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Razer

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virtually anybody can make the quality of art that goes into so-called 'AAA' games these days.


"AAA" definition is high budget and years development, it's games like Uncharted 4 , God Of War or Witcher 3 , the difference between "AAA" and indies is big and easy to perceive , you won't find the same level made by indies.

So don't use the "AAA" term for indies, it makes really no sense.

 


More realistically, T3D might be compared to other open source engines such as Godot, Urho, Quake, etc, and then only along the vectors that matter. These engines also don't solve the same problems for the same sets of people. That's a good thing. They are options that exist for different groups with different needs.

Good.

 

and for the love of God can we stop using Godot as the gold standard, it may have some good features, but it has even more problems than every other game engine out there unless you are making very specific game types, but good look making a high fidelity 3d game with it if that's what you are working on

 

Very angry people by nature will stay very angry for nothing :lol:

(I also don't need to compare T3D no more to others engines and let that to other people)


@JeffR

What do you think about comparing a little with Godot that is also an open source 3D engine ? It can only benefit T3D (for example the project management).

At least it's how i perceive it, it's not a bad thing comparing sometimes.

Because all things are inspired by others and it sometimes this can help you improve a little ;)



I'm not making a request but showing below the level of performance and quality that me and my team mates are interested about a game not using terrain system.

It's a good metric for T3D about graphic quality (global illumination) and capabilities (60 fps on average 3D cards Gtx 1060-1070).


**************** SPOILER DEMO **************


**************** SPOILER DEMO **************


It's downloadable to test on your hardware.

https://github.com/godotengine/tps-demo



@JeffR

What do you think about global illumination ? Godot has Vulkan with a new real time global illumination system, if T3D won't have that, i think it should at least provide some high quality baked global illumination with some dynamic capabilities, because it makes big difference on overall graphics lighting (it's really not something i ask for but what i find important to have). Or it is something that is really not important or for lot more later in T3D as T3D is mainly an outdoor terrain based 3D engine ?

Perhaps the best thing about T3D is it is first an outdoor terrain based 3D engine.


https://godotengine.org/article/vulkan-progress-report-5


*************** SPOILER GLOBAL ILLUMINATION ******************


*************** SPOILER GLOBAL ILLUMINATION ******************


@JeffR

We like T3D, but we already use some advanced 3D engine, so we won't use T3D because for our game it needs to grow some more little about graphics quality and performance. But we would be happy to test again T3D later when it will get more "weight" if we can say it that way :mrgreen:

 

I'm looking forward to having the first build of it out in possibly a week, so if you guys give it a whirl and provide feedback on it, that'll definitely help a lot.

Sure, some front panel with all projects we can edit , delete or create new ones.


While it's unknown roadmap, will T3D become as intutive and easy to use about interface, code editor, or models import, about that we also won't make any request (we just don't use when it's too bad workflow for us like CryEngine for example).

Edited by Razer
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Everyone with half a brain should be able to quickly figure out that Torque3D is the best open source engine and all other open source "engines" are simply not an option, if you are in any way serious about developing a real 3D full scale game, not just a prototype or primitive mobile style game.


I don't get how that is so hard for people to understand. The whole debate is so useless. I'm not up to date currently, but when I hear things like Godot has no LOD support this means the engine is disqualified right out of the gate already, since LOD support is one of the most essential things a game engine needs. If you have no LOD support or similar features, everything bigger than a single scene will kill performance and therefore kill your game and therefore kill the engine as an option for you to use.


Torque3D needs no improvement, it is already the best, all we need is organize things better so we get things done and think about marketing to gain more users. Projects like Godot work because they get hyped up and subsidized by commercial companies and because the mobile market is a growing market, while the market for real games is shrinking. So Godot appeals to a growing market and we appeal to a shrinking market, that's the secret.

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Torque3D needs no improvement, it is already the best, all we need is organize things better so we get things done and think about marketing to gain more users. Projects like Godot work because they get hyped up and subsidized by commercial companies and because the mobile market is a growing market, while the market for real games is shrinking. So Godot appeals to a growing market and we appeal to a shrinking market, that's the secret.

Godo is getting pbr and global illumination with Vulkan, this is not mobile games capability, or am i wrong ?

About bugs, Godot is very new, while T3D had lot of years to get rid of bugs.

