Torque 3D 3.6 nearing release
by Daniel Buckmaster · 09/18/2014 (5:12 pm) · 33 comments
That's right! At long last, your new T3D Steering Committee is going to be making our first release. Those of you who follow our GitHub milestones with rapt attention may have noticed that our goal for releasing Torque 3D 3.6 is September 30. That day is rapidly approaching, and we're nearing our goal - as of writing this, GitHub tells me our issue list is 84% complete. But we can't get the rest of the way without you! That's right, you. If you use Torque, we want your input on proposed changes and modifications, to ensure that the engine's development is both democratic, and technically sound.
The goods
So what's in this release? You'll have to wait for the final release blog to get the precise details, but here are some rough statistics for you (with source): we've closed 144 issues or pull requests, of which 36 were bugs (i.e. the engine was broken or behaving wrongly), 47 were defects (code cleanup, more sensible behavior, general improvements) and 23 were new features. And there are still more of all of those to be processed!Notable new features include being able to officially generate projects with CMake for the first time, being able to use English names for common colours (like in T2D), Visual Studio 2013 support, Googletest unit tests, and hopefully one or two more special treats. But beyond those glamorous items, a whole host of improvements have been made throughout the codebase - old/dead code has been removed, compiler warnings resolved, visual glitches ironed out and documentation added.
A departure
At this time we'd like to say a fond farewell to Andrew Mac, who due to work commitments has had to resign from his position on the Steering Committee. He'll still be around in the community, but a bit less active. We thank him for his significant contributions to the engine and the Committee, and wish him the best of luck for the future!And, of course, that means we'll be looking for another Committee member to fill this vacancy. If helping to maintain, develop and grow a large open-source project like Torque sounds like a fun time to you, and you have skills and energy to bring to the Committee, we'd love to hear from you! More information about the Committee is available on our website.
Getting involved
If you're a Torque user and you want to help improve the engine, we need you! Right now especially, we're looking for testers to review this branch with a 64-bit compiler compatible version of the engine, which we'd like to include in the 3.6 release. Otherwise, a great place to start is with our Final Review label. We tag PRs with it when we've looked it over, we like it, and we think it's ready to merge. It's like that moment at weddings when they ask if anyone has any objections. If the final review queue is looking a but short, take a look at the rest of our issue list, which you can point at any milestone we have, and have a look for issues that nobody's commented on.Does the issue affect you? Does it solve a problem you've had? Does it solve it in the right way? Would you have to rewrite parts of your game if this change were accepted? Does the code look stable and useful to lots of users of the engine?
These are the questions we'd like to ask every single user if we could. So give us a hand and make your voice heard!
The future
Torque, and the broader game engine landscape, are changing rapidly these days. After this release, the SC will be taking some time to regroup and discuss what we can do with the engine in the immediate future. We already have over 30 issues lined up for 3.7, and many more to work on that have been assigned to other milestones, or not assigned at all yet. In addition, we (and the community) will be continuing on our personal work with the engine - BeamNG's Linux and OpenGL work, Jeff's entity/component system, etcetera.We'll also be considering Torque's place in the developing engine marketplace - what makes Torque unique? What are its strengths, and why would you choose it over the competition? Especially when there is such good competition out there.
In conclusion,
Torque 3D 3.6 is coming, but we need your help! Much love, peace to all, and see you again at the end of the month when we announce the 3.6 release officially - if all goes well!
About the author
Studying mechatronic engineering and computer science at the University of Sydney. Game development is probably my most time-consuming hobby!
#22
Thanks, everyone, for the great thoughts and the input about why you use Torque. We'll be taking everyone's ideas into account as we discuss our plans for 3.7 and beyond - and don't worry, we'll keep you in the loop and discuss in public as often as we can!
09/20/2014 (3:47 pm)
This is a better way to view our 'changelog' since each pull-request might have multiple commits, and discussion about it.Thanks, everyone, for the great thoughts and the input about why you use Torque. We'll be taking everyone's ideas into account as we discuss our plans for 3.7 and beyond - and don't worry, we'll keep you in the loop and discuss in public as often as we can!
#23
09/20/2014 (8:16 pm)
Hey speaking of wish lists... where exactly are we at re: android? How far is that from the linux/GL work going on? 
#24
Thank you all for the great work you've done, and for the work that's still waiting. Too bad to see people leave again, but we can fairly say that @Andrew has been utterly important for T3D and the community.
