Dang, I just realized how long it had been since I'd done anything here, hehe. I've been busy busy on TorqueSchool and also some personal projects which you will see of soon.
At the moment I am in the middle of trying to make a few classes work. Unfortunatly I didn't have all of my materials ready when I thought I was going to, but most of the students have been cool about it. The few that have shown up, at least lol. I give all the info about the IRC and my other contact info, but only a few have participated so far. Granted there have been a few occasions where I forget to launch my IRC client after a restart, so If I'm not online its probably something like that lol. As the courses get further developed and word spreads from our students of the quality of the material and instruction.
TorqueSchool's upcoming flagship courses are going to be the TGE 101 and TGB 101 courses. We've got some solid stuff we think will really help those new to either engines. The 101 classes each focus on the script side, with 102 companion courses that go 'under the hood' of the engine. I should be announcing their official availability here in the next few days, but if you take a peek on the Subscriptions page... shh.. they're already there.
Heres the deal: We aren't sure exactly how many people are going to sign up. It could be 10, it could be 20, it could be 50. We can handle 10 and 20, we definitly can't handle 50 (yet), so we're going to be selling 'tickets' to the course on a first-come first-serve basis. For $100 you get a ticket to a seat in the course, and if you're one of the first 20-40 to sign up, you will be able to enroll for the first session of class, Monday April 7th. Depending on how many signups we get we may have to bring more instructors and/or tutors on board.
On the personal side, I've been working on some gamepad stuff recently. I purchased a little gadget for 10 bucks that allows me to plug in my Xbox, GameCube, and PS2 console controllers in my PC. Well, when I told my buddies in the IRC this none f them seemed as suprised as I was of this. Well, its new to me!
And its been a whole lot of fun to implement . Some games just feel better with a game pad, and designing your game to work well with them can take work. I've figured out how to get the engine to recognize the different controller devices and set them up as Xboxpad0, PS2pad0, and GCpad0 instead of gamepad 0,1,2.. etc.
I am also working on a set of example GUIs layouts to go with aformentioned controller resource. Main menus, character selects, level selects, pause... what you'd expect from a console game. Oh, did I mention this stuff will be free? Yeah, free is good
Today is the first day of my Intro to Torque Art class. I just got done sending out an email with the getting started info. I am looking forward to the next few weeks, as I will be working with my students, helping them make their own game art. I will also be working on course materials, revising the Intro course's materials and working on my upcoming courses.
I am thrilled to announce that my next course, Advanced Torque Art: Weapons is ready for registration and class will begin November 12th, a little less than a month from now. This course will also be available for the Introductory price of $80 until November 1st, at which time the price will be the full $200.
As the name suggests, this course is designed to teach you how to properly model and script different kinds of weapons for different kinds of games. The first two weeks focuses on the types of weapons and combat you'll see in the wide range of games that people call "First Person Shooters", from firearms to explosives, throwing stars to heat seaking missiles. Not only how to make them look and sound, but make them act as they should. The second week focuses on melee or contact-based combat, such as swords, sheilds, punching, kicking, biting. You can read more about it here.
Just as with my other course, in this class you will receive:
100+ pages of graphical lecture material and tutorials.
Videos that complement the written materials (lecture and tutorials).
Communication with instructors and peers via IRC, forums, email, and phone.
I'll be available for One-on-one and group assistance almost every day.
Yours and your peer's submitted assignments will be available to download to learn from and critique.
Links to other relevant information, further reading, and book recommendations.
Access to future sessions of the course, including all updated materials, for 90 days after purchase (~3 sessions).
It will be jolly good fun, I hope you will join me! Comments and questions can be posted below.
Happy Torquing!
Last Updated ( Monday, 15 October 2007 )
Advanced Camera Action
Written by Ed Johnson
Wednesday, 03 October 2007
I've been doing some experiments with the Advanced Camera Resource for one of my upcoming courses, a 3d platformer workshop, and have made a bit of progress.
Here is my First Youtube video, testing the advanced camera in track mode:
I was trying to get the track camera to move along two axis but stay fixed in a third, and then I found the Orbit mode and started playing with it. By setting the azimuth to 0 and declination to something high like 150, I get the effect of a 3d side-scrolling camera. Oh yeah, I'm also using a Player Movement resource that makes the player move relative to the camera (press right to move right, etc).
It may be a bit of hackery, but it works for now. If anyone can think of a better way of getting a similar effect, so that the player can walk left in a straight line without falling off the front or back of platforms, let me know!