The market for games is not shrinking, look on Steam at some best indies games sales (not the average games with poor design and small effort).

Let grow T3D , let's it get some impressive demo as the Godot one, and it should attract lot more people on Patreon and sponsors also ;)

 

I don't get how that is so hard for people to understand. The whole debate is so useless. I'm not up to date currently, but when I hear things like Godot has no LOD support this means the engine is disqualified right out of the gate already, since LOD support is one of the most essential things a game engine needs. If you have no LOD support or similar features, everything bigger than a single scene will kill performance and therefore kill your game and therefore kill the engine as an option for you to use.

I agree about LOD, its something essential.

But does T3D uses some culling systems ? LOD alone is not enough.

 

Torque3D needs no improvement, it is already the best, all we need is organize things better so we get things done and think about marketing to gain more users. Projects like Godot work because they get hyped up and subsidized by commercial companies and because the mobile market is a growing market, while the market for real games is shrinking. So Godot appeals to a growing market and we appeal to a shrinking market, that's the secret.

 

Why there is only very few people using T3D or publishing a game, or why there is no one making video tutorials about T3D ? if you think it's perfect and it needs no improvments ?


We will take another look and discuss that when T3D will propose a new demo.

I mean a game demo with pbr assets, player with some friendly and enemies characters with ai and physics interactions, some physics objects and grass interactions, some particle effects, improved terrain and vegetation shaders, and new post effects, all together.

Without optimisation it won't perform great at high quality or better than Cry Engine, or i'm missed something about T3D :lol:


Or perhaps you think T3D only needs to get hyped like Godot ? It's lot of work to promote something on twiiter and many other channels and sites, it's almost a full time job.

Perhaps it's something to consider ? i don't know.


The debate is not so useless, it can become constructive and point to good things (like the coming new project manager).

I have nothing more to discuss about T3D, and we will just wait for it to grow more and reach some more complete level as said on the previous post.

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Torque3D already had more impressive demos than Godot now has, more than a decade ago, they were made or commissioned by Garagegames.


Since then we had no demos, since the community seems to be too incompetent and to be honest making demos is a waste of time and resources. The old Garagegames demos were already better than most real indie games produced with Torque now, so they could have easily made a working game prototype with those resources.


Torque3D will not perform better than Cry Engine, it is technologically somewhere between FarCry1 engine and Crysis Engine, but even FarCry1 engine was superior in some ways to Torque now, for example it had a build in lightmap baking.


But whatever this is all irrelevant, first you need a market you advertise to, then you can worry about quality of your actual product. I mean look at others, they manage to sell game engines to people that are not even able to make games with.

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I agree about LOD, its something essential.

But does T3D uses some culling systems ? LOD alone is not enough.

 

Zones and Portals system.

 

The debate is not so useless, it can become constructive and point to good things (like the coming new project manager).

You're right. Constantly hijacking a thread about the work being focused on at the time of writing so that folks can review that point for bugs or things to refine isn't useless. Useless would imply 0 instead of some negative number. It's actively counterproductive. Start a new thread.

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Torque3D already had more impressive demos than Godot now has, more than a decade ago, they were made or commissioned by Garagegames.

No demo up to date with cinematic post effects, and the lack of global illumination, so i can't find it so so impressive :mrgreen:

 

But whatever this is all irrelevant, first you need a market you advertise to, then you can worry about quality of your actual product. I mean look at others, they manage to sell game engines to people that are not even able to make games with.

Lot of people just asset flip and sell their game on mobile or Steam, so there is some people able to make a game.

But i also agree, there is lot of people that will buy some engine and plugins and will never complete a full game.

I also agree you must be clear about your game and what is your game audience, and what is your game scope.


Do you have some game in the makings with T3D 4 ?

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No demo up to date with cinematic post effects, and the lack of global illumination, so i can't find it so so impressive :mrgreen:

Those are all just buzzwords and you probably would not even be able to notice it if nobody would tell you.

Post effects existed in Torque since forever and the post effects stack is pretty much the same as in all other engines.

Also global illumination is not as good as many might think, it depends on the situation and how it is implemented. I once made an experiment with one of my levels where I baked global illumination or the lightmap into the model, because I thought it would make the graphics so much better, but in fact it was hardly even noticeable, so I did not bother to implement it. The default SSAO post effect did a similar job and did not cost any effort so I went with that.


