October Update
by Eric Preisz · 10/30/2010 (12:53 am) · 107 comments
It’s been about a month since I posted a blog, so we all agreed that I would take some time to post this blog instead of our normal monthly product update in the forums. We are a heads down right now focusing on Windows Phone 7, so writing one big update will free up the others to keep things rolling. So instead of blogging on a single big topic, I’m going to cover a lot of smaller developments.
Torque 3D Binary
We developed the business case for our binary offering a little over a year ago. At the time, the idea of updating a binary with the final release seemed reasonable. One of the assumptions that was made at the time was that a final 1.1 would be available sooner rather than later. Well, the final release hasn’t happened. One reason that 1.1 final hasn’t arrived is that we have increased the bar for what we consider final. We introduced beta 3, and from what we are hearing from you, we are indeed approaching a higher bar of quality. The numbers of bugs we are now finding and recording are significantly less than the time after our beta 2 release. And while the pro users have benefited from the quality improvement, the binary users sat patiently waiting for 1.1 so that they can get their hands on the fixes and performance increases.
We decided that the binary users have been waiting too long and since beta 3 is such a quality and performance improvement over the 1.0 binary, we came to the realization that it’s only right for us to change our stated policy and give the binary users a binary version of 1.1 beta 3. Your 1.0 and 1.1 beta 3 versions are now available in your account.
Web Site UpdatesWe are continuing to work on our web-site. Right now we are in the middle of big update of our payment processing system in order to accommodate the tax laws both in the US and overseas. I would rather be spending our time on features for our community, but this work is part of doing business correctly. During this update, we’ve been adding some small features to the site and we are continuing to fix bugs the best we can. Two improvements we are working on include Studio Profiles which gives you a place to promote your studio on our site; if this is a popular feature, we will continue to increase the functionality. In addition to the Studio Profile, Resource Filters simplify searching for resources by engine type. |  |
Game Distribution
There are two big challenges a game developer faces. The first is finishing a game; the second, and often overlooked challenge, is distributing your game. These days, it’s hard for you to get your game noticed. Web-distribution is one avenue for bringing your game to the people. We currently have a web-based plug-in for Torque 3D that many of you are using. In addition to that implementation, our company has been working for years on a high-end distribution system. We aren’t ready to make that system available to the masses in the near term, so I’ve been given the company “OK” to start working with third parties who are also developing similar technologies. What this means to you is that we are working towards partnerships so that we can integrate these technologies into our products so that you can more easily take advantage of their offerings. We have started working on a Torque 2D 1.7.6 that will hopefully make it easier for you to distribute your games via the web. More to follow later in blog dedicated to the topic.
TorqueX
GS 3.1 is entering into the sun setting phase and from what we’ve read in public forums, it appears as though games that are submitted using GS 3.1 will be rejected three months after GS Connect 4.0 is released , That means we have x+90 days of 3.1 publishing with x being the number of days until GS Connect 4.0 final release. That put us and our TorqueX developers working towards XBLIG in a bit of a pickle.
To further complicate issues, as you know, we are working on a new XNA based engine that we feel is significant architectural improvement over that of TorqueX. The focus for our initial release is for Windows Phone 7; however, I can tell you that we’ve done XBox tests on our Windows Phone 7 code and it runs on the Xbox 360. This doesn’t guarantee that the Windows Phone 7 code will run on the Xbox 360 at launch; but at a minimum it’s foreseeable that it won’t be far from running on the Xbox 360.
So how are we reacting to this news?
Frankly, we haven’t decided. We are measuring a couple of factors before we make a final decision. Those being:
1) The date of the release of GS 4.0 Connect
2) The state of our Windows Phone 7 Engine at that time
3) The market demand for XBLIG publishing with TorqueX 3.1.5
Here’s what we do know:
1) TorqueX users are allowed to upgrade to 4.0 themselves and publish on any XNA platform ( including the phone)
2) We are dropping our price of TorqueX 3.1.5 to $99 as of tomorrow
3) We added a warning to the check-out so that no one purchase TorqueX without knowing the current situation.
4) Community members (graciously driven by Pino ) have undertaken the job of porting TorqueX 3.1.5 to XNA 4.0 today.
5) TorqueX owners will receive a discount towards our Windows Phone 7 engine.
iTorque 3D
We are continuing to work hard on iTorque 3D, but we have run into some delays. We are currently forecasting a release in Q1 with the hopes of delivering a beta as soon as possible.iTorque 2D
The news for iTorque 2D 1.4.1 is simple. We’ve been continuing to fix bugs and we’ve updated everything so that it is compatible with the last iOS updates. This version will be going to QA soon. Depending on the results of our testing, we could have an update in weeks.
