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.
#62
12/01/2008 (10:39 am)
In HLSL it is still valid to bind the variables to registers. However, if you look over in the C++ code of the engine, you'll note that we never reference those variables by the register number like we used to in TGEA 1.7.1. Instead we query by name for variables from the compiled shader. 
#63
gfxD3D9TextureManager.obj : error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol _DXGetErrorString9A@4
So is this a compatibility problem with DirectX or Am Missing something?
12/02/2008 (2:48 am)
Can I use Microsoft DirectX SDK (November 2008) with the latest build of TGEA - I get several erroer after setting up the linkage etc in VC++2008. One includes : gfxD3D9TextureManager.obj : error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol _DXGetErrorString9A@4
So is this a compatibility problem with DirectX or Am Missing something?
#64
P.S. Please update the TGEA documentation site!!!
12/02/2008 (6:37 am)
Hi, I'm a beginner, a novice that has purchased the TGEA because of the hype that it received. By far, I agree that it has more features than TGE, but as far as the drag and drop, user friendly config and scripting, it takes awhile to get use to it. If you are a complete newbie who tampered with TGE. Expect to put double the work into TGEA just to understand your direction with the engine (Atlas, vs custom map dev, folder familiarization (data, scripts, prefs, etc), views ports and how to use them, and many more. In some ways I agree, if TGEA was the only 3D game engine for GG, there would be more documentation and support keeping customers (like myself) extremely busy enjoy it. But since TGE is better supported in the Documentation, I still direct beginners to it for the sake of keeping them connected to Garagegames and not another game dev website. P.S. Please update the TGEA documentation site!!!
#65
12/02/2008 (9:24 am)
@Ebonixs - Which TGEA documentation site? The one that has 5 times more content than TGE? Or the an old one you have a link to? 
#66
12/02/2008 (2:30 pm)
does someone have a link to "The one that has 5 times more content than TGE"? I would like to see this.
#67
Does anyone click on the [Documentation] button at the top of this site?
12/02/2008 (2:32 pm)
TGEA Documentation Landing PageDoes anyone click on the [Documentation] button at the top of this site?
#68
Bye the way... are the "TGEA Developer FAQ" a bit outdated ?
Not a complain, the most of the docs is clear and ok, just noted some answers to the FAQ not really up to date...
Cheers, JoZ :-D
12/03/2008 (2:00 pm)
Michael, in the latest weeks I'm clicking it a lot :-DBye the way... are the "TGEA Developer FAQ" a bit outdated ?
Not a complain, the most of the docs is clear and ok, just noted some answers to the FAQ not really up to date...
Cheers, JoZ :-D
#69
12/03/2008 (2:18 pm)
The TGEA Developer FAQs are way out of date. A few of us are rewriting all of the FAQs for the site, and adding some new ones as well.
#70
12/03/2008 (2:32 pm)
Thanks Michael... I love TGEA but I don't understand it enough to say "I'm building all my games in TGEA." I've so far refered a few of my friends in High School to TGE for scripting simplicity, TDN, and forum support.
#71
12/03/2008 (2:54 pm)
We totally need well sorted and updated TGEA Docs, resources right now are spread apart and messy
#72
- Brought all engines under the same doc framework as TGB
- Generating new content for all engines
- Organizing and consolidating existing tutorials and docs
- Cleaning TDN and opening it fully to the public, as well as upgrading it to new versions
And so on...and so on....and so on...
12/03/2008 (3:10 pm)
@Ebonixs, Giampaolo - Take about 10 minutes to click on my name, then skim through my past 5 blogs.- Brought all engines under the same doc framework as TGB
- Generating new content for all engines
- Organizing and consolidating existing tutorials and docs
- Cleaning TDN and opening it fully to the public, as well as upgrading it to new versions
And so on...and so on....and so on...
#73
12/04/2008 (1:31 pm)
Thanks Michael... If only answers from the forums were reflected in the TDNs. Then no one would have issues.
#74
12/06/2008 (11:11 pm)
So can I make a game on Windows, that works on both Windows and Mac computers? 
Torque Owner Chenhong
But I find it bind the shader variable to register by numbers in the shader file of TGEA1.8 , like it did in TGEA1.7.
For example in atlasSurfaceV.hlsl ,(TGEA_1_8_Beta_1\GameExamples\T3D\game\shaders)
ConnectData main( VertData IN,
......
uniform float4 texGen : register(C44),
uniform float4 scaleOff : register(C45),
uniform float4 morphInfo : register(C46)
)
Why?