GarageGames: Employee Blogs

Deborah Marshall : A "Little Big" Surprise from GarageGames

Deborah Marshall — 2008-11-26T22:38:12+00:00

Most of us in the States are getting ready for a special time of year...a time for eating too much, a time to break from the daily work grind, but most importantly, a time to be grateful for the important people around us who make each day worth living.

While the rest of us are preparing for long plane rides and loosening our belts, though, one guy in Eugene stayed up until 4 am on Monday tinkering in Little Big Planet to surprise someone very close to him. Here are the results:

This story has a happy ending, as evidenced by the picture below.

Congrats to Ken Holst, our tireless QA manager, his girlfriend of 9 years Jeanne, and daughter Izabella. And to everyone else on break this week, have safe and happy travels wherever the winds take you!

Brett Seyler : Torque's 2D and 3D Future Vol. 2

Brett Seyler — 2008-11-18T14:01:23+00:00

Since my last post on this subject in March, our Torque engine developers have been quietly toiling away on some major new stuff. The major focus? TGEA. While we've also spent some serious cycles on Torque X (the impressive results of which you'll be seeing soon) and on TGB (which you'll probably start hearing about toward the end of the year), probably 80% of the energy has gone to TGEA, and it's definitely starting to bear fruit.

There are many of you out there who started with TGE and have yet to make the jump to TGEA. Some of you will be asking "why TGEA and not TGE?" That's going to be the main focus of this post. I'm going to talk about what you'll be seeing from TGEA in the coming weeks and months, and why you're not likely to see an update to TGE soon, or perhaps every again. Don't panic yet. Keep reading...

If you check out Matt Fairfax's recent post, you'll see a LOT more detail than I'm providing here, but the big whammy in 1.8 is that TGEA will now run on OSX and be used to create the best games ever seen on the Mac. This was long overdue and something we always wanted in our front line engine.

While there were good reasons OpenGL support did not make it in TGEA 1.0, it's here now with vastly better performance than ever possible before thanks to the new Brian Richardson and Alex Scarborough powered graphic layer (GFX2). You can see the early fruits of Alex's efforts porting Rokkitball and Legions to the Mac for InstantAction below.

Rokkitball and Fallen Empire: Legions running in Safari on OSX

Did we mention that TGEA 1.8 is a FREE update for all TGEA owners? You can grab the beta release by hitting your My Account page right now.

What About TGE?

We've kicked this idea around a lot here in the office and so have you in the forums and in the comments on my previous blog. Why aren't we working on TGE? There are a number of reasons that matter to us, but I really want to approach this from your perspective. I want to take a hard look at the reasons people have, in the past, chosen TGE over TGEA.

Reason #1: TGE has better documentation. While this was true when TGEA 1.0 originally launched back in February 2007, it's certainly not anymore. TGEA documentation has gotten the Mich Perry treatment. It's now probably the most well-documented engine out there with mountains of resouces and a well organized set of reference and learning materials. See the proof for yourselves.

Mich's docs blogs:

* What do you think about Documentation?
* MAJOR Documentation Announcement 1
* New Documentation System
* Documentation Announcements
* September Documentation Wrap Up
* October Documentation Wrap Up

Reason #2: TGE has better resources. More resources? Yes. Better resources? Not anymore. TGEA is where all the latest, coolest stuff is happening, and some Torque developers are defintiely taking it by the horns and doing some really cool stuff. There are also a bunch of great add-ons for TGEA and many many more in the works. Case in point: Konrad Kiss. His Cliff Construction Kit makes gorgeous, detailed environments much easier to do. There's also Lorne McIntosh's SSAO (screen space ambient occlusion), and Apparatus' Beautiful Doors.

Reason #3: TGE has better stability. This is also no longer true. While TGEA pre-1.7 didn't match TGE's stability, the 1.7 and 1.7.1 release did. It may take a while for TGEA to match TGE's stability on the Mac, but it will get there. On the PC, it's no longer an issue.

Reason #4: TGE can run on OSX with OpenGL. Now so can TGEA, only it runs the same projects faster.

So with TGEA we now have...

The first thing I want to say is this: I'm thrilled we got here. With TGEA 1.8, we're out of reasons to look back and we'll be looking to the future from here with continued improvements to TGEA. It was not without great effort. TGEA is now is a much better product for game developers than TGE. If you're part of the Torque community, TGEA is where all the new development will be happening. TGEA is where the majority of new resources and 3rd party products will be born. And the best part of this for TGE owners is, we've taken great care to make sure that TGE projects are very portable to TGEA.