Closing
I just returned from the MAX conference. For those of you who don’t know, that’s the Adobe annual developers conference. I felt out of my element, but their 3D hardware accelerating API caught my eye. As game developers, we need to keep an open mind about the next big platform. It’s a crapshoot.
I stumbled upon Jeff Tunnell’s last blog at GG where he states that Windows, OSX, and Linux are not enough. Jeff’s statements were spot on. And while it was more plausible to hit all of the major platforms two years ago, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to accomplish considering the explosion of platforms ( and the looseness of the definition of a platform ). Consoles, phones, tablets, web-portals, thin clients( i.e., OnLive ), and now TVs. Developers should realize that there may be some real potential to supporting 10 to 20 different “platforms” in the not so distant future. The ocean is big -we are preparing.
About the author
Manager, Programmer, Author, Professor, Small Business Owner, and Marketer.
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#42
Edit:
On a more serious note as a game developer, I'd like to be define not my the tools I use, but by how creative I can be!
Torque...Unity...this Tool...that Tool...! At the end of the day it should boil down to just trying to have fun, making great games.
Oh, I'd forgot to say Thank You Eric, and GG for all the time you guys put into developing and updating T3D, and for taking the time to write these blogs.
11/02/2010 (12:17 am)
can't we all just get along? lolEdit:
On a more serious note as a game developer, I'd like to be define not my the tools I use, but by how creative I can be!
Torque...Unity...this Tool...that Tool...! At the end of the day it should boil down to just trying to have fun, making great games.
Oh, I'd forgot to say Thank You Eric, and GG for all the time you guys put into developing and updating T3D, and for taking the time to write these blogs.
#43
11/02/2010 (12:59 am)
+1 @ Barnette's post 
#45
http://scarsofwargame.com/DevBlog/?p=1509
11/02/2010 (7:51 pm)
As always, it depends on what you want to achieve with your game. Here is Gareth's experience with Unity for his particular game:http://scarsofwargame.com/DevBlog/?p=1509
#46
You guys are spreading yourselves way too thin, which in the end will produce lots of mediocre products instead of a few very strong ones.
There's some quote like if you chase two rabbits you lose both of them... well you guys are chasing about 8 rabbits!
Narrow your scope and focus on a few key products and then deliver something amazing!
11/02/2010 (8:41 pm)
@GG/TP - I have to agree with the masses above. You guys are spreading yourselves way too thin, which in the end will produce lots of mediocre products instead of a few very strong ones.
There's some quote like if you chase two rabbits you lose both of them... well you guys are chasing about 8 rabbits!
Narrow your scope and focus on a few key products and then deliver something amazing!
#47
second that
Well that depends on what they want to do. If it's just another shooter sure. if they want to do something different that no one has ever thought of - Code access becomes pretty much essencial. Plus, no matter how well tuned the engine is, there will always be some limitations that you will have to work with. Unless you have code access, then the limit is what you can do.
Have to agree with beeing a lot of products at this point - but they have said they are working on converging as much as possible. But given the amount of tools and all the people using them at this point they can't just stop supporting half of them - will take time to converge. Would be nice to come down to little more than a couple of products but they have a lot of platforms beeing supported and people counting on them to keep supporting ones they want.
in the end and as been said - before buying you must choose carefully and once you choose one, after a while becomes hard (if not unthinkable) to port a project to another one - so choose according to what you will need and not according to shynniness or future expectations. Sometimes even porting between two versions of the same engine can be a assle so in choosing you must be smart.
Once you made a choice accept any faults that it has and work with it instead of wasting time complaining about what it doesn't have. With torque you have code access so you can work around any shortcomings that you absolutly need go around so that IS a feature.
11/02/2010 (9:32 pm)
Quote:Torque...Unity...this Tool...that Tool...! At the end of the day it should boil down to just trying to have fun, making great games.
second that
Quote:If T3D was designed half as well as Unity people would not need the source to do what they want.
Well that depends on what they want to do. If it's just another shooter sure. if they want to do something different that no one has ever thought of - Code access becomes pretty much essencial. Plus, no matter how well tuned the engine is, there will always be some limitations that you will have to work with. Unless you have code access, then the limit is what you can do.
Quote:You guys are spreading yourselves way too thin, which in the end will produce lots of mediocre products instead of a few very strong ones.
