Coding

finnbryant · Post by **finnbryant** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 7:47 am

I'm sorry to bring this up, but this project appears to have no coder. What do we do about this?
I bring this up because I wouldn't mind giving it a go, although my experience is limited, I have done some very small projects before.
the main problem is that I don't have, and don't really want to use the engine rad had planned to use (and spent money on) so that leaves a problem, do I start with my own choice of engine, and call it a prototype for when rad comes back? Do we give up hope and ask TE to remove the sub-forum? Or should I start on this project with the aim of finishing it and if rad comes back we apologize about his wasted money and offer that he join in the development?

My opinion is this; I think rads choice of engine had a flaw, he cut off any help by picking an engine that costs money, a free engine could seriously increase the chance that the project succeeds, since anyone can help and developers can come and go without damaging the project or their budgets.

My current favorite is Panda3D, it is open source (free) and uses python which is a damned easy language to learn, thus making the pool of potential developers as large as possible. I would then use dropbox as a very basic version control system, dropbox is so infinitely simple that a quick paragraph is all the guide someone would need to become the main developer (dropbox isn't designed for developers, and that's why its so good, I've heard very good things about it for small developments that cant afford to waste their lives getting an svn working), all that would mean development could go as fast as possible, with no bureaucracy to speak of, this will lead to bugs, but considering how huge this undertaking is, bugs are better than nothing, and there will be many more developers when this is running since people will actually believe their time wont be wasted on a pipe-dream, and they can fix the bugs.

What do you guys think? should this be done, or is there still enough chance that rad will reappear that we should wait for him.

whatever you decide im not starting for at least 2 weeks, I've got exams.

sambasti · Post by **sambasti** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 10:43 pm

If you use an easy language, and don't mind helping a noob with the basics, I could try and help the coding. I'm currently trying to learn to code, and would enjoy helping. (Since you say Python is easy to learn)

TheDevil · Post by **TheDevil** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 2:00 pm

Hey even I wouldn't mind doing some of it If I get help.

Stuff I done before:

Made a Calculator using C programming...LOL I know it not much but oh well!

Hockfire · Post by **Hockfire** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 2:48 pm

I got myself a copy of TGE, some months ago. I was skeptical about it, until I looked at it's scripting techniques. Beautifully simple, once you get the hang of it. TDN is an also amazing resource, having a good chunk of the engine documented. Now more to the point: I've recently returned dev'ing again, now more precisely the GUI. It's not a super important milestone, but is important enough for me to start working on it 2~3 weeks ago. It was supposed to be a suprise, and i'ts not polished yet, but anyway. The coding part (or should I say, "scripting part") needs a little push.

So, GUI for Quantus_000.8:

The Main Menu, with a background movie (here as a short alleg movie as a placeholder). Fonts and other minor issues are still not finished.

Options menu: Contains the Graphical and Audio "panes" already defined, others to come. Fonts and Tick/Radio/Scroll boxes still need the colors defined.

The "Are you sure you want to quit" dialog:

The folders are all done and the Quantus file structure should change very little if any.
This is just to tell you, that from my part, this will not end until it's finished. It does exist.

On another note, it seems that TDN just imploded as TGEA become 2008 best game engine. Interesting.

@sambasti:

TGE: Torque Game Engine (Or Torque, for short)
---/---
TGEA: Torque Game Engine Advanced (Or Torque Shader Engine (TSE) , for short)
---/---
TDN: Torque Developer Network: A hub for documentating the Torque Engine, now inexistant as GG (Garage Games, owners of TGE) stopped supporting TGE (like, today or so).

finnbryant · Post by **finnbryant** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 8:34 pm

that UI is beautiful, I'm really liking it.

sambasti, the only danger from learning python is that if you try to move on to another language, you will want to strangle whoever invented it, python makes life a lot easier for the programmer.

devil, my first program was a calculator too, sort of... you gave it a number and it would return the times tables of that number

sambasti · Post by **sambasti** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 9:14 pm

TGE and TDN are?

finnbryant · Post by **finnbryant** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 9:39 pm

Torque Game Engine (the paid for engine that rad selected)
Torque Developer Network (the community sharing network where torque developers can share stuff)

HSharp · Post by **HSharp** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 9:48 pm

Looks v.nice Hock, though more suited to Allegiance with the current backgrounds

Cadillac · Post by **Cadillac** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 3:23 am

Seems you guys and I have the same thoughts.

Only yesterday I asked TE to remove Radruin as moderator, and after my exam (in about 6 hours) I was going to post to ask if anyone could step up to the plate.

finnbryant · Post by **finnbryant** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 3:56 am

I'd vote for a short period of anarchy just to get things sorted and to allow people to work out if they could actually fulfill the position (after my exams i *think* i could but it might turn out my uni work and social life combined suck up too much time).

But even if i can't ill certainly be an eager programmer if we dont have to pay in order to develop. My usefullness can only increase too, since im taking a computer science degree (im planning to take a module in computer graphics next year, but thats a while off yet)

Ive set up the dropbox (after a short PM discussion with hock), so anyone who wants the ability to view/edit the code please get a dropbox account and then PM me the email you used so i can invite you to the group. We dont have to worry about vandals much, since this is a pretty tight knit community and dropbox has version control anyway (like the wikipedia history).
At this moment in time its an entirely empty folder, but hock is going to stick his work in after cleaning it up.

I think i'll stick any examples or simple practices i use to get the hang of things in there, so anyone interested can see whats going on, or even surprise me by adding some random thing to whatever im doing...