Blog for Justin DuJardin at GarageGames.com

Torque Game Builder 1.5 Beta

Justin DuJardin — 2007-04-01T20:36:09+00:00

Only Current Owners of Torque Game Builder may download this Beta

It's been just at two months since my last .PLAN and this one should be a good one! For a long while before the initial release of Torque Game Builder, we ran Beta series with T2D and TGB, where we were able to keep the users at the bleeding edge of our development with the understanding that there may be some bugs.

Since we released TGB last year, we have not done a Beta program that was open to the community, but that changes today. In an effort to be able to provide you with the latest Technology that we're making use of internally, we're proud to announce the Torque Game Builder open beta program.

Who can join the Beta?

All registered users of TGB now have a new download link available to them and may optionally download the 1.5 Beta 2 build. This does not mean that you will not be able to use the existing 1.1.3 downloads, and they continue to be the official release versions, but if you want the features listed below, you can surely get them!

Who should join the Beta?

People that already have a familiarity with TGB and are willing to deal with the bumps and brokeness that come with Beta testing software should use the Beta. Users that are new to TGB and want all the tutorials to work perfectly their first time through may want to wait for a release version of the software that guarantees up-to-date documentation.

Where do I get the Beta?
If you're a registered TGB owner you can get it Here at your My account page. Simply Click the "Download" link as you would to download the current public release version and there will be a link at the bottom of the page to opt to download the Beta instead!
garagegames.com/myAccount/

How long until the Beta is a full release?
The purpose of the TGB Beta program is to keep our users that wish to be, up to date with what is relatively stable and useful for our internal usage. To this end, we will make every effort to bring features out of Beta when they're sufficiently stable and tested through the Beta period.

What does the Beta get me?

Downloading the 1.5 Beta build gets you access to the latest improvements to the TGB line of software, including the following excellent features...

Behaviors
TGB 1.5 introduces a system by which you can place 'Behaviors' on objects in your scene, or on your scenegraph. Behaviors are small bits of functionality that can be attached to, and configured through the editor without opening a script file and typing anything. With Behaviors it is possible to create entire games without writing a single line of script or ever leaving the Torque Game Builder tool!

Quote:
For a great example of Behaviors being used to create a Breakout game and modeling some common gametype controls, see the BehaviorPlayground project that is included in the Beta download

Sizable Editor Window
In version 1.5 we bring back the idea that your Editor should be sizable, and the Tools window is now completely sizable to the area that you deem fit on your desktop!

Platform Specific Upgrades
Now if you're running TGB on Windows you will see the familiar Windows cursors and Menus, File Dialogs, and MessageBoxes that you are used to... and if you're on Mac you'll see the same, but in the Mac fashion that you're accustomed to!

Current 1.5 Beta and 1.1.3 Mac Builds
Just grab the version you desire for the Mac from your download page if you're a registered user!

Save your changes
Never again will you accidentally lose your changes to the level you'd been working on for an hour, only to accidentally click the X button on TGB. Now when you close a level TGB will kindly ask you whether you'd like to save your changes before leaving.

Drag-&-Drop file importing
You may now drag and drop images of PNG, JPG and BMP file format onto the TGB window and they will be automatically imported and a StaticSprite will be created from them. This support multiple files at a single time and copies them into your Game directory for you. You may drag images from anywhere on your computer, including from Internet Explorer and FireFox websites!

Remote File Saving
TGB 1.5 Beta series provides the ability to Create and Modify your games from any location that is available on your OS, provided you have the proper permissions. This means that you can download a friends game from GGE onto your desktop and open it using TGB from there! This should also provide a fix for windows Vista users for situations where their data is hidden by Vista because it had to be saved in their Programs directory.

Let us know what you think
We've opened up a new Beta Discussion forum for registered users to provide feedback and report bugs discovered in the Beta software. This is where you'll want to go to share ideas, post thoughts and suggestions and perhaps impact the development of future versions of TGB. As always, it's appreciated if you post fixes with your bugs when you can, as we do have a limited number of developers and this speeds the development process for us!

Until next time, enjoy the Beta!

Cheers,
-Justin

Torque Game Builder Closed Beta Signups

Justin DuJardin — 2007-02-01T22:42:39+00:00

EDIT: We now have enough testers for this portion of the Beta, thanks everyone for you interest, we've accepted every applicant we've received until 5PM PST on Sunday Feb 4th and are now finished with the signups.

