State of the Garage
by Mark Frohnmayer · 08/04/2006 (10:07 pm) · 15 comments
It seems that we are entering a pivotal stage here at GarageGames, with the departure of a key member of the team, the release of Torque Game Builder, the imminent release of a few other long-awaited products, and several exciting announcements on the near horizon. I figured this presented an ideal opportunity to post some thoughts on where we've been, where we are now, and where we're heading. That, and I had to post something before IGC to keep my "one blog post per year" streak going.
Jay Moore
What can I say about Professor Jay Moore that hasn't already been said? It should come as no surprise to anyone that has met Jay that his presence at the Garage will be sorely missed. Jay was our very first "employee," and provided a much needed face and energy to this thing that Jeff, Rick, Tim and I were trying to build. Over the years he has played an integral part in defining the heart and soul of GarageGames, and as he leaves he will take a little bit of that heart and soul with him. I have no doubt that Jay's next venture will be an exciting opportunity, and everyone at GarageGames wishes him nothing but the best.
What's New with Torque?
We released Torque Game Builder! Ok, I know I'm a bit behind the times, but what do you expect from a guy who only posts once per year? If you haven't tried it out, check out the free trial. I hope you all agree that TGB has been our most polished release product to date. It is this standard of quality that we are now pursuing across our whole product line.
Speaking of our whole product line, we have cool stuff happening in all areas of development. A point release update to TGB will be released very soon, version 1.5 of TGE will also be released very soon, the Torque Shader Engine is nearing final release, and Constructor is getting very close as well. In addition, we will be making some very cool announcements in the very near future. Keep your eyes on the news section of the site!
On the game side, we're putting the finishing touches on an update for Marble Blast Ultra, including bug fixes and new multiplayer maps, and we're about to go into beta testing on our first fully internally produced TGB game.
IndieGamesCon
We've come to a realization. We realized that IGC was not heading in the direction we wanted it to. We don't want IGC to be a mini-GDC. We want IGC to be of much more value to independent game developers. We want IGC to be a place where Indies to make valuable contacts, learn useful information, and have fun doing it. To that end, we are making some adjustments to IGC this year. Round-table group discussions will take the place of speaking sessions, and we will be putting up a wiki on the IGC site so that anyone can sign up for any discussions they find interesting, or can even start their own. We already have several parties interested in speaking, so several of these discussion groups are already planned. In addition, there will be the usual show-off center and Player's Choice awards, and plenty of time for networking with PC and console downloadable game publishers. We are cutting some of the extravagance as far as food and drink are concerned, and knocking $100 off the registration price to pass those savings on to you. Anyone who has already purchased a ticket will be refunded the difference in price. We realize that the registration cost is just a small fraction of the cost to travel to Eugene for IGC, but we want to provide savings to our community whenever possible. I hope to see many of you out here in October!
I think that's about long enough. In conclusion, I would just like to thank all of you for sharing this wild ride with us, and hang on, because there are some exciting twists and turns just around the corner!
Jay Moore
What can I say about Professor Jay Moore that hasn't already been said? It should come as no surprise to anyone that has met Jay that his presence at the Garage will be sorely missed. Jay was our very first "employee," and provided a much needed face and energy to this thing that Jeff, Rick, Tim and I were trying to build. Over the years he has played an integral part in defining the heart and soul of GarageGames, and as he leaves he will take a little bit of that heart and soul with him. I have no doubt that Jay's next venture will be an exciting opportunity, and everyone at GarageGames wishes him nothing but the best.
What's New with Torque?
We released Torque Game Builder! Ok, I know I'm a bit behind the times, but what do you expect from a guy who only posts once per year? If you haven't tried it out, check out the free trial. I hope you all agree that TGB has been our most polished release product to date. It is this standard of quality that we are now pursuing across our whole product line.
Speaking of our whole product line, we have cool stuff happening in all areas of development. A point release update to TGB will be released very soon, version 1.5 of TGE will also be released very soon, the Torque Shader Engine is nearing final release, and Constructor is getting very close as well. In addition, we will be making some very cool announcements in the very near future. Keep your eyes on the news section of the site!
On the game side, we're putting the finishing touches on an update for Marble Blast Ultra, including bug fixes and new multiplayer maps, and we're about to go into beta testing on our first fully internally produced TGB game.
IndieGamesCon
We've come to a realization. We realized that IGC was not heading in the direction we wanted it to. We don't want IGC to be a mini-GDC. We want IGC to be of much more value to independent game developers. We want IGC to be a place where Indies to make valuable contacts, learn useful information, and have fun doing it. To that end, we are making some adjustments to IGC this year. Round-table group discussions will take the place of speaking sessions, and we will be putting up a wiki on the IGC site so that anyone can sign up for any discussions they find interesting, or can even start their own. We already have several parties interested in speaking, so several of these discussion groups are already planned. In addition, there will be the usual show-off center and Player's Choice awards, and plenty of time for networking with PC and console downloadable game publishers. We are cutting some of the extravagance as far as food and drink are concerned, and knocking $100 off the registration price to pass those savings on to you. Anyone who has already purchased a ticket will be refunded the difference in price. We realize that the registration cost is just a small fraction of the cost to travel to Eugene for IGC, but we want to provide savings to our community whenever possible. I hope to see many of you out here in October!
I think that's about long enough. In conclusion, I would just like to thank all of you for sharing this wild ride with us, and hang on, because there are some exciting twists and turns just around the corner!
About the author
#2
Mark, I really love the way you write your blogs (call me a fan of your blogs) and I really like to read more of this - more than once a year.
