Disclaimer: Warning – code rant ahead

Okay, I’m still tinkering with the Torque engine and trying to figure out the best way to integrate it with our framework project. My first instinct was to define the engine as a big black box – seperate from the main code – so that it was easy to define what is ‘Torque bits’ and what is ‘Assault bits’. Easy enough you’d think – just put it in a subdirectory and wrap it up as a static library.

Bear in mind the Torque engine comes as a big demo project, with all of the code to do anything you like in a big source tree, and nicely it works just straight out of the box. Nice and easy to use, but I feel a bit dirty when I’m hacking other people’s applications to look more like I want mine to look; its good for learning purposes, but once I’m done I like building something clean from scratch which references the engine rather than modifies it.

So the engine-as-a-library approach is nice and clean – it fences the engine code off as ‘something to be used’ and gives the project a bit of modularity. But, and here’s the kicker, its really simple to split Torque off as a library, but the first thing the linker does when it finds that library is it strips out anything it doesn’t think is used; including several vital parts, because it can’t tell that they aren’t used until runtime. When it’s a big monolithic executable project, the compiler just assumes they will be used (otherwise they wouldn’t be in the project), but as a library it tries to be (too) smart. Grrr.

Okay, so I go to the Torque search engine to see if its come up before, and it has – like every 6 months, since 2002. The response is invariably along the lines of either a) “I like a big executable, it keeps everything together”, b) “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, c) “Yeah, we’re thinking about doing that some
time soon, honest”, or d) “why don’t you do it yourself, and we’ll consider putting it in”. I won’t go into why these are poor responses, but I’d say that if its been that way for 3 years, its likely to stay that way.

Anyway, it looks like the hack and slash of the big demo source is the only way to make it work. Maybe I’m just being too picky, but we’re at that nice initial stage of the project where you want to keep things clean and well laid out, because you know its going to go downhill over time. Last thing any developer wants is to have to tell new people on the team – “yeah, we know its bad, but we’re stuck with it now”.

Seeing this article reminded me, I’ll absolutely have to write out a coding standards document for the Company before anyone else starts working on the code-base. Heck, I’ll have to fix all of my code to some kind of appropriate standard as well!

I think the most horrible thing about using 3D modelling tools (apart from my chronic lack of artistic ability), is the fact that they all have different control interfaces. The functionality is pretty much the same in every tool, but it takes so long to learn any tool to the point of being comfortable enough to build anything with it, that you end up sticking with the same tool just because you don’t want to learn another. Admittedly most of my work the last few days has been with the free tools, which obviously haven’t had the tens of thousands of pounds spent developing and refining their UI, but its still a slog.

All I really want to do at the moment is build a mock-up of the Station Assault level so I can use it as a base for future development. After a lot of experimentation with the Torque engine, it seems really quite flexible, and certainly capable of doing what we need functionality-wise. Of course, I’ve still to get any of my own assets into the system, so it may still fall down on that, but I’m confident.

Once the basic project structure and a demo level is in place, I’ll be in a position (finally) to come up with some kind of task list/development strategy for the demo, and things will hopefully move along more smoothly.

Like the new colour layout? Its to match the subBlack theme on the forums, and is a bit more in-keeping with our company name. Now all I need is to figure out what we want in a logo…

A brief hiatus this morning, while staring at a freshly cleaned desk, covered in forms and booklets from the Inland Revenue, trying to figure out how to sort out my status as a new employer (technically I’m not self employed, rather I’m employed by the company of which I’m sole owner. Yes I know that sounds like self-employed, but apparently its not. Go figure). Thankfully, a quick call to the New Employers Helpline revealed that I’ve actually done all the work already, by just calling them up and registering as an employer. So much easier when you’re paying yourself nothing.

Anyway, in more relevant news, I’ve settled on a design for the initial project, and put up a draft of the high-level design on the forums (if you have access there). What does this mean? Well it means that we can concentrate on refining that design, and crack on with getting a demo up and running while we’re refining.

Found it! Actually thought I’d lost the write up there. If you want to be terminally bored, you can also read Appendix C, which is a laborious and overly-formatted protocol definition.

Okay, well this is a tricky call to make, since Torque annoyingly no longer provides the whole ‘free if you render a Torque logo in the corner all the time’ licence, so I can’t actually download the source code to see how it looks. However, I have tried out Crystal Space, and while its free, I must say I’ve not been impressed by the layout or demos. In addition, Torque has pedigree so to speak, and while the demos all look and feel to me like Tribes (understandably so), thats not necessarily a bad thing. The netcode design seems pretty sound (and actually not hugely far away from my original model); so it should suffice for a demo, and hopefully be easy to refactor later into the production model.

So, I’m going to fork up the cash and buy and indie licence for Torque for 100 USD and see how that goes. Thank goodness for the crappy US exchange rate just now, eh?

On an unrelated note, I’m tempted to try and find a copy of my original fourth year Uni report, as its got quite a lot of relevant stuff, and maybe host it here for all to read (rather than it just languishing in some room in the J.C.M.B. untouched for the rest of time).

Well, back from an enjoyable (read: liver-bashing) bank holiday weekend to the real work. In one of my trademark sweeping and poorly justified decisions, I’ve decided that the Company will take bank holidays off, and not count them in the regular holidays. Thats something about my old job which I was undecided about the merits of it, but I think its good for morale to get the holidays which everyone else gets – its pretty depressing when you have to go to work, but everyone else is planning for long weekends.

Anyway, found a useful piece on Joel on Software, recommending VMWare. Looks like an invaluable tool for diagnosing installation problems and various other configuration nasties that plague PC games development. “It works on my machine” isn’t really a solution.

On todays agenda: some more financing research, some more writing up of mid-level designs for some of the ideas bandied around in the forums (to try and find any gaping holes), and poking and prodding of game engines to see if they’re suitable for building our demo on. Currently top of the pile are looking like Crystal Space and Torque (a la Tribes) .

Okay, I think I’ve mastered at least some of this webmaster stuff. Forums are online and running, available to all. The same rules apply there with respect to IP and posting, etc.

The wiki is also up and running, however that one is just for staff at the moment, as I intend to start writing the actual design documents up in there. That may change at a later date, I suppose we’ll just have to see how things get used. Suck it and see, so they say.

Again, all feedback and/or questions welcome, either post here or drop me a mail.

Okay, while I’m wrestling with phpBB and trying to get a set of forums up, I’ve taken down the design ideas previously posted (as Slopey pointed out, its probably much better to put those in a less public place, and insist on registration before they can be read). I’m also going to put a wiki site up somewhere here as well, so it can be used for internal documentation and development stuff.

What do you mean, I’m just playing with all these new web-toys? Shame on you. Legitimate development work, of course it is.