flysouth

Anyone got info on this or link where to find this info?

But the deafult ground cover seems to be all billboarding? So if the player looks down at the grass and turns around he sees the grass at his feet all rotating. Looks bad

Are you saying that for ground cover I should just use 3d models?

Is there some way of using 3d modeled grass for within a meter or 2 of the player and then make it billboarded when further away?

I am trying to figure out what kinds of things can mount to what.

I have mounted ShapeBaseImageData to a vehicle without a problem.

What if I wanted to create something like a train where I had many coaches that the player could choose from at run time.

I have not figured out what object type allows for connecting to the same type.

So in the train example the motor coach would be a vehicle. The next coach could be a ShapeBaseImageData object but

then how do you connect the next coach, because as far as I worked out you cannot mount ShapeBaseImageData to abother ShapeBaseImageData.

How would I go about connecting them all? :cry:

Just to add... I dont want to make a train, thats just an example. What I would like to do is allow the player to build up obejects sort of like using lego.

The main question is what objects in T3D allow more of the same type to me mounted / attached to them?

Actually the plug-in had no stubs at all.

The core program passed a pointer to a struct which the plugin examined and decided if it was something that it could handle.

If the struct contained an unknown record type then you would return with a status that it was not processed. The core then sent the record pointer to the next plugin and this went on until it came across a plugin that knew what to do with the event / data / whatever.

Being an embedded system with limited memory and CPU it was a very effecient system. It was using C not C++. So it might be even easier using C++

No its not something I would try - My C++ skills are very basic, and after many years of microcontroller programing you tend to think very differently about software - especialy when on smaller devices you only have 8K of flash to put the program in and 2K of ram for the variables :D Everything you do is about speed and using the least amount of resources, so no dynamic stuff here.

I used to program credit card terminals. They had an interesting way of working. The central core program was pre-compiled and installed. You could then compile your own code which you would register with the core as a callback. The core would then hand full control to your program on every system 'tick' or any events such as keypad, wifi, network etc. It would also pass 'handles' to the event drivers. Your program would at that stage have full control of the system. If you did not want to react to the event you would simply hand control back. The core would then pass control to the next possible program until it had gone through the callback list. When compiling your code a header file was used to allow you to call the various functions built into the core. Using this method it was possible for terminals to download additional code or update existing without changing the core program. The core was like a mini operating system in a way.

Just thought I would mention this - perhaps give some ideas :shock:

I agree that certain things don't belong in the engine. I feel that the engine should be a generic as possible and then use a system of plugins such as dll's for Windows and whatever the equivalents are for other operating systems.

Plugins are better way of dealing with these things. The problem with compiling things in if you need them is that your version of the engine is unique and then when big changes are made to the engine it can be difficult / time consuming to adapt your special bits of code. Using plugins can make these changes easier to handle if done correctly. Obviously even with plugins you would always be free to change the core code if you wanted to. It also means you could supply end users with add-ons in the form of plugins to give new functionality without having to give an entirely new executable.

But hey my programming skills are for microcontrollers so I might be the wrong person to make these kinds of suggestions lol.

The truth is that I like the way that T3D works. It is mostly intuitive and fairly easy to use.

Like all game engines there is a learning curve.

For someone new to T3D it is just a bit confusing because a lot of the examples floating around are for older versions and

parts of the documentation are either very thin on details or just does not work as stated.

Clear with ver 4 coming out with major changes it does not make much sense to spend hours changing the current source.

I will obviously have to figure out work arounds to my problems.

Thank you to those who have made positive suggestions.

@saindd

You don't really know how game development works, do you? Are you sure you're not looking for something like GameGuru or Axis Game Factory? Seems to be more well suited for your expectations and skill set.

Dont make assumptions about people who you do not know

T3D is not a nightmare, by a longshot

That was not said by me

@Duion

but most do not even bother to look into the code or try things out

more assumptions. I have looked at the code and I have tried a lot of stuff out.

My only point here is I accept that with a game engine that if you try to do stuff that it was not designed to do then you might have to change the code. I however am trying to do something that the documentation says it can do. I came onto the forum to see if someone could assist and so far I have not received any working suggestions that do not involve changing the code. So my original post in this topic was just saying that new features are great but are non working features that have been around for 3 or 4 years being resolved?

