[GG]Mich on #GarageGames (+tn): Official GarageGames channel -=- Official GG TGE/TGEA chat Nov 20 @5pm PST -=- www.Exis-Exchange.com buy and sell 3D art, join today! -=- Promote your games related work here -=- If you have a question, ask in the channel (Thu Nov 20 2008 18:05:01 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time))

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Topic for #GarageGames is “Official GarageGames channel -=- Official GG TGE/TGEA chat Nov 20 @5pm PST -=- www.Exis-Exchange.com buy and sell 3D art, join today! -=- Promote your games related work here -=- If you have a question, ask in the channel”

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Topic for #GarageGames was set by Logan-MGT on Thursday, October 30, 2008 12:04:56 PM

hehe

full support for standard formats

worflow will be *MUCH* faster

This nickname has been registered; you may not use it.

Your nickname is now being changed to Guest38

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YOU are now known as Guest38

<Guest38>

gah

Brett, can you elaborate more on the artist features when you get a chance?

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YOU are now known as [GG]Mich

hahahah

yay...password

poor mitch

sad panda

<[GG]Mich>

time to change my password i guess

can't elaborate too much yet beyond what's above

<[GG]Mich>

Hey everyone!

<[GG]Mich>

Sorry I'm late and jumping in the middle

but I'll be posting on that stuff and other t3d features probably weekly starting soon

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

Now that mPerry is here can we talk about iTGB or is that for later?

*hands MC crown of power to all knowing Mich*

one word: Collada

let's stay focused on t3d stuff for now

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

Ok

but I'm happy to talk about itorque in just a bit

some good news there too :)

<[GG]Mich>

Indeed

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<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

I just want to express my interest in discussing it

<[GG]Mich>

@Wenceslao - We'll get to it =)

cool

<[GG]Mich>

So, I hear we've talked GreenEar. Glad that was brought up

<[GG]Mich>

It sounds like we were getting started with art, have we brought up exporters yet?

any other questions about new torque stuff (t3d) or suggestions / options for what to do with TGE

<eb>

Implementations of 3rd party physcis..which plz ?

appreciate all the comments in my blog btw

<eb>

oops! physics*

very happy with the generally positive response

there is some other *very* cool stuff going into a "vastly improved art pipeline" but we aren't going to talk about them just yet...prefer to tease you a little with them over the coming weeks/months

;)

3rd party physics implementations already exist for TGEA actually

<eb>

sure

you can use PhysX right now I believe

ODE is very doable and we may look at that for future releases or a community project

the big hitch is networking it all up

that's tricky

<[GG]Mich>

*** REMINDER: If you have specific questions, you can private message me and I will filter them to the most appropriate person. That way it doesn't get lost in the scroll ***

<eb>

*just curious as to why it is a focused item: "Support with sample implementations for more 3rd party middleware" - Physics is a listed item

any preference for a particular physics library?

bullet?

havok?

physx?

ode?

we like stuff with source included, but physx seems an appealing solution now that you have the software packaged with nvidia cards

<eb>

for the sake of the indy com...bullet/ode

Josh Engebretson has done some very cool stuff with TGEA 1.7 and ODE and Tom Spilman has been playing around with PhysX a lot...that said, it won't be a focus for the first version of Torque 3D....however, i wouldn't be surprised to see it show up in some form (like the community project brett mentioned)

yeah, bullet seems pretty cool

<[GG]Mich>

Hey, is Kevin Ashley here?

<[GG]Mich>

I don't see his name in the list

don't think so

<[GG]Mich>

OK

<[GG]Mich>

Well ,a popular request this week for discussion was Exporters

he's doing a bunch of exporter work though

*very *very nice work

<[GG]Mich>

Exactly the point we wanted to bring up

<[GG]Mich>

There has been a cry from the community for GG to officially support and maintain asset exporters for DTS

<[GG]Mich>

We have someone in office now to handle this, Kevin.

<[GG]Mich>

He has made a lot of progress with Maya and Max, creating uniform GUIs and updating to the latest versions

<[GG]Mich>

I was hoping a few people who wanted to talk exporters showed up tonight

<[GG]Mich>

So, if you have thoughts on exporters this is a good time to let us know

sure

what do you want to tlak about?

<[GG]Mich>

Hmm, not as popular as I thought

"GUIs" in relation to exporters somewhat scares me.... (/me looks back at the gawd awful "pro" max exporter... shrug. I hope you guys will LISTEN to US this time around..)

<Chemeleon-MGT>

are ya'll planning on extending the existing ones (ie multiple uv channels) or just go a different direction such as collada?

how about official GG compiled exporters?

Chemeleon-MGT: that is a little up in the air atm

so we dont have to wait for the community to update and fix bugs?

<[GG]Mich>

There has been talks of a collada to dts, but that is further down the pipeline for Kevin

<Chemeleon-MGT>

put my vote down for extending the original max exporter then :)

<eb>

same

Magnus I agree, GUIs generally have sucked in the past because theres been too much effort into putting everything into a bit catch all UI

which the exporter really doesnt need

<[GG]Mich>

What he has done is taken the existing Max and Maya exporters, and has gone through cleaning them up, stabilizing them, and making the interface easier to use and look similar

As long as we get to try the exporters beforehand (this worked fine with the DI pro stuff), and you actually listen to what we have to say (this did NOT work fine...).