Have to agree with beeing a lot of products at this point - but they have said they are working on converging as much as possible. But given the amount of tools and all the people using them at this point they can't just stop supporting half of them - will take time to converge. Would be nice to come down to little more than a couple of products but they have a lot of platforms beeing supported and people counting on them to keep supporting ones they want.
in the end and as been said - before buying you must choose carefully and once you choose one, after a while becomes hard (if not unthinkable) to port a project to another one - so choose according to what you will need and not according to shynniness or future expectations. Sometimes even porting between two versions of the same engine can be a assle so in choosing you must be smart.
Once you made a choice accept any faults that it has and work with it instead of wasting time complaining about what it doesn't have. With torque you have code access so you can work around any shortcomings that you absolutly need go around so that IS a feature.
#48
The infrastructure required to support so many concurrent products is significant. It's much more painful to do this work after the branching occurs. And the longer it occurs ( years in our case ), the harder and more skilled you need to be to pull it off.
All I can say is that we are working on this problem, but it's too early to share our plans because we need the flexibility; when we message too early we end up being handcuffed by our promises -this is twice as true when we take money based on promises...
Anyways, I wanted to acknowledge a lot of the observations in this blog. I think one promise we need to make is to ensure that we take care of our existing customers as much as possible as we work towards the goals of increasing our quality through architectural and ifrastructure adjustments. As much as possible, I'd like for us to all be on the same team.
11/03/2010 (5:28 pm)
Luis, I think you have summed up our position well. Oddly enough, I sent an e-mail to some folks at GG back in 2004 when I saw all of the versions being branched. I had worked for a company who did the same thing and I've seen this scenario play out before. It becomes very expensive to manage. I was part of the team that converged all of those different versions at my prior employment.The infrastructure required to support so many concurrent products is significant. It's much more painful to do this work after the branching occurs. And the longer it occurs ( years in our case ), the harder and more skilled you need to be to pull it off.
All I can say is that we are working on this problem, but it's too early to share our plans because we need the flexibility; when we message too early we end up being handcuffed by our promises -this is twice as true when we take money based on promises...
Anyways, I wanted to acknowledge a lot of the observations in this blog. I think one promise we need to make is to ensure that we take care of our existing customers as much as possible as we work towards the goals of increasing our quality through architectural and ifrastructure adjustments. As much as possible, I'd like for us to all be on the same team.
#49
11/03/2010 (7:24 pm)
You guys are simply incredible, you just keep pushing the limit. This is what I love about this company, I love how you have ideas and you just go with them. I have been awaiting a beta for awhile now as a binary owner and I am so happy you made it available especially right after I got my new quad-core development computer. Thanks guys for all the hard work you are putting into this and giving us indie gamers and hobbyists a chance. 
#50
11/03/2010 (7:56 pm)
This is has been a very insightful read :). I know a lot has been said. But the key thing for me is helping with game distribution. I know there are outlets for Indy games. Rampant comes to my mind. but Apple is reaping the nickel and dime gold mines with the way apps are distributed. yeah its nothing new. But what about the old PC markets. or any of the consoles markets. how long before you will never have to go into a Gamestop or Bestbuy, or Wal-mart to buy the latest game title. All you would need is a internet connection. and credit card. Making Apps is great extra income. But you can't make nearly as much with a Home-grown PC title. You still have to market it the old way. You certainly can't go to Wal-mart and say I made this game at home and would like to sell it from your store. Where is the New-Indy game distribution system going to be. Are PC's even going to be in the running for playing games anymore. Consoles and Mobiles are pretty strong right now. Which IMHO is influencing people when it comes to making games right now.
#51
11/03/2010 (9:03 pm)
Thanks for releasing Beta 3 1.1 to us Binaries. I've been able to poke around a bit over the last few days and have enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on 1.1 Final in order to really jump into development. In the mean time, more level building! :)
#52
11/05/2010 (2:09 pm)
Are the resource filters Working>? :/ 
#53
Let's be fair here. Unity didn't integrate the full version of Umbra or Beast, what they have is feature limited, watered down, "basic" versions of these technologies marketed as a smoke & mirrors selling point. If you want the full version of these technologies you still need to pay large amounts of money in licensing fees, so at best the integration of these technologies in Unity is more like giving you a demo that you can sort of work with than a feature.
Now I am not saying that Torque engines do not need to be competitive and feature complete, they most certainly do and they need to provide tremendous value in an ever increasing competetive market, but truth be told I would rather have full featured technology integration that I can actually utilize to its complete extent than something that is crippled and limits what I can do with it. From the talks I have had with the TorquePowered guys they get and understand this. With that all said I agree that there are holes in Torque, I just don't think having a demo or lite version of some 3rd party technology is where the holes are however.
