Development Info Grimoire - Better than Anything Else Out There

[EvilIndie]

This will be the first game I torrent. I don't know how to do that, but hopefully someone will give me pointers.

I will be buying AoD however. Maybe 2 copies or more if this is the cover:

Well by 2015 piratebay and similar sites might not be available in US, so don't count on pirating it. And is it really so bad to give a semi mentally ill guy 20 bucks? Hint: almost everyone on earth hates you before even reading your posts just for being gay, white, or american but it's customary to pay people for services they render to you even if they dislike you and vice versa.

AOD is worse off. Now that torque is dead, it's like the captain of the titanic declaring from the bottom of the ocean they will continue on to NY. Amusing, but unless you know how to make an engine (and debug drivers) or have it open source so you can benefit by the knowledge of people who do (or sort of do in some halfassed manner or know but only care about their own bugs like in most open source communities) it's just not a possible thing. Of course they say different but I don't think anyone who's seriously tried making a game engine would disagree. Maybe I am wrong here but it's hard to find truly qualified people to make an opinion. In last year or so I have downgraded opinion from almost done to not in a million years but if duke nukem's coming out next year anything is possible.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Cleve is gonna release this game

I stopped reading there.
He already released the game. Exclusive to himself.

 

[Ion Flux]

I know Cleve is smart and his rants are fun to read, but you guys gotta admit, this whole Grimoire thing is pretty weird. I mean, anyone who puts this much effort into trolling the *only* people who would even consider buying this stupid game has some serious psychological issues. It's like he's trying to take revenge on RPG nerds for his own personal design decline. Kinda messed up.

 

[EvilIndie]

I know Cleve is smart and his rants are fun to read, but you guys gotta admit, this whole Grimoire thing is pretty weird. I mean, anyone who puts this much effort into trolling the *only* people who would even consider buying this stupid game has some serious psychological issues. It's like he's trying to take revenge on RPG nerds for his own personal design decline. Kinda messed up.

You always hurt the ones you love.

 

[Xor]

I know Cleve is smart and his rants are fun to read, but you guys gotta admit, this whole Grimoire thing is pretty weird. I mean, anyone who puts this much effort into trolling the *only* people who would even consider buying this stupid game has some serious psychological issues. It's like he's trying to take revenge on RPG nerds for his own personal design decline. Kinda messed up.

Grimoire is part of his elaborate scheme to troll everyone. What other explanation could there possibly be?

 

[Admiral jimbob]

This crazy talk reminded me of an unbelievable email I once received :

Christ. Not quite in the same league, but that reminds me in turn of a thread I stumbled across in some Googleforsaken forum where Morrowind fans had pooled together and were brainstorming about Kemel-Ze, a dwarven ruin from one of the lore books. Why was so much detail put into thinking it up, they asked, if it wasn't in the game?

So they set out, about ten of them, to cover every square inch of Morrowind, searching top to bottom, ruin to ruin, to see if they could find it.

Note that they were aware the game had a construction set - a construction set one of three main windows of which lists the name of every cell/area in the game in alphabetical order - and not one of them considered the possibility of just checking that.

I wonder if they're still at it.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

AOD is worse off. Now that torque is dead, it's like the captain of the titanic declaring from the bottom of the ocean they will continue on to NY. Amusing, but unless you know how to make an engine (and debug drivers) or have it open source so you can benefit by the knowledge of people who do (or sort of do in some halfassed manner or know but only care about their own bugs like in most open source communities) it's just not a possible thing. Of course they say different but I don't think anyone who's seriously tried making a game engine would disagree. Maybe I am wrong here but it's hard to find truly qualified people to make an opinion. In last year or so I have downgraded opinion from almost done to not in a million years but if duke nukem's coming out next year anything is possible.

?

I haven't kept up with AoD news, so what's this about?

 

[Jaesun]

A new alt.

 

[SCO]

surely the best game of 1999

TAKE THAT BACK!!!

 

[EvilIndie]

AOD is worse off. Now that torque is dead, it's like the captain of the titanic declaring from the bottom of the ocean they will continue on to NY. Amusing, but unless you know how to make an engine (and debug drivers) or have it open source so you can benefit by the knowledge of people who do (or sort of do in some halfassed manner or know but only care about their own bugs like in most open source communities) it's just not a possible thing. Of course they say different but I don't think anyone who's seriously tried making a game engine would disagree. Maybe I am wrong here but it's hard to find truly qualified people to make an opinion. In last year or so I have downgraded opinion from almost done to not in a million years but if duke nukem's coming out next year anything is possible.

?

I haven't kept up with AoD news, so what's this about?

The maker of torque is out of business. Torque3D users are totally screwed. They claim to be trying to sell the engine it would be of no worth to anyone to take over a half done engine like that. People like ITS with older version can only hope they release the code as open source or they are similarly screwed, but that's unlikely too.

The blog comments are full of delusional people who still want to use T3D or hope it gets taken up by some other company. I guess a sucker is born every minute.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Could you elaborate on how they are screwed?

They already had a functional 3d engine when the combat demo came out.

So would they just lose the ability to make patches if certain engine bugs or incompatibilities are discovered?

Or is it something more serious?

 

[EvilIndie]

Could you elaborate on how they are screwed?

They already had a functional 3d engine when the combat demo came out.

So would they just lose the ability to make patches if certain engine bugs or incompatibilities are discovered?