<Chemeleon-MGT>

otherwise one of these days I'll stop procrastinating and actually get around to working on the exporter myself ;)

Kev has been talking heavily to the pro artists here at GG

well the other thing is this time please listen to us

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with the DI exporters we bitched about them and no one listened

who have the same concerns about the DI exporters

in fact a certain head honcho guy at a certain unnamed company got rather pissy with us all for speaking out about the DI exporters and how they were going

<[GG]Mich>

It's been touted that Houdini has the easiest to use exporter. Has anyone used tried it yet?

nope, 3DS Max user here

<Chemeleon-MGT>

I've not...no reason to buy houdini for torque when I own max

<eb>

I asked about that in the thread/blog, no REAL answer was ever given.

same here, been using max the last 10 years so no reason to switch =)

Mich one other thing is that quite a few of us here have developed internal tools for our apps to help the DTS process

I have tried the HD ROP/exporter

maybe you guys should hit us all up for the scripts that we have done

<eb>

Want $ ? ..I would like to see what you have tossed together

that way you can see how we have been working with them and extending them to our own internal needs (which may suit what GG needs)

<[GG]Mich>

@Logan - I like that idea a lot. Could you send me an e-mail? I'm going to send this transcript to Kevin to let him know what you all think. I'd like to add whatever else you might have to it

sure

pm me your email address

I have a bunch of strange scripts to make exporting files easier too. Most of it may not be very "generic", but bits could probably be quite useful.

we plan to support secondary uvs for collada files (Tom has been working on it this week in fact) and we will have a version of the DTS file format that supports it but we haven't figured out the cost/coordination for getting that updated in the official DTS exporters....will *probably* happen but it hasn't been discussed yet

Kev is still getting his feet under him some...the exporters code/projects/etc were spread *all* over the place

<[GG]Mich>

And of course, as he reaches the end of each project I'm going to work with him on documenting changes and usage

once he has a set of really solid, up-to-date, and bug free exporters i really hope that we can get feature improvements and feedback from you guys and get them to Kev

<[GG]Mich>

so we can send that out the door to artists as well

cool

that sounds very positive for the future of the exporters

<[GG]Mich>

I hope bank sees this =/

the art formats for Torque used to be industry leading but unfortunately over the past 8 years theyve fallen by the wayside because no one was working on them

<Sickhead|Ross>

@[GG]mattf, yeah the code for the various exporters is pretty painful...I spent several days a while ago modding the project generator to allow for a project to build a dll or custom named dll (dle for Max)

so hopefully with this new attention focused on them again they will move forward once again

we are also in need of experienced artists to help us put our collada pipeline through its paces...especially animators...please email me if you are interested

and serious about helping =)

matt have there been any new builds for the collada stuff? last one i saw was months ago

i can geet you a new build logan

ok

we were lookign at it for a forthcoming contract project

but we got a bit concerned when the private builds you guys were supplying to us stopped appearin

Is anyone working on an exporter for Fragmotion?

Logan-MGT: the problem was that it moved onto an early version of 1.8 and that wasn't stable enough to work with for a long time

<[GG]Mich>

@Pelgar - Fragmotion?

<[GG]Mich>

That's new to me

but that isn't really a concern anymore

It's an awsome modeling prog.

<[GG]Mich>

really?

we aren't working on one internally

yep

i have never heard of it either

Very nice features for a new commer.

animation assembler...uv tweeker...

<eb>

awesome ? ...it costs $25

<[GG]Mich>

Yeah, nothing has been lined up for it yet. But I'll send out a word in the community and see if anyone is

can it export .dif?

no...dif

FBX

No diff yet.

read

http://www.fragmosoft.com/

torque can use .fbx?

no...

no but other programs can read it

not directly

looks like the best path for fragmotion at the moment would be fragmotion -> Milkshape -> Torque

true

Thats the path I use and it works well

Mmmmm.......love that milkshape exporter!

delicious

hehe

wonder why.......

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little engine that could....

and you can make your music in milkytracker!

heh... I skipped milkshape when it failed to export this one free player resource someone posted

then I finished my kork-compatible player model with blender

fsvo finished at least

<[GG]Mich>

Any TGEA 1.8 Beta users here tonight?

<eb>

-> Back on that collada exporter for a sec: matt can I get an address

<eb>

<Chemeleon-MGT>

not even sure which version of tgb we're using these days :)

<Chemeleon-MGT>

err, tgea

Michael, MGT is starting to work with it, but our programmers arent online, sorry

sorta

<[GG]Mich>

Just curious to see if anyone has a non-tech opinion or feedback so far

by 'user' do we count 'yeling at it a bit'

well, in the absence of more questions about "future of torque" stuff, I'm cool with some itorque questions or other stuff

eb...that is correct

before we're out of time that is

<[GG]Mich>

We haven't gotten a major bug storm like we did for 1.7

<eb>

;)

<[GG]Mich>

Oh yeah. So, iTorque

<[GG]Mich>

*** iTORQUE *** <== Attention grabber

<[GG]Mich>

Wenceslao, others?

