Torque 3D Development - Beta 3!
by Brett Seyler · 06/24/2009 (1:45 pm) · 130 comments
Thanks for your patience everyone. I know this was a longer stretch than expected between Beta 2 and 3, but wow, we've been busy!
Download Torque 3D Beta 3 from your Account
Again, we have an enormous list of new stuff (see below), improvements (~200), (fixes (100+) and known issues you'll find posting in the Torque 3D forums.
New Stuff in Beta 3!
Shape Editor - This new feature allows you to apply various changes to a mesh after it is loaded. You can merge animations, define nodes, rename meshes, and more. Tutorial video and extensive docs on this are forthcoming, but it's pretty intuitive to play with, so have fun!
Decal Editor - This allows you to quickly paint and edit decals in the scene. On the engine side, we've done a major rework of Decal-related source code, so it's now much more efficient and significantly easier to understand. As with the Shape Editor, we'll have a tutorial video and extensive docs available soon.
Mesh Road Editor - This allows you to quickly prototype a 3D mesh road. We're stressing the word "prototype" here because there's a lot this tool is not yet wired to do. For example, applying an arbitrary mesh profile (for different shaped roads with curbs for example) is not yet possible. This would be an excellent community project if someone want to give it a go, but we're going to leave this as a prototyping tool in this release.
Beta 3 also includes...
Mac / OSX Support for:
- Basic Lighting
- TerrainBlock
- Water
- ScatterSky
- CloudLayer
- Toolbox
- pureLIGHT
For the full monster list of improvements, fixes, and remaining known issues, see the Torque 3D forums for details.
If you're ready to move to Torque 3D, you can still get your $100 OFF pre-order discount right now. This discount will be reduced to $50 OFF at the end of June. If you're already a Torque 3D owner, congrats! Don't forget to post your Beta 3 feedback in Torque 3D Private Forums. We need your help to get to the finish line!
We've still got a ways to go to fully catch up on the Mac / OSX side, but we're moving quickly. Full feature and stability parity with Windows is our goal for Beta 4.
More development blogs to come. This is post #25.
Torque 3D development blogs:
- Post #1 - Kickoff
- Post #2 - Apparatus and Warrior Camp
- Post #3 - Luma's racing kit
- Post #4 - Josh Engebretson and Web Publishing
- Post #5 - Pricing and Licensing
- Post #6 - Pricing and Licensing CONTINUED
- Post #7 - Wetness & Precipitation
- Post #8 - Screeen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
- Post #9 - Matt Langley and the Torque Launcher
- Post #10 - Chris Robertson and Collada
- Post #11 - Depth of Field
- Post #12 - Advanced Lighting
- Post #13 - Soft Particles
- Post #14 - World Editor
- Post #15 - Pricing and Licensing ANNOUNCED!
- Post #16 - GDC Live Edition
- Post #17 - River & Road Editors
- Post #18 - Beta is UP!
- Post #19 - Light Rays, Undercity, and the Material Editor
- Post #20 - Mass Market Hardware
- Post #21 - Beta: Part Deux
- Post #22 - Marching Towards Beta 3
- Post #23 - pureLIGHT
- Post #24 - Lighting, Terrain, and Cloth
- Post #25 - Beta 3!
- Post #26 - Coming Soon!
About the author
Since 2007, I've done my best to steer Torque's development and brand toward the best opportunities in games middleware.
#102
WOW! I'm impressed! Even with the short low quality video that was really all i needed to see! The clouds properly dissipate, the sun looks accurate and realistic, raytracing looks awesome, and the rayleigh scattering looks pretty nice from the little bit of the horizon i could see!
I must be the only one here who's so excited about the new atmosphere changes. lol
Quick question, is the day/night system already scripted in? Would be nice to have a global serverwide variable for the sun's position/etc for online games, without having to do too much work.
Also, is there a default moon/celestial night object?
Again, thanks for the video, much appreciated my man.
06/29/2009 (11:41 am)
@JordanWOW! I'm impressed! Even with the short low quality video that was really all i needed to see! The clouds properly dissipate, the sun looks accurate and realistic, raytracing looks awesome, and the rayleigh scattering looks pretty nice from the little bit of the horizon i could see!
I must be the only one here who's so excited about the new atmosphere changes. lol
Quick question, is the day/night system already scripted in? Would be nice to have a global serverwide variable for the sun's position/etc for online games, without having to do too much work.
Also, is there a default moon/celestial night object?
Again, thanks for the video, much appreciated my man.
#103
Seems to me that making this networkable is not that easy - some systems might lag a bit and soon you would have one user at night and other at day.
Unless maybe if you turn off animation on the TimeOfDay client side, and have your server broadcast his time to all machines - but this could eventually clutter your bandwidth with time change requests. Maybe someone more inside this system and it's workings can give you a better answer on this one.
You could maybe have your server scripted to order that change only every so often (like every six hours) and only broadcast that change then - this would however lead to drastic changes on the client side suddenly happening.
