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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.

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#121
05/23/2011 (7:45 pm)
Second installment...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9PInchUXRI
#122
05/23/2011 (8:08 pm)
It's refreshing to have an owner that is also a fanboi.
#123
05/23/2011 (8:09 pm)
*glint!* Shiny...
#124
05/23/2011 (8:14 pm)
@Eric And a level head for business at the same time, no? Nice find...
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