What is torque3d.net lacking

#21 My take on it is what Demolishun said times a million.

A community needs to be actively engaged; saying "hey why aren't you guys on that other site instead?" doesn't really entice people to join in or contribute.

When I visit Torque3D.net, I think "oh, it's a dark skinned version of garagegames.com".

I'd visit regularly if there were developer interviews, contests, tutorials, tips and tricks, articles, content! Use blog posts on garagegames.com to point traffic your way, that's entirely fine.

Your best bet, in my opinion is to become a hub for all things torque. Link to Duion's texture site and other T3D-related sites so that users can find everything they might need in one easy place. Once you do that, nobody is ever going to bother searching the garagegames.com forums for links, people will naturally flock to Torque3d.net. Best of luck!

#22 I'm sorry to say this; but I don't understand why are you posting questions in the blog section?!

Anyway, your actions are noble, but sorry to ask you this; did you notice how many posts are made on the GG forums? If you're going to split that up there will be nothing left for sure. The GG forums are an archive which with every new attempt to create a new platform; you'd need to clone this data as well. Most will not going search on multiple sites; and will just fall back on good old Google. To draw more visitors to your T3D site would be starting to show up in Google's search results when looking for T3D related info.

Another thing is that a part would like to see an official platform; in this case held by GG. I personally think that GG should point out additional forum moderators, to not only keep this clean when they don't have the time for it, but also work together to help upgrade it to new standards. This could be somebody like you! :)

#23 The ideal case would be an official platform from garagegames, but it needs to be maintained also and this is not the case at the moment.
From what I have heard the goal was to bring Torque3D into community hands, but at the same time it looks they want to keep their site up as the official place for Torque3D.
So either find a way to manage this site better or announce another place where the community has more control.
It just does not give a good image to have a forum full of spam and very few people that help out others in the forum regularly.
@Simon
Your link to my site leads to somewhere else.

#24 @Duion, no no and no.. Garagegames did leave it to the community and they should not be held responsible for creating a new platform. They are keeping this site up yes, but purely as a service to the community, not because they still feel they "own" Torque 3D..

It's our own job to change platform if that's what we want.

To be perfectly clear, GG open sourced T3D and it's now entirely in community hands. They don't really have anything to do with T3D anymore..

#25 I was not saying Garagegames is responsible for it, my point was just, that they did not make it clear what they want.

#26 @Duion : Fixed the link. Sorry, I meant no disrespect.

#27 @Simon, Duion and Nils

If I was profiting from Torque3d.net in some way then I could see putting the extra work of putting ALL of the links in one place, although I do not have all these readily available-I haven't worked in Torque in about a year so I don't know where all the great resources are which means I'd have to put in hours of research. If someone would just hop on there and put those links up there, then I could do the rest which would take 20-30 minutes approximately.

The problem with torque is the lack of effort on everyone's part imho. I don't feel people do enough marketing for a game engine they claim to love. Rather or not the engine has gotten more sound since last time is not up to me to answer because I have not been involved in it recently.

What I have done(how I have shown my support for Torque3D) is give a solid Facebook page that has a growing fan base (it looks like my post reach is growing a lot actually) and an opportunity for all the developers of torque to collaborate in an environment they control. When someone steps up I will gladly give up control to a trusted member who can manage the Torque3d website so that it can flourish on it's own.

GG has announced multiple times both publically and on a one on one basis that they do not support Torque3d or the community any longer, what they do is provide support for companies who work with torque on a commercial basis (i.e. you pay them for their support). Eventually they will figure out it's not business savvy to have a forum or support torque entirely if the business doesn't pick up for them. So it's on the community to pick up the slack. I believe I've stepped up quite a bit and have made an attempt to better the community. I think it's time the rest of you jump on board and do the same as well.

I don't believe in splitting a community but I see the death of one happening here, a rebirth is in order.

#28 Also, I work full time in the military, I'm sure Ron could back me up and say that I really don't get a lot of time (I'm on Medical leave atm, so I can put some hours in to help out...), I get tagged a lot to help out as a full time staff in the reserves... a lot is on my shoulders.

