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.
#22
This is such good news. Our team has been faithful users of TGE, TGEA (early adopters), and TGB. I always told everyone on our team this entire time of TGEA that give them time, once Mac support ( OpenGL ) is placed in your going to see a new flagship product for GG and for the community at whole take shape right before our eyes. I'm so happy for all you guys at GG, and for all of us in the community.
*applauds*
Matt Fairfax \ Alex:
BTW in that motivational pic, I see someone has emptied the Corona case there, better get a beer run up! I'm going to crack one open for you guys tonight! =)
11/14/2008 (6:53 am)
Congrats to GG guys!This is such good news. Our team has been faithful users of TGE, TGEA (early adopters), and TGB. I always told everyone on our team this entire time of TGEA that give them time, once Mac support ( OpenGL ) is placed in your going to see a new flagship product for GG and for the community at whole take shape right before our eyes. I'm so happy for all you guys at GG, and for all of us in the community.
*applauds*
Matt Fairfax \ Alex:
BTW in that motivational pic, I see someone has emptied the Corona case there, better get a beer run up! I'm going to crack one open for you guys tonight! =)
#23
Just want to say THANK YOU. Ever since I started using Torque I always hoped you'd put what was known back then as TSE on a mac. Great Work!!!
I do have one question, in your section of "Time to Switch" we are starting our next game and it plans to be a quick small game. We may use shaders....we may not, we don't know at this point. We are debating if we should use TGE or TGEA, and the reason why we are debating is because we think TGE would run better on a larger variety of computers, mostly for the slow ones. Is this a valid statement? Are there any advantages of using TGE over TGEA now? And lastly will TGE slowly be phased out, unsupported, finito??
Thx.
11/14/2008 (6:59 am)
Hello Matt,Just want to say THANK YOU. Ever since I started using Torque I always hoped you'd put what was known back then as TSE on a mac. Great Work!!!
I do have one question, in your section of "Time to Switch" we are starting our next game and it plans to be a quick small game. We may use shaders....we may not, we don't know at this point. We are debating if we should use TGE or TGEA, and the reason why we are debating is because we think TGE would run better on a larger variety of computers, mostly for the slow ones. Is this a valid statement? Are there any advantages of using TGE over TGEA now? And lastly will TGE slowly be phased out, unsupported, finito??
Thx.
#24
11/14/2008 (7:08 am)
Good work....I guess. I don't really get the decision to go Mac ONLY for OpenGL. Seems like a large targeted release effort at a very small group of developers (relatively speaking). I'm guessing this was a "we did it for instant action audience support" so let's release it type of thing. Don't get me wrong, it shows continued movement in the product which I really appreciate, but I'd like to have the option on Windows as well. 
#26
Matt Fairfax ...you know ...you are my god....I very very very like you makeing any one...
11/14/2008 (9:10 am)
TGEA 1.8 Beta is now available!!!!!Matt Fairfax ...you know ...you are my god....I very very very like you makeing any one...
#27
11/14/2008 (9:48 am)
@JPaxson: It is important for indies to be able to support multiple platforms. Mac sales can account for 30%-50% of sales for indie developers. On Windows, Direct3D is by far the best supported API and thus the one GG directly supports on the platform. If I was making a game, I wouldn't want to support both OpenGL and Direct3D on Windows (Vista), ick :)
#28
11/14/2008 (10:47 am)
Where are the actual release notes? I have scoured here and the boards and can not find any release notes stating what has change from 1.7.1 to 1.8.
#30
TGE will probably still have an edge on the really old computers. It has been years since you could buy a computer without some sort of limited shader support and most modern computers (aside from the Intel chips as I mentioned above) will work better with TGEA (batch rendering is much more efficient).
I would say my biggest concern with TGE vs TGEA if you are targetting lowend computers is that TGEA is now the GarageGames flagship product and will get a lot more attention and work from us compared to TGE. Brett should be posting a blog in the very near future with some more information about the plans for TGE.
11/14/2008 (10:56 am)
DALO,TGE will probably still have an edge on the really old computers. It has been years since you could buy a computer without some sort of limited shader support and most modern computers (aside from the Intel chips as I mentioned above) will work better with TGEA (batch rendering is much more efficient).
I would say my biggest concern with TGE vs TGEA if you are targetting lowend computers is that TGEA is now the GarageGames flagship product and will get a lot more attention and work from us compared to TGE. Brett should be posting a blog in the very near future with some more information about the plans for TGE.
#31
11/14/2008 (12:06 pm)
Is there a demo available? I can't seem to find one.
#32
11/14/2008 (12:11 pm)
TGE still has a big edge for Linux users for the obvious reason of not having support in TGEA. A shame I don't have the background needed to bring it to Linux. Hopefully, someone out there will. 
#33
11/14/2008 (12:22 pm)
@Steven - The beta is open to TGEA owners only.
#34
We want to get the Mac stuff a bit more solid before we put out a demo for it (we *should* have a Mac demo or two by the final release).
11/14/2008 (1:25 pm)
For Windows users the current TGEA demos are virtual identical (aside from one script call to initialize the RenderInstManager and the last few graphical and Mission Editor glitches).We want to get the Mac stuff a bit more solid before we put out a demo for it (we *should* have a Mac demo or two by the final release).
#35
I really hope that some Linux gurus step up and get TGEA working on Linux. We've done the hardest part for them (porting GFX to OpenGL).
11/14/2008 (1:31 pm)
Keith,I really hope that some Linux gurus step up and get TGEA working on Linux. We've done the hardest part for them (porting GFX to OpenGL).
#36
11/14/2008 (5:03 pm)
O-de-yeah! 
#37
11/15/2008 (2:23 am)
Hmm... TGEA upgrade is tempting me now...
#38
UnWinded: A Matt and Alex Conversation Survival Game.
11/15/2008 (6:08 am)
New TGEA demo request...
#39
I have been waiting to read about this since I got the engine some time ago. Brilliant effort the GG team has done.
Thats good news. Very good news. ( I am looking at the bigger Picture.. and it's Beautiful ).
Thanks go out to everyone at GG.
11/15/2008 (9:12 am)
Hats off to Alex, Your amazing.!! ( Two Thumbs Up)I have been waiting to read about this since I got the engine some time ago. Brilliant effort the GG team has done.
Thats good news. Very good news. ( I am looking at the bigger Picture.. and it's Beautiful ).
Thanks go out to everyone at GG.
#40
Great job.
11/16/2008 (5:16 pm)
"TGEA is finally available for the Mac!" I was wondering why it's getting cold in here ;)Great job.
Torque 3D Owner Dave Young
Dave Young Games
thanks guys...