Hello again from the world of TGB, It's been quite some time since I posted a .PLAN on GG and so I figured with the new year, may as well get it started off right, and by right I mean of course it's Beta time!! This time because of the substantial changes to thecode base we've decided to go with a Closed beta initially before we move into the Open beta to all registered users that we normally do.

Whats New :

Of course before we get into who we're looking for and how you can sign up, let's get to the meat that you care about, what's changed that makes this Beta something you want to be part of!

Sizable Editor Window :

You are now free to have the editor the size you want it. After much dancing around issues related to this feature we've brought it back in a major way! No longer are you confined to working within resolutions supported by normal video game modes!

Save your changes :

This version of TGB goes further than any previous version of Game Builder in making sure that you don't lose your precious changes by accidentally clicking your close button on the wrong window. TGB now employs blocking message boxes similar to those you'll find in any other application when you close it with unsaved changes that will prompt you to save your changes before quitting!

Native File Dialogs :

We've finally taken the plunge and you'll find no more Torque GUI driven file dialogs presented to you when you perform open/save actions. The dialogs have been traded for Platform driven dialogs to favor consistency amongst user experience when using the tools.

Drag-&-Drop :

You may now drag and drop images of PNG, JPG and BMP file format on TGB and they will automatically be imported into your game (copied into your game/data/images/ path) and created as full sized image maps in the builder. You may even drag and drop multiple files at a single time and they will all be imported without hassle.

Much, much more!

Who will you be accepting?

Mostly we're looking for 3rd party developers that are working with adding extensions and additional functionality to TGB such as Neo Bindell's ISO pack, or Josh Ritter's Mozilla implementation!

We're also looking for people with complex games! If you've got a game you're working on that uses TGB in a unique way, you may be perfectly suited for this Beta!

Sounds Cool, where do I sign up?

No huge sign up forms this time around, simply send an email to justind AT garagegames DOT com with the subject "TGB Closed Beta Application" with some compelling reason you should be added. If this blows up into a bunch of spam we may set out a specific application for entry, but we'll go with this simple method for now if it works!

When do we get it?

The first Beta release will be going out as soon as we have enough developers to begin the Beta, hopefully no later than this Friday (Tomorrow)!

Do you have anything else?

I'm so glad you asked! Before I go, here's one more thing you may find attractive about this Beta--The File Size! The binary file sizes that your games and tools run from have been significantly decreased from the 3.2MB monsters that you had to distribute with your game. The new game executable that is packaged with your games in this version weighs in at just 670KB!

Thanks!
I wanted to take a moment and thank all of you for supporting us in TGB development since we started back int he days of T2D, while not all of you will get into the Closed beta, we promise to open it up to all registered users as soon as possible!

Cheers,
-Justin

Torque Game Builder 1.1.2 Goes Live!

Justin DuJardin — 2006-09-28T21:11:49+00:00

Hello again from the world of TGB! Well it's been a bit over a month and we've been once again cranking away at updates to get out to you all as soon as they're ready. We've got some really cool stuff that's still being tested and developed, but a relatively small update is within our reach and we want to bring you guys some fixes for things that may have been annoying you recently. That's right, 1.1.2 is here, and it's got some great fixes, sorry no new features this time, but keep your eyes open we'll be bringing some update loving your way again, as soon as we can!

This time around we've got some great news for our Mac users. 1.1.2 brings with it all the resolved bugs on the mac that have been reported and marked as such by Paul Scott. A HUGE thanks to Paul for making time in his obscenely busy schedule to get these bugs resolved for you all!

So without further ado, here goes the obligatory listing of what you'll find inside your download page!

Mac Bug fixes for 1.1.2 :

- #2150: Debug banner crashes TGB1.1.1
- #2046: menu bar doesnt work in full screen mode, sometimes causes crash.
- #2047: background sleep time pref not good
- #2054: mouse cursor hides when it shouldn't when window is minimized on mac
- #2048: high values for $pref::backgroundSleepTime freeze mac Torque
- #2074: Mac: no mouse events for a few moments after Canvas::setCursorPos()
- fixed a bug where a negative value in $pref::timeManagerProcessInterval would freeze torque.
- fixed a bug where the sleep interval was not correctly honored.
- updated xcode project file

General Fixes for 1.1.2 :

