Indy Game Developer Support Tools

[Aethyr]

Hi I am a Game Developer whom recently discovered your product and am integrating it in to my work flow for handling all mapping and final processing before going in to the game engine. However currently to do this I can start in which ever program then bring it to 3DBrush but then have to re-export it and take it back in to Milkshape or 3D Studio Max to be exported to the TGE/TGEA game engine format which produces a lot of extra steps, time and frustration using less than perfect 3rd party scripts and exporters to handle the process in these other programs. The TGE and TGEA engines both use the following model types: DTS and DIF.

The technology is based on the .bsp principals of trees and leafs as described here: http://qxx.planetquake.gamespy.com/bsp/

It uses the map2dif toolset documented - http://www.garagegames.com/docs/tge/general/ape.php

Torque Documentation - http://www.garagegames.com/docs/tge/general/pt06.php

Dev Page - http://www.garagegames.com/developer/torque/tge/

DTS vs DIF - http://www.garagegames.com/docs/artist/off...f/Overview.html

I believe that with your pricing if you supported allowing users of 3Dbrush/coat to export directly to the two formats .dts and .dif you could position your product as the premiere finishing tool for dealing with Shaders and game engines for the Indy Developing Community as Garage Games is considered to be the best option available for many looking to break in to the industry.

Presently the results of trying to deal with DIF is that you cannot create objects with Concave surfaces on them.

The inability to convert most things reliably to DIF (editors fault) leaves you being required to use these tiny inefficient tools that do not have exporting to formats you can 3D Map with ease like in 3DBrush. The "editors" for DIF are to polite.. rather terrible. DIF have baked shadowing in the engine and natively all convex surfaces are dynamically converted in to collision surfaces. The dynamic collision surfaces are what make DIF ideal for making any building or large stationary object.

The format DTS is basically any .3ds/.lwo etc.. your standard "art detail" objects. Characters, weapons, vehicles, decorations for buildings, etc., would be this type of file. Currently you can create and export these from 3DSMax with a 3rd party script but this requires you to have rebuild all of your mapping topologies and such again to make sure your exports work correctly when being imported from 3D brush and heading to the TGE or TGEA game engine for use as a game asset.

I really do hope to see you add an exporter for these file formats at some point as it would greatly improve my production work flow time.

Thanks for your time!

Cheers to you and your family!

[StereoMike]

sorry for being the party pooper, but as pointed out in the other thread, I think Andrew shouldn't focus on a specific app, but on generic file formats. If TGE/TGEA has problems with getting the most common files in (which is obviously the case as you descibed it) then why should Andrew do the work of Garagegames? I bet more ppl work for GG than for 3DC.

my 2ct

mike

[Andrew Shpagin]

Yes,really it is not easy to make all this. I think that some general things could be done - like COLLADA support or something like that. But it could not be done immediately because now I am focused of 2.10 support and making major 3.0 features.