Latest GarageGames News

That's right! More cool stuff and wicked sweet projects from the forums!

Cool Stuff
Melv's sweet collision and physics document for TGB
Adding "simple" collision for trigger and onCollision callback to the RTS Kit
Dan Keller provides extremely helpful information on Rigid Body setups!
Nice discussion of interactive file access in TGE
Joseph Greenawalt describes exporting effects from Blender
Magnus compiles the Max exporter for 2009
Mike Rowley provides the TGE 1.5.2 OpCode integration files
Alex Stone provides a fix for the ALT-TAB crash (I included Amanda Fitch's programmer's
information for it in TGB as well)
Alex Stone provides help in solving flying vehicle-ground collision issues
Mark Dynna helps out by providing clarification on SimID's
Great Datablock discussion with extremely helpful input from Stephen Zepp!
A rather interesting look at TGEA's shadowing with screenshots
Jaimi provides great information for working with Constructor
Interesting discussion on polysoup portaling methods
Matt Fairfax provides an excellent evaluation of MegaTerrains
TGB TDN News for April
Torque Collaborative Design World Tool for TGEA 1.7
Interesting discussion on Squad-based movement

Wicked Sweet Projects
Nicolai Dukta shares some of his college Torque projects
Torque MMO Kit advanced C++ MMORPG Extensions ready for testing with TGEA
Frayed Nights Pilot Episode Beta


TGEA Hover Racing


Awesome Artists & Musicians
Maxim releases more free models!


DexSoft releases Middle East Building Pack

Due to unexpected latency and resource eating, I had to scale back these for a bit. But I got some time to parse them and let them into the wild. There's a lot here, so enjoy if you missed some of the stuff that's going on in the community over the last month!

There's a ton of stuff, but I've tried to break it up a bit to be more readable!

Cool Stuff
Deborah Marshall releases a video "Rainy Day" tutorial for TGB
Zap available on InstantAction
Michael Perry helps out new users
Michael Perry helps out new users with folders
Adding Modifier keys to mouse functionality in TorqueX by Scott Goodwin
Excellent discussion on specular mapping in TGEA (with screenshots)
Lee Latham helps with rigid body physics (TGE)
Information on posting TGEA Open Beta bugs
Major known issues in TGEA Open Beta 1
TGEA Open Beta Documentation Feedback

RTS Unit particle emitters by BillF
Good discussion on ending a game in TGB
Neat hack from Peter Simard to disable lighting
Derek Bronson announces the Houdini exporter beta
Ground Cover (TGEA Open Beta 1) changes for ATLAS terrains
Vespers3D progress and NPC discussion
Portal fix test edition for Constructor
CameraManager Singleton released on TDN
Collaborative World Editor in Torque
Good discussion of GuiMLTextEditCtrl

Interesting discussion on controlling animations
ZergCow shares his dynamic web page from object id process
round burst weapon discussion (with an example by Maxwell Marsh)
Nice discussion on polycount and textures in TGEA
Bill Vee explains tree depths on ATLAS terrain
Joseph Greenwalt provides a Windows file association hack for Torque ShowTool Pro
Nice discussion on TGB's clamp and velocity
Great rigid body physics discussion (TGB)
Fun opening to a discussion on Breakout behaviors (with code) in TGB
GUI's on in-game textures (TGEA)

Very, very cool map2dif additions
Balls of Steel (Unity)
TGB TDN News for March
TetraWeb's new TGB Breakout tutorials
Nice discussion of schedules and simsets in TGB
Workaround for scene loading and unloading problems in TorqueX
Portal-esque movement and translation of player
GPU Gems available for free (thanks to Stephan Goebels for posting!)

Peter Simard requests feedback on the launch of Crowns of Power
3DRT YouTube video of Dragon Pack in Showtool Pro
Free Motion Capture Data
Stephen Zepp provides excellent help on triggers
Stephen Zepp and Jeff Faust provide input on runtime debugging
Matt Vitelli shows off his day/night system for TGEA
Rene Damm provides a way to make detail texturing optional
TGEA 1.7 + Python support

Fun discussion (and screenshots) of TGEA and shadows
Andy Hawkins shares his script to generate terrains (TGEA)
Cool discussion of working with polysoup and TGEA 1.7b2
3D Gui design in TrueSpace and Maya
Super-Sweet Color Picker from Taras (TSK) Anatsko
Alan James provides a pictoral reference to getting fxFoliageReplicators to work in TGE
Blender DTS Exporter 0.96 released
RTS Kit for TorqueX!
Fog of War example for the RTS Kit

