Jan 06 TDN Update

Howdy!

I've just finished some regularly unscheduled TDN maintenance, updating the database and site code significantly. TDN was down for a total of of 27 minutes. :)

Lots of polish and nice new features. The login should be more robust, although if you encounter any problems I definitely want to hear about it. Just drop me a note at this forum thread. Parsing is more robust and faster, and a lot of interface and stability improvements have come from the fine team that works on MediaWiki. (If you're keeping track, we've just made the jump from MW 1.4.9 to MW 1.5.5.)

This update also presages further work on TDN. I'm working on rolling out Elixir with Tom Bampton very soon, and will also be pumping a bunch of new features into the wiki side of TDN - ways to browse and manage content that will make it much easier for us make sure TDN is a useful place for everyone. I'll talk more about those when I get them written. ;)

If you haven't already, this is also an excellent time to subscribe to the TDN forums! Just go here, and check the box next to "Torque Developer Network" near the bottom of the list, and you'll start seeing the TDN forums in your unread posts.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year's!
Over the break, besides slacking off, working on getting through some video games (Rebel Star: Tactical Command, Metroid Fusion, both my first time playing, and Psychonauts, for the second time), and generally being festive, I refactored the Torque profiler. It's now a TON cleaner, codewise, to read, as well as being all smooth and polished. The profiler update also supports multiple threads, so those of you working on multithreaded apps in Torque now have a powerful tool for analyzing your code's performance. This also lays the groundwork for some more interesting enhancements... But more on those in a later .plan. ;)

I'm also continuing to plonk away on Atlas, getting runtime texture blending implemented (with no seams, which is the harder part ;), and in-game editors online. The next revision is going to be faster, better, and generally more awesome.

At the office, we're spending these first few weeks doing post-mortems on our projects, and planning the new year. We'll be pretty busy with those activities for a bit, but I think once we've gotten our heads all in order you'll be seeing a lot of renewed effort on our biggest projects! (This is also a subtle way of letting you know that we might be a bit slow on the response until we've gotten this planning done, so be patient if you've sent us mail. :)

On the subject of Atlas, I'll leave you with a shot of an arch that our very own Adam deGrandis made in 3d Studio Max. This isn't your dad's terrain engine. ;)