- Made locked/hidden layers persist across testing of levels.
- Added rendering of vertices to collision poly debug rendering.
- Collision polys now honor flip settings in tile layers.
- Fixed tile collision poly editing for non square tiles.
- Fixed String Stack Corruption problem in guiInspector.cc
- Fixed tolerance settings in guiParticleGraphCtrl for getPlotPoint.
- Fixed an issue with the getPlotIndex function for guiParticleGraphCtrl.
- Set image map to default to prefer performance over memory.
- Fixed image map packing to take packing/performance into account.
- Removed unnecessary usage of isBeingDeleted.
- Fix for mount rotation being applied to mounted objects additively on level load.
- Fixed FourCC code on t2dTrigger. It was using the static sprite code.
- t2dVector::rotate fix. It was converting from degrees to radians twice.
- Fixed new RSS News notification to properly detect when there is new news.
- Updated the locked icon for layers so it is easier to differentiate from the unlocked icon.
- Added toggling of the debug banner in the editor.

Physics Fixes for 1.1.2 :

- Fixed clamp collision for particle collision responses.
- Added specific rigid body case for resolve overlaps.
- Forward movement only collision fixes.
- Fixed inverted logic in t2dPhysics::moveToCollisionPoint. Object's were not properly moving to the collision point. Now they are.
- Fixed bad dot-velocity calculations during bounce and clamp collision responses.
- Fixed problem where minor overlaps were being ignored causing tunnelling over a period of time.

Version Control Fixes for 1.1.2 :

On a slightly different note, we fixed a few areas in which using Version control for a team-setting was causing unnecessary conflicts in files in a repository.

- Made layouts save to a user file so the default layout is never overwritten.
Resolves issue where Default.cs would be conflicted when updating
- Dynamic Fields are now sorted before they are saved in a level file.
This keeps level files from being conflicted due to being the same level but having their dynamic fields written in a random order.

Let the world know what YOU think of TGB

While we're on topic with TGB and updates to it, we could use your help, yet again! This time we need your help in getting thoughts and feelings on your experiences with TGB. Recently we made TGB available for download from Downloads.com. As Downloads.com is rating based we need as much help as we can get in having user reviews for TGB. Whether you've had a positive experience or a negative one, we seem to be severly lacking in ratings on our page and would appreciate it if you all could find the time to let Downloads.com know what you think of TGB.

Review and Rate Torque Game Builder for Windows
Review and Rate Torque Game Builder for Mac

Thanks!

Just wanted to take a moment and thank you all again for your continued support in reporting bugs you find and offering suggestions for things that would make your lives easier when it comes to game development with TGB--It means the world to us!

Cheers,
-Justin

Torque Game Builder 1.1.1 Lives!

Justin DuJardin — 2006-08-10T01:06:26+00:00

So it's been a little over a month since we released TGB 1.1.0 and we're proud to present the first in a long line of updates which brings with it many improvements and some new functionalities! Keep in mind that we're still working and so things will continue to get better, but we need your help! Please continue to help us improve TGB by reporting issues that you have (we promise to get to them when we have time!) and ideas for ways to make your experience more enjoyable. We take all comments to heart and consider them, though sometimes it may take a while before we can get to them.

That out of the way, I'd like to take a moment and introduce you to what is new and improved in the 1.1.1 point release.

Note Our Mac update is slightly delayed as our Mac guru is out at WWDC currently and was not in the office to get a build together. We will have that for all of you Mac guys very soon, I promise!

Tile Layer Editing in the Level Builder
Tile Layers are now editable and viewable from within the LevelBuilder! This means that you can drop a tile layer on a scene and use either the quickedit or the right-most widget on the object to edit it. There are a variety of tools that you can use for editing your tile layers and you can save them off as different names, add scripting, assign collision polygons, and more.

Selection Tool
The selection tool in the layer editor (accessible from the quickedit tile layer toolbar) will allow you to select individual tiles, or double click to flood select a group of them and you can apply changes to any selection using the 'Apply to Selection' button in the quickedit. You can also shift+drag to do rectangle selection of a group of tiles.

Paint Brush Tool
The paint brush tool allows you to paint directly onto the layer with the currently defined brush or settings of an unsaved brush that is defined in the quickedit panel. This works much like the original tile editor painting and should be fairly self-explanatory.

EyeDropper Tool
The eye dropper tool will allow you to drop from any given tile. it will grab all properties from a dropped tile and apply them to your current brush setup in the quickedit. It will get collision information, custom script and other relevent data from the tile.

Erase Tool
The eraser tool when selected will clear tiles that you click on.