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

Excellent

<Russell-Sickhead>

By the way, no real exporter needed for Collada. Just save out as Collada, open in Torque.

<Chemeleon-MGT>

my only current question is largely idle curiosity...has anyone run benchmarks to see what type of performance/polycounts/etc is possible?

in Itorque Chem?

<Chemeleon-MGT>

yea

we have, yes

russell is our primary collada guinea pig atm...and i hear from tom that he is pretty happy =P

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

Well, let's start with an update in iTorque. The only user I've talked to with it is Conor. I've been hesitant to purchase because I'm looking to see what the future holds for it and if the pricing will stick.

for tge, with the improvement to torquescript and texture compression, getting 4-5000 polys on screen is definitely possible with a decent framerate

what kind of questions do you have wenceslao?

the pricing will likely stick by the way

but there are some pretty good improvements in the pipeline

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

What's the timeline for iTGB? When is the next release and when do you feel that the engine will be ready for prime time to release an application on the itunes store?

torquescript's compiler is running *much* faster

PVRTC is implemented

well, the engine is ready for prime time to release an application on the itunes store now

it's the best performing engine tech available for the iphone

the next itgb release is probably only a week or so away

we're aiming to include pvrtc and the improvements to torquescript

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

So all of the improvements you describe will be in that release?

"best performing engine tech...." you base that statement on what? Just curious really... (I haven't tried it, so I have no idea if it's true or not)

we're not stopping there, but that should make it much easier to get your app performing faster

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

I'm a bit new to the iTGB development, I only got my iMac a week ago and just started tinkering with the SDK.

I base "best performing engine tech" on what we can render on screen, how fast it renders, what features are supported out of the box, access to source code...things that matter most when you're shipping a commercial titles

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

What about debugging on the mac side of scripts? As far as I understand XCode cannot debug torque scripts.

*title

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debugging on the mac side is mostly manual right now, but scripting should be used heavily only in the prototype phase

Right. As I said, was just curious what you would say... pretty bold statement after all =)

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

Are there any features missing from iTGB when compared to TGB?

no matter how efficient the script language, you'll get an extra 5-10% fps out of all code

@wenceslao: nope

everything compiles and runs unchanged

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

About licensing. Suppose I put up an app on the iTunes store and I also want to create a demo version of that app. How does the licensing work out for all of that?

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1 title = 1 title fee, so if you want to do a demo, that's totally fine

is there a page for iTorque yet?

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

Are there any apps now as well that use Torque Technology on the itunes store?

<[GG]Mich>

@proq - You mean TDN?

<[GG]Mich>

Or docs?

there aren't currently any iTGB apps that I know of in the App Store

about 4-5 titles in development that I'm pretty certain you'll see soon

some using iTGE

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

Yes, wasn't there supposed to be some TDN documentation up on there?

some iTGB

[GG]Mich: anything

<[GG]Mich>

There is documentation that ships with iTGB. I've started with some sample tutorials

<[GG]Mich>

TDN has been down for an entire week, which prevented me from putting anything new up

<[GG]Mich>

when the next iTGB update goes out, I will include new tutorials and launch the TDN section fully

iTGB is pretty much feature complete at the moment, so from here, we'll be working on more steps to make getting max performance out of your game easier

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

So licensing is just $500 for the first title and then $100 dollars for additional titles correct? So there is no consideration if you want to publish a "free" title?

<[GG]Mich>

You can check this too: http://tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/ITorque

automate some steps

<[GG]Mich>

I will be adding to that page

@wenceslao: correct

well, we're at the 6pm mark...any one else have questions?

<Wenceslao_Hyjinx_TGB>

Ok, well I suppose that's all I really have for now since I don't have iTGB yet. Thanks for answering my questions.

<[GG]Mich>

Bien

<[GG]Mich>

OK EVERYONE

no problem :)

<[GG]Mich>

That's it for tonight

<[GG]Mich>

http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=78907

<[GG]Mich>

The IRC Discussion Thread: http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=78907

<eb>

Thx for the chat guys/gals

okay guys...'night

Thanks for coming!

<[GG]Mich>

That will have the uploaded Transcript and a wrap up

Thanks guys

see you next week

Brett will be on his own next week

next week is thanksgiving

<[GG]Mich>

Feel free to e-mail me any feedback on IRC Hour or post in the thread

I will be eating turkey

ya turkey!

<[GG]Mich>

Have fun with that Ken

<[GG]Mich>

PB & J all the way

<eb>

Send my best to Kev with a 'pat on the back'

<eb>

:D

<[GG]Mich>

***IRC HOUR OVER***

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lol **all by my self...**

<[GG]Mich>

hahaha

<[GG]Mich>

nice brett

heheh