When I'm home I either write news for my online website http://lethonline.com/ or play video games, alongside the torque3d facebook page... Needless to say I'm very booked normally. Be thankful you don't have a rainbow colored Torque3d.net because I've been working on it probably 7 hours a day while hopped on Percocet's lol.

#29

Quote:
From what I have heard the goal was to bring Torque3D into community hands, but at the same time it looks they want to keep their site up as the official place for Torque3D.

That has already happen. It is yours to use. But you have not read the blogs and posts well enough when you do not understand that they keep an official site for the engine. The engine is open source but the name Torque 3D and Garage Games belongs to GG ;O)

Here is an answer by Eric in the "Introducing GG Interactive" when asked about which tech they use for their contracting work:

Quote:
Are you using Torque 2D/3D in your projects?
In some yes, in some no. The theme park work included Torque. We actually worked on an augmented reality project for air shows. For that we used Unity. We all hope to use Torque more but like every good thread on this vs. that engine...no engine solves all problems the best. The good news is that we are using other people's engines which makes us much better at authoring engines.

Here is the link to it:
http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/22605


Below the link to the The Big Picture blog where it is explained how GG earns its money:

http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/22218


Below a quote from the blog "After 5 years..." where you get a rare view into some of the problems Torque 3D faced and how people thought about facing them:

Quote:
Several years ago, there was a heated debate internally at GarageGames. The topic was on how to push Torque amidst the rising competition. This was when Unity was barely known, but clearly identified by GG as something that could become a great threat. GG blazed trails by offering a full source, AAA game engine for $100. While groundbreaking, everyone knew it would not be a solo endeavor.

So meetings were had. How do "we" keep Torque alive? How do we shake things up while still staying in business? Do you know what the most popular idea was (which was shot down)? Some of the earliest Torque developers at GG believed the engine should be released for free under a liberal open source license. How to make money was the point of contention. Release the engine for free, but charge for editors. Free editors and charge for source. All for free, but charge for service and content packs. No single idea won out, so the traditional license model remained and lasted up until last year.

What do all those quotes tell you? Well Torque 3D as an engine did not make enough sales to maintain and develop inhouse. In the end GG had to release it as MIT so it would stay in use and then eventual revenue from addons and art pack sales would still be a business. The sale of art packs and addons might not be enough to maintain GG as such(also I have no idea about that I am just guessing here), but still it is an income and then the major income comes from the service and contracting jobs they get and GG use whatever suitable tech to finish those contracting jobs.

Hence their is no reason whatsoever why GG should shut down this site. Firstly it maintains a hub where Torque tech users can exchange knowledge and skills, secondly it generates many hits in google(relevant contents and many years of history) and by that also potential sales(again properly not GG's main income but still it is cash that can be used to pay the bills with).

GG did not hand over their website and business to us(and why should they?), just the engine so it could survive and hence their developers could be used on other more profit generating task so the company could keep on provide jobs for its current labor force.

Again I am simply guessing and analyzing here so do not take what I write for granted.

I honestly find it tiring that people think that getting an engine also means that GG needs to hand over the whole firm's website as well O_o

Perhaps some people believe that money and tech are something that grow on trees?

GG has all the right to keep its site up. The name Torque 3D belongs to GG. You use it under the MIT license.

Note: I am not angry, I am not trying to attack anyone, I am just trying to point out why it is fair that GG keeps this site up.

No more posts for me in this thread... back to work.... Love your all :O)

#30 I noticed that they keep it up, but on the other hand it looks like they do not care about it and it was not about handing over the business, but the work that needs to be done to maintain this platform, since people feel a little lost with 20 new spam posts every day and no moderators and such.

My point was just, that it has not been made clear enough what "giving the engine into community hands" means.

#31

Quote:@James: I really don't get a lot of time

@James,

You are the owner of the torque3d.net domain, maintain the website/forums and keeps it running. If you're not able to access this for some reasons, the whole community will suffer from this if it would be the only platform we know.

