Happy Holidays from everyone at TorqueSchool!

Greetings! I hope your winter has been a productive one. The folks working on the TorqueSchool project have enjoyed a little winter break, and are now getting ready to charge into the New Year of 2008 with a bigger, better TorqueSchool.

The first few months were a trial run of the courses and we have since taken a winter break to collect our thoughts and reorganize some things. We received much feedback, both positive and negative, and have been working on smoothing out the tougher aspects of learning Torque via an online course. I am pleased to announce our plans of expanding TorqueSchool with a completely redesigned website interface, more staff, and much more content available(courses, workshops, articles). I will be coordinating these efforts with the help and support of people like Dave Young and those in the DreamGames/GarageGames community.

To kick off the new year in full Torque style, we are offering a Holiday Special of $50 for 1 TorqueSchool course.
This is the lowest price a TS course will ever be, as these are complete courses. You can buy one for a friend, co-worker, or for yourself, and redeem it for the TorqueSchool course of your choice after February when the new website launches.


This Holiday Special will be running from Jan 1st thru Jan 31st
You can read more about the holiday special on our website. There you can see the courses in the works and what else we are developing. We will officially announce new courses on TorqueSchool.com and GarageGames.com as they are made available.

In addition to courses on the individual aspects of game development, from understanding the engine to creating the 3d art and sounds, there will also be Gaming Workshop courses designed to help budding game developers take their game idea from ideas to a playable prototype. I currently am working on a Platformer Game Workshop which will show you how to convert Torque's default first person shooter setup into a hack and slash action adventure game(reminiscent of Mario, Sonic, Rayman, or Zelda). In the future I foresee RPG Game workshops, Driving Game workshops, RTS Game workshops, etc.

Those who participated in the first runs of the courses will be glad to know that the first 3 launch titles will be back and better than before, thanks to the feedback gathered. The planned video tutorials will be on-line then as well. Many thanks to the brave souls who braved the first drafts of the courses, your feedback is invaluable and I hope to see you back in class February!

With a complete redesign of the TorqueSchool website will come a focus for better communication with instant messaging, and rating/commenting on items. Also, In an effort to increase the amount of return traffic to TorqueSchool, our instructors will be writing short articles and tutorials available for free exclusively here at TorqueSchool.com. Check the site often for updates!

Over the next few weeks we will be looking for people to groom into various positions from course development, to administration, advisers and tutors, as well as experts in general game development. Interested in creating or reviewing content for TorqueSchool (Articles, courses, assignments, tutorials, workshops) ?
We have many opportunities for learning and success depending on your abilities and time available. Send me an email (ed@torqueschool.com) and tell me what you are interested in.

- Ed Johnson
TorqueSchool Administrator