Big Update to TGEA on the way!
by Matt Fairfax · 01/18/2008 (10:38 pm) · 128 comments
Hi GarageGames Community! I know I have been awfully quiet recently but trust me...it was worth it!
Ever since I handed off community management to the supremely capable hands of David Blake, I have been jamming away on the next big update to Torque. As many of you know, we spent much of 2007 merging the Torque C++ engine products into one code base which we've been referring to as Torque Juggernaut. There are big opportunities here to update both TGEA and TGE. I focused on TGEA 1.0.3 as a start here, but as you'll see below, we've made some *big* moves.
Huge credit goes to Clark and his team working on the core engine for all their hard work on Juggernaut over the past year. Juggernaut includes lots of updates, bug fixes, and feature additions to the Torque line up. What we're looking to release here will look a lot like TGEA, but it's really another stepping stone to our longer term goal of a fully componentized Torque Engine.
TGEA...more is on the way
What you'll see:
All the features of TGEA 1.0.3 PLUS 99% of TGE 1.5.2 PLUS:
Multiple Terrain Tiles (with full editor support)
Stronghold (starter.fps)
TGE Feature Demo
Tim Aste's Forge demo
Shhhh... early yet, but this new demo is going to be BEAUTIFUL
Release will include SpaceOrc, TorqueOrc, Elf, Forge guy, Spacesuit guy, and BoomBot
TGB-style Offline Docs
At this point I am sure that there are a few questions on everyone's mind!
How much will this cost? This is a free update for TGEA owners. It doesn't get much better than that!
Will this include OpenGL? Sadly, no, this update will not include OpenGL. All of the work we have done on OpenGL is still not ready for release.
When will this update be ready? As always, this is a hard question to answer. GarageGames is more committed to high quality releases than ever before so this update will not go out the door until it is polished and ready. The Associates are already participating in a closed Beta and have been giving great help and feedback. I expect to have a fairly complete version of it demoing at GDC next month but I will not hesitate to put in a couple of extra weeks on documentation and bugfixing if it needs it (please email me if you would like to help with docs). There is still a lot of ground to cover but we are making rapid progress on it!
Hopefully everyone reading this is as excited as I am about this update! Be sure to go check out the awesome things that the game teams are doing with it in Fallen Empire: Legions
Fallen Empire: Legions
Ever since I handed off community management to the supremely capable hands of David Blake, I have been jamming away on the next big update to Torque. As many of you know, we spent much of 2007 merging the Torque C++ engine products into one code base which we've been referring to as Torque Juggernaut. There are big opportunities here to update both TGEA and TGE. I focused on TGEA 1.0.3 as a start here, but as you'll see below, we've made some *big* moves.
Huge credit goes to Clark and his team working on the core engine for all their hard work on Juggernaut over the past year. Juggernaut includes lots of updates, bug fixes, and feature additions to the Torque line up. What we're looking to release here will look a lot like TGEA, but it's really another stepping stone to our longer term goal of a fully componentized Torque Engine.
TGEA...more is on the wayWhat you'll see:
All the features of TGEA 1.0.3 PLUS 99% of TGE 1.5.2 PLUS:
- 1. A brand new completely abstracted sound system (SFX) with a DirectSound and OpenAL implementation (credit to Tom Spilman).
- 2. Major reworks of GFX layers and the addition of a D3D8 layer
- 3. All of the rendering objects should now support fixed function fallbacks for non-shadered video cards
- 4. Introduction of the Project Generator - a system that automates generating up-to-date Visual Studio projects files based on which "modules" of code you want to include
- 5. Significant directory reorganizations with an eye towards making it easier to work with for both experienced and new users
- 6. A ton of bugfixes done by the internal development team as they worked towards a fully componentized version of Torque
- 7. Lots of refactoring and general code cleanup
- 8. Port of some of the missing TGE classes including Lightning, fxShapeReplicator, and RigidShape
- 9. The famous Ben Garney's OPCODE polysoup collision implementation
- 10. Support for multiple legacy terrain tiles (including full editor support) - this should make building a paging terrain manager for massive environments a lot easier and will support realtime editing
Multiple Terrain Tiles (with full editor support)
- 11. Ports of the TGE demo and starter.fps with performance tweaks
Stronghold (starter.fps)
TGE Feature Demo- 12. A couple unreleased demos! A small team is slaving away to bring you a never-before-seen feature demo that will knock off those socks.