Thanks

I see this is in CPP. I looked at the source code to see what the setTurretEulerRotation command does....

_updateNodes(rot);

mShapeInstance->animate();

mRot = rot;

Which looks like what was being discussed in that post.

Taking all of the post about fixes into consideration it looks like this does not work and has never been fixed. So I guess if I want to use turrets I will have to use a different method

Thanks I will take a look. I was hoping not to modify the source.

This stuff is 5 years old. Why has it not been fixed in the current engine?

Okay I tried to mod the source files but failed due to the fact that some of them have had such major changes that the bug fixes are no longer compatible and will reuire some serious investigation to patch - so back to the drawing board.

I downloaded the binary and it is exactly the same. The setTurretEulerRotation function does not seem to work. But being a noob to T3D I might just be doing something wrong.

Although if you look at http://forums.torque3d.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=666 it does seem like there is a problem

@ Johxz

Thanks - But that is the well documented 'easy' part and I figured that out. I now have a scripted turret with barrel mounted on my vehicle. The part where I have not seen a single document or tutorial or working example is how to control the turret and weapon. setTurretEulerRotation appears to be the command but does nothing even if typed in at the ~ console. Is there a bug in 3.8? Can somebody test it and tell me if it works for them.

I created the nodes in the model as per the documentation.

I managed to mount it and it all aligns but it just ignores the setTurretEulerRotation command. Even when typed in from console. Also if you use a get command it shows things have changed but not what you set.

Does it work for you in the standard 3.8 T3D?

It is one thing if you want to do something different and it is undocumented and perhaps was never intended that an engine can do something.. then you expect to struggle.

But this is something that the engine supposedly can do but there is little / no documentation on the how. So once you have created your turret, mounted it to a vehicle then how to you control it?

So as the OP said ... we need better docs

As a noob starting with T3d about a month ago I agree. I have done some of the tutorials and some of them don't work. Perhaps they are for an earlier version. I have downloaded all the docs I can find and things such as the state machine have very little explaining how it works. And yes as a C programmer I do know how state machines work.

As you might have seen in my other posts I have been trying to mount a turret on a vehicle but with little success. There is not much info how to do this and no examples. As much as I appreciate the tutorials people have done, I find most of them to be the stuff that is well documented. The stuff like mounting a turret is not documented and there are no tutorials.

I do have time and am tempted to offer my services depending on exactly what is expected

Does anybody know?

Hi Jason

I have worked out how to mount it.. but I cannot get it to move.

The cheetah turret is just mounting a static image using the ShapeBaseImageData datablock. I am using the TurretShapeData datablock.

What I have is a separate barrel mesh and turret mount mesh. The datablocks are then defined like a deployed turret which mounts the barrel on the turret mount mesh. This mesh has a mount point and a pitch point and in theory should move using the setTurretEulerRotation function. I then mount this scripted turret as an object to the vehicle. But this is where thing dont seem to work. I have posted on this forum to see if anyone knows what the problem is.

It also has another problem which I believe is a bug in the engine. The turret does not stay in perfect sync with the vehicle when the vehicle moves. I have seen a code fix for that problem in these forums

If i set rotate to true then the turret mount and barrel turn perfectly together - just in the editor

I will post evrything here once I get it working

I have wasted hours trying to get the setTurretEulerRotation function to do anything. The getTurretEulerRotation returns values but the set does nothing. Does anybody know if this works and if so how do you script it?

I have also tried everything. Even in the console window the setTurretEulerRotation command does nothing. The getTurretEulerRotation returns the turret position and if you do it after the set then it shows that the turret has moved but image still in same place.

My understanding is that it is not animated in Blender. The document says...

Shape File Nodes The shape file used for the TurretShape needs to have a number of defined nodes. The first node

is named ‘heading’. The heading node is special in that it is controlled by the TurretShape code. This means that it

should not be animated by the artist, nor should it have anything but the default transform applied to it. This doesn’t

stop the heading node’s parent or its children from being animated, however.