If I really wanted I could implement a global illumination post effect or just bake perfect global illumination into the model with Blender, so having a feature in the engine for that is not that essential. And such a thing as "global illumination feature" does not even exist. There are just several ways you can fake it or you bake it into the model, otherwise it costs too much performance to be usable.

 

Lot of people just asset flip and sell their game on mobile or Steam, so there is some people able to make a game.

But i also agree, there is lot of people that will buy some engine and plugins and will never complete a full game.

I also agree you must be clear about your game and what is your game audience, and what is your game scope.


Do you have some game in the makings with T3D 4 ?

You did not get my point, I meant that people are sold game engines that you cannot even make games with, I meant the game engine with that, not the people. There are so many game engines out there that cannot make games, but some of them are still popular and that is because of marketing and buzzwords like you already fell for.


And I'm not making any new games with T3D 4 since it does not even exist yet and just updating my existing games would be enough work, since people carelessly break backwards compatibility all the time because it does not affect them since they have no game in the making.

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your definition of AAA is subjective, period, stamping your foot down and having to state in entirety your definition of AAA is absolute proof that this is not objective, seems to be the favourite hobby of the modern internet dweller, just redefine the terms they want as their own and claim this is the one and only gospel truth.


You may as well be comparing my hairy arm to your favourite plumbers hairy arm, and daring somebody to disagree, maybe the moderator should restore my original post since you pair of numbnuts have gone on to prove my original point, neither of you has a clue about the new torque because neither of you is doing anything about it, apart from bitching about something it doesn't do or will do wrong.


if all you can do is pick one or two things about an engine that the other engine has you are nothing but a troll; because that is and always will be ground truth regardless which two engines you pick.

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You did not get my point, I meant that people are sold game engines that you cannot even make games with, I meant the game engine with that, not the people. There are so many game engines out there that cannot make games, but some of them are still popular and that is because of marketing and buzzwords like you already fell for.

No, there are not a lot of game engines with mature editor, able to produce high quality graphics or advanced particles and effects.

If you mean Godot, you can check there is already some Godot games on Steam.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/404790/discussions/0/412448792354265655/

And TailsQuest is another good example of what Godot can do (while there will be some wait until T3D 4 will become as easy and mature and we'll see more people using it and get new T3D games on Steam for example)

******************SPOILER NEW GAMES SHOWCASE **********************


******************SPOILER NEW GAMES SHOWCASE **********************


(Some very angry people here would be disappointed :lol: , if i would tell we use something else because we want to support PS4 and Switch stores with "out of the box" export).

 

And I'm not making any new games with T3D 4 since it does not even exist yet and just updating my existing games would be enough work, since people carelessly break backwards compatibility all the time because it does not affect them since they have no game in the making.

Perhaps some good changes are needed for T3D to change and become something lot better without keeping old 3D engines modules.

So T3D 4 can get a modern and better architecture for better performance, to make it more easy to evolve when it will get new graphics features and new capabilities. The changes are necessary for T3D 4, it's for the best i think.

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Godot is for making mobile games, which as I said is the growing market now, that is why it works financially, but if you ask me, the ability to quickly produce even more mobile games is mostly useless, since it will flood the market with even more garbage.


Changes to T3D are mostly irrelevant when it comes to growing the user base, what is important is that you have a market and appeal to that market, then you gain customers.


Our market is open source game developers or developers who prefer open source software and those do not exist for the most part.


Any changes made to the engine will do absolutely nothing regarding growing the user base, when no marketing is done or the changes do not make the engine appeal to a new market.


I don't know why this all is so hard to understand for you all.

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Godot is for making mobile games, which as I said is the growing market now, that is why it works financially, but if you ask me, the ability to quickly produce even more mobile games is mostly useless, since it will flood the market with even more garbage.


Changes to T3D are mostly irrelevant when it comes to growing the user base, what is important is that you have a market and appeal to that market, then you gain customers.


Our market is open source game developers or developers who prefer open source software and those do not exist for the most part.

 

I agree you must promote and advertise.


For example Godot is a very early 3D engine without LOD, culling systems, terrain system, or without pathfinding "out of the box" systems, but their marketing has been very strong since Godot 3 and it worked even some people use it for 3D games release (while it's very early and minimal on many aspects).