Wrap Indication and Layer Collision Creation
The tile layer editor will display a translucent red rectangle around any areas of a tile layer that are wrapping when you are editing. This is to show you which areas you can change and which are simply duplicates from wrapping options. You can also do a normal collision polygon edit on a tile layer and it will automatically chunk out the collisions onto the proper tiles so that they match what you've created.

Managed Brushes
Brushes are created by setting up your properties as you'd like them to be for a given Tile and then typing a name in the Brush name edit and hitting save brush. At this point it will be saved in your project brushes and accesible in any layer that you create within that project!

Editor Addon Support

With 1.1.1, resources have been expanded upon to allow drop-in addon functionality to the LevelBuilder and tools set. An addon is simply a folder with special scripts inside of it that is placed in $installPath/tools/resources/resourceName that will automatically be loaded upon startup. As an example of this functionality we have prepared a floating Layer Management window addon that you will be able to download from TDN soon! It provides a new menu item and shortcut (ctrl-l) to toggle it on screen and will show up as follows. This means that if you've got a modification you've made to the LevelBuilder that is all script you can easily give it to your friends and they can then instantly use your cool addon the next time they start TGB. All currently active addons are listed in the about dialog for TGB.

Layer Y-Sorting Support for Isometric Games

Layers may now have a sorting mode assigned to each of them, including sorting by Y and -Y axes. This allows you to do isometric style games where a player may need to at times be rendered in front of or behind an object depending on his Y position and the sort point for his object. The sorting modes for each layer may be changed by clicking on the scenegraph (on no objects) and in the "Layer Management" rollout.

UI/Workflow improvements

With 1.1.1 we tried to take the UI and make it a bit more friendly in terms of a few things.

Screen Space
We tried to address (atleast in part) the concern with screen space usage by introducing smaller fonts and more space considerate panels and rollouts.

New Button Appearance
There was also alot of confusion about buttons on the Interface so the buttons have been tweaked to appear more like buttons, making them easier to identify and more inviting to click on!

Play Preview Linked to Design resolution
The play game option of the builder has now been linked to the Design Resolution at which your level is designed (this can be accessed from the Preferences dialog or the SceneGraph quickedit panel). This was because of feedback indicating that designing something for 800x600 while running the builder in a 16:9 Aspect Ratio resolution was causing stretching of sprites and overall confusion and dissatisfaction while playing your game. TGB now sets the screen size to the design resolution that is specified when playing your game and then back to it's previous resolution when you return to the editor.

Layer Management (Locking/Hiding)
In 1.1.1 you will finally be able to lock and hide objects in your levels based on their layer in the file. You can find the layer management rollout in the SceneGraph quickedit panel which you can access by clicking on the scene anywhere that there is not an object.

Updated Linux Pro version
With 1.1.1 we offer an updated download for linux users that comes with a precompiled binary and should compile out of the box! You can get it from your my account page!

There's so much more - Full ChangeList!

So much has changed since release that I can't bare the thought of typing it all up here. You can find a full changelist HERE for all of you that just HAVE to know EXACTLY what has changed :)

We truly hope you guys like the new version and we promise to continue to make it even better and better in the future! Thanks for all your support and encouragement, you guys rock and this is our way of saying thanks!

Cheers,
-Justin

Extra Special Thanks - to Tom Spilman and Russell Fincher from over at SickHead games for kindly letting me use their starter kit assets for my screenshots. You can find out more about their upcoming kit on Russel's latest blog "Update: Sickhead TGB Tile Pack"; they're doing some awesome stuff I know I can't wait to see released!

Torque Game Builder Hits 1.1.0!

Justin DuJardin — 2006-06-20T20:05:06+00:00

After a long journey through development woe's and huge successes we have finally done it--Torque Game Builder 1.1.0 is here! Over here at GarageGames we've been working our butts off to get you guys the tools with which you can make your very own game; not to mention in a very short amount of time! This process has been a radical new approach to development for us, and it has proven to work quite well as we've been able to take the awesome T2D Early Adopter engine and build a set of tools around it that allow you to prototype and design levels, particle effects, tile maps, and pretty much anything you want in a 'What you see is what you get' style.
Download The Trial - Windows - Mac

The Path to Release:

Originally what has become TGB was intended to simply be a small add on tool for our amazing T2D engine, offering the simplest of capabilities for creating and manipulating scene objects for a scene. However, because of our awesome community's feedback and the amazing amount of work accomplished on this small tool by our team, it quickly became a whole different beast. In just under 7 months our small core team was able to bring you the most polished Torque tool to ever grace our community's eager hands. While TGB, much like any product, is not done--even 3DS Max at version 8 is not done--we have managed to get it to a point that you can create in it almost anything your over-active imagination can come up with!