You're right that if GG pulls the plug out of the forums, it will be the death of it. But as long as GG needs to grow their business in different directions then before; they will certainly use T3D as a great example of what they're capable of. The death of T3D would certainly have a negative effect on their brand. I strongly believe that it's still in GG's interest to keep it running.

What I also believe is that it's a struggle with the costs. Every time GG needs to put people on it, it won't be profitable. That's why I think they should think about asking for a couple volunteers to moderate the forums as a start. Gather the thoughts of the community and think about how to innovate together.

You may ask why torque3d.net doesn't get off the ground, but you have to remember that T3D has been a GG product for so long. It will take a very long time for the gamedev world to understand what it means that T3D is under a MIT licence now.

Again, I think you do a noble thing. I'm thankful for your participation; because as long as I'm using T3D, it's in my interest it's still alive and evolving. Everyone who's is participating in some way makes a contribution to that!

A personal note: I hope you get better soon!

#32 Dwarf pointed out some interesting facts, the main one is GG is off doing their own thing and they're about making money. Torque3D name and the website belong to them. that said

Nils what I'm offering here (at least once Torque3d is in use) is administrative rights to a few select people who will run the site in my absence. I realize Torque3d.net will take a minute to get off the ground but we do need to pump some momentum into it, and that task relies on everyone.

Thank you, I get better every day :), although having this mesh and not a stitch job on the hernia is strange. :P

#33 This is a real hard one, obviously you have passion for T3D and you genuinely want to see T3D thrive. I honestly think it's going to be very difficult getting new users to go over there while these forums here still exist. It's going to need a lot content.

If GG got really angry and didn't like it (i'm not saying they would but who knows really), would they be able to take legal action considering the domain name and their obvious copyright on Torque 3D. I don't mean like suing but been able legally take the domain name? I don't know a lot about dot com law?

#34 First let me say this, I hate going into what if situations because A)Speculation is stupid unless your being paid for it and B)What if's piss people off even though nothing really happened.

That said the aim of my site isn't to steal any of their business and to that end if I was a competitor... I'd likely be the crappiest one haha. My aim is to relieve some of the stress off their back and provide a better resource section for developers. I don't foresee GG ever getting angry, in fact I think they'd applaud my attempts because I am taking them in the route that unity and other engines/games have gone... having multiple resources in multiple places-My efforts have given them free advertising and publicity.

If anything I think GG needs to mail me a plaque with their thanks ^_^ (Contact me for my address, please nothing more than $200. I'd feel bad)

Furthermore timmy you are trying to take situations from the past that are very irrelevant to what is going on here, such as Google suing Goooogle.com which was a porn site that made profit, I make zero profit from what I do, and the content is relevant to the search and the domain name.

Lastly and please don't take this the wrong way-what was the point of interjecting with mythological law? It's like you want to stir up trouble... Why did you not choose to contact a lawyer and seek some legal advice before posting rubbish if this grinds your gears that much (I hope Peter from family guy doesn't sue me next)

I'm not being hostile towards you, I am offended that your taking the conversation this way however. It'd be nice for a moderator to delete your post and my response so we can stay on topic.

#35 Well firstly i will quote myself

Quote:
obviously you have passion for T3D and you genuinely want to see T3D thrive

I actually do take offence to what you replied with, i was merely trying to point out what could potentially be a problem. I won't comment again in this thread nor will i ever be signing up on your forums. Best of luck to you.

#36 Thank you Timmy, I don't think legal hypotheticals are really the best scenario for any website dealing with game development. If you're offended I apologize but I stand my ground on what I said. If you won't sign up on the forums that is OK, you will be missed. Thank you for your endearing ending comment.

#37 Your last post highlights the problem. This is not a community initiative it is your own. No-one asked for it, it's not needed currently. It won't lead to a rebirth because it does none of the required actions needed to get Torque known. That would be better served by posting blogs and articles in a continuous drip at sites like gamasutra.

Whilst the legal issues Timmy brought up probably are irrelevant your reaction was to insult him and dismiss the idea.

