And the Torque Tutorials are Wrapped Up

I have finished the Torque tutorials, which is a nice plus.  I do not feel I learned everything I need, but I do think I got a good start on the basic layout of the development kit.  Of course, there is nothing to show.  As I mentioned before, I was trying to get through the tutorials as fast as possible and this precluded making models and things of that nature.  Hopefully in the near future, I can get something like a mock up level made.  But I would not hold my breath since that may take a while.  On the plus side most of the tutorials worked.  For some reason the weapon models did not load properly, but that was not a big concern of mine.  They behaved as they were intended to, and the models came with the engine.  My only other problem was I could not package the tutorial.  Apparently their old code was written poorly and they have not made the time to correct it, so the button does nothing.  When I went to do it manually, it said my PhysX engine was either not installed or I needed to set a environmental variable.  I did not feel like doing either, so I have not worked through packaging a game yet.  To be honest, I am hoping the graphics version is up and running by the time I am ready to package a game since it looks much easier than the command line version available to me now.  That about wraps up Torque for the moment.  I seem happy with it, though who knows where I will be blown by the time I am ready to release.  Unreal has a new version coming out, I may want to look at that - at least the UDK version of it.

I also want to apologize for missing the Friday post.  Long week and I just forgot.  Actuially I fell asleep which is almost the same as forgetting.  But it was not like I had that much to say.  Next week looks to be filled with overtime, so my post for next Friday may be skipped if I have nothing new to say.  Until next time,

~gunnah

Finally made some progress

While the last month and a half may seem like I have little to show for it, I have learned a great deal about 3D modeling.  Not that I really want that as my excuse, but it is how I explain it to myself, so that is about all I can say about it.  Life really has been harsh the last month and a half, so hopefully it starts to ease up a bit.  As far as programming goes, the last month or so has been a complete washout, basically being stuck at the same point for he entire time, but that has now changed!

Tutorial 2: Loading a Scene has caused me nothing but pains sine I started it.  As I commented last post, I had almost finished it for that post, at that point my errors laid outside the coding.  As it turns out, having required files in the same folder as the other project files is not good enough for Visual Studios, you actually need to bring the files into the project inside the program.  It took a bunch of thinking to get that one, so this is as much a note to myself as a warning to others.  Once I solved that trick, I was almost home free.  As it turns out, the strings of names given in the program need to match the XML file, but that was nothing to correct.  So I am done with that, unfortunately, all it does is display a corner of the static map, so it is really nothing to look at.

Now onto the next tutorial, Adding the Player.  The part of this one which took the longest was adding all of the minor changes to the parser allowing items to be parsed right into the game engine instead of a secondary scene manager.  Overall this tutorial went very smoothly without too much new material learner.  Though I did find out what kind of shooter this tutorial was making: a fixed shooter - think Space Invaders or Centipede - with a little better graphics than those old arcade games.  I know it is not the perfect match for what I am doing, but it covers most of the basics, which can then just be applied to three dimensions from the two already programmed.

The final tutorial I finished was more of a bathroom reading material type of exercise than an actual tutorial.  It was called Populating the Level but was really just a collection of links to sites which offer free or cheap low polygon count models.  I am most likely just going to use the models the tutorial does to finish the tutorial as quick as possible, being a month and a half late already from where I wanted to be, and then make my own low polygon models for the game.  To be honest, besides the pains of making sure the Credits page is one of the first done, I would also feel a little weird using someone else's materials.

On a programming side note, I also wrote my first pair of server/client programs.  I know all they do is send the string "Hello, World!" from one panel to another on my Linux-box, but I under stood 80% of the code use to make them.  There was a few functions which I did not quite grasp but the text outside of the program said that what I did not understand was okay since the author had not gone over the code previously.

The last thing I would like to discuss is a redefined timetable (I know I go over this every post, but this one should hold unless something really goes wrong with my program of Life).  For now I would like to say that the Shooter tutorial should be finished for the post just before Christmas.  The Advanced Framework should be done for the last post of this year.  Once those are done, I can begin actually coding on the game, which I am going to say early to mid January on the Progress page (I know that was originally early November, but I hit a speed bump), possibly using some of the starting coding to make the proof of concept I want to do.  Well this post is too long now, so I will stop here, hopefully more good results for the end of the weekend,
~gunnah

A little distraction

Look a picture!  Actually it is not that impressive since I cannot think of when I would need a meat grinder in a video game outside of a scene in a deli or supermarket.  But if the need ever arose, I do have the perfect item for it.  Actually, in my opinion, it looks a little cartoon-y, and could probably be helped with a better background, I am still learning how to best frame items.  I mostly made it because I wanted something to show and it had been a while since my last picture.  I had been working on the mech, but the process of UV mapping over twenty thousand faces is going to take some time.  Also I have started on a second 3D modeling program, just picking up the basics, but the more I learn the more marketable this all may become.  My problem with the new program is it is a lot more artsy than the one I had been using and low poly is more or less non-existent in that program, but it is capable of rendering extremely photo-realistic images.  So the trade-off is while completely unusable for the game I am making, it may prove useful in future exploits.

Now, on to what should be my main focus.  Since the Shoo 'Em Up tutorial was in utter chaos from trying various ways of merging the two systems together, I am in the process of restarting the tutorials.  This was the easiest option since I only got to the second tutorial.  So no progress there really, outside of making a whole new project to repeat what I thought I had done but royally messed up.  But there is a bright spot, not in the previous bits but in the fact I continues with the network programming book and made a program which returned the IP address of a given website.  That may not sound like much, and actually the program was not very intense, but what was key was that I completely understood the entire program.  The next couple of programs in the book are a server and a client so that should be fun to get together.

Finally, a small change has been made to the Progress page changing when I think I will start coding the actual game from late November to mid December.  I am trying to be honest, but life has a way of making a liar out of me.  So I hope for a little forward progress next time.
~gunnah