Indulging Your Imagination:

If you've got a game you've just been dying to make, I invite you to download the TGB trial that can be found by clicking on the link above and make it happen! If you're anything like me, you may often say things like "Gee, I really wish there was a game that was like X, Y and Z" , but worry that you don't have the time to invest, or the resources to make it happen. With TGB you are now empowered to make it happen; We've had full games shipped within 3 months from concept to completion!

Rapid Prototyping:

TGB is not just your everyday 'gamemaker', quite the opposite really. TGB and its tools have been used by commercial studios such as Large Animal Games and others to create hundreds of levels for games, but it also offers, in conjunction with the T2D engine that powers it, the opportunity to get good at making games. If you're looking to create a game, to REALLY get a good game and make it happen, you will need to just dive in and start making small prototypes. Within our community people have taken it upon themselves to do sporadic 'Game in a Day' competitions using TGB in which members get together with a theme and see who can make the coolest game in under 24 hours. Some of the games created for these competitions end up not being as fun as they were intended to be, and are scrapped by their creators, but the knowledge is not lost. To truly get into making games you need to... well... do it! For more on succesfully creating games, and words of wisdom, check out Joe or Jeffs blogs; I find their words are often quite helpful to me.

Moving Forward:

With the release of TGB we realize that there is still much to do. During development we took the approach of having very open Alpha's and Beta's in our community, offering our latest tech up to anyone who owned a license and had a desire to play with the 'latest and greatest'. This was a wonderful thing for us, and we were able to implement many suggestions offered up by you all, and address a good majority of the bugs that you all reported. However, we do have some issues that time and manpower constraints left us unable to resolve before the initial release. We have addressed all known serious issues and will continue to improve upon the tool's usability and features over the coming months. We have a list of Known Issues posted in our forums that we were unable to address before release of 1.1.0.

Giving Proper Feedback:

Feedback is a great thing, but it can easily become essentially useless if not reported in a constructive, detailed manner. We love nothing more than to hear your ideas about what would make your experience better, and help improve your workflow. If you've got ideas, or run into any problems please feel free to let us know. We have setup a forum for problems with Tutorials or the Trial that you can find Here.

Bringing the Awesome:

I originally titled the above 'Bringing You the Awesome' but quickly changed it because not only do we want to help you get started by providing you with fresh new content as often as possible (in the form of tutorials and examples on TDN), but we also want to challenge all of you TGB Early Adopters to help us out. We will be doing our best to get you fun, exciting examples up on TDN regularly but we'd also like to see more of the cool stuff that you all are coming up with on TDN as well. So if you've got a cool little demo laying around that you did not finish, clean it up and post it on TDN. If we all share our breakthroughs, we can all learn more and make even cooler things! We'll be having alot of new users that will need a bit of help getting started, and we'd like to not only help them, but help us all by putting all we can at everyone's fingertips!

I'd like to say thank you to all the amazing people involved in this project, not only over at GG, but in our community. Without all of you this would not have been possible, and we look forward to continued development on this, not only on the Tech side, but also on the Documentation and community side in the following months and years. I truly hope you all find this as fun and exciting as we all do over here, and I personally can't wait to see all the cool stuff that you all come up with in the future! Enjoy TGB and let's make some games, after all, that's what we're here for, right? :)

All the Best,

-Justin

Torque Game Builder RC2 is Here!

Justin DuJardin — 2006-06-08T18:22:14+00:00

Torque GameBuilder RC2 is Here!

As you all may have read, TGB's final release has been slightly delayed in favor of being sure that all of our ducks are in a row before we go golfin'... or something like that. At any rate, no need to fret, you expected something new and that's what we have for you! So without further ado, we'd like to welcome you all to Torque GameBuilder's Release Candidate 2; come on and have a seat, let's see what we've got in store for you all this time 'round!

The Stuff
While our changelist is too long to post here, and may bore some viewers, I'd like to go over a quick run-through of some of the cool stuff that you can expect to see in RC2. A few things have changed, and some have gone the way of the dodo in an attempt to provide you with the best stability possible. With over 50 issues addressed that you all reported and we discovered on our own since RC1, we believe that you'll find RC2 to be much more complete and stable than RC1. We're also going to continue to work on some issues we've identified internally for the final release that we were going to address after release since we've got an extra few days.

