2011 - The Year in Review!
by David Montgomery-Blake · 01/17/2012 (12:15 pm) · 22 comments
2012 has begun with a bang here in Vegas! We're excitedly pushing forward on a number of great projects and have some very exciting things that we are working on! We'll post more on these things later, however. I wanted to sit down and look at the 2011 year and reflect on just how far we have come as a company. For most of the year, we've been operating in start-up mode, which seems really strange to say about a company with such a rich history. We have hired a lot of amazing talent such as Dexter Chow (Ubisoft), Dennis Booth (THQ), and Dmitry Shtainer (Crytek, EA, Unity, Monolith). We have added an art studio, have strong marketing and web resources, a killer documentation team, and have had a lot of releases in the last 12 months!
At the beginning of 2011, we were in "reboot" mode. After the closure of InstantAction, we were picked up by some savvy investors at Graham Software Development. They were long-time Torque users who are aligned with our team and vision moving foward. To get back to our indie roots, we jumped back into the indie pricing arena and offered our engines for $99. The team started with nine employees. They moved the office into a great new location and began ramping up operations on our engines. We also ramped up the hiring process, and by the end of May, we had doubled our team size!
During the last year, we had two releases of iTorque 2D, two releases of Torque 3D, and a release of Torque 2D!
We also expanded our reach by hiring a dedicated art team and creating a number of art packs: Soldier Death Animations, Soldier Art Pack, Cheetah Art Pack, Decal Art Pack, Zombie Art Pack, Graveyard Art Pack, Soldier Weapons Art Pack, Alien Art Pack, and the Alien Weapons Art Pack.
As if we were not busy enough, we wrote a cradle-to-grave tutorial for creating a First-Person Shooter in Torque 3D. This was a great experience and provided us with the opportunity to not only work with a great technical writer (Janet Fisher), but also to hire a full time documentation manager (Geoff Beckstrom) and technical writer (Richard Ranft). This also allowed us to create an educational curriculum based around the tutorial.
On the community front, in August we began Friday Community Power Hours where the company jumps into the forums and IRC to help people in our community and answer any questions that you have at the time.
We have done an amazing amount in 2011, and are looking forward to doing even more in 2012!
At the beginning of 2011, we were in "reboot" mode. After the closure of InstantAction, we were picked up by some savvy investors at Graham Software Development. They were long-time Torque users who are aligned with our team and vision moving foward. To get back to our indie roots, we jumped back into the indie pricing arena and offered our engines for $99. The team started with nine employees. They moved the office into a great new location and began ramping up operations on our engines. We also ramped up the hiring process, and by the end of May, we had doubled our team size!
During the last year, we had two releases of iTorque 2D, two releases of Torque 3D, and a release of Torque 2D!
We also expanded our reach by hiring a dedicated art team and creating a number of art packs: Soldier Death Animations, Soldier Art Pack, Cheetah Art Pack, Decal Art Pack, Zombie Art Pack, Graveyard Art Pack, Soldier Weapons Art Pack, Alien Art Pack, and the Alien Weapons Art Pack.
As if we were not busy enough, we wrote a cradle-to-grave tutorial for creating a First-Person Shooter in Torque 3D. This was a great experience and provided us with the opportunity to not only work with a great technical writer (Janet Fisher), but also to hire a full time documentation manager (Geoff Beckstrom) and technical writer (Richard Ranft). This also allowed us to create an educational curriculum based around the tutorial.
On the community front, in August we began Friday Community Power Hours where the company jumps into the forums and IRC to help people in our community and answer any questions that you have at the time.
We have done an amazing amount in 2011, and are looking forward to doing even more in 2012!
About the author
Community management and development, Educational computing systems and lab management, Flex, ActionScript, JavaScript, PHP, C++, C#, Perl, Python, Ruby, LUA, etc.
Torque Owner Mike Rowley
Mike Rowley