Are We Still Using That Old Engine?

[Altiris]

...I can imagine how weird it would look if Blockland was run on something like Source, CryEngine, or even the Unity eng-

No, scratch the changing engine thing, probably is best to improve as much as possible the Blockland Torque engine, and we will just need to wait to see what happens in the future.

I hate it when people say this. Just because a game such as Crysis or Half Life uses the Cry or Source engine doesn't mean every single game will look the same. Stop being stupid and realize that you can customize textures/graphics, whatever in a game engine. Look at TF2 and Half Life, they are both running Source but look different. Blockland on another engine would look the same, the only thing you would notice is performance.

By the way, if an engine change would happen we should hope for it to be Torque3D, because it is infact still Torque and uses TorqueScript, the majority of addons would still work, this way we would have an upgraded engine and many old things would still be compatible. However, if the point of changing the engine is to have superb/complete performance then something rather than Torque3D would be picked, however addons would need to be re-made from scratch. Remember that addons are what keep this game alive.

[Ad Bot]

[Bisjac]

dosnt it cost a stuffload of money to use the AAA engines?
like more then blockland could even earn to make it worth while lol

plus an upgrade like that wouldnt promise a return. its not like the world isnt buying blockland because they dislike torque or something.

[Linkusofepica]

What does AoT stand for?

http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=160556.0

[QuadStorm]

its not like the world isnt buying blockland because they dislike torque or something.

This. Anyways, it's not like someone considering buying Blockland really cares about what engine we use; it'd only really benefit us if anyone.

[otto-san]

add-ons are the least of your worries lol

also keep in mind that fxdtsbrick would have to have either a replacement with the engine that performs at least as well or completely remade for the new engine. all the other features would also have to be re-implemented.

[Dre5567]

lel, if BL were on unreal/cryengine, it wouldn't work out very good

[Altiris]

lel, if BL were on unreal/cryengine, it wouldn't work out very good

Nahh man it's all about that unity now (it's insane at how popular it is)

[mp7964]

Nahh man it's all about that unity now (it's insane at how popular it is)

Unity is over-rated.

[$trinick]

We are still using the same engine.

We could update it, but there are two reasons why we haven't.
1.  Like Dillpickle said, it's been modified so much, it's basically its own engine.
2.  Updating it from Torque to Torque3D would be like changing it to Java or HTML.  It would take WAY too long.

I've got a huge bone to pick with both of these messages.

1. It hasn't been modded NEARLY enough to be considered its own engine. In fact, I wouldn't feel uncomfortable estimating 90% of the engine code to be exactly the same as stock TGE. When decompiled, the code for each individual function is virtually identical to TGE.
2. No, it really wouldn't. At all. It would be a big project, but there's multiple reasons why it isn't comparable to porting to Java or HTML
    2a. HTML is not a programming language. You can not write a 3D game in HTML.
    2b. Most modified Blockland code can be easily ported to the T3D equivalent of TGE functions. T3D still operates with Datablocks, handles classes the same way as TGE, operates on the same coding language (so all the .dso code would still work), and is formatted in the exact same way as TGE. While the algorithms for processing may be different, T3D and TGE are still very similar.
    2c. Porting to an outside language (and thus not a Torque engine) would require not only a complete rewrite of the TorqueScript virtual machine in this new language, but would require all the code that's been written specifically for Blockland to be completely rewritten in the new game engine's specific way. As mentioned earlier, with TGE it could be almost directly copied and pasted.

Again, this isn't to say porting to T3D wouldn't be a huge project. It would be a lot of work and it would require Badspot to spend a lot of time with a lot of testing. Even if Badspot was willing to do all of this work, kompressor and him have decided that T3D is not a better engine for Blockland than TGE is. There's nothing wrong with TGE, and unless Badspot decides to rewrite the game in Unity or Unreal I really don't think porting to any newer engine (including T3D) would be worth it.

[Port]

There is no need to change the engine.

[tails]

You can not write a 3D game in HTML.

HTML5 says hi.

[Port]

HTML5 says hi.

You don't write it in HTML, you write it in JavaScript. Sure, <canvas> is a HTML element, but that's not the point.

[.::Taboo::.]

Unity is over-rated.

more importantly it's terribly optimized and a huge pain in the ass to work with when it comes to implementing fully custom things (like bricks)

[Reindeer]

Unity is too high-end as well. A lot of people want the ease to run Blockland on older computers too, you know. Unity is $1500 I checked for the full thing, crazy pricing.

[$trinick]

HTML5 says hi.

Nope. The game isn't written in HTML. It's written in JavaScript. HTML5 merely supports a canvas tag that allows manipulation via JavaScript (or other in-browser scripting language).