More scripting, less restarting
With RC2 we addressed an issue as pointed out by Jay Barnson that the Run Game functionality from within the builder was not always re-executing script files when you started play. This has been resolved and all scripts executed in startGame will be freshly compiled when you begin your game.

Particle Editor updates
Particle effect and emitter graph modification has been improved to support multiple levels of undo and redo, as well as to persist your graph fields' time and value min/max while editing.

Clean Slate sandboxing
Projects are now edited in their own process instances for complete Simulation sandboxing. When you load a project, unless it's your first loaded project, TGB will quietly shut it self off and restart itself with your new project open. Your window may dissapear for a second and come back with a fresh copy of your game loaded. This makes sure that when you load a project, that project only is loaded into the Torque GameBuilder simulation, not the left-over scripts and functions from your previously loaded second game, just what you really want in your game... your game!

Cleanup
We have cleaned up alot of the mysterious and annoying console echo's and error's that had been lingering around throughout the beta's as most of them were either debug messages or 'oops left that extra line in' type things throughout the builder. Your console should look a bit nicer now! :)

Installer Fixes
RC2's installer has resolved all known issues with the installation process.

New Tutorials! - In RC2's installer you'll find two new tutorials that were not in RC1.

Configuration Datablocks Tutorial - A simple tutorial that explains the use of and reasoning behind using Configuration datablocks and how they can help make making your game easier and quicker!

Creating Resources Tutorial - A simple tutorial that explains how to create and distribute your own custom resources for TGB!

There is alot of exciting stuff in RC2 that I'm sure all of you will appreciate, and even more 'polish' goodness will be in the release! Thanks for all of your support and wonderful feedback during development, we would not be where we are today without all of you!

See you guys at the finish line soon!

Cheers,

-Justin

Torque Game Builder goes Feature Complete!

Justin DuJardin — 2006-05-10T04:00:47+00:00

Torque GameBuilder goes Feature Complete

That's right, you heard it here first, Torque GameBuilder has gone feature complete with the release of Beta3. This has many far reaching implications and is very exciting for us as we're finally able to guarantee that there will be no changes to the engine aside from bug fixes from this point on until release! But you're probably wondering--What does feature complete mean to ME?! I'm so glad you asked!

Tool Scripts unveiled!
With TGB going feature complete and us ramping up for a final release in the near future we've decided to go ahead and release the script source to the LevelBuilder and other tools that come with TGB. The reason we've decided to go this route even though the scripts are still a bit messy in places and need to be cleaned up before the final release is that we understand how invaluable more eyes on any piece of our code can be. Previously we withheld the scripts to the tools as they were in huge flux, but with feature complete that is no longer true.

Codebase Stabilized
Over the course of development of T2D/TGB we have had some users that are not willing to continually update their SDK's with the newest changes that we've made since until now they were unpredictable as far as how widespread their effect on your games would be. This is also no longer a concern as our codebase has been locked down from features and changes to core functionality. We are now focused on only resolving existing bugs in the current setup, which may include tiny UI tweaks if necessary and fixing functionality that may be acting a bit wonky or improperly. What this won't include are any changes to the script methods or functions that you call, or any way your game interacts with the engine.

What's Changed?
Since our GDC Beta2 release much has changed and been improved upon. While there are some things that should be noted, there are so many fixes and improvements that I'm just going to list some of the more interesting changes.

Bug Fixes and Improvements
We were able to parse a good amount of the awesome feedback that you all offered up in our forums about Beta2 and have tried to address the most serious concerns as we were able to understand them. With this Beta3 we have fixed all of the annoying problems that were in Beta2. The enormous number of fixes in this build are not really listable here so i've provided a short list below. They are all made possible of course by the great team working on TGB.

Animation Builder

Click Here To Enlarge
Matt Langley was able to identify and resolve all known issues with this tool as well as adding some fantastic UI improvements to ease it's use.

ImageMap Builder

Click Here To Enlarge
Matt Langley also (while simultaneously writing huge comprehensive tutorials!) was able to overhaul the ImageMap Builder to support operations such as zooming and border/background color for specifying proper contrast on white or lighter images.

