Torque X Update

Current Status of Torque X

As Eric mentioned previously in his "Full Speed Ahead" blog a new Torque X team has formed and we have been working hard to get a release out. We are focusing on bug fixes and performance optimizations in lieu of new features. Torque X 3D especially has had some rough releases and it made more sense to focus on making it more usable to create XNA games than introducing a shiny new marketing feature while leaving a ton of bugs. Here is a high level list of some of the things we have already done:

We've added many of the community fixes and improvements gathered by Pino

We've done additional bug fixes, performance improvements and reduction of garbage generation for both PC and Xbox 360

We're doing fixes and some small feature improvements to the Torque X 3D editor

We are shooting for a release at the end of June of both the 2D and 3D. Because the 2D is in much better shape we are going to do an earlier beta release. I'll send out another announcement when the beta is available so everyone can start poking at it.

Torque X 3.1.5 vs 3.2.1

One of the main changes that's occurring on the marketing front is a name change from the proposed 3.2.1 to 3.1.5. There are a couple of reasons for this. 1) I wanted a name that better aligned to the version of XNA it supported to make it easier to understand where the product was and to set expectations appropriately. 2) John released a blog earlier detailing what was going to be in 3.2.1 but unfortunately most of that won't be available. I'll do my best to detail the differences between the proposed 3.2.1 and 3.1.5:

Xbox Live Avatars - We are currently evaluating its state but will most likely not put any further dev into it for this release. It will be available for anyone to use and extend but I will not be able to promise its quality.

3D Billboards - We are currently evaluating the state of this feature and how much polish it needs.

Projecting Terrain Decals - We are currently evaluating the state of this feature and how much polish it needs.

Editor Update - This build will not feature the new Torque 3D editors as alluded to previously. Everything was still very rough and I made the call to focus on making the old editors functional than waiting an additional month or two getting the Torque 3D editors merged with Torque X 3D.

Sounds like a lot of things got cut huh? Like I said earlier, I am focused on making sure what we have works before introducing a bunch of new features. Torque X has gone awhile without a release and I wanted to get something out there sooner rather than later. Therefore I made the call to spend time focusing on tuning performance and getting rid of bugs rather than making sure a new feature got in. That being said we won't be stripping out any of the code for those above mentioned features, I won't promise that it works but you can certainly dig into yourself and see if you can apply it to your project.

Creators Club

Some of you may have recently noticed that Torque X is listed as "Currently Unavailable" on the XNA Creator's Club site. We made the call to take it down because the quality wasn't there. Once 3.1.5 releases it will be available again through your Creator's Club membership.

Torque X vs Torque 3D

One other thing I wanted to touch on briefly. While there is some good dev going on in Torque X land it is not affecting the speed in which we release Torque 3D 1.1 Beta 2. Eric is fully aware of the multi engine problem that has plagued us for so long, I know we've talked convergence and what not before but for the first time we are putting actual practices in place to get us there.

Future of Torque X

I'll be writing another blog soon to discuss the future plans for Torque X but for now I wanted to leave you with a little teaser.