Same for Blender since 2.8 beta, they started a big marketing and they got lot more adopters and big financial support from Epic and EA.


They are both good examples of communication and marketing, you can check there is daily news about people using them or people that are dedicated to marketing on social media.


T3D is some good open source engine like some others good ones (banshee, lumix, uro and others), but like those it is unknown to the majority of game developers.

 

Any changes made to the engine will do absolutely nothing regarding growing the user base, when no marketing is done or the changes do not make the engine appeal to a new market.

I don't know why this all is so hard to understand for you all.

 


************* Spoiler opinion **********************

So perhaps you are the one that is right about the lack of marketing ? Or perhaps people active on T3D don't think maketing is really importants and they are perhaps right ?

************* Spoiler opinion **********************


************* Spoiler opinion **********************

When a T3D dev says the editor automatic file detection and import dialog automatically pop up are not important,

working the old way is better; it's looks like the same mistake of Blender and why lot of people did not use it (before 2.8).

Fortunately Blender understood or listened, and they changed a lot in Blender 2.8 to make it more modern, intuitive with revamped editor and functionality for new comers.

And it worked as it got lot more traction and also got attention from Epic and EA for example.

My advice would be to not neglect the editor modern interface and workflow or usablility, it must be worked on, it is something that matters the more to new comers and adopters or getting more support.

************* Spoiler opinion **********************





I wish T3D 4 great success, become more popular, get more devs on board, become more user friendly and get more capabilities and quality graphics (so perhaps we could consider using it, because as i said previously about features, T3D 4 it is too early for us to use it).


I'm off from the discussion.

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Marketing is not only important, it is the single most important thing and the single most important factor in marketing is money, it is not that lets say Blender is doing good marketing, they are just good at getting investors who pump money into it and pump money into marketing, that is the secret. It is the same with Godot, all that popularity is not organic it is to a large degree subsidized.

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************* Spoiler opinion **********************

When a T3D dev says the editor automatic file detection and import dialog automatically pop up are not important,

working the old way is better; it's looks like the same mistake of Blender and why lot of people did not use it (before 2.8).

Fortunately Blender understood or listened, and they changed a lot in Blender 2.8 to make it more modern, intuitive with revamped editor and functionality for new comers.

And it worked as it got lot more traction and also got attention from Epic and EA for example.

My advice would be to not neglect the editor modern interface and workflow or usablility, it must be worked on, it is something that matters the more to new comers and adopters or getting more support.

************* Spoiler opinion **********************

 

If you people spent less time hijacking the thread to go on these entirely tangential screeds, you might have caught that the last few weeks of focus have been on the asset system, both automatic and configuration-based individual and batch importing, and methodologies we'd been batting around to make that better backwards compatible.

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This'll be a good place as a companion thread to the workblog for people to do more continuous discussions about stuff spurred on by, or tangental to the stuff that gets discussed in my workblog updates.

The discussion is good, but it definitely bloats out my workblog thread and can make it harder for people to see the updates themselves, so we'll move those side discussions over to here for coherency :)

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Like @Razer write....T3D 4 needs a friendlier style of working with the editor....the success of the Godot engine is precisely because of this approach in the development of the editor (user friendly) and of course the MIT license.

I think the Project Manager is the way in the right direction...also the process of writing scripts for game object behaviors...maybe somethink like Unreal engine's BluePrints would be great for artist...input event mapping and export game project needs changes for the better workflows.

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Like @Razer write....T3D 4 needs a friendlier style of working with the editor....the success of the Godot engine is precisely because of this approach in the development of the editor (user friendly) and of course the MIT license.

 

Dude, you are just assuming something without any arguments or facts to back it up. Its "popularity" is almost solely based on the mobile game market boom, the editor is kind of irrelevant. The mobile game market is the biggest and fastest growing market, whereas PC games the smallest and slowest growing market. I mean do your math what will be more successful, appealing to the biggest market or the smallest?


If you don't believe me randomly google it and you will find lots of articles and statistics that back my position up, for example: https://medium.com/worldopo/impressive-mobile-gaming-market-growth-in-2019-b72ac7740218 or https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/the-global-games-market-will-generate-152-1-billion-in-2019-as-the-u-s-overtakes-china-as-the-biggest-market/ or https://www.statista.com/topics/1906/mobile-gaming/ and many more.