I'm encouraging those that haven't made the move to consider it. Having all hands on the same codebase benefits our development internally, but it also has huge benefits you guys. It means you'll have more compatible resources, and you'll have better, faster, more accurate answers to your technical questions because everyone's looking the same code.

There are real, tangible advantages for your project as well. In addition to all the hallmark strengths of Torque like world class networking and real-time world editing, with TGEA you have...

To us, it's a clear choice. You'll notice that we've taken this new embrace of Torque's future to heart with some recent changes to the website too. If you're a new user looking for an engine and want to make a 3D game, you'll end up on the TGEA landing page in just one click.

Getting to TGE is a tad tougher, but of course it's still there.

At some point, TGE will likely either go away, or be licensed in a different way. We could do something like the id does with the older Quake engines offering both GPL and closed source. We could simply leave it on the site as a less expensive option. To be honest, we haven't decided and we won't be doing anything about it right away.

This is a decision that I really would like some community feedback on. I know many of you have been working with TGE for years and really love it. We don't want to do anything that discourages it's continued use, but for new and advanced users alike, TGEA is now a better product, so we want to put it out front where we can focus on making it even better.

If TGE is going away soon, doesn't the name "TGEA" seem a little dumb?

Yes =) We are some gigantic dunces at this whole "naming" and "marketing" thing, but I see no reason to live with our mistakes or repeat them in the future. At some point, we'll look to simplify our products down to basics. It could look something like:

TGEA --> Torque 3D

and

TGB --> Torque 2D (duh...didn't we do that once already?)

So, none of that is happening *right* now, but likely happen in the future.

Okay Cool. So What's Next?

First off, to quickly review the stuff I've covered so far...

* TGEA 1.8 is in beta and adds an OpenGL graphics implementation and runs on OSX.
* At some point TGEA will replace TGE entirely and may be renamed to something more...concise.

Alright, alright! What's next? Good question...

The next version of Torque for 3D games

If you're still looking for another reason to make the leap to TGEA, pay attention. Remember all that stuff mentioned in my last blog under R&D? Well, back in March, there were dozens of things I wasn't ready to mention and quite a few that we'll be able to confirm as part of our next Torque release. The GG Studios team and many 3rd party developers we work with are already hands on with some of the coolest new R&D tech around. While the game studio is proving this new tech out with games you'll see on InstantAction and consoles over the next year, we're merging it with TGEA to be included in our next release.

When is this new version coming? I can't say how long the development cycle will be, but I can tell you for sure that we'll be showing some pretty monstrous new stuff at GDC (or potentially even before). If you're working with TGEA, there are some excellent reasons to be excited about the future. If you're on the fence, it's time to make the leap.

Finally, Some "Thank Yous"

Maintaining and improving Torque is an incredible amount of work, so I want to recognize some of the people who've been HUGELY helpful in this last round of development, and generally moving the Torque experience in a positive direction, either by generously providing community resources, contributing directly to development, or providing really nice add-ons that help make Torque shine.

1. The entire Sickhead Games crew (Tom Spilman, Russell Fincher, Ross Pawley, and James Ford). These guys are to thank for a ton of what goes on behind the scenes in Torque development and even more of what you're about to see in the future. Their products, Torsion especially, make Torque much easier and much more fun to work with. They are a truly independent studio and they're bound for success.

2. John Kabus. John's continued support for the entire Torque product lineup has been a huge value add. He's been working on a lot of cool stuff that you guys will be psyched to see in the future too, so John definitely deserves a big thanks.

3. John Kanalakis. Remember when I mentioned that you'd be seeing some really new and impressive Torque X stuff? You have John to thank. John spearheaded our last round of development on Torque X both by updating it to XNA Game Studio 3.0 and he added his own suite of 3D editing tools. Now you can use WYSIWG tools to design your scene, assign components, and even write new ones right inside the editor. It's hot stuff and it's not been easy, so thank you, John. You're a superhero.

4. Melv May and Phillip O'Shea. Melv and Phillip are currently hard at work on some super-top-secret 2D engine stuff. When the next version of Torque's 2D engine tech ships, you'll have them to thank for most of its coolness.

5. Jeff Faust. Jeff never stops improving his fabulous AFX technology. He recently updated it to include TGEA support and more awesome effects. Word has it he's planning a big release in the next few months that will impress us all. I have no doubts about that. Keep it up, Jeff!

6. Rene Damm. Rene's another guy who's been absolutely killer behind the scenes helping with TGEA. He's tackled Atlas Terrain issues that frighten the best of us and his current plans include some really cool ways to leverage that core tech. We're all really looking forward to seeing what will happen when the final stuff emerges.