11/06/2010 (3:07 pm)
@Thomas BangQuote:Question: Did GG (TP) think about to integrate Umbra Occlusion Culling and Beast Lightmapping into T3D like Unity did?
Let's be fair here. Unity didn't integrate the full version of Umbra or Beast, what they have is feature limited, watered down, "basic" versions of these technologies marketed as a smoke & mirrors selling point. If you want the full version of these technologies you still need to pay large amounts of money in licensing fees, so at best the integration of these technologies in Unity is more like giving you a demo that you can sort of work with than a feature.
Now I am not saying that Torque engines do not need to be competitive and feature complete, they most certainly do and they need to provide tremendous value in an ever increasing competetive market, but truth be told I would rather have full featured technology integration that I can actually utilize to its complete extent than something that is crippled and limits what I can do with it. From the talks I have had with the TorquePowered guys they get and understand this. With that all said I agree that there are holes in Torque, I just don't think having a demo or lite version of some 3rd party technology is where the holes are however.
#54
11/06/2010 (4:46 pm)
Honestly in the whole "Unity 3 Vs Torque 3D" I see only two issues that make Unity a better fit for casual games: Web streamed gaming and the assets' pipeline. I don't really see anything else: Unity doesn't even have decals so... I let you imagine the hell displaying bullets' holes on objects... I really hope IA will put those two main points very high on the to-do list.
#55
Torque only needs a few toolsets to catch up. One of them being a 4 port or multiple port screen. Making levels with multiple viewports make game making 10 times easier.
11/06/2010 (4:50 pm)
I don't think decals of bullet wholes is the end of the world. Torque only needs a few toolsets to catch up. One of them being a 4 port or multiple port screen. Making levels with multiple viewports make game making 10 times easier.
#56
TorqueScript is outdated and hard to use. From what I've heard, Torque no longer allows shipping the editors that made Torque different from Unity in the fact that users could easily mod your game.
GarageGames has always failed to deliver on their big ideas. And when they do deliver, it is often buggy and incomplete.
11/08/2010 (12:46 am)
I don't think the source is a big deal when you are getting the source to a piece of crap. Sure, you can spend 3x the development time required to reverse engineer what you want to do in Torque by manipulating the source, or you can spend a lot less time getting what you want to work in Unity. There are a ton of Unity released games and even portals. The only Torque portal I have seen failed horribly. (InstantAction)TorqueScript is outdated and hard to use. From what I've heard, Torque no longer allows shipping the editors that made Torque different from Unity in the fact that users could easily mod your game.
GarageGames has always failed to deliver on their big ideas. And when they do deliver, it is often buggy and incomplete.
#57
Exactly.
11/08/2010 (2:26 am)
Quote:I don't think the source is a big deal when you are getting the source to a piece of crap. Sure, you can spend 3x the development time required to reverse engineer what you want to do in Torque by manipulating the source, or you can spend a lot less time getting what you want to work in Unity.
Exactly.
#58
Sorry to answer this way but you are just trolling.
The source code for TGE is quite good. Maybe not the best but flexible enough to support changes. There was absolutely no way for me to reach my development point in my game without the source code. There is no way in Unity to create completely new and complex controls like the ones I had to create for my game. Unless you have a way to build a grid in Unity fully with column resize and sorting.
Also AFAIK there is no way in unity to create a control like the 3D viewer for each on my cards and even if it exists there is no way to modify it to handle the exceptions I had to code in to support the diverse models from diverse providers each with their own quirks.
TorqueScript is a quite potent language and indeed flexible enough to support quite a lot. I really was angry with the language at the beginning but I have come to a point where the languages works for me and not against me and lets me quickly prototype and test lots of things.
So if you are not technically savvy then you should refrain from posting this kind of things unless you have the experience to backup your claims. Torque may not be perfect. And I still maintain my position that it should be better integrated and GG should reduce the engine fragmentation. But from there to your claims there is a vast sea of ignorance. Sorry to say that.
Guimo
11/08/2010 (11:49 am)
@Jack & JonSorry to answer this way but you are just trolling.
The source code for TGE is quite good. Maybe not the best but flexible enough to support changes. There was absolutely no way for me to reach my development point in my game without the source code. There is no way in Unity to create completely new and complex controls like the ones I had to create for my game. Unless you have a way to build a grid in Unity fully with column resize and sorting.
Also AFAIK there is no way in unity to create a control like the 3D viewer for each on my cards and even if it exists there is no way to modify it to handle the exceptions I had to code in to support the diverse models from diverse providers each with their own quirks.