Some very helpful information from Derelict on reading lines from files in TGB
Paired down example of freelook and player-mounted camera in TorqueX
Russel Bishops prepares a FAQ area for TX 3D questions and answers
TGB Platform Starter kit information on template creation from Stephen Howe
Cool information for setting up projects in Houdini
Matthew Jessick explains triggers with a detailed example
Steve YorkshireRifles provides a cogent example of using classname and triggers
Some very cool porting advice for TGE -> TGEA 1.7 from James Laker
Andy Hawkins shows off his ShapeReplicator screens
Pretty cool polysoup racetrack

ShapeReplicator used in BRAVE
Carcassonne game in TGB
Beta 1 for AFX + TGEA 1.7 available
CubeMapping tutorial by Lorne McIntosh
Fun teleporter inplementation with trigger arrays

Wicked Sweet Projects
New Ice Wolf information and video
Extreme Sudoku deathmatch
Balloon Bliss released!
Metal Drift players wanted (InstantAction title)
Wheeled Vehicle Editor and new Book from Edward F. Maurina III
Abaddon (Western-themed post-apocalyptic RPG)
Shelled Online!
Crowns of Power Open Beta

Awesome Artists & Musicians
Kevin James shows off his musical talents
Maxim Lyulyukin gives us some models for free!

DexSoft releases a cathedral and props


[url=http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=73743]DexSoft releases Sci-Fi Machines Pack

Maxim shows off more models

Fleeky shows off some WIP Vehicles

Radoslaw Marcin Kurczewski shows his Salome character

[url=http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=73331]Kevin Pillow's Dojo

Kevin Pillow's Egyptian Tomb


Japp Visser's back with more music

Sci-Fi Textures 2 from Dexsoft

Very sweet, but sadly lost and missed, Constructor artwork




Cubix advertises art services (go Evi!)

Free 2D Trees from Cubix

Taufan shows his pixel-art stuff

We're doing another Ustream live chat. This time it's with marketing guy Dylan Romero and is going to cover the InstantAction gaming platform in general and will also talk about marketing issues - had a lot of questions about this on the Legions chat.

The chat will take place this Friday, April 4, 1:00 pm at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/instantaction-live-chat.

For this time's forum news, I shamelessly "acquired" screenshots of some of the excellent things that are happening on the forums.

Cool Stuff
GG'er on G4 TV
Kevin James shares some image effects in TGB
Interesting Article on Game Loops
MMO Game Developer's Conference looking for volunteers
William Jonny Brannum explains how to use Yaw with the player class
Tom Spilman relates information about depthmaps in TGEA
Ryan Mounts reworks lightmapping in Map2DIF_plus
Torque in Education information via Davey Jackson
Interesting save solution for TGB
Interesting discussion of animations and ActionAnimBits
Specular Map + Transparency discussion
W-S-A-D movement code for TGB Games

Wicked Sweet Project
Mini-Chess Beta


Awesome Artists and Musicians
More Dexsoft packs


First use of Constructor



Tribal Floating Base


Maxim's Buggy Pack


RPG SFX and Music designer looking for work
Aldo Scoppa's music and SFX
Ninja concept art

Eugene, OR February 26, 2008 - Quad Software and GarageGames announced today the availability of a new solution for exporting limitless, high-resolution terrains created in Grome Editor directly into Torque Game Engine Advanced.

A product of more than three years of development and refinements, Grome is a versatile terrain and level modeler targeted towards both professional and indie game developers. Grome Editor is capable of working with large landscapes and its procedural generation algorithms and real-time feedback make it an ideal tool to generate terrain data for Torque powered games.

"We are very satisfied with our current collaboration with GarageGames and the powerful ATLAS terrain system used in Torque," said Adrian Licuriceanu, Quad Software Technical Director. "We provide a direct exporter from Grome scenes to the engine, comprehensive help, examples and video tutorials. The Torque community will love working with Grome and it should bring an immediate increase in the visual quality of their scenes."

Torque Game Engine Advanced, with its ATLAS terrain rendering system, is a perfect solution for rendering large outdoor landscapes with great performance. Applications of Torque range from single to massive multiplayer games that require huge, high detail worlds.

"Grome is a great tool and we're very happy to help put it in the hands of Torque developers," said Brett Seyler, GarageGames VP of Business Development. "Our community has asked for a reliable way to generate and edit massive terrains handled by ATLAS, and Grome is an excellent solution."

