TGEA 1.8 Beta is now available!
by Matt Fairfax · 11/13/2008 (5:08 pm) · 75 comments
Get your Mac on!
Brace yourselves! Hell is freezing over and the Apocalypse is nigh! Well...maybe just a small apocalypse =) The impossible has happened and TGEA is finally available for the Mac! Go ahead and pay up those of you who placed your bets in the wrong direction =)I am happy to announce that you can now snag the first TGEA 1.8 Beta from your account. This is a FREE update if you already own TGEA (why wouldn't you?).
Get the TGEA 1.8 Beta now
Time to switch!
Now that TGEA is on the Mac, there really isn't any reason to not upgrade from TGE. In addition to the benefits of Torque's amazing real-time in-game editors, best in the industry networking, robust and fast terrain engine, and easy-to-use scripting languages, you also get access to our powerful shader-driven Material system, the limitless potential of the paging Atlas terrain system, the improvements to our legacy terrain system known as MegaTerrain, more examples and demos, and the far superior documentation to help get you on your way!You will also get access to our latest and greatest tech like the new, easier to use ResourceManager (I can't wait to show you the potential of that) and the heavily refactored and vastly improved GFX2. As if that wasn't enough, you will be setting yourself up for easier upgrades to some of the truly fantastic tech we have coming down the pipe!
Yeah...my jaw dropped too!
I was the primary architect and engineer on TGE 1.5 and I am proud to say that it has well stood the test of time. It is one of the best products that GarageGames has ever produced. However, trust me when I say that TGEA 1.8 is a true replacement for TGE and is well worth the upgrade. Moving forward TGEA will be our flagship product and I would love to have you along for the ride. Do yourself a favor and make the switch!
System Requirements
In order to get a Mac version of TGEA to you guys at any point during this decade, we had to focus our efforts on a limited set of Mac hardware and OS. You may be able to get it to run on older Macs and weaker video cards, but "officially" we are only supporting:- Intel-based Macs
- 2 Gb System Memory
- ATI or nVidia shader model 2.0+ video cards with 256 Mb video RAM
- OS X 10.5.5 (we highly recommend updating to 10.5.6 when it comes out...it fixes some serious driver bugs)
Calling all Mac gurus!
In software development a "beta" is defined as "feature complete but with known issues" and that holds true for this TGEA 1.8 Beta. There are still some rough edges but we feel like it is at a level that you guys can start to dig in and help us get this product to a polished release state.Feel free to peruse our known issues list and hop over into the TGEA Bugs forum and start posting anything new you find. Also start posting bugfixes to those issues! It is no secret that we are a primarily Windows development house and, while I am proud of what we have accomplished so far, we could definitely use a hand on the Mac side. I know there are some really passionate Mac developers in our community, so let's get this done!
Come dev with me
Dance, dance, docos
Our indefatigable docs engineer Michael Perry continues to push our docs to new heights. As part of that effort, he has been working on the TGEA 1.8 docs on TDN for the last few weeks. We plan to continue to refine these and add more content over the course of the Beta and, once we are ready to do the final release, these docs will be pulled down with our handy-dandy TDN->DocGenerator convertor and added to the Official TGEA Docs and the offline docs that ship with the SDK. Pretty cool, huh? You guys get to see our docs evolve right before your eyes!
Gotta love Rokkitball on the Mac
Special Thanks
There are a lot of people who have helped to get TGEA 1.8 out to you guys and I will definitely be giving them major credit in my upcoming blogs, but for this one I really wanted to highlight the man without whom none of this would be possible: Alex Scarborough
I hear Alex is willing to accept hugs in lieu of beer ;)
Alex has the often thankless job of being the GarageGames "Mac Guy." If it wasn't for his wholehearted devotion to bringing the next generation of Torque to the Mac, I seriously doubt it would have happened. He has been working on this for years (check out the Modernization Kit and the Mac InstantAction games) and it is really nice to be able to finally bring all of that effort to fruition! I think it is safe to say that everyone owes him a beer!
Now, go forth and bring bountiful bugfixes to all!
About the author
I am a Game Designer at PopCap who has worked on PvZ Adventures, PvZ2, Peggle Blast, and Bejeweled Skies. I am an ex-GarageGames employee who helped ship TGE, TGEA, Torque 3D, and Constructor.
#3
11/13/2008 (5:34 pm)
Nice work, guys! Looks like the best Torque release yet! :) 
#4
Hopefully I'll get to play around with this soon. Definatly looking forward to the additions to GFX with render state batches and all that, as well as the upcoming ResManager.
Have a nice weekend!
11/13/2008 (5:40 pm)
Thanks Alex, Matt and everyone else involved in this.Hopefully I'll get to play around with this soon. Definatly looking forward to the additions to GFX with render state batches and all that, as well as the upcoming ResManager.
Have a nice weekend!
#5
11/13/2008 (5:41 pm)
Unbelievable! Great work GG! 
