Preface

Torque 3D is a low cost, fully featured game engine that provides a time-tested foundation in multiplayer networking and a next generation graphics engine. This game engine provides the TorqueScript scripting language to allow users to start building their games, and also full source code to the engine when users are serious about making the game engine their own. Torque 3D comes with a suite of tools that allows the user to craft their game worlds, and supports industry standard file formats for graphics and sound. Torque 3D also supports using Physics third-party libraries, such as PhysX and Bullet, and the FMOD sound library when the user wants to take advantage of what these libraries have to offer.

Out-of-the-box Torque 3D allows the user to create a wide variety of games without needing to look to other sources to fill in the gaps, other than the usual graphics and sound editing tools, of course. This plus access to source code is the reason, a number of educational institutions are using Torque 3D in their courses.

Torque 3D Game Engine Cookbook is a practical reference guide to the latest version of the Torque 3D game engine, and takes the reader beyond the basics provided by the GarageGames FPS Tutorial. Each chapter covers a common topic of game development, and exposes the reader to some less understood and hidden gems that developers may not come across through other material. By the end of the book, readers should come away with a better understanding of the internals of the Torque 3D game engine, and be inspired to try new things that they may not have thought of before.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, TorqueScript: The Only Script You Need to Know, covers the scripting language of Torque 3D. TorqueScript is used to define game objects and to create the rules of play. This chapter teaches some important— and often lesser known – TorqueScript concepts and shortcuts.

Chapter 2 , Working with Your Editors, looks at using the various editors that are part of Torque 3D that are used to build your game. Many of these recipes will help you work faster, or help add that extra bit of polish and performance to your game.

Chapter 3, Graphical User Interface, discusses some important graphical user interface concepts that often come up while working on a game, but whose information can be hard to come by. The recipes in this chapter make use of Torque 3D’s built-in GUI editor to arrange controls, as well as TorqueScript to define how the controls operate.

Chapter 4, Camera and Mouse Controls, explores the various camera types available in Torque 3D, and their control by the user and the game. Beyond controlling the in-game camera, this chapter also covers using the mouse to manipulate objects within a game.

Chapter 5, Your Graphics Evolved, introduces Torque 3D’s graphics pipeline through the creation of custom-coded materials and postFx. This includes taking advantage of Torque 3D’s advanced lighting model. This chapter also covers using the built-in video recording features of Torque 3D.

Chapter 6, Make That Sound Happen, is where we discover the various methods of playing sound effects in Torque 3D and when to use them. This chapter also touches on how to modify a game’s music or other sound according to the current gameplay mood.

Chapter 7, Game Objects, takes us into the details of some of the objects that make up a game’s atmosphere. This includes background animation, precipitation, lightning, and triggering events throughout an in-game day.

Chapter 8, Multiplayer Servers, shows us how to start up and allow others to connect to our game, as well as how to administer it. In addition, we discover how to access the player’s connections on a client or server, and how to broadcast a message to all connected players.

Chapter 9, Importance of Networking, provides several examples of connecting Torque 3D to various external network services, and how to make Torque 3D respond to network requests. This chapter also covers how to send event messages between a game’s clients and server.

Chapter 10, Miscellaneous Gameplay Features, looks at the various parts of Torque 3D that help you expand on the gameplay rules that are already available, as well as how to build your own. This includes modifying how player and weapon objects function, finding any objects within a given range, and making use of Torque 3D’s message producer/consumer system.

What you need for this book

Torque 3D Game Development Cookbook is useful for the majority of Torque 3D developers. Each chapter covers a common topic of game development, starting with TorqueScript, the scripting language of Torque 3D used to define game objects and build gameplay rules. It is expected that the reader has completed the FPS Tutorial available on the GarageGames site (www.garagegames.com/products/torque-3d) or the equivalent. A basic understanding of TorqueScript and using Torque 3D’s built-in editors is required.

Torque 3D is now an open source product under the MIT license, and is available for free to everyone. Links to the latest version and other useful information is available from the Torque 3D product page on the GarageGames site at www.garagegames.com/products/torque-3d. The source code and example templates are also available directly from the GitHub repository at www.github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D. In order to compile the game engine from the source code you will need to have access to Visual Studio. You may also download a precompiled package by following the instructions on the Torque 3D GitHub repository.

Any text editor may be used to create and edit TorqueScript files. Torsion, a commercial TorqueScript editor, may be used as an alternative. It is available for purchase from the GarageGames web store.

Who this book is for

Torque 3D Game Development Cookbook is aimed at developers that are interested is working with the latest version of the Torque 3D game engine. This book will be helpful for developers that have already gone through the FPS Tutorial on the GarageGames site and are looking for more information on getting the most out of Torque 3D.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: Change its noCursor property from a value of 1 to a value of 0.

A block of code is set as follows:

%val1 = “1 2 3”;
%val2 = setWord( %val1, 5, “4”);
echo( getWordCount( %val2 ) ); 

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

// Load up the Game GUIs
   exec(“art/gui/defaultGameProfiles.cs”);
   exec(“art/gui/PlayGui.gui”);
   exec(“art/gui/ChatHud.gui”);
   exec(“art/gui/playerList.gui”);
   exec(“art/gui/hudlessGui.gui”);
   exec(“art/gui/controlsHelpDlg.gui”);
   exec(“art/gui/mainmenulevel.gui”);
   exec(“art/gui/mainmenulevelsplash.gui”); 

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

operateOnFields1();

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: “ Drag-and-drop the GuiTextEditCtrl control on to Canvas of the editor to the left-hand side.”.

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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