Tim Aste's Forge demo
Shhhh... early yet, but this new demo is going to be BEAUTIFUL
- 13. Previously unreleased Player models bringing the total count up to 6!
Release will include SpaceOrc, TorqueOrc, Elf, Forge guy, Spacesuit guy, and BoomBot- 14. Clipmapping support for legacy terrain allows higher resolution terrain textures and gives a general performance boost
- 15. Jeff Faust's fantastic AFX Kit should be updated for compatibility with this new version and he's already brought over most of the excellent bugfixes he posted on the TGEA forums including multiple particles per emitter
- 16. Reworked Material system is easier to use and performs better
- 17. Improved functionality in the Mission Editor with work from Dave Wyand, with a few new features that make it much easier to use
- 18. GUI Editor improvements making it easier to use
- 19. TGB-style offline docs and tutorials for better / faster accessibility
TGB-style Offline Docs
- 20. Abstracted Lighting allows you to plug in different lighting systems of your choice. Current built in options include:
- a) Basic Lighting System (really simple)
- b) John Kabus' Synapse Gaming Lighting System
At this point I am sure that there are a few questions on everyone's mind!
How much will this cost? This is a free update for TGEA owners. It doesn't get much better than that!
Will this include OpenGL? Sadly, no, this update will not include OpenGL. All of the work we have done on OpenGL is still not ready for release.
When will this update be ready? As always, this is a hard question to answer. GarageGames is more committed to high quality releases than ever before so this update will not go out the door until it is polished and ready. The Associates are already participating in a closed Beta and have been giving great help and feedback. I expect to have a fairly complete version of it demoing at GDC next month but I will not hesitate to put in a couple of extra weeks on documentation and bugfixing if it needs it (please email me if you would like to help with docs). There is still a lot of ground to cover but we are making rapid progress on it!
Hopefully everyone reading this is as excited as I am about this update! Be sure to go check out the awesome things that the game teams are doing with it in Fallen Empire: Legions
Fallen Empire: Legions
About the author
#42
01/19/2008 (12:41 pm)
Unreleased demos mentioned above are what I looking forward to see. Great!
#43
01/19/2008 (1:24 pm)
Frack me... I'm speechless! 
#44
- I hope that it holds more water than "hype for GDC". (meaning that we get it before Xmas) :D
01/19/2008 (2:10 pm)
Nice to see all of this information Matt.- I hope that it holds more water than "hype for GDC". (meaning that we get it before Xmas) :D
#45
01/19/2008 (2:40 pm)
Great work guys :D !
#46
Does this mean that Atlas will no longer be supported/updated?
01/19/2008 (3:05 pm)
Good news, hopefully it will be out soon.Quote:10. Support for multiple legacy terrain tiles (including full editor support) - this should make building a paging terrain manager for massive environments a lot easier and will support realtime editing
Does this mean that Atlas will no longer be supported/updated?
#47
01/19/2008 (3:13 pm)
How compatible are the 2 engine.. And its does seen that essentially that GG is rolling up the 3 products to A) reduce the ammount of support needed to give attention to its other products and B) give us something that was indeed promised . As everything i have read indicated that They have been trying to fix TGEA for a while. Somewhere i think Jeffs Fausts merging his AFX work with TGEA has had something to do with alot of this(read the AFX blogs for those that arent sure about the fixes he had to make the get AFX to work on TGEA, remarkably similar). Which leads to the next question. If This is Torque JuggerNaught. What is T2 going to consist of? This Juggernaut is apparently geared for IAC... will it work standard with Single/multiplayer codes? I mean how drastic is the c++ code changes. Will it render the current packs and work that folks have upgraded to TGEA 1.03 and TGE 1.5.2 no longer valid?