7. Laurentiu Danila a.k.a. "Apparatus". Does this guy ever sleep? Doors, bridges, props, textures, environments...KABOOM!. Talk about making Torque shine! Great job, Apparatus. Can't wait to see what you do next.

AND THAT'S A WRAP!

If you made it this far in the longest blog ever, congrats! I hope it was worth reading. Thanks!

...................................................................................................

Another Pre-emptive Q&A (with myself)
Q. What? No more TGE?
A. TGE is not gone yet and it's not going to disappear tomorrow, next week, or even next month. Next year? Possibly. There are no longer any technical reasons to choose TGE over TGEA, so we're going to focus our development efforts there. If you're concerned about the price, I wouldn't worry. We're going to find a way to make Torque technology as accessible on a budget as it can be. TGE resources and documentation aren't going to disappear either. They'll always be available, they may just become less relevant.

Q. Which of these releases will GG charge for?
A. TGEA 1.8 will be a free update. The next version of our 3D tech after that will be a paid update. The next version of our 2D tech will probably be a paid update. It's been almost 2 years since we charged for any version of TGEA and almost 4 years since we charge for any version of TGB. That's a pretty generous track record. At some point, we're going to have to feed the developers but as always, if we do charge for an update, you'll get more *way* more than your money's worth.

Q. When will we see OpenGL support in TGEA?
A. In TGEA 1.8! It's in open beta now! Pull it down. Put the hammer to it. Let us know what needs fixing.

Matt Fairfax : TGEA 1.8 Beta is now available!

Matt Fairfax — 2008-11-14T01:08:09+00:00

Get your Mac on!

Brace yourselves! Hell is freezing over and the Apocalypse is nigh! Well...maybe just a small apocalypse =) The impossible has happened and TGEA is finally available for the Mac! Go ahead and pay up those of you who placed your bets in the wrong direction =)

I am happy to announce that you can now snag the first TGEA 1.8 Beta from your account. This is a FREE update if you already own TGEA (why wouldn't you?).

Get the TGEA 1.8 Beta now

Time to switch!

Now that TGEA is on the Mac, there really isn't any reason to not upgrade from TGE. In addition to the benefits of Torque's amazing real-time in-game editors, best in the industry networking, robust and fast terrain engine, and easy-to-use scripting languages, you also get access to our powerful shader-driven Material system, the limitless potential of the paging Atlas terrain system, the improvements to our legacy terrain system known as MegaTerrain, more examples and demos, and the far superior documentation to help get you on your way!

You will also get access to our latest and greatest tech like the new, easier to use ResourceManager (I can't wait to show you the potential of that) and the heavily refactored and vastly improved GFX2. As if that wasn't enough, you will be setting yourself up for easier upgrades to some of the truly fantastic tech we have coming down the pipe!

Yeah...my jaw dropped too!

I was the primary architect and engineer on TGE 1.5 and I am proud to say that it has well stood the test of time. It is one of the best products that GarageGames has ever produced. However, trust me when I say that TGEA 1.8 is a true replacement for TGE and is well worth the upgrade. Moving forward TGEA will be our flagship product and I would love to have you along for the ride. Do yourself a favor and make the switch!

System Requirements

In order to get a Mac version of TGEA to you guys at any point during this decade, we had to focus our efforts on a limited set of Mac hardware and OS. You may be able to get it to run on older Macs and weaker video cards, but "officially" we are only supporting:

Intel-based Macs
2 Gb System Memory
ATI or nVidia shader model 2.0+ video cards with 256 Mb video RAM
OS X 10.5.5 (we highly recommend updating to 10.5.6 when it comes out...it fixes some serious driver bugs)

Calling all Mac gurus!

In software development a "beta" is defined as "feature complete but with known issues" and that holds true for this TGEA 1.8 Beta. There are still some rough edges but we feel like it is at a level that you guys can start to dig in and help us get this product to a polished release state.

Feel free to peruse our known issues list and hop over into the TGEA Bugs forum and start posting anything new you find. Also start posting bugfixes to those issues! It is no secret that we are a primarily Windows development house and, while I am proud of what we have accomplished so far, we could definitely use a hand on the Mac side. I know there are some really passionate Mac developers in our community, so let's get this done!

Come dev with me

Dance, dance, docos

Our indefatigable docs engineer Michael Perry continues to push our docs to new heights. As part of that effort, he has been working on the TGEA 1.8 docs on TDN for the last few weeks. We plan to continue to refine these and add more content over the course of the Beta and, once we are ready to do the final release, these docs will be pulled down with our handy-dandy TDN->DocGenerator convertor and added to the Official TGEA Docs and the offline docs that ship with the SDK. Pretty cool, huh? You guys get to see our docs evolve right before your eyes!