TorqueScript is a quite potent language and indeed flexible enough to support quite a lot. I really was angry with the language at the beginning but I have come to a point where the languages works for me and not against me and lets me quickly prototype and test lots of things.
So if you are not technically savvy then you should refrain from posting this kind of things unless you have the experience to backup your claims. Torque may not be perfect. And I still maintain my position that it should be better integrated and GG should reduce the engine fragmentation. But from there to your claims there is a vast sea of ignorance. Sorry to say that.
Guimo
#59
You seem to be thinking that because you don't have the source, you can't do anything.
Unity does have it's downfalls of course and sometimes you have to get creative with how you do things.
11/08/2010 (5:10 pm)
There are multiple ways for you to accomplish a grid in Unity. There is even a free, 3d, open source grid generator for Unity called "Griddy". You could probably add more to it to suit your needs. (naming each grid space for sorting, resizing, etc) I'm not sure what you are talking about with the 3D viewer, although you could probably code a way to associate a 3d model with the card you want and then display it on the screen. You seem to be thinking that because you don't have the source, you can't do anything.
Unity does have it's downfalls of course and sometimes you have to get creative with how you do things.
#60
Exactly the point - there are things in Torque not in Unity and things in Unity not in Torque.
Unity is on version 3.0.0 - Torque is on it's way to version 1.1 after a major update on it's core since the TGEA days.
When 1.0 beta was on they kept bringing new features and everyone complained how this wasn't good because every feature creep meant existing features weren't getting the required time to completly fix all the bugs found. So they changed the way they do things. Now even though they try adding some features with updates they don't do that with every beta, leaving the betas to fix all the bugs - well, as many as possible.
So you know complain about not having some X or Y feature that an older engine has recently added.
It's the old bake the cake and eat it too thing.
I for one would rather have everything fixed before adding more and more and loose all sense of what goes where and have fixing one thing break everything else.
Like i said - when starting a project evaluate the tools (engine included) pick one who fits best your needs (not necessarly the shiniest) and work with what it gives you.
Don't choose based on future expectations and use all the engine gives you to your advantage - in case of Torque, one of the things it gives you is code access - using it or not is up to you - it's still there giving you the oportunity to take the engine up to your needs.
That is important to some and not to others, but just cause you don't want or don't know how to take advantage of it is not same as it not beeing a feature too.
If someone doesn't know how to use the Shape Editor or the Sketch Tool would they stop beeing a feature? no - features are what is there at your disposal and that you can (if you want) take advantage of. Weather you do or even know how to is irrelevant for it to be a feature - this is only relevant to your hability to take advantage of the tool (engine)
11/08/2010 (8:51 pm)
Quote:Unity does have it's downfalls of course and sometimes you have to get creative with how you do things.
Exactly the point - there are things in Torque not in Unity and things in Unity not in Torque.
Unity is on version 3.0.0 - Torque is on it's way to version 1.1 after a major update on it's core since the TGEA days.
When 1.0 beta was on they kept bringing new features and everyone complained how this wasn't good because every feature creep meant existing features weren't getting the required time to completly fix all the bugs found. So they changed the way they do things. Now even though they try adding some features with updates they don't do that with every beta, leaving the betas to fix all the bugs - well, as many as possible.
So you know complain about not having some X or Y feature that an older engine has recently added.
It's the old bake the cake and eat it too thing.
I for one would rather have everything fixed before adding more and more and loose all sense of what goes where and have fixing one thing break everything else.
Like i said - when starting a project evaluate the tools (engine included) pick one who fits best your needs (not necessarly the shiniest) and work with what it gives you.
Don't choose based on future expectations and use all the engine gives you to your advantage - in case of Torque, one of the things it gives you is code access - using it or not is up to you - it's still there giving you the oportunity to take the engine up to your needs.
That is important to some and not to others, but just cause you don't want or don't know how to take advantage of it is not same as it not beeing a feature too.
If someone doesn't know how to use the Shape Editor or the Sketch Tool would they stop beeing a feature? no - features are what is there at your disposal and that you can (if you want) take advantage of. Weather you do or even know how to is irrelevant for it to be a feature - this is only relevant to your hability to take advantage of the tool (engine)
Torque 3D Owner Rapid Fire
Rapid Fire Studios
Sorry, i had to let that out, after 1 frustrating year with you guys.
T3D and iT3D however is why I'm still here and waiting for the T3D 1.1 release, and the iT3D beta (or whatever). I still feel that GG is a good company, but needs to focus, don't jump on the band wagon, focus on what you have and make it better.