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Torque Collaborative World Design Tool [Call for beta testing]

Name:	fairuz
Date Posted:	Mar 27, 2008
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ArrowMaker Productions is happy to announce our latest product; the Torque Collaborative Design World Tool for both TGE and TGEA version.

The Torque Collaborative World Design Tool (TCWDT) is unlike any other games level design tool. For the first time ever multiple indie level designers can join together sharing the same virtual space and time, to create and manipulate a level simultaneously in real-time from anywhere in the world.

This new collaborative world design tool will allow for better communication between level designers; to make the level design process as easy and fluid as possible. We have also included many improvements and tweaks to the World Editor making design more efficient and intuitive.

One main strength of TCWDT is it does not require a dedicated server setup. Any level designer can easily setup and host a level. Once hosted, clients with prior authorization can access the hosted level and share the assets for further collaborative level editing.

Perhaps one of the best things about the tool is you can contribute! We would love to hear your feedback as well as ideas for new features that you would like to see added. We want to see the process of level design streamlined and the quality of design brought to the next level. You can help.

We are currently conducting a product beta-test for both versions of the TCWDT. Feel free download it here.

Click here to view a video demonstration of TCWDT.

Please provide your comments, feedback, feature request and questions on our support forum. We look forward to hearing from you.

To go to our Support Forum, click here.

ArrowMaker Productions
arrowmakerproductions@gmail.com

Recent Blog Posts

List:	04/30/08 - TCWDT for TGEA 1.7 [Call for beta testing] 03/27/08 - Torque Collaborative World Design Tool [Call for beta testing]

Submit your own resources!

Maxim Lyulyukin (Mar 27, 2008 at 14:30 GMT)

looks cool, very helpfull when working remotely ^____^

Mark Dynna (Mar 27, 2008 at 14:40 GMT)

Very, very interesting. This could greatly benefit our project. I'm downloading it now, and will give it a try as soon as I can.

Sparkling (Mar 27, 2008 at 15:16 GMT)

YES!!!!!! *Cheers for the Victors!*

Thanks so much for offering this as Open Beta! We have been looking for a solution to get all (or even just a few! or even TWO!) worldbuilders into the game dev world at the same time! SOOO many times we've been trying to communicate what needs to be done and it would be so incredibly much easier to have both people in the game world at the same time so we can say "This house here has a problem," and the other person can say "Oh, yeah that can be fixed real easy, you jsut do this..." and so on and so forth. As it is now, we have one person in the game world and then the other people in IRC or Teamspeak and communicating that way. It's cumbersome and only partially effective. We've needed a multi-user world editor for on about 3 years now. We would LOVE to help beta test this! We've got a small team of developers, our code is managed with Tortoise SVN, and we have our own in-house master server on which we can manage the testing. My lead programmer, Mark Dynna, spotted this resource and pointed me to it. He will be managing any code changes that might be neccessary in the development process, I see you've already met him above. :)

Please contact me at your earliest convenience. I would love to hear from you!
-Sparkling
Owner and CEO
Heaven's Blessings Tiny Zoo
Sparkling@visionsdev.com
Edited on Mar 27, 2008 15:19 GMT

Dave Young (Mar 27, 2008 at 15:34 GMT)

First off, well done. This is a very handy concept. Still need to test multiplayer, but the editor itself has some great new features which are good to have. Some things I would add:

1) A finite translate/rotate tool. Buttons to move an object along whatever axis in user specified increments, or rotate by degrees. I've made a simple one I can give you to use as a base if you like. This is one of those must-haves when building a large environment and trying to line things up.

2) Right click menu- drop to ground. It's a nasty workflow hiccup to have to change your Drop Style back and forth so often, a stock problem

3) Show some visual indicator on an object that someone else has it selected and might be working with it.

I'll be picking this up definitely!

Dave Young (Mar 27, 2008 at 15:37 GMT)

Also, when you use the edit tool to move or rotate an object by typing in values, the normal inspector values don't change. This can actually be kind of handy because it allows you to hit apply on the inspector and 'undo' your change if you need to, but thought I'd mention it.

Russell Fincher (Mar 27, 2008 at 16:32 GMT)

Multiplayer level design? You just blew my mind.

Rodney (OldRod) Burns (Mar 27, 2008 at 16:56 GMT)

Wow, that looks great! Good job! :)

Ed Johnson (Mar 27, 2008 at 17:19 GMT)

You guys took the word out of my mouth.... wow! lol

This is indeed a huge step forward for world building as a team. Thanks!

fairuz (Mar 27, 2008 at 20:34 GMT)

Hi all,

Thank you.

We have added a link to our Support Forum here and in the intial post.

Please try it and let us know what you think and would like to see. Post your comments and suggestions on the forum.

Thanks again and we would love to hear from you.

ArrowMaker Productions
Edited on Mar 27, 2008 21:30 GMT

J. Erick Christgau (Mar 27, 2008 at 21:42 GMT)

It's great that you're adding this feature to Torque, it is sadly lacking. However, you're not the first. Hero Engine has done it for a while. Not that I recommend their engine or pricing (yikes), but just FYI.

Thomas Oliver (Mar 28, 2008 at 00:26 GMT)

Great addition to the engine I must say. I love being able to work with multi people on laying out a large city or level. I do wish you could get terrain editing tied in but that is a major beast to tackle and would require a fair amount of engine changes to get fully working.

I would love to see this updated to the latest editor on TGEA 1.7 as I feel just all around its a better editor setup.

But nice job on starting to bring the editor side of Torque upto some of the more expensive engines.

Ryan V. Jaeger (Mar 28, 2008 at 05:01 GMT)

About time someone came out with this for torque!

Does this get rid of the normal alt/shift/ctrl functions, or does it just add the menu context for the functions?

fairuz (Mar 28, 2008 at 16:15 GMT)

We are currently investigating to support: (1) Torque X 3D and (2) TGEA 1.7.

We've added an email link to the initial post and also here. Anyone wishing to email us instead, please use arrowmakerproductions@gmail.com.

ArrowMaker Productions

David Blake (Mar 28, 2008 at 21:41 GMT)

Cool feature. Sauerbraten and Cube were designed around this concept before Hero was announced. Good to see a group working on it in Torque!

Sparkling (Apr 03, 2008 at 17:21 GMT)

Works pretty well over the LAN but we're having some trouble getting the Internet collaboration to work. Our server does not show up on the list. There doesn't seem to be any way to force the server to be listed. Can you offer any help in this? I sent an email last night, feel free to respond there as needed.

Thanks!
-Sparkling
tinyzoo@yahoo.com

fairuz (Apr 04, 2008 at 02:25 GMT)

@ Sparkling

We are looking into it. Stay tuned !!!

ArrowMaker Productions
Edited on Apr 04, 2008 02:26 GMT

Charles Tkaczuk (Apr 25, 2008 at 17:21 GMT)

Excellent.

Would it be possible to edit the level via code so that certain objects could be placed based on other objects. Ex. If a level designer added a sidewalk, then an automated light post installation program could be run which would determine road placement and drop light posts where needed.

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