Plan for Chris Calef

Edit: download it here:
www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=6950

Hello again! This is going to be a quick .plan, I just wanted to announce the test release of a project I'm working on for Garage Games. We've been unhappy with the length of the initial learning curve for beginning programmers when it comes to compiling Torque. In addition, we understand that, for some people, coming up with the price of the engine was a financial stretch, and they can't afford to shell out another $70 or whatever for Visual Studio.

This is why Garage Games decided to put together the Torque Build Environment. It is a free package containing a compiler and debugger (gcc/gdb from MinGW) and a code editing environment (Eclipse). The installer sets up the necessary configuration files in your Torque directory, and even takes you to java.com if it determines that you don't have a Java Runtime Environment installed yet (Eclipse needs it). The intent here is to give newbies a "one click" (okay, you have to click three or four times, but you get the idea) solution that immediately puts them into a code editing environment and compiles the engine for them.

The one caveat here is this: we're putting this out for the lowest common denominator, people who don't claim to know _anything_ about what's going on, and as such we didn't feel the need to bend over backwards accomodating everybody's choice of path, etc. It requires that you have already installed the torque SDK and that you put it in the DEFAULT directory, i.e. C:\Torque\SDK. If you have already installed torque and didn't put it there, you'll need to move it there before running this installer.

That's all. Other than that, it should work. I say, "should", because it's only been tested on a couple of machines so far. If you have a clean windows system sitting around with no compiler or anything on it, do us a favor and download the Torque Build Environment, read the readme, and report back to us -- did it work?

Mucho Gracias to Ron Yacketta and Matt Benya for the resources they posted re: compiling Torque with MinGW and Eclipse!

Enjoy!

Chris