Torque.net is your website, you grant the administrative permissions and that's the main problem right there given that you just demonstrated that
your answer to someone raising a difficult topic is not to pour oil on troubled water but to add fuel to a fire. Not a good sign for the future.

Plus if you don't want to swap out the resources to your site, if garagegames forums eventually disappear the community would be wiser to simply setup a free wordpress blog or something as it would have just as much utility and would not be at the whim of a community member.

#38 Given the messy state of these community forums and all the old and out-dated cruft on here (which might be interesting as a read-only archive but not for an active community) I fully support the torque3d.net initiative.

It always takes some dedicated community members to get something like this off the ground, and as the internet is a "meritocraty" James has shown that he is the right guy to do it.

Thanks and I don't think your comment was un-called for nor particulary offensive.

#39 JED, your analogy is a bit confusing. perhaps you meant adding water to oil... actually I'm not sure because water and oil don't mix, they separate-this is why the gulf spills were so terrible. No matter how you look at it, SOMEONE has to purchase a domain name and SOMEONE has to own the webspace. I've owned the same webspace since 2007. That is quite a long time, I haven't missed a payment (that I can remember).

This is my own initiative based on a problem I saw the community raise, many people asked for, you need to search the forums and blogs but this has been raised several times, the fact that Julius posted right after you, and Lukas posted before you identifies two people-lukas is a key member of this community in my opinion-he provides a lot of insight into torque and provides a lot of support both free and paid, not to mention many others who have already posted on the website.

JED, your last paragraph was a bit confusing but I'm imagining what you're saying is what if I didn't want to stop using phpBB and replace it with an alternative the majority of the community wanted? That's how I'm reading that.

My answer to that is I'm not going to be running this, I will grant access to a few people to run the site. There was a post a ways up where I said I'm a lazy person and love to let people do the work for me... I honed in on just this in that reference.

To summarize my long drawn out speech... My domain space has been around quite a while... I've been working on websites right around the birth of GG's website so I have the savvy to help out in this area. I have quite a few wordpress blogs so if wordpress is what y'all want theN I know how to set it up, While I do grant permissions, someone has to... at least permissions are being granted to community members unlike at GG, AND I'm giving both admin and ftp access to multiple members of the community.

Any more concerns?

/////ABOUT TIMMY////
My answer to Timmy trying to bring legalities to a situation that is not a legal one was fair, I immediately dismissed it because it was off topic. Perhaps that is wrong but if GG is worried about my website they would've spoken up, they could always whois my domain name and send me a legal notice on letter head to cease, but they haven't-because they don't care, they're a company not a community; while they care about the community they care more about profits-my website takes none of their revenue and gives them publicity and possible customers-hence more profits.

To be frank Jed, I believe timmy was being insulting or at least trying to discredit what I'm doing with a "what if" situation-if he wasn't then I cannot gander at why he brought that up to begin with. It was a nonsense topic and had nothing to do with the original post or any post following.

Suppose I come into your thread and say "I love that you all care about this topic but what if a meteor hits us tomorrow, everything you did today would be entirely wasted when you should've spent it with your loved ones"

Please explain to me the thought process behind him bringing up a legal matter, I can't for the life of me figure it out, but just e-mail me your response, so we can stay on topic: lethedethius@gmail.com .

If Timmy is genuinely concerned he can do the same thing. If Timmy was being genuine in his concern then let me extend a genuine apology-I'm not a jerk by nature but after ten years in the military I have a good sense of when I'm being jerked around.

#40

Quote:lost with 20 new spam posts every day and no moderators and such.

Moderator chiming in. Who do you think cleans up the spam in the morning, at night, and then on the weekends?

I've been talking to Eric about arranging some time for our web dev to create a new "role" on this site. One that can help moderate and remove spam, without having access to the very dangerous nuke button that moderators can press.

We are in the middle of a crunch right now, so there's no justifiable reason to pull him on this task. However, I've been pointing out the severity of the spam posts as of late and it has been noted.