We'll try our best to help out whenever possible, yet our own development consumes so much time, so apologies if we look a bit absent here lately.
64-bit is pretty important, let's see if we can test this ... :-)
Fingers crossed and Godspeed!
09/20/2014 (10:06 pm)
Thanks for the update @DanielThank you all for the great work you've done, and for the work that's still waiting. Too bad to see people leave again, but we can fairly say that @Andrew has been utterly important for T3D and the community.
We'll try our best to help out whenever possible, yet our own development consumes so much time, so apologies if we look a bit absent here lately.
64-bit is pretty important, let's see if we can test this ... :-)
Fingers crossed and Godspeed!
#25
09/21/2014 (2:37 am)
Quote:what makes Torque unique? What are its strengths, and why would you choose it over the competition?Open source with a very permisive MIT license. We can even release a game with all tools/editors for modding (not posible on other engines licenses).
Quote:Hey speaking of wish lists... where exactly are we at re: android? How far is that from the linux/GL work going on?We want try to merge OpenGL/Linux to 3.7... I hope we have Android, not long after. A community help on review Github's PR can help me speed this work, becouse i can dedicate more time on ports.
#26
09/21/2014 (4:36 am)
Good point - I'd forgotten that way back in TGE days, a big reason for me choosing Torque was because I could distribute editors and make my game moddable. Of course, I was being way too ambitious and never ended up releasing anything that anyone could mod anyway... but the possibility was there :P. Kind of like full source. I might not know enough to make anything I want even with the engine source... but the possibility is there.
#27
I personally keep using T3D because the codebase is small enough that you can wrap your head around it, it's open source and free and you can produce indie-quality games with it.. And after all thats all I am, an indie developer trying to make indie games and not the next damn Call Of Duty.
Though I've said this before and I'm gonna say it again. Imo there are no engine out there that compares with T3D.
Unity, has less features than T3D when you use the free version and limited possibilities of improving it.
CryEngine is... Well it's not very beginner-friendly from what I've heard.. And I don't think it actually gives you opensource (also you have to pay for a shitload of licenses when you want to publish your game, despite the low price of the engine).
UE4 is a great engine, but when I opened it up, I couldn't help feeling like it was made for great games. I felt completely out of place and all the graphics were just turned up. It felt odd that I had to think "what can I do to make this look worse". Also the royalties are gonna bite you in the ass at some point, but hey it's cheap enough for a game engine that actually passes a static code analyzer somewhat decently.
I guess my point is, the competition out there isn't that bad imo, we just haven't got the word out about T3D properly.
But it still seems like the community has been a bit on the rise, the blogs and forums are active. Lots of developers still hammering away at those same old issues. We got deferred shading, OpenGL and a lot of other things going on. The engine is as alive as ever, the key point is that we all remember to finish the projects we start, so they don't go dead in the water.
// Long post, ended. Now return to studies.
09/21/2014 (5:26 am)
I once read a blog about T3D vs Unity, and while biased a little towards Unity, the author said that the strongest points of T3D, compared to other engines was the environmental tools. The river editor, road editor etc. All these special little environmental tools we all take for granted are a godsend. And I agree with him.I personally keep using T3D because the codebase is small enough that you can wrap your head around it, it's open source and free and you can produce indie-quality games with it.. And after all thats all I am, an indie developer trying to make indie games and not the next damn Call Of Duty.
Though I've said this before and I'm gonna say it again. Imo there are no engine out there that compares with T3D.
Unity, has less features than T3D when you use the free version and limited possibilities of improving it.
CryEngine is... Well it's not very beginner-friendly from what I've heard.. And I don't think it actually gives you opensource (also you have to pay for a shitload of licenses when you want to publish your game, despite the low price of the engine).
UE4 is a great engine, but when I opened it up, I couldn't help feeling like it was made for great games. I felt completely out of place and all the graphics were just turned up. It felt odd that I had to think "what can I do to make this look worse". Also the royalties are gonna bite you in the ass at some point, but hey it's cheap enough for a game engine that actually passes a static code analyzer somewhat decently.
I guess my point is, the competition out there isn't that bad imo, we just haven't got the word out about T3D properly.
But it still seems like the community has been a bit on the rise, the blogs and forums are active. Lots of developers still hammering away at those same old issues. We got deferred shading, OpenGL and a lot of other things going on. The engine is as alive as ever, the key point is that we all remember to finish the projects we start, so they don't go dead in the water.
// Long post, ended. Now return to studies.