#48
Juggernaut was an internal initiative that was start some time ago to merge the core functionality of our 3 main engines (TGE, TGB, and TGEA)..
with the growth of our QA department and our expansion of initiatives into improving the documentation, we were finding that we were spending a lot of time planning and tracking redundant issues.. issues that existed in all 3 engines.. and we are talking about just the overhead of merging changes and testing back and forth between the engines.
Juggernaut, and the TGEA version that is being worked on now is the result of this work. It is mostly compatible with previous versions of TGE and TGEA, using the ShapeBase based game object classes. This is the version of the Engine that we used internally for the games we are working on internally for release on the Instant Action website.
T2 is the ongoing development of this Engine. The ongoing development is mostly based upon the move to the fully componentized game classes (prototyped in dRacer, design refined in Torque X). We are moving this direction because it will allow us to develop games much quicker, and for end users, it will make for a much more flexible engine (which is easier for us to support and update).
Changes made in T2 that are applicable to Juggernaut will be moved back, and these changes will be used to update existing engines if the updates are determined to be beneficial (meaning bug fixes and performance enhancements).
What you see here is the upgrade of TGEA to Juggernaut. The work put into this represents many months of effort by many people, and represents the latest changes that we ourselves have been working with to get a bunch of games ready to ship.
We have not been as transparent about it as most would prefer, but this is primarily because those working on this have been head down actually making it happen and not spending time talking about what we planned.. we were just executing on the plan. alot of which consisted of very non-sexy things like:
5. Significant directory reorganizations with an eye towards making it easier to work with for both experienced and new users
6. A ton of bugfixes done by the internal development team
7. Lots of refactoring and general code cleanup
which does not make for really good blog posts.
At the IGC this year, Clark Fagot and Justin Dujardin gave a presentation on where we were going, and if the slides for that presentation are available, it would be good to have those up here (if they are not already posted in someones previous blog).
I want to reiterate, that what you are seeing here is the result of many people over the last several months.
the merger with IAC has not decreased our focus on the tech, it has actually allowed us to expand the initiative to move much more quickly, and we actually have two teams working on this.. one, the engine team, is part of the game studio, is focused on getting the tech done and solid for use is in production game products.. and the product team, which is solely focused on handling the issues of preparing what we have produced into a shipping product for use by you guys.. this includes documentation, community support, sheperding the product through testing, etc.
hopefully this helps to clarify and not add additional confusion to this thread.
01/19/2008 (4:28 pm)
for clarification purposes.Juggernaut was an internal initiative that was start some time ago to merge the core functionality of our 3 main engines (TGE, TGB, and TGEA)..
with the growth of our QA department and our expansion of initiatives into improving the documentation, we were finding that we were spending a lot of time planning and tracking redundant issues.. issues that existed in all 3 engines.. and we are talking about just the overhead of merging changes and testing back and forth between the engines.
Juggernaut, and the TGEA version that is being worked on now is the result of this work. It is mostly compatible with previous versions of TGE and TGEA, using the ShapeBase based game object classes. This is the version of the Engine that we used internally for the games we are working on internally for release on the Instant Action website.
T2 is the ongoing development of this Engine. The ongoing development is mostly based upon the move to the fully componentized game classes (prototyped in dRacer, design refined in Torque X). We are moving this direction because it will allow us to develop games much quicker, and for end users, it will make for a much more flexible engine (which is easier for us to support and update).
Changes made in T2 that are applicable to Juggernaut will be moved back, and these changes will be used to update existing engines if the updates are determined to be beneficial (meaning bug fixes and performance enhancements).
What you see here is the upgrade of TGEA to Juggernaut. The work put into this represents many months of effort by many people, and represents the latest changes that we ourselves have been working with to get a bunch of games ready to ship.