#6
11/13/2008 (5:43 pm)
About three weeks ago, Matt Fairfax and Alex Scarborough got into this lunchtime conversation on the state of TGEA, Mac game development and a host of other topics. It began at noon and lasted over five hours. In honor of their ridiculous dedication to getting this beta out the door, we made the following motivational poster of their actual conversation, with Alex on the left and Matt Fairfax talking about it front and center:
#7
11/13/2008 (5:49 pm)
So the forest pack will be available soon for the TGEA 1.8? Just wondering. 
#8
Great job, guys. Good to see you and Alex working your magic there!
11/13/2008 (5:56 pm)
Ah, crap. There goes another $145.Great job, guys. Good to see you and Alex working your magic there!
#9
I wish it was only $145 USD. I'm still waiting to get TGEA 1.7.1. But with the current exchange rates with NZD the upgrade costs @ $300 NZD, I'm trying not to even think of the cost for the full version atm! :(
Just hoping no new version of TGEA comes out before I buy my upgrade from TGE. Fiingers crossed! ;)
11/13/2008 (6:19 pm)
@Rubes I wish it was only $145 USD. I'm still waiting to get TGEA 1.7.1. But with the current exchange rates with NZD the upgrade costs @ $300 NZD, I'm trying not to even think of the cost for the full version atm! :(
Just hoping no new version of TGEA comes out before I buy my upgrade from TGE. Fiingers crossed! ;)
#10
Interesting fact: My WWE ring name is "Mich the Indefatigable Documentation Black Belt"
11/13/2008 (6:51 pm)
Excellent write up Matt. Screens look really really good!Interesting fact: My WWE ring name is "Mich the Indefatigable Documentation Black Belt"
#11
11/13/2008 (7:00 pm)
First off this is amazing, thanks for all your hard work. Second off will openGL work on the PC? 
#13
Also, *coughcough* that tropical forest looks really cool.
11/13/2008 (7:34 pm)
Now who (community) wants to port this to *nix (preferably Ubuntu 8.10)? :PAlso, *coughcough* that tropical forest looks really cool.
#14
Steven,
The Forest Kit won't be out for TGEA 1.8 but you will be seeing more of it pretty soon. There is actually a real estimated release date for it which we will be talking about more in the next couple of months.
Greg,
DirectX for Windows and OpenGL for the Mac. If you look you'll notice that we compile OpenGL on Windows but that is mostly for reference in Visual Studio...it won't actually work if you run it. Microsoft has made it pretty clear that they aren't interested in pushing forward with OpenGL on Windows and that is fine...DirectX is a really good graphics API and well worth working with on Windows.
If you are concerned about bringing OpenGL code over from another project then you have to understand that with TGEA you don't write OpenGL code (unless you are helping us bugfix ;). You write GFX code which TGEA automatically "converts" into DirectX on Windows on OpenGL on Mac. You will have to go through the process of converting your OpenGL rendering code to GFX rendering code (not very hard).
All,
One thing I forgot to mention in my blog:
For the bugfixing we are primarily concerned about bugs caused by our merge to GFX2. This is mostly graphical bugs and a few editor/ResourceManager related issues. You are welcome to continue to report other types of general TGEA bugs but it is unlikely that we will have the time to spend on them for 1.8. However, the good news is that, once 1.8 makes it out, the current plans are to spend a big chunk of time doing some serious bugfixing and polishing =)
11/13/2008 (7:36 pm)
Thanks for all of the praise so far =) (and the embarrassing picture =P)Steven,
The Forest Kit won't be out for TGEA 1.8 but you will be seeing more of it pretty soon. There is actually a real estimated release date for it which we will be talking about more in the next couple of months.
Greg,
DirectX for Windows and OpenGL for the Mac. If you look you'll notice that we compile OpenGL on Windows but that is mostly for reference in Visual Studio...it won't actually work if you run it. Microsoft has made it pretty clear that they aren't interested in pushing forward with OpenGL on Windows and that is fine...DirectX is a really good graphics API and well worth working with on Windows.
If you are concerned about bringing OpenGL code over from another project then you have to understand that with TGEA you don't write OpenGL code (unless you are helping us bugfix ;). You write GFX code which TGEA automatically "converts" into DirectX on Windows on OpenGL on Mac. You will have to go through the process of converting your OpenGL rendering code to GFX rendering code (not very hard).
All,
One thing I forgot to mention in my blog:
For the bugfixing we are primarily concerned about bugs caused by our merge to GFX2. This is mostly graphical bugs and a few editor/ResourceManager related issues. You are welcome to continue to report other types of general TGEA bugs but it is unlikely that we will have the time to spend on them for 1.8. However, the good news is that, once 1.8 makes it out, the current plans are to spend a big chunk of time doing some serious bugfixing and polishing =)
#15
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Congratulations... this time I really think its a no-brainer to pick TGEA for any new project.
