v21 was ten years ago

Author Topic: v21 was ten years ago  (Read 4332 times)


a ~2013 amd radeon can run max shaders at a solid 60fps with tens of thousands of bricks loaded into the map
alright time to buy an r9 290x just for blockland

This is what i suggested a few times in the past, even jokingly, but the idea was always shot down with responses like "No one would want to go through all that trouble", and "You'd have to completely re-do the octree system", and "Some/all of the add-ons would break", and all of those are true, but i feel like if Blockland actually made the jump to T3D, it would have been far more worth it in the end than the shadows and shaders update
Having BL in T3D would be awesome, it totally would have been worth it. "Some/all of the add-ons would break" isn't necessarily true though. The engine still relies on Torque Script, although some default functions may change based on name or variables for the new engine, so it's a matter of what can and cannot be ported reliably. Most script based add-ons should be fine. The main thing is that T3D uses a different format for basic shapes, the DAE format instead of the depreciated DTS shape format. Arguably the biggest hurdle with going to T3D is converting every shape from the game into this format with proper animations and stuff.

"No one would want to go through all that trouble"
pretty much sums it up lol

« Last Edit: August 12, 2022, 04:59:37 AM by Goth77 »

I find that somewhat difficult to imagine. did whoever ur talking about write about that anywhere?
the two that looked into it and told me this were eagle and redo. to be more specific, they didnt say it would be hard, but that it would be a lot of work.

alright time to buy an r9 290x just for blockland
the specific gpu i used was an r9 270x so actually really close, as far as i remember that gpu ran blockland the best out of all the ones ive used
and yeah torque 3d is a bit dated but it would have been a massive improvement compared to the current engine while retaining the hallmark ease of moddability that blockland is known for. im sure people would have been much more tolerant of a "we have completely overhauled the game engine but some of your addons may need to be updated for them to work" rather than the whole v21 situation

the specific gpu i used was an r9 270x so actually really close, as far as i remember that gpu ran blockland the best out of all the ones ive used
and yeah torque 3d is a bit dated but it would have been a massive improvement compared to the current engine while retaining the hallmark ease of moddability that blockland is known for. im sure people would have been much more tolerant of a "we have completely overhauled the game engine but some of your addons may need to be updated for them to work" rather than the whole v21 situation
The new T3D 4.0 could be released soon. I could give it another try to fix the Blockland vanilla port. If you want to check it out, here it is.

"Some/all of the add-ons would break" isn't necessarily true though. The engine still relies on Torque Script, although some default functions may change based on name or variables for the new engine, so it's a matter of what can and cannot be ported reliably. Most script based add-ons should be fine. The main thing is that T3D uses a different format for basic shapes, the DAE format instead of the depreciated DTS shape format. Arguably the biggest hurdle with going to T3D is converting every shape from the game into this format with proper animations and stuff.

t3d can import older dts versions just fine iirc, and dae files are just converted to dts on load
however it uses a completely different material system
materials are objects instead of simply being used to look up textures in a folder, and each material must have a unique name
also weapons no longer use lods as viewmodels since t3d supports proper viewmodels, with movement anims too


i think a lot of people underestimate how much work it takes to make a moddable game on t3d without watering down the engine features so much that you might as well still be using tge
maybe t3d 4.x will have mod support back...

for functional mod support, you would need to:
- keep all server assets in a list
      mod makers shouldn't have to register every asset manually (though they should be allowed to, for things like chat emotes or skyboxes)
      you would need to make the server send clients all the assets they need, instead of letting them look for local files

- reimplement file downloading
      while some file downloading code is left in the engine, it is even slower than blockland's and is not actually hooked up to anything
      you would also need to implement a cache system, and make the resource manager use cached resources instead of looking for local files

- make all client side fx objects into datablocks
      post fx, shaders, materials, and all the objects those require are entirely client sided in t3d
      you would need to make them into datablocks (not very good for things like materials which you might want to manipulate at runtime)
      you could try netobjects, but it won't work as datablocks preload materials and are ghosted before normal objects
      in a project of mine i made materials into a special type that is ghosted after files are downloaded, but before datablocks

- update all classes that use materials
      since they all expect materials to be client sided, you'd have to make them look for the datablocks sent by the server instead

- fix terrain loading
      i mightve just done something wrong, but in my project, making terrain moddable seemed to take more than just making the resource manager use cached resources
      i couldn't get terrain to load at all, it always ended up being a black plane (though this might just be my severe lack of c++ experience)

- implement the new loading phases

...and probably more

plus this isn't even including bricks, or the addon system itself

i typed most of this out a few hours ago and forgot to post :V
« Last Edit: August 12, 2022, 05:10:41 PM by adel »

The new T3D 4.0 could be released soon. I could give it another try to fix the Blockland vanilla port. If you want to check it out, here it is.

Wait, wait. new Torque 3D?

I thought Torque 3D had long since been abandoned.

V21 was the death sentence that Blockland didn't deserve.

V21 was just blankly announced. Half the community balked and didn't like the idea. And upon release most players started having issues with the shadows not looking like the screenshots or even being available for them. Despite community backlash, the change remained.

v21 was an update ahead of it's time.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2022, 05:18:28 PM by Master Matthew² »

Wait, wait. new Torque 3D?

I thought Torque 3D had long since been abandoned.

no, t3d is maintained by the community now
https://github.com/TorqueGameEngines/Torque3D


Wait, wait. new Torque 3D?

I thought Torque 3D had long since been abandoned.
-snip-
A small team went further with developing Torque 3D over the years. They even have their own discord and website.

edit:
Fix'd the animations.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2022, 05:28:41 PM by Antares »

The new T3D 4.0 could be released soon.

Also, the github link that Adel just posted shows that 4.0 is out rn.
https://github.com/TorqueGameEngines/Torque3D/releases/tag/v4.0

t3d can import older dts versions just fine iirc, and dae files are just converted to dts on load
however it uses a completely different material system
materials are objects instead of simply being used to look up textures in a folder, and each material must have a unique name
also weapons no longer use lods as viewmodels since t3d supports proper viewmodels, with movement anims too

-snip-
I was aware of the dae to dts converter but couldn't find anything about dts to dae. thank you for the informational post!

Fix'd the animations.
-imgsnip-
holy crap thats awesome. could you try the retail player model next or maybe try importing the default gun? I'm excited to see what else you can do with this. I've always felt that a blockland sequel / successor should be in T3D

« Last Edit: August 13, 2022, 12:40:18 AM by Goth77 »