Starting a new project

What is the best way to start a new project on the engine? The official, and old, FPS tutorials or this project by eightyeight?

https://github.com/eightyeight/t3d-bones

Just use the full template, the other stuff is complicated.

duion is right btw I'm preparing a full template for do rapid development, mostly very useful for prototyping :roll:

Shouldn't it be simple, though? Since it's barebones? :P

If you're an artist: go for the full template, if you're a scripter or coder: you should really use the barebones template, as you will have complete control and understanding of how the project works and you wont have any unnecessary code flowing around.

Also, it's so welldocumented that you can piece a game together even though it's barebones.

As the author of t3d-bones I second Lukas's advice. The editors can be made to work with bones, but it's a bit of a pain. On my vague list of things that need to be done is getting them to work properly. I nearly did it during 7DFPS but there was still a lot of dodgy stuff going on.

Thanks for the tips, guys! :)

Choosing the full template!

The full template is giving me so many headaches lately, that i decided to start from scratch. The code that handles player model animations, as well FP animations, is pure hell and turned into a nightmare when i tried to integrate my models (with custom bones, anims, etc.).

Is there a version of T3D with just the editors and a bare-minimum code (rain, clouds, etc.)?

You can try starting with a full template and removing things and shutting off scripts you do not need.

The full template is giving me so many headaches lately, that i decided to start from scratch. The code that handles player model animations, as well FP animations, is pure hell and turned into a nightmare when i tried to integrate my models (with custom bones, anims, etc.).

Is there a version of T3D with just the editors and a bare-minimum code (rain, clouds, etc.)?

That's esentially the Empty template that comes with t3d, the alternate to the other stock template, Full.

That hasa single blank mission, a floating camera, and a few other bare minimum things art and script wise. Beyond that, it's pretty much the editors and what's needed to run it. It sounds like that may be a better starting point for you if the Full template feels a bit too much to work through.

Don't be afraid to ask questions about particular trouble spots you're having. Many people on here are likely to have dealt with anything you're running into, and we don't know what parts to emphasize to make easier for new people if new people don't describe the rough patches to the old hands ;)

Thanks a lot for the help guys. It's nothing really serious, or a huge problem with the Full code itself, but it's just that i think that i'll spend more time trying to make things work in the existing code, rather than building myself.

There's a lot of hardcoded stuff in the animation/skeleton parts, and the player class as well. Since my model and animations are completely different, it's being a huge pain. For example: i broke the upperbody rotation when aiming and caused the engine to crash. I tried to fix that by changing the bone names and so on, but no luck.

For example: i broke the upperbody rotation when aiming and caused the engine to crash.

Would love to know the exact steps to reproduce that. In my opinion we should make it as difficult as possible to crash the engine by modifying scripts. Of course, a separate problem is the hard-codedness you describe. Torque evolved from a very specific use case, and making it work for a different type of game is a little bit of work. It's sad but it's the best we can do right now - we're working on it!