#28
Sorry to hear Andrew has to go. Wish I had time to volunteer in some capacity. But the last thing you need is a guy who's neck deep in his own project taking up space on a committee.
We're sticking with T3D for all of the reasons listed above. We're very familiar with it at this point and have modified it a lot to suit our needs. Something we just couldn't do with any other engine. Also, there are a lot of very timely improvements being made to T3D fairly quickly considering no one is employed full time. That all saves an indie team like us enormous amounts of time and money.
I can't wait to get some of the latest and upcoming improvements merged into our project. Like PBR, 64bit and DX11. Michael has already added features I haven't even had a chance to play with yet, like Physics and his pathShape alternative.
Thanks again!
Scot
09/21/2014 (11:21 am)
Congrats on the upcoming new version release! Sorry to hear Andrew has to go. Wish I had time to volunteer in some capacity. But the last thing you need is a guy who's neck deep in his own project taking up space on a committee.
We're sticking with T3D for all of the reasons listed above. We're very familiar with it at this point and have modified it a lot to suit our needs. Something we just couldn't do with any other engine. Also, there are a lot of very timely improvements being made to T3D fairly quickly considering no one is employed full time. That all saves an indie team like us enormous amounts of time and money.
I can't wait to get some of the latest and upcoming improvements merged into our project. Like PBR, 64bit and DX11. Michael has already added features I haven't even had a chance to play with yet, like Physics and his pathShape alternative.
Thanks again!
Scot
#29
Do you guys intend to keep up with the Oculus Rift updates and other VR peripherals?
09/24/2014 (8:43 am)
Quote:We already have over 30 issues lined up for 3.7
Do you guys intend to keep up with the Oculus Rift updates and other VR peripherals?
#30
I am also interested in this I only make games for Oculus Rift and the DK2 SDK needs to be implemented into T3D for use I tried myself but i really am not up to the task sadly as a lot has changed from the DK1 integration.
I do think T3D when it can run on Android would be the best engine for samsung GearVR :)
I would love to hear about Rift support as i can't use T3D anymore :(
I am glad to see the committee has done such a wonderful job of updating T3D
09/24/2014 (4:43 pm)
Quote:Do you guys intend to keep up with the Oculus Rift updates and other VR peripherals?
I am also interested in this I only make games for Oculus Rift and the DK2 SDK needs to be implemented into T3D for use I tried myself but i really am not up to the task sadly as a lot has changed from the DK1 integration.
I do think T3D when it can run on Android would be the best engine for samsung GearVR :)
I would love to hear about Rift support as i can't use T3D anymore :(
I am glad to see the committee has done such a wonderful job of updating T3D
#31
09/25/2014 (12:23 am)
I think it would take someone with a DK2 to keep the OVR code up-to-date :/ 
#32
09/25/2014 (12:16 pm)
Really looking forward to this release, and I hope that there will be a correction of defects calculation animation and positioning of the UV mapping ...
#33
But also, we think we have bigger issues than keeping up with niche hardware at this point - we're very sorry to have to say that, but our priorities when we're doing personal dev work on the engine are mostly focused on the most-wanted improvements. For example, Mac/Linux support. We'd be very excited to see someone maintaining OR support, and we defiitely want it in the engine, but we have a limited time/effort budget for our own contributions, and we're focusing them elsewhere.
Olexiy, those issues aren't on the list for 3.6. However, Azaezel's been validating your animation issues so we should be able to look into them in 3.7. Increased support for a Blender asset pipeline is something the committee is generally agreed upon, so we'll try to make it a priority.
09/25/2014 (3:26 pm)
Unfortunately the OR support was written by GarageGames, and they don't seem forthcoming with support at the moment. None of the current committee members has access to a dev kit, so it'll be hard for us to do anything without somebody from the community stepping up to help out.But also, we think we have bigger issues than keeping up with niche hardware at this point - we're very sorry to have to say that, but our priorities when we're doing personal dev work on the engine are mostly focused on the most-wanted improvements. For example, Mac/Linux support. We'd be very excited to see someone maintaining OR support, and we defiitely want it in the engine, but we have a limited time/effort budget for our own contributions, and we're focusing them elsewhere.
Olexiy, those issues aren't on the list for 3.6. However, Azaezel's been validating your animation issues so we should be able to look into them in 3.7. Increased support for a Blender asset pipeline is something the committee is generally agreed upon, so we'll try to make it a priority.
Azaezel