Anyone has a better solution? Personally i don't see this as a very networkable feature - i may be wrong on this however (haven't explored network on T3D yet)
06/29/2009 (1:35 pm)
I have read somewhere they are working on a moon/stars for night but that is not yet done.Seems to me that making this networkable is not that easy - some systems might lag a bit and soon you would have one user at night and other at day.
Unless maybe if you turn off animation on the TimeOfDay client side, and have your server broadcast his time to all machines - but this could eventually clutter your bandwidth with time change requests. Maybe someone more inside this system and it's workings can give you a better answer on this one.
You could maybe have your server scripted to order that change only every so often (like every six hours) and only broadcast that change then - this would however lead to drastic changes on the client side suddenly happening.
Anyone has a better solution? Personally i don't see this as a very networkable feature - i may be wrong on this however (haven't explored network on T3D yet)
#104
Hmm, you're right that they would eventually be offset, but maybe if I was to have the client get timeofday from the server upon loading, along with the global clock. Then every 5 minutes or so, have a client-server sync, I wouldn't think that would be too noticable if at all, and shouldnt be too heavy on bandwidth usage.
06/29/2009 (1:51 pm)
Luis,Hmm, you're right that they would eventually be offset, but maybe if I was to have the client get timeofday from the server upon loading, along with the global clock. Then every 5 minutes or so, have a client-server sync, I wouldn't think that would be too noticable if at all, and shouldnt be too heavy on bandwidth usage.
#105
As you can see from the video - even in beta the progress and quality, far exceeds that of any previous Torque title and stands on it's own merit.
Now, as far as the moon/celestial object, all that I know on it is that there has been some work done by the community as a placeholder until the Time of Day feature is fully completed - honestly, I'd rather the GG staff answer this one because it specifically talks about features that are still being worked on. Either that, or talk about it in the private forums - you understand :)
06/29/2009 (1:55 pm)
@Cameron - I don't want to speak for the GG developers and associates working on T3D (and more specifically this feature) but I'll go on ahead and give my answer of: yes to the day/night system. There has been some tremendous amount of work that's been done on the "Time of Day" feature but being that it's still in beta, it's still being worked on. As you can see from the video - even in beta the progress and quality, far exceeds that of any previous Torque title and stands on it's own merit.
Now, as far as the moon/celestial object, all that I know on it is that there has been some work done by the community as a placeholder until the Time of Day feature is fully completed - honestly, I'd rather the GG staff answer this one because it specifically talks about features that are still being worked on. Either that, or talk about it in the private forums - you understand :)
#106
06/29/2009 (5:20 pm)
Understood. Thanks for everything though :) Maybe a dev will post back on here with some more certain answers :) 
#108
Cheers!!!
06/30/2009 (8:14 am)
Hey the music in the Torque PhysixCloth demo is excellent! Anyone know where i can get the tracks? I searched on youtube, its not there.Cheers!!!
#109
06/30/2009 (10:24 am)
@Ajmul: I think the music is Mogwai. 
#110
06/30/2009 (11:59 am)
it is not a good idea effects like "glow" to be moved to "advanced lighting". 
#111
www.myspace.com/mogwai
From Glazgae no less, home of deep fried chocolate bar.
06/30/2009 (12:04 pm)
@Ajmulwww.myspace.com/mogwai
From Glazgae no less, home of deep fried chocolate bar.
#112
06/30/2009 (1:05 pm)
<3 Mogwai
#113
I couldn't find any information about the timeframe of final release.
Besides great job GG:)
06/30/2009 (2:14 pm)
Is anyone able to tell me when the full T3D will be released? I'm setting up a commercial project and I'd like to know when approximately I'll be able to use that engine in full to organize my project in right time.I couldn't find any information about the timeframe of final release.
Besides great job GG:)
#114
Oh hang on, I've infringed Id's copywrite slogan ...
8D
some day I'll come up with an original joke, but until then ...
06/30/2009 (6:55 pm)
When it's done.Oh hang on, I've infringed Id's copywrite slogan ...
8D
some day I'll come up with an original joke, but until then ...
#115
06/30/2009 (11:53 pm)
You can have a "medium" light setting with Advanced Lighting with a lot of the shadow stuff turned off. I think they are trying to make it capable of running on a GMA 950 in a netbook for 3d web apps and that requires keeping things as painfully simple as possible in Basic Lighting. More sliders and controls would be nice for all of this stuff so adjustments can be made easily for low end and high end machines.
#116
Excellent.
07/01/2009 (3:47 am)
Man this engine is getting better day by day! Ive just checked some of the video clips for torque 3d and it looks fantastic, especially the road feature and the south pacific demo, it looks like the Crytek engine demo.Excellent.
#117
07/01/2009 (9:39 am)
What no see FXsun in Beta3? It lost? 
#118
07/01/2009 (4:55 pm)
It looks pretty cool, where is the beta version because I want to try the road feature
#120
07/01/2009 (5:13 pm)
Deborah, can you e-mail me because I would like to talk to you about the software
Torque Owner Jordan Parsons
GP Interactive
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGt6Ck3ZBv0