Questions about Torque3D

Hey everyone,

I am currently in the planning phase of a project with Torque 3D which I will talk about at a later point in this thread. However currently I have some questions.

1. What is the ETA on PBR / Differed rendering tech that is being worked on? I am asking because the project that I am working on has or at least will have allot of lights (Tracers, Muzzle flashes, Explosions, etc.) going off at times. I just would like to make sure that torque is efficient as possible :)

2. How many players can be on a single instance of an unmodified Torque 3D server? I am reading in some places 250 and others 128. Where does the Server start to cap out?

3. Is there any Modern and stable Torque Script plugin for Visual Studio 2013? I am currently using Visual Studio Community and I cannot seem to find one apart from torsion. Which from what I read about it is buggy and prone to crashes.

4. Linux is coming out for Torque 3D from what I read from the most recent blog post. This makes me excited! That said - Can I compile Torque for Linux under Windows?

I know that this sounds counter intuitive but I just want to build a Linux binary from Visual Studio.

About the project I am currently planning

I am currently planning on making an open source variant of the RV Engine by Bohemia Interactive. The RV Engine is most known for the ARMA Series, DayZ and Take on Helicopters. Torque provides the perfect starting point for me as I do not have to write an engine from scratch. A good majority of the engine is already done. Things such as 64 Bit floats and large scale terrain I will need to do however.

Anyway that is as far I can go into at the moment. I am still planing how editors should look and feel :)

Thank you for your time,

HeadClot

1) Deferred could probably be rolled in tomorrow, but needs a review. Something that'll need to be put off till the opengl/linux/mac work lets up enough to get knowledgeable eyes on.

PBR- see the issues list https://github.com/Azaezel/Torque3D/issues (though likely a few things still overlooked). Time it takes really does depend on what folks interested in squeezing in development time can toss towards it. Non-answer, I know, but it is what it is.

2) she's scripted with a default of 64: https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/blob/development/Templates/Full/game/core/scripts/server/defaults.cs#L55. depending on how much detail you plan on sending along the network, realtime vs replicating on both ends, and what maximum ping you want to allow, I'd shoot for more or less conservative.

3) not really. personally, I use notepad++ for the highlighting, and keep visual studio open for method look-ups.

4) http://torque3d.wikidot.com/coder:compiling-in-linux has a bit of stub-work going on reguarding vagrant and ubuntu. For myself, currently working out the kinks this end for compiling on a virtualbox Ubuntu VM + guest additions for file passthrough.

I use torsion a lot and find it just fine. Never crashed once.

T3D does already have deferred lighting but do check out az's repo above for the deferred shading branch.

@HeadClot, yeah don't worry about the lights thing, it's already in there and has been for years :) It's just being changed to another way of doing it atm.

Torsion is fine, I use it a lot and gives you all the IDE features you'll need. Alternatives can be found here: http://wiki.torque3d.org/introduction:scripting-ides there are no VS-plugin currently, I tried that and it was too much work and it wouldn't work on Linux. There are lots of great alternatives though (they might look a bit dated but they work fine).

If you don't want to actually run Torque under Linux in a VM, just compile it, then I highly recommend Vagrant - the process is pretty simple although the Vagrant configuration used in that tutorial isn't in the engine yet, just in my own fork waiting to be PRed once I see if I can make it work for with GUI as well.

Hey everyone,

Just getting around to checking this thread for today and thank you for all the awesome replies.

Also got a few more questions -

1. So what does this new deferred rendering tech do differently or better than the current one? Just curious here.

2. So should I pickup Torsion or should I use Notepad ++? I am noticing that torsion is no longer actively maintained which is a big deal to me. I would honestly pay for the development of a Visual Studio plugin for Torque script if it came down to it. So long as it is made available to everyone.

I was hoping we could get the community to jump aboard with TorqueDev since it's open source and has the potential to be actively maintained. However it's not cross-platform. Another option is to make an effort to have an in-engine TS editor with more IDE features, though I imagine debugging script from within the engine while the editor runs scripts is... well, not going to be possible :P.

@buckmaster but I don't think TorqueDev is cross-platform is it?

I really should write an editor using SDL2 :/ I was helping out on an Objective-C based editor but that's for Mac OSX only :/

@buckmaster but I don't think TorqueDev is cross-platform is it?

However it's not cross-platform.

Yup.

I'd actually be vaguely tempted to try and make debugging work in a Vim plugin. Which sounds insane. But hopefully cross platform :P.

1. So what does this new deferred rendering tech do differently or better than the current one? Just curious here.

Short version: stores moar data to use at runtime.

longer version: instead of rendering the scene for lighting, then slapping on the skybox/scattersky background, then multiplying color over all of that, sends lighting and color to seperate chunks of render memory, and knits them back together later so there's more tricks you can pull.

really, really long version: see commit log for the last time it was up for review https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/pull/867 *

*been a few simplifications, debugs and general cleanups since then, as well as a few other performance tricks. you'll find the result https://github.com/Azaezel/Torque3D/tree/deferred_complete, for the one that's backwards compatible, and https://github.com/Azaezel/Torque3D/tree/PBR for the one that starts on the 'actively breaks stuff' end.

1. So what does this new deferred rendering tech do differently or better than the current one? Just curious here.

 

Short version: stores moar data to use at runtime.

longer version: instead of rendering the scene for lighting, then slapping on the skybox/scattersky background, then multiplying color over all of that, sends lighting and color to seperate chunks of render memory, and knits them back together later so there's more tricks you can pull.

really, really long version: see commit log for the last time it was up for review https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/pull/867 *

*been a few simplifications, debugs and general cleanups since then, as well as a few other performance tricks. you'll find the result https://github.com/Azaezel/Torque3D/tree/deferred_complete, for the one that's backwards compatible, and https://github.com/Azaezel/Torque3D/tree/PBR for the one that starts on the 'actively breaks stuff' end.

How much more data are we talking?

Also awesome job on this cannot wait to use it. :)

How much more data are we talking?

Depends on how much of the older gbuffer you were using. adds 2 additional screen sized chunks, so if you were using lightmapping, you'd see an x2 memory hit. if not, and x3. It's offset more than a bit of course by not having to re-render the scene twice in serial.

[Long version](http://gameangst.com/?p=141)

Short version: [somewhere in here](https://gamedevcoder.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/light-pre-pass-vs-deferred-renderer-part-1/)

Also got a few more questions -

1. So what does this new deferred rendering tech do differently or better than the current one? Just curious here.

The change was made mainly because the need for deferred shading was needed for the move to PBR which was our ultimate objective when we all started this.

The plus side with deferred shading is the scene is not rendered twice but the G-Buffer is larger so the bandwidth usage is higher. With decent GPU's that can handle the extra bandwidth, the lower cpu usage sometimes equates to better frame rate ( obviously the GPU is processing less data too ).

I think I did a decent job explaining it in my original post about Deferred Shading:

http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/137917

2. So should I pickup Torsion or should I use Notepad ++?

Still love Torsion. I can't imagine working without after all these years :lol:

Yeah, the lack of updates is a pity; I think they should start giving the source code with the licence now...

If you want to make it look more or less like VS ;) ;) ;) then download your theme here:

http://www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/22798

Gotta chime in on this since I have been using Torque Dev for YEARS. Never bought torsion, or any other scripting tool for T3D (or torque anything for that matter). I whole heartedly LOVE the idea of Torque Dev. No, it's not cross platform but hey, guess what Torque isn't either (at least not yet).