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T3D 1.1 Preview and Our New Office

by Eric Preisz · 04/08/2011 (4:46 pm) · 124 comments






April is upon us and I finally have a free hour to provide an update. First though, I’d like to take the time to thank everyone for the kind words regarding the $99.00 price tag. We are going to continue to offer the promotion since it has been so well received by the community. Selling Torque products below our original price (early GG price was $100) has been rewarding for us in many ways. Please take the time to welcome all of our new community members!

The iTorque 1.4.1 release went really well. We released a preview early in the QA process and many of you contributed by testing the release and reporting bugs on the forums. It was really successful and there’s no doubt that you were a big part of that release. We plan on increasing the release frequency for iTorque by providing smaller feature updates that aren’t necessarily QA certified.

Torque 3D 1.1 final is on the horizon. This release looks to be our most stable ever. We have a full time art team of four banging away on the engine and supporting them has ultimately helped us find bugs and build a better product. For example, they begged us to update our deferred renderer to include Jorge Jimenez’s MLAA solution. We complied, and we think the results speak for themselves. Thanks to Jorge -I'll send you some screen shots with our new art soon. Thanks also to Manoel Neto who did the first Torque implementation.



MLAA removed the jaggies common in DX9 deferred rendering.


This release is targeted at more than just bugs though. We are managing a coordinated effort across marketing, art & demos, web dev, documentation, and engine development. The new art looks amazing! And while it’s sad to see Gideon depart, I think you will enjoy our new friend.



Quick, strong, sleek, and intolerant of Gideon and improperly scaled ogres orcs


We released a preview of 1.1 yesterday. If you already own T3D, you will notice the preview in your account. This is your chance to influence and guide our focus from now until release. Please test the engine and report your bugs in the forums. You will find that we are collecting and prioritizing them every weekday. We are especially focused on any crash or performance bugs you may encounter. There are some known issues that are in development still, so there’s no need to report bugs on the following:

-Occlusion, zones & portals
-Physics demo crash on exit
-Things that are the result of levels being in a WIP state (i.e. the current texture on the terrain)

The Mac side of the engine will most likely require an update after 1.1 final. If you are a Mac focused dev, you will notice that there are a lot of Mac updates, but there are some known issues that we will need to address after the release.

Now that the quarter is behind us, we have been reflecting on all of the change that has been going on inside our walls. Firstly, the walls have changed. I’ll put some pictures below this blog so that you can enjoy our new office space. It’s really professional and I think that the building and location represents the professional business and best practices we are constantly refining.








The GarageGames sign on the top of our new building.


Our new home.



Finally, we also have a lot of new employees and full time contractors helping us maintain momentum: Victor Penman, David Montgomery-Blake, Elie Arabian, Star Shaw, Doug Poston, Matt Wood, and Jennifer Robbins. We have two other hires confirmed for the month of April and one in May. More will follow. The sum of our new experience includes dozens of AAA shipped titles and over seventy professional years of experience in the game industry.

We are excited about our future. I feel confident that our royalty-free, full-source offering, at an incredibly low price, is the best value in all game engine middleware. Keep working hard and making great games!








About the author

Manager, Programmer, Author, Professor, Small Business Owner, and Marketer.

#101
05/18/2011 (10:00 pm)
O...SO good ...
just 4 hours.....
ok, hopeing...
I always believe that GG will give us a new version to convince everyone..
Not bad!!!!
#102
05/18/2011 (10:45 pm)
@Eric: Putting that together into the wee hours of the night? Now THAT's My Kind of company!! :-D
#103
05/19/2011 (3:28 am)
GG web restart!!!
but not T3d new version...

disappointedly
#104
05/19/2011 (3:33 am)
We stated the repository was being locked down (success), but the final QA pass still has to occur.
#106
05/19/2011 (9:38 am)
GG data: 05/19/2011 ....

#107
05/19/2011 (10:34 am)
Once we have our Release Candidate finalized and it has passed a QA Cycle we'll be releasing it. We have no timeframe to give for this.
#108
05/19/2011 (11:09 am)
It sounds to me like it could take up to a couple of weeks so I don't think anyone should be waiting for a release for today (or tomorrow most likely).
#109
05/19/2011 (3:29 pm)
Take all the time you need guys! It's always better to have it with a few bugs then to get it faster with a lot of bugs :-)

#110
05/19/2011 (8:51 pm)
@Everyone - Good news. We fixed our last known showstopper bug today. Basically, that means we fixed every bug that we marked as preventing us from releasing.

Tomorrow morning we will build RC1 and begin the QA process to certify a release. Now if we don't find any more showstoppers, RC1 will become the release.

It's likely that we will have one or two RCs before we go gold. And as Matt said, that can take as long as a couple of weeks. Best case is around seven days.

We'll do our best to deliver as quickly as possible without shipping a build that falls below the standard defined for this release.

Fingers crossed!
#112
05/19/2011 (9:48 pm)
Good news
hope today
#113
05/21/2011 (2:09 am)
I am waiting day++
#114
05/22/2011 (12:28 am)
I am waiting day+++
#115
05/22/2011 (4:41 am)
Hey GG...any chance of us finally getting our hands on all those cool tech demos and features shown off in the original T3D Dev Blog like all those cool shaders such as the Wetness and Precip.

And what about the Racing Kit from Luma, and the South Pacific and Warrior Camp demos by Sickhead and Aparatus???
#116
05/22/2011 (11:22 am)
Puppy Shader? ;-)
#117
05/22/2011 (11:24 am)
@Maximillian - Pacific will be in 1.1 final, the rest will not.
#118
05/22/2011 (11:37 am)
The Pacific Demo? At long last? Hurray!

It's been said, but I'll say it again: I'll take a QC'd version over a rushed version any day. :-)
#119
05/22/2011 (12:08 pm)
@random9q:

I posted this teaser last night over on Eric's 'moving the rock' blog, but since you brought it up...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4VMJJGZImI

If I get some time (and that's a big if) I'll post some other vids sometime this week.
#120
05/23/2011 (7:54 am)
I am super T3d engine, loyal customers
so waiting day++++