Particle Quick Editing

Click Here To Enlarge
Adam Larson was able to expand the functionality of the QuickEdit to support the necessary fields for emitter objects. The Particle QuickEdit support is now functional with the exception of adding/removing emitters. The script is included to support this but it is commented out due to finding a serious bug in the particle management code that made it unstable to add and remove emitters dynamically. This issue has been marked high priority and will be hot-fixed before the Beta is complete.

RSS Update News - In Engine

Click Here To Enlarge
Beta3 will periodically check for official GarageGames RSS news and notify you at the top right of your screen when there are news items available. By clicking on the RSS button near the 'New News!' text, you will be presented with the News reading dialog with links to the full articles on our site.

Project Resources!
After the Beta2 release and with all of the community art bounties that we've got out there, it occurred to us that we really needed to have a simple way for our users to be able to get 'art packs' from each other and us for use in their games. We've included two art resource examples with Beta3 and they're easily configured by a convenient in-game UI.

When you open up Beta3 and create a new project you will be presented with a screen that looks similar to the following. You may notice that you have no game assets with which to work :(

Click Here To Enlarge

Fear Not as the Project Resource manager is here to help! Simply by navigating the menu system to Project->Resources or simply by hitting the shortcut key Ctrl-R you will be presented with a dialog that looks similar to the following, which lists all the resources that TGB currently knows about 'Available Resources' and all the ones that your project is currently using 'Current Project Resources'.

Click Here To Enlarge

If you select a resource, in this example I'm using the 'puzzleArt' resource and then hit 'Add to Project' it will be moved over to your Current Project Resources list.

Click Here To Enlarge

At this point if you hit the Save button you will notice your Object library on the right side now has a large set of Art that could be used to make a Puzzle Game.

Click Here To Enlarge

Click Here To Enlarge

At this point you're ready to go making your puzzle game. Simply drag the elements from your object library to your level and you're all set. Below is my modest attempt at a puzzle level using the puzzleArt resource!

Click Here To Enlarge

You can also do the opposite of this to remove art resources from your game!

Proper Bug Reporting

As we gear up to finalize the release we'd like to ask that in the report bugs private forum you only post bugs that impede existing functionality from properly operating. As always, feature requests and idea for improvement are encouraged, but there are forums for those separately. In the past there has been some spill over and we'd just ask that you be mindful of which forum you're posting in!

Cheers and Enjoy the Beta!

-Justin

Edit : The Mac and Linux builds will be available as soon as they are ready. More to come on that soon!

Torque Game Builder Bounties (Part 2)

Justin DuJardin — 2006-04-17T01:45:08+00:00

First of all, if you missed my first post about them, we're reaching out to the community to help get some art and sample assets into Torque Game Builder with a chance at making some cash for your time!

Read more about it in my previous plan : Here

It appears there's been a bit of confusion over the bounties that we posted the other day for TGB that I should clear up.

Submitting Large Bounties

Because mantis is already being overloaded, we suggest using YouSendIt.com to send us your bounties if they are over 1MB in size. While mantis says it's max upload size if 5MB the apache server only allows up to 1MB, so if your files are larger than that, please use YouSendIt to submit your bounties and also post a note on the bounty itself. All YouSendIt submissions should go to justind@garagegames.com

Bounty-Awareness

Bounties are awarded based on the first accepted submission to the bounty so it's a good idea to keep an eye on a bounty that you might be working on so that you can know when other submissions are added and/or accepted-it's a bummer to work on something for a while then find out someone beat you to it yesterday. You can help combat this by being 'Bounty-Aware'.

Knowing your bounty status

The first step to being bounty-aware is to know the status of your bounty. When you're browsing the bounty list, bounties are listed with a color. This color indicates their status which is of great use to you hunters out there.

New - New status is highlighted with the color Red
The New status means that the bounty is open game for all hunters to take a stab at.

Assigned - Assigned status is highlighted with the color Blue
The Assigned status means that a bounty has been turned in and accepted with some minor adjustments before it is resolved.

Resolved - Resolved status is highlighted with the color Green
The Resolved status means that a bounty has been turned in and accepted, but the hunter is still in the process of being compensated.

Closed - The Closed status is highlighted with the color Grey
The Closed status means that the bounty has been accepted and the hunter has been compensated for his efforts.

Tracking Your Bounty

After finding a bounty that meets your status criteria, you need to track your bounty's status while on the hunt. When you are viewing the details of a bounty in the mantis tracker, there is a button on the form that says 'Monitor Issue'; just click that button and you will get email notifications about activity on it.

