Torque 3D 1.2 Now Available!

For those of you that haven’t been following my blogs, they contain a fair amount of detail on what constitutes Torque 3D 1.2 and provide a good read for those of you that want all the info. Here is an overview of what makes up Torque 3D 1.2:

1st Person Models
One of the major additions we made to Torque 3D 1.2 was allowing developers to create a separation between their 1st person characters and their 3rd person characters. Now you can have highly detailed and custom 1st person views while at the same time maintaining 3rd person models. This makes it easy to create games like Fallout 3 without having to compromise the artistic quality for any one view. It also works really well with multiplayer games like the one the FPS Tutorial helps you build. To find out more details on this feature please check out the Disembodied Arms and Disembodied Arms, Part Deux blogs.

Enhanced Weapon State Machine
Torque 3D 1.2 also provides more attributes and triggers for the mounted weapon state machine, all available with or without the 1st person models. Some of the enhancements include:

• Control over the player’s 3rd person animations sequences on a per weapon and per weapon state basis. This allows for different grips and stances for each weapon. Two handed rifle? Ready to throw a mine? Akimbo-style pistols while crouching? Yes, yes, and oh yes!
• Weapon sway while the player is moving. A subtle effect so weapons don’t feel locked to the camera.
• Optional ammunition clip support and manual reloading.
• Optional weapon lockout while the player is sprinting. Oh, didn’t we mention that we have a new sprinting pose in 1.2?

Player Hit Notification
In the FPS spirit we now have damage indicators showing you exactly where damage is coming from. Get that sniper!

AI Turrets
These can be either placed throughout a level or carried by characters and deployed as a weapon. Built in C++ and controlled through a customizable, script-based state machine, they scan for targets, rotate, and fire using the weapons that are attached to the turret. Show your friends you care by putting them on your turret’s friends list so they won’t be targeted. Or not.

Proximity Mines
These are carried by the character, thrown, and then stick to surfaces to become little traps for anyone that comes too close. Optimized in C++ yet available in script you can set just how sensitive these things are. Nothing better than running around spreading mines all over the place and then watching your handy work in action.

Teleporters
Teleporters serve as a great example of how to make use of triggers to send people all over the place. In the words of Eric, “they are just freaking cool".

Improvements and Fixes
Focusing on creating a FPS with Torque 3D 1.2 allowed us to find specific bugs and usability issues with Torque 3D that would have been difficult to locate any other way. On top of that you, the community, have provided us with a plethora of feedback on ways to make Torque 3D 1.2 better. I’m happy to say that on top of the cool features listed above we have been able to address a ton of things with Torque 3D 1.2. You can find the change-log posted here. We’ll also be making these fixes available to current Torque 3D 1.1 users in the coming month so keep your eyes posted for that.



FPS Deathmatch Tutorial
The documentation team focused on creating a beginning to end tutorial showing how to create a multiplayer FPS deathmatch game using Torque 3D 1.2. It really is the most comprehensive guide GarageGames has ever provided on how to use Torque to create a full game. We truly believe this tutorial sets a new standard for game engine tutorials and should help everyone from long standing Torque users that just want to find information on squeezing the most out of the engine to new people that have never made a game.

We’ve also enhanced the Torque 3D 1.2 web page to better facilitate using the tutorial. The tutorial now features an easy to use navigation, and a new engagement bar at the bottom of your browser screen. This bar makes it easy to socialize your experience with Twitter, or Google+ or to use the chat to get answers specific to the tutorial. We really want to make the tutorial an engaging experience and hope to use this as a template of sorts for future tutorials. We also have a cool bookmarking system, per page commenting, a Facebook like button for the engagement bar and a tutorial chat room coming soon.

User Guide & Reference Guide
Along with the tutorial we have cleaned up several user guides as well as created new ones showing how to take advantage of the new features in Torque 3D 1.2. The new features have also been documented in the engine and are now available through the Reference Guide. You can view the documentation here.

Torque 3D 1.2 ships with almost a gig of new art for you to use in your commercial products. First and foremost is the long discussed Chinatown environment, started by Luma and polished by our internal staff. The Soldier has also received an update featuring new weapon specific animations and new 1st person arms. Finally we created several new weapons complete with sounds to show off the new features. These assets are provided to you with a royalty free license to use in your products and serve as a great example of how to create your own art that takes advantage of everything Torque 3D 1.2 has to offer.

Art Packs
The art team has also been pumping out several art packs for use in any of your projects. The Soldier Weapon Pack, Alien, and Alien Weapon Pack are all releasing alongside Torque 3D 1.2 and are setup to integrate quickly and easily. They also work with Torque 3D 1.1 but won’t allow you to take advantage of the nifty new features. On top of that we recently released the Zombie Art Combo featuring both a modular Zombie character and an awesome Graveyard environment for them to play in that work with Torque 3D 1.2.



Torque 3D 1.2 is available for $179 for new customers and $20-$69 for existing Torque 3D users. Torque 3D 1.2 also features a new and more simple licensing structure. Torque 3D 1.2 is a Studio license and uses our new studio management system. For more detail on pricing please check here.

If you haven’t already checked out Eric’s Be My Boss please do so now, it is one of the coolest contests I’ve ever seen GarageGames run. Here is an easy access Twitter link to enter the contest:



I would just like to close by saying thank you to all the people that made Torque 3D 1.2 happen both internally and from our community. It really was a cross department effort to try to bring everything together for this release and your positive comments and thoughts are why we do what we do. Now go get yourself a copy and start making some games!