iTorque 2D 1.4.1 Released!

Greetings all! Allow me to join the collective voice and cry out "Finally!". iTorque 2D 1.4.1 is available for download from your account, if you own a license...at $99, why don't you own it yet? I'll keep this section short so you can read about the good stuff and check out the update.

Plans for 1.4.1 were starting to be laid out around last November. Many of you already know what happened around that time. While temporarily unemployed and wondering what to do with my spare time, I started working on v1.4.1. When GarageGames was reestablished, Eric, Dexter and the new owners really got behind the engine. Despite the chaos of reforming a company, moving offices and handling new responsibilities, 1.4.1 was able to make steady progress. The quality bar was set very high by everyone involved, resulting in three QA passes and three documentation polishing phases. The following blog is the result of this effort:

New Demos

Gone are the old and somewhat confusing iPhone examples. Three new demos ship with v1.4.1. You might recognize the Aquarium and Rainy Day apps. They have been cleaned up and ported to iTorque 2D. Sometimes you can't keep a good demo down. New to the engine is the Music Player Demo, which queries and plays music from the iOS library. Creating and porting these demos was an excellent opportunity to evaluate the features, stability and flow. Two of the demos even drove the effort for new documentation. Feast your eyes:

iRainy Day

Aquarium Simulator

Music Player Demo

New Documentation

Long past due, the documentation has received an overhaul. A majority of the legacy documentation referring to TGB and older versions of iTorque 2D have been scrapped. The feature section of the Tutorials is steadily being replaced with new Editor docs and updated guides. The old and broken tutorials are now gone, replaced with guides on recreating Rainy Day and Aquarium demos. We have also added a new section specific to iOS features, which covers information on how to stream MP3s, play movies and add new interface files created using Interface Builder. Because I live and breathe docs, and I'm "that guy", I've included a screen shot of the new docs:


CLICK THE IMAGE TO GO TO THE NEW DOCS

Fixes

Bug fixing was the focus for v1.4.1. The following list of fixes were gathered from the awesome iTorque 2D community and discovered when creating the new demos. Usability and stability were the directives:

• General cleanup of sample projects, templates and bad docs
• ITGB-76 Black screen on playiPhoneMovie
• ITGB-77 Sounds come out static on Mac version
• ITGB-78 iDevice Resolution will always default to SMALLW/H
• ITGB-79 isFile() and OpenForRead() broken
• ITGB-80 Apps referencing wrong directories
• ITGB-82 Using GUI causes all objects to disappear in OSX iTGB editor
• ITGB-83 Use of custom OSX folder icons
• ITGB-84 Gameplay Template Build And Run broken
• ITGB-86 Cannot create polygon objects in editor
• ITGB-87 Returning very long strings from a function causes crash EXC_BAD_ACCESS in audio driver
• ITGB-89 Reading XML - error notify has filename hardcoded
• ITGB-90 MainWindow.xib targeted for iPhone OS 2.0
• ITGB-92 Setting status bar bugs
• ITGB-93 Fix stopiPhoneAudioStream usage string
• ITGB-95 Add new music demo
• ITGB-99 iPad Portrait Orientation Bugged
• ITGB-100 Rainy Day Doc/Demo
• ITGB-101 iTorque 2D Doc Cleanup
• ITGB-102 Movie Player Uses Wrong Orientation and Resolution
• ITGB-103 Windows installer points to the incorrect product page
• ITGB-104 Windows build has the wrong example projects included
• ITGB-105 Editor restarts after loading an updated project for the first time
• ITGB-108 EULAs included in the install need to be updated to the current Master EULA
• ITGB-110 Gui Editor saves guis with double .gui extensions when user specifies extension
• ITGB-111 Images can't be searched for on Macs
• ITGB-112 Remove Sample Project template
• ITGB-114 $(IT2D_EDITOR_FLAGS) is missing from all projects
• ITGB-118 $Game::ProductName should be filled based on name the user specifies for the project
• ITGB-119 App Data/Application Support directory for the Editor needs to be changed from TorquePowered to GarageGames
• ITGB-121 setStatusBarType does not set the status bar to be hidden
• ITGB-124 Saved iDevice settinngs are not reflected in the editor upon project close and reopen
• ITGB-125 Editor restarts after opening a project while another project is open
• ITGB-127 EULA pdf not included in Windows build
• ITGB-128 Do something with the changelog included in the installer
• ITGB-132 RainyDay project needs to be included in Windows build
• Several small tweaks to editor stability and file referencing which were not tasked in Jira

Known Issues
Fixes for the following issues did not make it in 1.4.1 and would most likely have held up release another two weeks:

• ITGB-81 Windows 7 "Unable to Open Project" (unable to fix for this release)
• ITGB-91 Cleanup full screen variables (does not affect functionality or stability)
• ITGB-109 Compiler warnings in example projects (Xcode 4 upped the count dramatically)
• ITGB-115 Closing the GUI Editor does not close GUIs being edited
• ITGB-116 GuiButtonCtrls are rendered as black in their up state
• ITGB-117 Games deployed to 2G devices compiled under armv7 do not run
• ITGB-120 Calling Canvas.popDialog() pop the mainScreenGui on devices and simulator
• ITGB-122 Varied behavior with different Gui Controls
• ITGB-123 Gui Editor Inspector does not auto update when adding a new control
• ITGB-126 Extra common/commonConfig.xml being created during project creation
• ITGB-129 iTorque2DGame.app is not added to the projectfiles when a project is created on Windows
• ITGB-130 Editor points to Root directory on the first project open after install on Mac
• ITGB-131 Load last scene on startup checkbox is being ignored
• The multi-touch enhancement did not make it in
• Shooter demo was removed

The Future

The future looks brighter than ever. We are getting a lot of support from the new owners and a road map is in the works. Immediate plans include continuing to update and improve the documentation

We are reevaluating our strategy, release standards, development cycles and feature priorities. Suffice it to say, after a few internal discussions I truly believe future releases are going to satisfy some longstanding demands (improved physics, Game Center, etc). When we come up with solid plans and a road map, we will start discussing more details.

Credits

Everyone should put a major round of applause together for Scott Burns. He pulled more than reasonable overtime to QA iTorque 2D without stalling development. The stability of the engine and polish can be directly attributed to his work. Thanks Scott!

Elie Arabian, our new creative director at GarageGames, took some time out of his slammed schedule to create and modify the artwork for the Aquarium and Rainy Day demos. Additionally, you can thank our other new artist, Starr Shaw, for all of the artwork in the Music Player Demo. It's nice to finally have dedicated art team.

Jeff Leigh is a newcomer provided by the new GarageGames owners. Seeing how swamped I was, they offered an extra set of eyes to run through the docs to check for grammar and inaccurate statements. Once again, that little extra doc polish was greatly increased thanks to his work.

YOU, the GarageGames Community. YOU are the reason we have jobs right now and YOU drove the 1.4.1 release. Everyone did their bit to contribute fixes, review docs, help newcomers get through the dark times while waiting for 1.4.1 and generally pushed us to new levels of quality. Thanks to all of YOU!