I second the question of Greg Gardinier... does OGL works in Windows? I wonder because in a laptop integrated card (like the Intel 950) the TGE D3D driver delivers about 8 FPS in a simple map while the OGL driver delivers about 30FPS. I also get a lot of artifacts (in TGE and TGEA) specially in the shadows while using D3D which show fine in TGE OGL (I can send screenshots if requested).
Other question... has anybody tried TGEA in small PCs like all those new little webbooks?
I hope the Beta goes as expected and we get this amazing engine ready for development soon.
Luck!
Guimo
11/13/2008 (7:47 pm)
I think this was answered in the previous post. Thanks!--------------------------------------------------
Congratulations... this time I really think its a no-brainer to pick TGEA for any new project.
I second the question of Greg Gardinier... does OGL works in Windows? I wonder because in a laptop integrated card (like the Intel 950) the TGE D3D driver delivers about 8 FPS in a simple map while the OGL driver delivers about 30FPS. I also get a lot of artifacts (in TGE and TGEA) specially in the shadows while using D3D which show fine in TGE OGL (I can send screenshots if requested).
Other question... has anybody tried TGEA in small PCs like all those new little webbooks?
I hope the Beta goes as expected and we get this amazing engine ready for development soon.
Luck!
Guimo
#16
11/13/2008 (7:54 pm)
In TGE, (an outdated version of) Direct3D is supported via an OpenGL wrapper which itself is the reason for poor performance and compatibility issues. Direct3D is by far the best supported API when running under Windows (especially Vista). Check out Matt's answer above regarding GFX2 which is the (neato) graphics abstraction layer.
#17
Out of the box TGEA struggles a little with the integrated Intel chipsets. Mostly it is because the Intel drivers blatantly lie about the cards capabilities (reporting more texture units or a higher shader model than the video card is actually capable of).
However, TGEA does have a reasonably good "card profiling" system that allows GFX to enable or disable certain features based on which card you have. Currently, we aren't making use of this to inform TGEA of the real capabilities of the Intel chipsets so that it can scale down appropriately, but it wouldn't be hard for a serious developer to do that themselves.
11/13/2008 (8:11 pm)
Guimo,Out of the box TGEA struggles a little with the integrated Intel chipsets. Mostly it is because the Intel drivers blatantly lie about the cards capabilities (reporting more texture units or a higher shader model than the video card is actually capable of).
However, TGEA does have a reasonably good "card profiling" system that allows GFX to enable or disable certain features based on which card you have. Currently, we aren't making use of this to inform TGEA of the real capabilities of the Intel chipsets so that it can scale down appropriately, but it wouldn't be hard for a serious developer to do that themselves.
#19
11/14/2008 (2:16 am)
Thank you, this is great news! How cool would it be if everyone here would be using the same engine?! This is a great leap in the right direction. Count me in for testing on the Mac! 
#20
I remember when I bought TSE, totally new to making games of computers and desperately looking for the red button. It was not there, but instead I began to learn about scoping, arrays, etc... How nasty was that, no red button that is, but whatever TSE was kind of cheap and I struggled on!
Why the above? Well, even though some even have aired the feeling that "juggernaut/T2" was what GG used in their stuff, we the paying base was left behind. I can only say, and I'm often in a sceptical mood trying not to be ripped by yet another bastard, that what GG have been handing me down for free ever since I bought TSE -has been absolutely incredible!
The development of GG's product range may at times have been non transparent, but as some guys have said; then make it yourself (or do a paid job, after all its games dev). But what have hit us through times, have been worth every hour of waiting (I'm not mentioning cash, as these engines are actually cheap)
So, even though I often have braced myself and tried to hold on to the table, I have yet again been fully blown off the chair -for free!
Bottom line is; thank you so much GG (the staff that is)
11/14/2008 (3:03 am)
TGEA 1.8 (for PC & Mac)I remember when I bought TSE, totally new to making games of computers and desperately looking for the red button. It was not there, but instead I began to learn about scoping, arrays, etc... How nasty was that, no red button that is, but whatever TSE was kind of cheap and I struggled on!
Why the above? Well, even though some even have aired the feeling that "juggernaut/T2" was what GG used in their stuff, we the paying base was left behind. I can only say, and I'm often in a sceptical mood trying not to be ripped by yet another bastard, that what GG have been handing me down for free ever since I bought TSE -has been absolutely incredible!
The development of GG's product range may at times have been non transparent, but as some guys have said; then make it yourself (or do a paid job, after all its games dev). But what have hit us through times, have been worth every hour of waiting (I'm not mentioning cash, as these engines are actually cheap)
So, even though I often have braced myself and tried to hold on to the table, I have yet again been fully blown off the chair -for free!
Bottom line is; thank you so much GG (the staff that is)
Associate Josh Engebretson
All hail Alex "the Mac Guy" Scarborough!!!!
TGEA F0r3v4h!!!!