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.
#42
When you buy TGEA, you get complete access to the source code the same as you would with TGE. Nothing preventing anyone (with the skill of course), to take the code they bought, port it & give it back to GG.
11/18/2008 (6:21 am)
@Paulo:When you buy TGEA, you get complete access to the source code the same as you would with TGE. Nothing preventing anyone (with the skill of course), to take the code they bought, port it & give it back to GG.
#44
11/18/2008 (12:18 pm)
I would really love to get this beta, I got TGEA as an upgrade, but I cant seem to find a link to download the 1.8 beta from my account. why could this be? 
#45
1. Click on "My Account" at the top of the GG.com website and log into your account.
2. At the bottom of your "My Account" page, there's a box called "Downloadable Products You Own." Find the "TGEA" product SKU in that list, and click on the "Download" link to the right of it.
3. You will be taken to the TGEA product page, which lists many different versions of TGEA. Click on the link that says "Torque Game Engine Advanced 1.8 BETA," and that will start your download.
Please tell me if that doesn't work for you!
11/18/2008 (12:30 pm)
@deepscratch: Try the following steps to get to the beta:1. Click on "My Account" at the top of the GG.com website and log into your account.
2. At the bottom of your "My Account" page, there's a box called "Downloadable Products You Own." Find the "TGEA" product SKU in that list, and click on the "Download" link to the right of it.
3. You will be taken to the TGEA product page, which lists many different versions of TGEA. Click on the link that says "Torque Game Engine Advanced 1.8 BETA," and that will start your download.
Please tell me if that doesn't work for you!
#46
Now, is it possible to have both TGEA 1.7.1 and TGEA 1.8 Demo installed on the same Windows XP at the same time without one messing up with the other?
Thank you all in advance, that's some serious good news, we should ALL be really happy about it
11/18/2008 (2:35 pm)
Thank you Deborah, that important step was not much clear to meNow, is it possible to have both TGEA 1.7.1 and TGEA 1.8 Demo installed on the same Windows XP at the same time without one messing up with the other?
Thank you all in advance, that's some serious good news, we should ALL be really happy about it
#47
It is indeed possible. TGEA 1.7.1 will install to C:\Torque\TGEA_1_7_1 by default and TGEA 1.8 Beta 1 will install to C:\Torque\TGEA_1_8_Beta_1 by default. As long as you stick with this (or at least install them to different folders on your end), they shouldn't interfere with each other at all.
11/18/2008 (2:42 pm)
Quote:
Now, is it possible to have both TGEA 1.7.1 and TGEA 1.8 Demo installed on the same Windows XP at the same time without one messing up with the other?
It is indeed possible. TGEA 1.7.1 will install to C:\Torque\TGEA_1_7_1 by default and TGEA 1.8 Beta 1 will install to C:\Torque\TGEA_1_8_Beta_1 by default. As long as you stick with this (or at least install them to different folders on your end), they shouldn't interfere with each other at all.
#48
thanks, that worked. didnt seem to yesterday.
noobish question:
can I do a diff and merge the 1.8 over my 1.7.1? I've quite a few changes this last week since I got 1.7.1, I dont wanna go through hours retyping code again.
11/19/2008 (5:22 am)
@Deborah,thanks, that worked. didnt seem to yesterday.
noobish question:
can I do a diff and merge the 1.8 over my 1.7.1? I've quite a few changes this last week since I got 1.7.1, I dont wanna go through hours retyping code again.
#49
11/19/2008 (10:05 am)
Hey, should i upgraded from TGE even if I'm only a beginner? because i will if i should, but some where on the TGEA page it says something like "if you are a beginner we recommend TGE". So is this statement obsolete? should i start saving up my allowance?
#50
I would highly recommend against diff'ing and merging from 1.7.1 to 1.8. We changed thousands of files all across the engine when we merged in GFX2 and it is going to be difficult at best to see your specific changes.
I would recommend doing a diff against a clean 1.7.1 install and hand merging your specific changes across into 1.8.
11/19/2008 (10:08 am)
deepscratch,I would highly recommend against diff'ing and merging from 1.7.1 to 1.8. We changed thousands of files all across the engine when we merged in GFX2 and it is going to be difficult at best to see your specific changes.