Or is it something more serious?

When you try making a 3D engine there's two big surprising things. One is how hard it can be to get very stupid rendering stuff just exactly right, the other is that every time you upgrade drivers or directx or OS versions shit stops working. After a while, like months and years of work you get to where you can deal with this but if you didn't even write the original code and haven't done similar debugging it's pretty much hopeless whent hings go wrong.

Since T3D has no released games it's worse because nothing is really debugged until you release something. T3D is basically of zero use at all except as a reference or for the tools. Plenty of torque fanbois will say how you have the source and can do anything you want, the only limit is you! That's kind of true, but in reality it's a complete waste of time to pursue that path. You could maybe make your own engine off the tools a lot easier since the tools are so time consuming but using the engine itself is a Bad Idea.

With the standard torque at least there are released games, but if it doesn't go open source then everyone is pretty much on their own and if you're not able to make your own engine in the first place you are going to be fucked trying to debug future problems.

 

[RampantCoyote]

Torque users have the source code. So while the code base is no longer being maintained, owners of the engine are in theory in full possession of a more-or-less fully functional game engine that they can modify and update to their heart's content.

I've heard lots of horror stories from people who worked with older versions of the Unreal engine, and the mainstream pros have had to work with a lot worse in the past. But your average indie isn't a full-time pro game developer used to dealing with that kind of crap.

The real issue here is how ready for prime-time the new Torque 3D engine really was. A lot of people licensed the engine based on promises of what would eventually be in there. (Lesson #1 - Unless you really feel ready to take ownership of engine development, go with a mature engine). I am still using an older Torque engine (with lots of hacked-up modifications - I call it the FrankenEngine), so I'm not too familiar with the state of Torque 3D, or how close it was to being able to be used in a released, commercial-quality game. The older Torque Game Engine was a total pain in the butt to modify and maintain - I speak from painful experience. And yes, I have written a 3d game engine from scratch, and worked on several others - I just prefer not to anymore, and nobody's paying me to do so anymore. So maybe that gives me some authority when I say it was crap to work with. Or maybe not. Anyway, I hear the newer engines - especially T3D - are much cleaner, better designed, and easier to maintain. But I can't answer to that.

If there are still some major holes and bugs, then the T3D licensees are going to have to pull together as a community to fix it (still possible), or be ready to put a lot of time into finishing-the-engine that they'd otherwise have put into finishing-the-game. But they were up to 1.1 Beta 3 on the engine, so it wasn't like it was only halfway done.

I personally don't think things are quite as grim as folks here seem to believe, but I'm one of those idiot optimists. But even if the company that owns Torque gets bought out, I wouldn't expect any updates to the game engine to start happening for many months. So if a game developer is depending upon a knight in shining armor to save them and the engine, they are probably in trouble.

 

[EvilIndie]

If there are still some major holes and bugs, then the T3D licensees are going to have to pull together as a community to fix it (still possible),

Well, they can't even do that unless it goes open source. The old Torque might still be open sourced one day, but there's just no way T3D is going to be open sourced.

 

[RampantCoyote]

Well, they can't even do that unless it goes open source. The old Torque might still be open sourced one day, but there's just no way T3D is going to be open sourced.

It takes community. Open Source is just one approach to it.

The community that's already been there at the-company-formerly-known-as-Garage-Games has probably been a bigger help to developers in fixing bugs or finding work-arounds than the staff itself for years. It's been pretty functional that way.

But without new blood, that's going to shrivel up and die. They either need someone there to distribute new licenses, or go open source so licenses are no longer needed. Otherwise, a year from now, there'll be nobody left who both knows and cares about it.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Hint: almost everyone on earth hates you before even reading your posts just for being gay, white, or american but it's customary to pay people for services they render to you even if they dislike you and vice versa.

So if they hate his guts already, why not go full retard bastard?

 

[EvilIndie]

Hint: almost everyone on earth hates you before even reading your posts just for being gay, white, or american but it's customary to pay people for services they render to you even if they dislike you and vice versa.

So if they hate his guts already, why not go full retard bastard?

I was going to say something about morals or karma but how about choice and consequences? Sure you can punch the guy who asks you for a dollar in the gut but if you give him a dollar for crack probably he won't rob some old lady and beat her to death or something, maybe even your mom or you when you get old.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

That, or the crack will make him violent and he'll shank my mom while she's on her way back from the grocery store, instead of simply robbing her.

/Kreia

 

[hanssolo]

Christ. Not quite in the same league, but that reminds me in turn of a thread I stumbled across in some Googleforsaken forum where Morrowind fans had pooled together and were brainstorming about Kemel-Ze, a dwarven ruin from one of the lore books. Why was so much detail put into thinking it up, they asked, if it wasn't in the game?

So they set out, about ten of them, to cover every square inch of Morrowind, searching top to bottom, ruin to ruin, to see if they could find it.

Note that they were aware the game had a construction set - a construction set one of three main windows of which lists the name of every cell/area in the game in alphabetical order - and not one of them considered the possibility of just checking that.

I wonder if they're still at it.

That's particularly lulzy since the ingame book about the ruins states it's on the mainland side of the Vvardenfel rift, as in, not on the fucking landmass the game is set. I sincerely hope they're not continuing their search, too, because the ruins are present in the Tamriel Rebuilt mod.