I am trying this too but have not managed to get it to move. This is the command: setTurretEulerRotation(...);

flysouth wrote:

If editors / script functions dont work 100% then perhaps they can have some sort of pop up comment in them that alerts users

Azaezel wrote:

elaborate?

It was really based on what Janders said about the sketch tool. I have not used it so cannot comment on it.

I was just suggesting that if a tool is released in a version but it has some known issues then perhaps when opening the tool a message could be shown indicating that it is not a 100% working tool and problems can be expected.

Clearly it looks as if some of the stuff will be addressed in release 4 which will be great. For me I would just like to be able to use an engine that does not require the user to change the c++ code. Yes if you are doing some 'non standard' stuf it might be required but for the more common stuff I would expect it to be done in scripts

I have not looked at the way Cryengine works. I also understand that the people doing the coding are volunteers and I appreciate their effort.

I don't expect to drag and drop a tank, but I would expect that I should be able to put a working turret and tracks on a vehicle without having to change the engine code.

All my point is that adding new features is great but perhaps some of the more basic requirements should be fixed. Using the turret as an example... yes you can mount it,

okay at this moment I am not sure if it will rotate and change pitch.. I am still trying to get that figured out. But once it is mounted I would expect it to move in sync with the vehicle.

Unfortunately this does not appear to be the case and has not worked for at least 2 years. So surely it would make sense to fix it especially when people have already worked out what needs to be changed in the engine?

I dont expect the documents to give a working example of how to make a tank. But it would be nice if it showed how to mount a working turret to a vehicle.

My skills are mostly in embedded systems using C and IS project management.

Due to the various versions of Torque it is very difficult when searching for help, to know what has been fixed in the current version, what tutorials will work

and what features exist and can be expected to work correctly.

As new user of T3D I would like to make the following comments that might be of some help going forward. Some of this might be 'common' knowledge to the

experienced Torque users, if so please just accept it, as mentioned already I am a T3D noob.

In no particular order...

 

• A line should be drawn at some version, for example 3.8. Then the wiki, resources and forum should have that as a separate starting point where only stuff that applies will be found.

• A list of known issues ie. things that dont work correctly should be made and put on a page where it can be checked. (maybe not every small bug). This will stop multiple bug reports and also help noobs to figure out if something should work or not.

• There should be some common base class that all objects / shapes use which has stuff like mounting in it. It should allow anything to mount to anything and all in the same way.
  
  Many FPS games have tanks / robots / vehicles with working gun turrets... Surely this should be one of the standard operations that a new user can achiever fairly simply?
  
  These are games not the real world. We want people mounted on rocks mounted on robots each with a gun turret.... lol ... anything to anything. (I can suggest how to do it but I am sure the C++ guys here already know)

• There should be a place where simple examples can be found. Templates are okay but they will always be very specific.

• Take a look at the PHP manual http://php.net/manual/en/control-structures.while.php - it allows users to post examples for each command... just an idea

• If editors / script functions dont work 100% then perhaps they can have some sort of pop up comment in them that alerts users

 

Okay this is my 2 cents worth at the moment ... hey I am new .. only tried making a tank so far. Feel free to add to this list.

I am willing to assist with getting some of this stuff sorted out

As a complete noob to Torque3D I can see why it is not seen by many in a favourable light. I wanted to do what I thought should be simple... fit a turret to a vehicle. Well I managed to get it to be on the vehicle but not managed to get it to rotate. When the vehicle drives the turret jitters like it is not in sync with vehicle. After hours of searching I found a 2 year old post dealing with this and issue but it still seems to be an issue in the current version.

So it is great to hear about the new stuff in 3.9 but is all of the 'old stuff' working correctly? There seem to be many posts detailing all sorts of code fixes required and many of them going back years, but most of the issues still exist in 3.8.

Is anyone actually ensuring that all these bugs get fixed or is it more important to get new stuff and people who want to use the engine must try and patch it?

Hi

I would like to mount a Turret to a vehicle. Does anyone know how I can do this? Note I dont want to just mount an image, I want a working Turret. I have created a working turret but am not sure how to mount a 'TurretShape' to a vehicle.