I would recommend doing a diff against a clean 1.7.1 install and hand merging your specific changes across into 1.8.
#51
That is some older marketing text left over from TGEA 1.0.3 when TGEA had less features, less stability, less examples, and less documentation than TGE. We should be updating that shortly now that it has been brought to our attention.
At this point TGEA is a far better choice for a beginner looking to get into a 3D engine than TGE. It matches and/or exceeds TGE in every way and far exceeds it in beginner friendly documentation.
11/19/2008 (10:12 am)
Matthew,That is some older marketing text left over from TGEA 1.0.3 when TGEA had less features, less stability, less examples, and less documentation than TGE. We should be updating that shortly now that it has been brought to our attention.
At this point TGEA is a far better choice for a beginner looking to get into a 3D engine than TGE. It matches and/or exceeds TGE in every way and far exceeds it in beginner friendly documentation.
#52
Expecially when searching documentation
11/20/2008 (3:26 am)
Let's get rid of TGE, it will be much easier for TGEA users thenExpecially when searching documentation
#53
That's not a very bright idea when people like myself who use Linux only have TGE as a practical choice. I'm glad some companies still use TGE like the Penny Arcade games I can play in Linux.
11/20/2008 (6:20 am)
@Giampaolo:That's not a very bright idea when people like myself who use Linux only have TGE as a practical choice. I'm glad some companies still use TGE like the Penny Arcade games I can play in Linux.
#54
2>LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file '..\..\link\vc2k8.release.win32\libogg.lib'
Any idea if its a missing file or anything ? Thanks :D
BTW, any idea on when we're going to get video support (avi,mpg,theora, ANYTHING) ?
As i've been trying unsuccessfully to get TGE tutorials to work on TGEA 1.71 due to
the change to SFX system.
11/21/2008 (12:53 am)
on a clean install of 1.8 beta, i tried to compile stronghold with VS2008 and got the following linking error2>LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file '..\..\link\vc2k8.release.win32\libogg.lib'
Any idea if its a missing file or anything ? Thanks :D
BTW, any idea on when we're going to get video support (avi,mpg,theora, ANYTHING) ?
As i've been trying unsuccessfully to get TGE tutorials to work on TGEA 1.71 due to
the change to SFX system.
#55
Would you move onto TGEA if it was compatible with Linux?
11/21/2008 (2:22 am)
Sorry Keith I didn't know about thatWould you move onto TGEA if it was compatible with Linux?
#56
thanks for the comment, yes I saw there where severe changes, have already started hand merging.
11/21/2008 (2:58 am)
@Matthew,thanks for the comment, yes I saw there where severe changes, have already started hand merging.
#57
did you notice that libogg was excluded from the build? just rebuild it(libogg) and relink.
11/21/2008 (3:01 am)
@Cai Yundong,did you notice that libogg was excluded from the build? just rebuild it(libogg) and relink.
#58
At present, I'm not working at anything with TGE, but if TGEA were available for me, I'd consider that at least. I suppose if no one takes a crack at porting it to Linux, I might be crazy enough to make an attempt someday (after I familiarize myself with C++, OpenGL & re-purchase the engine again... not something that happens overnight with all those pre-requisites!). If nothing else, as Matt points out, they do have the harder part of it done by adding OpenGL to it.
11/21/2008 (6:29 pm)
@Giampaolo:At present, I'm not working at anything with TGE, but if TGEA were available for me, I'd consider that at least. I suppose if no one takes a crack at porting it to Linux, I might be crazy enough to make an attempt someday (after I familiarize myself with C++, OpenGL & re-purchase the engine again... not something that happens overnight with all those pre-requisites!). If nothing else, as Matt points out, they do have the harder part of it done by adding OpenGL to it.
#60
11/26/2008 (2:44 am)
After a particularly venomous swearing session at Vista, I went out and bought my first Mac (the 24" iMac). I never thought it would happen but here I am using it. I love it's old school unixy ways and I'm blown away with how well it runs World of Warcraft. I think the new generation of macs have serious gaming potential and I'm so pleased that you've put all this effort in to porting your engine across. Well done! I'm going to grab it now. 
Paulo Pinto
Great work supporting the Mac.
How can we help you guys with Linux porting, isn't TGEA closed source?