What I'm mising a bit is what you announced in the first paragraph - an outlook where GG heads to. I mean not only product-wise (and I was surprised to read that TSE is near final! We even have not seen MS4 so far!), I mean things like the GG staff, the company and what's going on behind the scenes. For example I'd like to know who is going to - if possible - replace Jay? And If I'm already at begging, please tell Tim Gift to post a new plan. What the hell is this guy doing? :-)
Again: Please, more than one blog post a year. :-)
Your blog-fan,
Martin ;-)
08/04/2006 (10:27 pm)
Just a couple of days ago I thought: Hey, would be nice to hear something new from Mark... :-)Mark, I really love the way you write your blogs (call me a fan of your blogs) and I really like to read more of this - more than once a year.
What I'm mising a bit is what you announced in the first paragraph - an outlook where GG heads to. I mean not only product-wise (and I was surprised to read that TSE is near final! We even have not seen MS4 so far!), I mean things like the GG staff, the company and what's going on behind the scenes. For example I'd like to know who is going to - if possible - replace Jay? And If I'm already at begging, please tell Tim Gift to post a new plan. What the hell is this guy doing? :-)
Again: Please, more than one blog post a year. :-)
Your blog-fan,
Martin ;-)
#3
08/04/2006 (10:31 pm)
Quote: "the Torque Shader Engine is nearing final release" 
#4
Thanks for the update, especially about IGC. I have to say that I like the idea of the round-tables more than the sessions (oddly enough, Danny and I had discussed wanted to do more of these for the art track at this years IGC than sessions if it was possible, so its a good coincidence). After a few years of IGCs it was getting hard to plan the sessions to meet the needs of unknown attendees. Years when we would plan art sessions to cater to new Torque users, we got a lot of intermediate guys who wanted some advanced knowledge, and vice versa last year when we tried to push the bar up higher we ended up with a lot of new users who wanted basics.
Looking forward to meeting you guys in Eugene once again for more foolery and laughs.
08/04/2006 (10:41 pm)
@MarkThanks for the update, especially about IGC. I have to say that I like the idea of the round-tables more than the sessions (oddly enough, Danny and I had discussed wanted to do more of these for the art track at this years IGC than sessions if it was possible, so its a good coincidence). After a few years of IGCs it was getting hard to plan the sessions to meet the needs of unknown attendees. Years when we would plan art sessions to cater to new Torque users, we got a lot of intermediate guys who wanted some advanced knowledge, and vice versa last year when we tried to push the bar up higher we ended up with a lot of new users who wanted basics.
Looking forward to meeting you guys in Eugene once again for more foolery and laughs.
#6
08/04/2006 (11:01 pm)
Cool, maybe we can get some useful design roundtables going too.
#8
wait, TGE 1.5 soon? and we just upgraded shelled to 1.4 this week! oh, cruel iterations...
well the difference between GDC and IGC is also about $800 -- so I always appreciated the breakout sessions and always took a LOT away from them, especially since I could never afford the sessions at GDC, and the sessions at GDC aren't really geared towards indies so they're of nominal value. I'm open to this new roundtable idea, but skeptical. about the price change w/o food - great idea, especially since my food-sensitive ass could never eat most of what was served. oh - and you forgot to mention the bigger venue for IGC this year - so we should see more people there I hope!
08/05/2006 (3:03 am)
(still bummed about Jay...)wait, TGE 1.5 soon? and we just upgraded shelled to 1.4 this week! oh, cruel iterations...
well the difference between GDC and IGC is also about $800 -- so I always appreciated the breakout sessions and always took a LOT away from them, especially since I could never afford the sessions at GDC, and the sessions at GDC aren't really geared towards indies so they're of nominal value. I'm open to this new roundtable idea, but skeptical. about the price change w/o food - great idea, especially since my food-sensitive ass could never eat most of what was served. oh - and you forgot to mention the bigger venue for IGC this year - so we should see more people there I hope!
#10
Also we have food...
08/05/2006 (7:31 am)
Mark have you thought about getting more involved in the Texas Indie Game con? Seeing as how everyone was talking about you guys anyway it would only make sense that you have more presence there. We would like to see more of you guys out there. If you want to start some of those talks I would be more than happy. Email me at big_mojo AT yahoo.comAlso we have food...
#11
And I really hope I can go to IGC when I get to Eugene!
08/05/2006 (7:15 pm)
Great to hear about a MBU update! I know quite a few folks were getting annoyed at some bugs. They'll be happy - though I haven't seen ANY media stuff about an update for quite a while. Make sure everyone knows!And I really hope I can go to IGC when I get to Eugene!
#12
If there's one thing that would make the IGC waaaaay better, it would be soundproofing between the session areas.
Whatcha going to do about food? If it's at the same venue, I don't remember a lot of restaurants around there. I certainly don't mind buying my own food, as long as it's there to be bought :)
Details aside, I'm still looking forward to it!
08/06/2006 (5:18 am)
RE: IGC, I like roundtable discussions, but I've always got a lot out of presentations where I can see an on-screen demo of tools in use, especially when it comes to art and design tools. I'm thinking of the Lighting Kit demo, seeing Tim Aste showing something to do with TSE, Joe Maruschak's art demos, and Danny Ngan's rigging demos. That kind of stuff won't work as well in a roundtable format. If there's one thing that would make the IGC waaaaay better, it would be soundproofing between the session areas.
Whatcha going to do about food? If it's at the same venue, I don't remember a lot of restaurants around there. I certainly don't mind buying my own food, as long as it's there to be bought :)
Details aside, I'm still looking forward to it!
#14
08/07/2006 (12:55 pm)
Wait, 1.5? Is the point release for 1.4 ever going to be released?
#15
08/07/2006 (4:18 pm)
Just to be clear, there will be food at IGC! We're just going to do some cost cutting measures (like get rid of the coffee that tasted like motor oil and replace it with a pay for coffee stand). Once the conference starts you won't have to go off site for food.
Torque 3D Owner Peter Simard