own pocket unless someone else decides to sponsor it.
I've written simple deploy code in another engine before and made a sort-of tech demo. I've been considering posting it here for a while.
My main downfall is a lack of advanced math knowledge, but I'm usually able to make up for that with creativity.
I'm not comfortable with the notion of using TGEA, because it uses Direct3D shader functionality, thus is very Windows specific. It would also require substantial effort to develop simultaneously for both TGE and TGEA. There is OpenGL shader code for TGE which could be used instead. This means that the code does not need to be branched. Additionally, OpenGL code can dynamically detect hardware capabilities and use implicit functional paths as it detects various shader versions and features.
I am certainly more familiar with OpenGL, and the GLSL than I am with Microsoft's specific offerings. Considering the antics with DirectX 10, and my use of UNIX derived systems, I don't plan on changing this specificity. The only possible advantage that TGEA would bring is the simplified shader construction. I don't know how advanced or flexible the TGEA shader building system is, but I seriously doubt it is as advanced as Maya, or even the free ATi Shader studio program.
I'm also not so sure about the fitness of Torque as a platform for Construction. Writing certain forms of Torque scripts (especially object oriented ones) is not the conventional expected manner in which scripts are written. The scripting language imposes a certain mindset, which leads to a certain way of implementing functionality. I think that constraint will hinder the creative process that needs to happen, if you are to justify such a re-engineering effort. Finally, considering the size of the project, I'm not sure I see any substantial advantages to using an engine like Torque as opposed to something custom made. Torque will need to be altered in various ways to eliminate artifacts such as the piece limit anyway.
I've put some thought into areas where Construction type game play could be expanded, but many of them require an engine with radically different characteristics than those provided by Torque.
My knowledge of mathematics, especially in the area of Euclidean space wizardry, is probably the greatest of anyone who is still playing Construction, but I have severe time constraints as far as actually working on independent projects. I am not willing to commit to any programming position until I have a more detailed overview of your intentions, but I am willing to commit project space on my software engineering server for developers in this project.
This server includes continuous integration (Atlassian Bamboo), bug tracking (Atlassian Jira), wiki (Atlassian Confluence), repository overview (Cenqua/Atlassian Fisheye), code review and defect management system (Cenqua/Atlassian Crucible), test coverage diagnostics (Cenqua/Atlassian Clover), and I may integrate OpenFire (Jive Software) into that mix in the near future. All of these (very expensive) programs are configured to work together, and together make any large scale programming project manageable.
Code can be committed to the source repository, immediately overviewed in the repository viewer, automatically built by the continual integration system, tested during the CI build process, notifications can be sent to developers when certain files are changed or if a commit resulted in the break of a test, reports on the quality of the tests can be accessed, features can be discussed on the wiki, bugs can be entered (plus assigned, tracked, and closed), and different features can be developed/tested within repository branches.
Those capabilities may seem like overkill, but when working on large projects, with multiple developers, those capabilities become essential.
I would strongly consider use of another engine, so a second major re-engineering effort isn't required when the project runs into the limitations of the Torque engine in the future. I plan on working on an engine designed for a dynamic, populated environment, which would include building aspects, in the near future for my "Paradise" project. I expect my early versions will look a lot like Construction. For this reason as well, I hesitate to commit to Torque, with its known limitations in the Construction specific needs.
One other pain I had was converting models to dts format. If I recall correctly, it seemed to involve a large convoluted process of having several specially named objects within your model linked in a certain way to get the model to export properly.
I'm fond of Truevision3d myself. Though, its more 3d middleware than a full game engine. So it doesn't have built-in networking, or scripting. Since other libraries are available that could do those things, it'd almost seem to be easier to add those, rather than having to dig through torque's massive bloat to fix its issues.
Thought this was interesting: Someone's experience switching from torque to tv3d
I spent some time reading the source code of the script compiler and interpreter in the process of working on a DSO decompiler. The code was far from pretty, and there were several major hacks to get those things working (e.g. global variables storing important state information). It took me about 2 hours to figure out what they were trying to do well enough to write a disassembler.
The TGE, is not a beautiful Engine, many problems and bugs. Documentation is only online and is somewhat difficult to obtain, but when you do, LOOKOUT it is very complete. She is a shell of tribes2. Many t2 familiar things have been removed:
IE (Shocklance Projectiles/ Shockwaves/ hoverVehicles(ithink)/ InitialDirection on the ONLY projectile) theres alot more removed stuff... i just haven't run into them yet.