Hunter Pro

Once you have mastered these two techniques you can rest assured that when a bounty changes in any way that you know about it, and also be sure that your bounty hasn't been claimed so you don't do unnecessary work.

Beta 3 Bounties

Some bounties in the list are labeled for Beta3 compatibility. We are releasing a new Beta at the end of this month and at that time bounties to be paid, must comply and work with this revision. Not terribly much has changed that will require changes, but it may be necessary. If there's a suitable submission and the author agrees to update it to work with Beta 3 before it's release, we may Assign the issue to that person.

Hope this helps clear any questions you all may have had up. Happy bounty hunting!

Cheers,
-Justin

Torque Game Builder Pre-Release Bounties!

Justin DuJardin — 2006-04-14T22:02:57+00:00

With the success we have had with Community Bounties and TSE; and the upcoming release of Torque Game Builder, we have decided to give our awesome community a chance to once again help us along the way, and perhaps make some cash while you're at it!

What's a "Bounty"?

The basic idea is this : We have a ton of art, scripts, and documentation that need to be updated/created to prepare for the final release of TGB. So we have compiled a list of assets that we would like to have in the release but don't have the resources to create them ourselves. So we divided them up into digestible chunks and are offering small cash compensation for each bounty that a community member completes and is selected.

What kind of Bounties are you offering?

The bounties we have include but are not limited to...

Art Sets Cars, planes, boats, simple environmental tile sets

Mini game Tutorial Sets Creating small simple games and tutorials that will guide a user along the development process

TDN Updates Updating existing TDN tutorials that are outdated and no longer function with the newest version of TGB.

These are just a few examples of the 20 currently listed bounties.

Should I participate?

Everyone from our wonderful community that owns a license of TGB (or just wants to create some art) is welcomed to find a bounty that suits them and start working on it.

How do I submit my work?

Bounties are simply Mantis bug tracker bugs that are sponsored for a listed price. When you have completed something you'd like to submit, all you have to do is zip up your submission and upload the file as an attachment to the bounty that you were working on. Once we have a submission that we deem to be complete, we will close off the bounty item and compensate the creator of the chosen submission.

So I can't claim a bounty to be mine and be the only contributor?

Bounties are dealt with on a first complete solution basis. This means that the first submission that is deemed complete will be accepted and the bounty will then be closed. In this way we can ensure that we get the best possible submission for you guys in the end!

Where do I get started?

You can get started by clicking the link provided below!

Click Here - Then in the upper right, change your project view to TGB Bounty.

If you don't have a Mantis account you may be required to create one!

Happy bounty hunting guys, this is a chance to have some fun, be creative, make some cash and help us and the rest of the ocmmunity out, all at the same time!

Cheers,

-Justin

Edit : For more information about working with bounties and general FAQ type stuff, see my next Blog - Torque Game Builder Bounties (Part2)

Finding a Hero (TGB Saves the Day)

Justin DuJardin — 2006-02-21T17:11:57+00:00

Finding a Hero
In the darkest of times, we all find ourselves looking for a hero, in this case that hero comes riding in on his white horse in the form of the TGB LevelBuilder!

Historically torque has required quite a bit of knowledge to get into and get started before you could create something that resembled what you may have been picturing in your mind. Well, with TGB(Formerly T2D) we've decided that this is not an acceptable thing and have been slaving away to make sure that becomes a thing of the past for TGB users.

Starting with Alpha4 of TGB we included the LevelBuilder, which is most definately a 'work in progress', so that's why we're here today; to track a bit how this unfinished painting of a hero is coming along.

Point and Click
The biggest thing we've been trying to address with the LevelBuilder is the workflow aspect. We want to make sure that when you get into it you can sit down for 5 minutes and spec out a level for your game and see it all come together as quickly as possible which is why I've prepared a small video to show off some of the new cool things we've been adding to make this dream a reality!

The Portal between Heaven and Hell

Like any good Hero, the LevelBuilder must, at times, face off against the worst of enemies, in this case it must have a way to travel from it's most prestigious residence in the clouds down to the darkest depths of hell to defeat scripted level setups and particle positioning.

Lukcily it is equipped well enough to make it's round trip in just under a minute, making use of the tools at it's disposal. So without further ado, join me in a quick preview of going from concept to implementation in ~50 seconds (Sped up to keep file size down - 2X Speed)

Don't forget me! Movie Link!

This is just a preview of what we'll be showing off at GDC and what TGB users can look forward to in the 1.1 Release!

Until next time then, Cheers,

-Justin