Author Topic: Regarding Torque Engine and Player Feedback  (Read 2546 times)

I would have to say, this is a very impressive game. Making this game solo, is something very hard to do. Coding, modeling and animating are big factors in here. Another large factor is the game engine, and it's capabilities. At the end of the day, the engine will provide you with the answer of whether or not this game could expand, and have new features.

Whether this is correct or not (be sure to prove me wrong), I heard badspot saying something about how the buildings he had in the game so far. I remember hearing that he had reached some sort of limit? If there was added buildings on top of some technical limit, could you explain what it would do? Would it mess up lighting etc?

I think this game can expand much larger, have bigger cities, but I think it is just the engine holding it back. The only thing that is conflicting this simple idea, is the fact that I have gone to the torque website, experienced many other of their games, and seen videos and screenshots of their other games. What boggles me is, howcome we have reached such a limit of buildings, when other games have hundreds, to thousands of huge castles and empires?

Will Age of time ever have its own Castle without conflicting with the engine in some way or another? I have seen it be done before, how come this is not applicable to our game? Which is running on the same engine.

* Secondly *

I heard that Badspot won't be having any relation to using other models, or help from anyone else that might want to contribute. If this is true, it would only hold back the game from reaching its full potential. I am sure that many people here could create buildings, weapons, clothes, armor and more importantly, I am pretty sure we can find a person or two who has experience in Coding.

For partial Example: If there was ever a decent poly Male Model, that looked very nice, it was appropriate, and would fit inside age of time, + it was made by one of the users who are willing to contribute it, will Badspot still accept this model into the game? Or will, the game still lack one of the essential roles of the game and keep many fans who like to see sweaty man behinds upset?

Anyways, I am just wondering because this game have a LOT of potential, I was planning on making my own game, and honestly the process looks extremely daring and hard. But, with some contribution and with the capabilities of the engine, I believe that AoT could expand much bigger, and with the time that it has already been created, and the time that will be spent working on it in the future, we can work up something better than we already have... 200% better :P

What do you think? And what are your responses to my concerns?  :cookie:

Woah, I can agree with alot of in the post, but I don't know abotu the first part.

On the first part, I think Badspot said it's not a limit of buildings, just the way he's doing them is very laggy. Those games with lots of buildings use a different system then BS I beleive. As for the second part, that's something you'd have to ask Badspot about.

Badspot

  • Administrator
Re: Buildings
Adding more buildings uses more memory.  As far as I can tell, there is something wrong with the way torque handles lightmap data.  This was tested to the limit in an earlier version of AoT featuring the hedge maze.  The hedge maze consisted of 1024 very small buildings with almost no lightmap data, yet the game would use over 1200mb of virtual memory.

Many people complained that they could not run that version of the game because they ran out of virtual memory.

More buildings could be added if they didn't all have to be loaded at once, but that would require an architecture change of some kind.

There is also the matter of rendering performance.  It is quite poor.  Port town only has about 10 buildings and the framerate is down to 40 in some places.  It's pathetic. 

I have speculated about adapting some technology from blockland to render the buildings, but I havent quite wrapped my brain around how I want to do that yet.


Re: Model contributions
The male and female models must both be made by the same person so that the style will match.  I can't take a model from someone else and stick it in there with the current model because it just won't look right.

Also, I'm not going to take any models from anyone who isn't as good or better than me at modeling.  So far, no one worthy has volunteered their services.  If I wanted a bunch of boxy models, I could make my own in about 5 minutes.

Re: General
Adding more stuff is not the main problem, managing the stuff is.  Sure I could add a new dungeon, but that won't make the dungeon system any more compelling.  Sure I could add 10 more swords, but that doesn't get me any closer to a crafting system.  I really want to get to the point where I can just make fun stuff like weapons and quests, but the management systems have to be established first if it's going to work. 

I greatly appreciate the responses, but I am wondering, since you said you will not accept anything except for models that are made from people who are better than you, or just as good, what type of models are you looking for right now? Besides males?

I heard badspot / you weren't going to add anymore weapons. I think swords and crossbows are way too limited, adding new weapons will be the first step into advancement. Even though you are now aiming for Leveling, experience and more, while you work on that, you can keep the fans happy and still playing by adding new weapons? Plus, ill have something to spend my 50,000 gold on ='(

*Also, I just realized that, Badspot sort of didn't update AoT for awhile, then all of a sudden, Kapow, we are getting tons of updates, everyday. I must thank you for that =D

P.S: Too bad the girl models don't look like the ones on the Radeon Video card's. Now that is worth the demerits! =D
« Last Edit: January 01, 2006, 03:38:33 AM by Moogle »

aaah, bold blindness X(

Too bad the girl models don't look like the ones on the Radeon Video card's. Now that is worth the demerits! =D

haha! i second that motion!



Whether this is correct or not (be sure to prove me wrong), I heard badspot saying something about how the buildings he had in the game so far. I remember hearing that he had reached some sort of limit? If there was added buildings on top of some technical limit, could you explain what it would do? Would it mess up lighting etc?

I think this game can expand much larger, have bigger cities, but I think it is just the engine holding it back. The only thing that is conflicting this simple idea, is the fact that I have gone to the torque website, experienced many other of their games, and seen videos and screenshots of their other games. What boggles me is, howcome we have reached such a limit of buildings, when other games have hundreds, to thousands of huge castles and empires?


Have you ever tried playing on Certain torque games with city maps (EX: Tribes 2) Such as this http://www.tribes2maps.com/map_detail.php?id=3069 , when just staring at a building you get about 20 FPS (with tons of lag online, and there are about 200 interior buildings in that in that map, but only about 5 you can enter). And thats considering that the buildings are incredibly blockly, horrible lighting, and 1 collision box (whatever its called). Now image 2-3 of these (AOT style), 5X better effects, 20 people, and most of these buildings enterable, plus all the OTHER interiors in the level, thats about 5 FPS (even on a high end computer)  if you dont crash, plus insane ping levels, the game would be unplayable