Plan for Josh Williams

Well, this is a .plan I've been anxious to write for quite some time: Torque 2D is almost here!

As we speak, T2D is out for what should be the last major testing cycle it needs. We can't wait to see what everyone is going to do with it... this is going to be a fun year.

T2D is coming out under the Early Adopter program, at a reduced price, and it'll be released very soon! We want to bring you all on the inside early again, as with TSE. Early Adopter means you get your hands on the technology as soon as possible, and get an inside line as we develop more tech, tools and editors.

Work will continue on T2D until it's the best little game maker ever. :) Of course, it feels like we're practically to that point already, so I'm very glad T2D's launching sooner rather than later. The technology in T2D is way beyond "Early Adopter", more than stable enough to use in serious game development, and we can't wait to get equally powerful tools into everyone's hands.

Shots from a T2D IGC demo, thanks to Alex Swanson and Pat Wilson.

Torque 2D is all about rapid development. It takes care of the technology, and let's you focus on gameplay and art.

Bleh, that probably sounds like marketing-speech. Look... let me be honest, I don't know what to say other than... I have a very hard time not asking Jeff if I can go on a 3 month sabbatical and just make a game with T2D. Seriously, I get to work with it a lotat least a little every single daybut not enough. I would like nothing better than to make a T2D game. It's that good. This thing is Melv's baby, so I can brag on it without being too pompous... it is amazing . I'm proud to be a part of the development, and of Melv for doing such an outstanding job.

Check out the features:

• Sprites (static and animated)
• Tiles (static, animated, dynamic, script-executable, unlimited layers, import from popular formats, fully scrollable)
• Collision (swept-poly collision, highly optimized, returns rich info: contact points, normals, time of impact, etc, collision with individual tiles)
• Physics (full rigid-body dynamics: linear and angular velocity, mass, inertia, friction, torque, etc)
• Particles (well... wow... watch the video)
• Documentation (tutorial, demo mission, and complete reference guide)
• Complete C++ Source
• Beginnings of editors: particle, animation... sprite, tile, and much more coming
• Tons more... too much to mention really... parallax scrolling, mounted objects, statistics / performance HUD, object debug rendering, flexible camera, object picking, scene saving / loading, fully scriptable, Torque integration, much more!

In my next .plan, I'll go over all these features in detail, and watch for more info from Melv soon too.
And did you catch that? C++ source... T2D was going to be binary only, but we decided that we had to see what people could do with the source in-hand. Torque SDK owners will be able to purchase the full T2D source code. Going to be fun seeing all the crazy stuff people do with it.

In the end, there simply isn't a more powerful 2D engine out there. We're very, very excited to launch T2D.

Speaking of which, we'd love to roll out with some great demos, and if you'd like to help out, we'd be glad to give you a free copy. Watch the forums in the next couple days for more details!

Shot from a T2D IGC demo, thanks to Alex Swanson and Pat Wilson.

On a final note, and I don't mean to get too mushy here but... Melv May is an absolutely incredible guy. T2D is his baby (besides his new, beautiful daughter), and it's got his mark all over it. It's phenomenally well engineeredif you look at T2D and really consider all the design, production, and implementation decisions, you quickly realize how truly smart Melv is. Moreover, he is incredibly easy to work with, and one of the nicest guys I've met. One of the things I like most about my job here as GG's "3rd Party Development Director" is getting to work closely with guys like John Kabus, Dave Wyand, the crew over at BraveTree, Ed Maurina, Ken Finney, Melv, and many more. All these guys are shining examples of indie developers.. and more than that, they're indie developers who are just as passionate about helping other indies out as we are here at GG. Melv, it's been a pleasure working with you bud. :)

Just had to spout a bit and give Melv proper credit for all his hard work... he's been working like a machine (despite my encouragements to take a break, once in a while at least). I hope he is very proud of T2D, I certainly am.

I'd also like to say thanks to Pat Wilson for helping out with T2D. Pat took on the task of implementing some of the less fun pieces of code we needed to write in order to make T2D a great product, and he, as always, did an excellent job. I know Melv and I both would like to thank him for the hard work. Alex Swanson helped put together a couple cool-looking IGC demos too, and it's always fun to see Alex show off his art skills.

Thanks for reading everyone... this was probably a bit dry, what with the relative lack of pictures and all, but watch for more next time. In my next .plan, I'm going to bore some people (and probably interest some others very, very much), and dig deep into some of the technical features of T2D. Melv will be doing some cool .plans as well, so watch the page!

(Previous T2D .plan (from Melv))