Torsion Updated!

First off I'm at the GDC this week. If anyone wants to meet up just drop me a name and phone number to tom AT sickheadgames DOT com and I'll give you a call back. I hope to spend some time with the GG guys talking Torsion and checking out all the cool new stuff they're about to unleash upon us. =)










So aside from contract work Torsion has been my primary focus of late. Today I released a new version that has a significant amount of improvements. I think this will be the final alpha release. The next release will be a beta and be 100% feature complete.



A few notable changes:

• New project setting allows ignoring of select mod folders in both the project tree and for code completion.
• Enabled code completion for fields within object and datablock declarations.
• Script compiler errors are highlighted in the output window and they are double clickable.
• New error display within output window for spotting errors quickly.
• Added visibility toggle of left and bottom panes in view menu.
• Added preferences dialog exposing all customizable IDE settings.
• New optional pre-compile dumps the syntax errors of modified scripts into output window before execution.

PrecompilerIMO the coolest thing in the new release is the script precompiler.


When enabled it will compile any changed scripts before you launch your game. If you have any syntax errors they will be caught and reported in the output window. It works by calling your game executable with a special script file which just compiles a list of scripts. Since it uses your Torque executable it's always accurate and never misses or reports false errors. Say goodbye to alot of wasted time with this one feature.

The down side is that it assumes your Torque executable will run the script passed to it. If you have disabled this feature in your executable it won't work. I've added the ability to toggle it off per config to deal with that case.


Code Browser
The code browser has started to get a face lift, but it's not finished for this release. I've started to add filtering for different classes of identifier, but the mix isn't final yet. It now also shows the base class/datablock when you expand an object which is pretty handy. When you double click on an item it will take you to the script and line that identifier is declared in or will show you a list of locations to choose from.

I could use some feedback on this area of Torsion. There is a ton of data to display here and it's been challenging finding a way to display it all. I'm starting to think i need to do something different that what is normally seen in most IDEs.




Code Completion
This release has my third and final refactor of the code completion scanner engine. It took me a couple of tries before i got the design right as when i started the Torsion project i was pretty much a TorqueScript neophyte. Aside from the internal changes and performance improvements i added dot completion for the special %this local. I didn't get time on this pass, but it's all ready now to finish off all the other typical code completion features. I'll be on this right after GDC.





Preferences
Finally i've begun the process of exposing the preferences stored in the xml file to the IDE. All the coloring stuff is there as well as a few other toggles including tab size and type, disabling code folding, and code completion. There will be more options added now that the framework is in place to easily edit them. If you have a pet option go ahead and log it into our bug tracker.

Well... gotta get some lunch and rub elbows with industry folk. =)


Download Torsion
v1.0.544 Alpha