We have not been as transparent about it as most would prefer, but this is primarily because those working on this have been head down actually making it happen and not spending time talking about what we planned.. we were just executing on the plan. alot of which consisted of very non-sexy things like:
5. Significant directory reorganizations with an eye towards making it easier to work with for both experienced and new users
6. A ton of bugfixes done by the internal development team
7. Lots of refactoring and general code cleanup
which does not make for really good blog posts.
At the IGC this year, Clark Fagot and Justin Dujardin gave a presentation on where we were going, and if the slides for that presentation are available, it would be good to have those up here (if they are not already posted in someones previous blog).
I want to reiterate, that what you are seeing here is the result of many people over the last several months.
the merger with IAC has not decreased our focus on the tech, it has actually allowed us to expand the initiative to move much more quickly, and we actually have two teams working on this.. one, the engine team, is part of the game studio, is focused on getting the tech done and solid for use is in production game products.. and the product team, which is solely focused on handling the issues of preparing what we have produced into a shipping product for use by you guys.. this includes documentation, community support, sheperding the product through testing, etc.
hopefully this helps to clarify and not add additional confusion to this thread.
#49
That's not even as positive as it was when TSE was in development. The fact that linux support [think "dedicated servers", let alone clients] isn't even considered anymore means I'm pretty glad I started using Ogre and a hotchpotch of other cross platform tools, instead :-/
Gary (-;
01/19/2008 (4:52 pm)
Quote:Sorry...no plans for Juggernaut. OpenGL and Mac support is still tentatively planned for our fully componetized version of Torque (what we called Torque 2 at IGC...that name may change).
That's not even as positive as it was when TSE was in development. The fact that linux support [think "dedicated servers", let alone clients] isn't even considered anymore means I'm pretty glad I started using Ogre and a hotchpotch of other cross platform tools, instead :-/
Gary (-;
#50
any chance that some animated water (ala tge) might find its way into the new code?
--Mike
01/19/2008 (5:14 pm)
good news indeed... and a verrrry pleasant and unexpected surprise i might add...any chance that some animated water (ala tge) might find its way into the new code?
--Mike
#52
01/19/2008 (8:02 pm)
Will there be an Exis credit screen in Tim's Forge demo, for the weapon model ? 
#53
01/19/2008 (8:31 pm)
I should clarify, the weapon model in those pictures was placeholder from the Legions 2006 TSE tech demo. A separate weapon model will be included with these demos.
#55
Cant wait to get my hands on this code
01/19/2008 (9:12 pm)
Bout time! i've been wanting to update the sound code but i knew that it was being worked on! Very excelent update indead!Cant wait to get my hands on this code
#56
A question: is there any chance for something like polysoup collision for vehicles? IMHO the out-of-the-box vehicle collision is so crude it would need tons of rewriting for a commercial product. A shame when most other TGEA features are so impressive. A better vehicle collision algorithm would be the missing piece of the puzzle :) Either way, Juggernaut seems like a great iteration!
01/19/2008 (9:19 pm)
All sounds great!A question: is there any chance for something like polysoup collision for vehicles? IMHO the out-of-the-box vehicle collision is so crude it would need tons of rewriting for a commercial product. A shame when most other TGEA features are so impressive. A better vehicle collision algorithm would be the missing piece of the puzzle :) Either way, Juggernaut seems like a great iteration!
#57
Oh ...and give everyone on the team a cookie, they deserve it.
01/20/2008 (3:29 am)
well .. I'm stunned.. keep up the great work. Oh ...and give everyone on the team a cookie, they deserve it.
#58
C'mon guys, it does not take 4 years to fix 100 bugs... and add few functions
01/20/2008 (5:38 am)
No OpenGL/Mac support ---> real show-stoper :(C'mon guys, it does not take 4 years to fix 100 bugs... and add few functions
#59
01/20/2008 (6:22 am)
This .plan makes me nostalgic. 
#60
01/20/2008 (7:32 am)
Wow thats looks like a huge improvement in the engine, and super work. I look forward to checking it out when released :). Its too bad about the lack of mac/opengl support though, as it rules out the engine for some projects, no matter how much great work you do.
Torque Owner Gary Preston