Godot appeals to that market as well as provides things the industry wants like build in features for easy and fast mobile games production as well as direct integration with microtransactions and cryptocurrencies to make even more money. So its "popularity" is almost solely based on its ability to generate money. I can almost guarantee you, that improving our editor, which is already very good will do absolutely nothing. I tried most of the game engines out there and Torque3D was already one of the best regarding how easy it is to use, Torque3D is engineered after Cry Engine, which is the best game engine or was at that time, what more do you want?

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I've been using the Godot engine for over three years...i think since version 2.1

....and i can guarantee you that most people who use Godot engine have liked the simplicity and

simultaneously cleverness of the editor and overall engine workflow and also the speed with which you have the overall game prototype done.

This is a key for "popularity" not a that you can also create an mobile game with this engine...

...in fact Godot had quite problems with the Google store....yes Godot engine has maybe the best 2d editor and real 2d engine you can get for today....therefore it is so popular for mobile games....but Godot is heading higher than just for mobile games....Godot engine 4 is aiming at smaller and middle studios for pc market.

Godot engine is not....something like - "Hey,...we will create engine for a mobile games and we will be popular and rich " :).....in fact the Godot engine is 12 years in development....started as a proprietary engine and got open-sourced in the 2014.

.....it's perfectly designed...brilliantly developed modern engine.

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Before Godot existed Torque was already further developed to what Godot is now. What Godot supposedly aiming at now is what Torque already did better since forever. So how can an inferior product with the promise to do something it actually cannot do be more popular compared to a product that actually can do the things the other one only promises? Your logic here is flawed all the way. I don't get why so many people here are so full of self hatred and try to shill for competing products. I met many people telling me how much better other engines are and that they will switch and produce so much better games than me, but what almost all of them have in common is that I never saw them again and they never produced any games.

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...so where are those projects/ prototypes for various games and all those wip games that a Torque novice can learn?

....where are more new users? .... new possible tutorial creators?........where is the reason? .... what is missing from the Torque engine....not necessarily much popular but more friendlier to new users.

....when i read somewhere discussing what engine to choose....so little will ever be heard "Go for Torque 3d engine".....and often you won't see the word Torque engine in these discussions.

....or you will hear an...outdated editor with hard workflow or FPS only engine.

I personally like the Torque engine .... it's great but something obviously missing....or not?

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It is all because our nonexistent steering committee refuses to do any marketing. Torque3D is not a special case, there were multiple indie and/or open source engines that also are unknown and disappeared from the market, because their marketing was bad and they did not target growing markets like mobile. Even with more "popular" and supposedly "better" engines the rate of finished products is not that high either. To me the best engine always was Cry Engine, but hardly anyone uses it at least on the indie level and hardly anyone finishes games with it, so quality does not have much to do with popularity. In case of Cry Engine, I had a friend who worked there and he said their company policies are "not very nice" to express it mildly, meaning they do not care about the indie user. It is similar to the problem we have, that nobody really cares.

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...so if I understand correctly by you...it is by missing steering committee + non existend marketing and disinterest for indie user?...or the total lack of interest in the future of the Torque engine because there is no steering committee?

@Duion ...you tried Cry engine?.....did you create something in it?

Edited by Bishop
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...so if I understand correctly by you...it is by missing steering committee + non existend marketing and disinterest for indie developers?

Yes, but the biggest factor I think still is the mobile market, the mobile market is twice as big as the PC market, but that does not even cover all of it. The PC market is mostly AAA studios AND mobile games that are for PC also and only a small portion left is indie developers where as the mobile market is a more even playing ground, since the scale of games is so small that everyone can compete, where in the PC market as an indie you have almost no chance.

@Duion ...you tried Cry engine?.....did you create something in it?

Sure, but mostly levels and for Far Cry 1, maybe you can still find them, if not I can send them to you in case you have the game. I tried Cry Engine meaning the one from Crysis, but it was too broken to build anything with it, but visually and performance wise it outcompeted every other engine. I'm not up to date now, but from what I can see is that Cry Engine seems to still be better. The battle is mostly between Unreal and Cry Engine, Unity is more for indie developers and of course mobile, that is why it is more popular, even though it is inferior to the competition. I never liked the look of Unreal engine, it always looked so "unreal" meaning not realistic, that is why I liked Cry Engine better.

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