What is the TGEA 1.7 MMO Kit Alpha
TGEA (Torque Game Engine Advanced) is the latest and greatest engine from GarageGames?. It supports DirectX Shaders up to Shader Model 3. Most of the active development from GarageGames? is going toward TGEA so you will get some of the best technology by using this engine. The latest TGE kit supports Shaders using TMK, but it still lacks in some areas compared to TGEA. There are other technologies such as Atlas (Terrain paging System), MegaTerrains?, PolySoup?, Materials, and multiple others.
Alpha is used to represent the status of the TGEA version of the Torque MMOKit. Currently, a lot of work and testing is being put into this product and it is ready for testing and perhaps some development if you are comfortable with programming in C++ and Python, but there are still some moderate to major issues that still need to be addressed. In addition, there are no major running instances of the TGEA kit so it is classified as untested. It is using pretty much 99% of the same Python server code and a lot of the modifications used in the TGE kit, but things work a bit differently here and there.
Currently, TGEA is DirectX9 only so it only works with Microsoft. The next version of TGEA is going to support OpenGL so it will be able to support all 3 Operating Systems eventually making for an excellent choice in that arena as well.
Should I use the TGEA kit??
If you are looking to use TGEA to make an MMO than the short answer is yes. It is not suggested that beginners should pick up this version of the kit until it in a better state. It is useable as it is now, but there are still some flaws and a lot of untested sections of the code.
As an option you can use the TGE version of the code and you will be able to move over a lot of your work to TGEA in the future. While onethe strength of TGEA is arguably in the Atlas terrain paging system, it does support the legacy terrain used in TGE. You will also most likely need to convert your DIF files so make sure you have the original MAP files or test the ones you are using in TGE if you plan on migrating to TGEA in the future.
Who is working or using the TGEA kit??
There are a few community users working with the TGEA kit and are actively contributing fixes toward the project. It is slowly moving because we all have our own projects to work on, but it is moving forward slowly. The TGEA kit is not being used or contributed to currently by PrarieGames? in their work with MoM, so it is something of a separate entity.
Known Issues
There is a tracker setup for this project. You can find it here.
http://www.rafermand.com/mantis/roadmap_page.php
As for the major issues as of 3/9/2009 they are the following
* Still some sound issues (debugging these right now)
* Map does not work
* Weather system does not work
* Swimming is partially updated
* Flying needs to be reimplemented
* Classic Terrain (TGE) has some camera issues
These will be addressed eventually, but for the time being they are what they are.