However, there is a lot of improvements... AI is substantially improved. There is a lot of new lighting goodies, improved Interiors, new Map Items (replicated2dimages, picture fields of grass), the Engine has almost a built in documentation, you put in an engine function and instead of a little "MatrixMulVector(Transform, Vector)" it will tell you what it does "MatrixMulVector(Transform, Vector) Multiply vector by transform". There is a lot of other improved features (read the GG website).
TGEA, is TGE with it's Shading code rewritin from the ground up. But it is beautiful. It can make scenery gorgeous, it has active skin, which means.. i can put a GIF of a guy waving on an LSB. Interiors are improved even more, with fantastic lighting.
Improved security (torque.Net is already award winning network code). T2 and TGE have Tile based Terrain, where you sculpt one tile and the engine duplicates it, infinite times, where TGEA has HUGE tiles (or none.. i can't remember) where someone can make an original terrain last for many kms, there are even plugins for a Terragen type program, where HUGE terrains are generated to be LifeLike realistic. .Theres tons of other stuff, but idk it, becuase all i know is what GG has posted on the site.
But.. i have to say, programming an engine would be strenuous, time consuming, and "finger" breaking work. If we did travel this path, We'd need to choose a scripting language, write our own network code (if we decided not to buy Torque.net as a plugin). Find programmers to write the engine or tutor us, for free. We'll need to read a lot of internet based documents on simple stuff like terrain generation.
Plus TGE/TGEA have an MapEditor, GuiEditor, ParticleEditor, a Constructor (a plugin that lets you reform and make interiors and collisionBoxs), the VisLimit.... can be changed by simply modifying a Variable.. and a 1000++ active user base on the forums who are more than willing to help people with ANY TGE/TGEA based problem.
All in all, i'm helping no matter what we do. I can be an advisor on TGE functionality, The way the TGE 'game' is laid out is very different from t2, it takes some getting used to, and i know where just about any function is located; A 3d artist (i'm pretty skilled in that, and with simple 3d model skins); A scripter/minor programmer.
i'm always on call.
Krash, go for it
really? i read it was stored in a variable.
I thought exporting to DTS was pretty simple.. but then again it did take me a few hours of internet surfing. I'm using Blender BTW
With Torque we will have something that those of us here and now have some familiarity with, giving those without much (if any) other programming background the ability to contribute to the project. The development period for a public release shouldn't be more than a few months for an initial setup.
A few of the limitations of the engine have been dealt with (such as the meager piece limit) in the current build, and some additions have been made to suit the purpose.
I don't have a lot of time to go into detail at the moment, but I'll try to keep you guys up to date when everything is set up a bit more.
One concept I've been thinking of for a while for a TGEA Construction game was that, instead of making buildings out of simple support beams and pads, they'd be kinda made out of a tileset. But having it so that you build things by snapping tileset pieces together is less flexiable and takes less "skill". What I had in mind was, you still make the skeleton of the building out of support beams, then you apply a tileset to it. The geometry of the tileset pieces would be morphed to fit the skeleton.
Also, extensive control over lighting in interiors would be a nice thing to have, so perhaps most (or a variable amount) of the map's sunlight and ambient lighting could be shadowed, then you'd use your own lights to light up the interior of your building.
Thoughts?
For now I'll put a few things around to keep things around, and contact a few who have noted interest in the project so far sometime soon. There may be some tasks set forth as far as some artwork so we can hit the ground running, but other than that we'll probably just collect ideas for now.
I'm assuming TSE = Torque Script Engine.
Relighting takes a bit in Tribes 2 ignoring the static shapes. Imagine if it lit static shapes too? Maybe around..the SI maximum? But then again, if you can concentrate the lighting engine on a certain area, it wouldn't be much of a problem..
Ideas:
1.) A way to download custom files. Such as sounds, shapes, and bitmaps straight from a server.
2.) Deployable interiors would be fun.
3.) Naosyth's flyable ship script. (To those who don't know, it allows you to build a ship and fly it.
And Torque Shader Engine = Torque Game Engine Advanced
Um, forget that then. I didn't bother to check the date.
Lol, I'd like to help out, but it appears that I'm about 3 days from a year late. XD
Yah! A year late!
A year late!
A year late!
A year late!
A year late!
A year late!