About Quad Software SRL
Quad Software, privately own company founded in 2000, is specialized in 3D middleware development. Building on experience from single player and massive multiplayer game titles, the company developed an extensible graphical development platform from which Grome is one of the first products to arrive. Past and current clients include game studios like ArenaNet (NCSoft), Ubisoft, Eidos, SquareEnix, as well as companies from civil and military avionics and naval simulations and training industry.

About GarageGames
GarageGames is located in Eugene, Oregon and on the web at www.garagegames.com. As the makers of Torque Game Builder, Torque Game Engine, Torque Game Engine Advanced, and Torque X, they have been providing game development tools and technology at an affordable price since 2000. The Torque Technologies line of game engines have been used since to develop hits such as Marble Blast Ultra, Fallen Empire: Legions, Penny Arcade Adventures, Screwjumper, and countless other titles on Windows, Mac, Linux, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, and GarageGames' own InstantAction web-based gaming service.

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MARK YOUR CALENDARS -- INSTANTACTION.COM SCHEDULED FOR PUBLIC UNVEILING AT 2008 GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE

Public to See Fallen Empires: Legions, Cyclomite and Much More of New Web Gaming Platform

EUGENE, OREGON - February 12, 2008 - Attendees can expect a special treat next week when they visit the Game Developers Conference Expo - the first public showing of InstantAction.com. Announced earlier this year, InstantAction is a new platform, developed by GarageGames, for playing 3D action games within any of the popular web browsers.

"We are very excited to use GDC to lift the hood on InstantAction," said Josh Williams, CEO of GarageGames/InstantAction.com. "We believe it's important for the game development community to know how serious we are about creating an entirely new destination for playing high quality games on the web. It's time for them to get their hands on it and hear about our upcoming plans."

Located at Moscone North #5438, InstantAction.com will have the following events:

EVERY DAY

Every half hour, feast your eyes on a public demonstration of the entire network. Get a chance to win stuff and sign up for the beta.

WEDNESDAY - FEBRUARY 20

11:30 Fallen Empires: Legions: Presented by members of the Legions development team. Show attendees will get an exclusive firsthand look at the highly anticipated FPS. If you miss this one, it will be repeated Thursday at 2pm.

2:00 Cyclomite: Alex Seropian and his team at Wideload Shorts team present Cyclomite. This is the first ever showing of this innovative multiplayer party game. Don't miss your chance to play it. If you miss this one, it's repeated on Thursday at 11:30 am.

3:00 Torque Present and Future: Matt Fairfax, Engine Developer and Game Programmer for GarageGames, will showcase the latest updates to Torque game creation technology. In addition to presenting new functionality to Torque for PC development, Torque projects are now portable for publishing games on the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii. GarageGames is an approved middleware for both platforms with multiple hit titles shipped on consoles. If you miss this one, it's repeated on Thursday at 1:00 pm.

4:30 Developers Wanted! Randy Dersham, Director of Publishing at InstantAction.com, tells the crowd how they can land a publishing contract with InstantAction. He's walking in the building with contracts, so be prepared to stalk this presentation! If you miss this one, it's repeated on Thursday at 4:30 pm.

For more information, please visit www.instantaction.com.

About Instant Action

InstantAction is bringing next-gen gaming to the web. Through its unique platform, InstantAction will deliver fully 3D, console-style games in a browser. Web gaming is also about social gaming -- taking your party from one action game to another.

What makes InstantAction unique is that it is not tied down to a specific gaming console, distributor or retailer; creating an accessible place for gamers to play great games.

GarageGames/InstantAction.com, an operating business of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI), is located in Eugene, OR, on the web at http://www.garagegames.com

The deadline for the InstantAction Developer Contest has been extended to February 18th

To give developers more time to put the finishing touches on their games, GarageGames has extended the deadline for contest submissions until the day before the Game Developers Conference.

The contest finalists will still be announced February 20th at 4pm at the GarageGames/InstantAction booth, with the winners to be announced the following week.

Send in your game submissions to GameDevContest08@garagegames.com by the revised date **Tuesday, Feb 18th** to be considered for the contest.

For all the contest updates, including the full prize list, head over to the InstantAction Blog.

Official Contest Rules

The Finalists for the InstantAction Developers Contest will be announced at this year's GDC in San Fransisco.

The announcement will be made on Wednesday, February 20th at 4pm at the GarageGames/InstantAction booth. The GDC Booth Crawl begins soon after at 4:30, so celebrate the selection of the finalists by having a drink with us at the GarageGames booth!

Time is running out: please send in your game submissions to GameDevContest08@garagegames.com by Feb 10th to be considered for the contest.

For all the contest updates, including the full prize list, head over to the InstantAction Blog.

Official Contest Rules