Gotta love Rokkitball on the Mac

Special Thanks

There are a lot of people who have helped to get TGEA 1.8 out to you guys and I will definitely be giving them major credit in my upcoming blogs, but for this one I really wanted to highlight the man without whom none of this would be possible: Alex Scarborough

I hear Alex is willing to accept hugs in lieu of beer ;)

Alex has the often thankless job of being the GarageGames "Mac Guy." If it wasn't for his wholehearted devotion to bringing the next generation of Torque to the Mac, I seriously doubt it would have happened. He has been working on this for years (check out the Modernization Kit and the Mac InstantAction games) and it is really nice to be able to finally bring all of that effort to fruition! I think it is safe to say that everyone owes him a beer!

Now, go forth and bring bountiful bugfixes to all!

Derek Bronson : 3rd Party Product Update - November 2008

Derek Bronson — 2008-11-05T23:51:47+00:00

Time for another monthly update on all your favorite 3rd party products. October was a busy month for me as I took a week off for my honeymoon. I also got some new products from some new community members as well as expanded some offerings from long-time community guys. I'm always on the look out for new products, so if you have something brewing or something in-store ready, be sure to send me an email.

Awesome New Products

Green Ear - A couple of months ago I got a visit from a couple of the guys from Ayalogic who wanted to showcase their new product Green Ear. Needless to say we had some good talks and decided to deliver Green Ear to the Torque community. Green Ear is more than just a simple voice over IP (VOIP) product. They offer all the VOIP goodies with voice morphing and voice fonting. The best part is that they have done all the integration leg work so all you need to do is find cool ways to use it for your game. Their solution is super indie friendly, and if you haven't already checked out some of the blogs from Leba and Mike, they are doing everything they can to make Green Ear the product that Indie game studios want to use. They also just announced a contest here where the winner gets a nice lump of money plus they get featured in the Green Ear booth at GDC.

Plastic Games: Tweaker - Tweaker was built by a game team, for a game team. Tweaker allows you to edit datablocks in real time and view their effects. No more constant reloading to test game play elements. Now you can rapidly prototype your game and tweak it 'til it's just right.

Apparatus Catalog - I am happy to announce that we are now offering almost all of Apparatus' content packs for sale, with the rest hopefully available by the end of the month. That means that the Bridge Pack, Environment Pack, Textures Pack, Doors Pack and Props Pack are now available. Apparatus is an awesome game artist who produces some truly stunning textures. A great guy working on some beautiful eye candy, keep your eyes peeled as Apparatus is working on some secret projects that should come to light very soon.

Digital Lightstorm - Will Zettler has been a part of this community since October 2004. He has just recently expanded his offering of Ambient Sound packs from 1 to 4 with 3 more on the way. His sounds have a creepy theme which makes them perfect for all sorts of games. He also recently released the source files to his first pack Ambient Sounds Pack 1 so you can see the method to his madness. Another really great community member sharing his talents.

2D Fantasy Character Pack - I don't get too many 2D pack submissions so I was really pleased when this fell into my lap. This pack includes 15 different characters with multiple animations optimized for TGB from the famous Magnus Blikstad. Use these in stock TGB or drop them into the Adventure Kit and jumpstart your game.

Medieval Characters 4 - Medieval Characters 4 is an character pack with 4 animated models with a medieval theme (go figure). They are ready to be dropped straight into your Torque game. They have all the basic animations as well as some sword fighting ones (sword model is included). A pretty hefty pack for a low price!

MACK Update - The guys over at BrokeAss Games ported their already awesome MACK pack that features mesh hiding, melee combat, an awesome editor and a whole bunch of other great features over to TGEA. Best of all this update is free to all that own the pack. This resource is perfect for anybody doing an RPG game or anything that requires multiple costumes.

Wrap Up

As always, I am keeping my eyes open for awesome new art or code to bring to the Torque community. If you got something that you think is store worthy, don't be afraid to send me an email at derekb (AT) garagegames (DOT) com. I am focusing on stuff for TGEA and TGB at the moment, as those products have a higher need for quality content and code packs.

Mark Frohnmayer : My one year anniversary out of the Garage

Mark Frohnmayer — 2008-11-04T22:12:26+00:00

So I might be a bit overdue in mentioning this, but my last day as a GarageGames employee was October 31, 2007. True to my blogging form at GG I've slacked a bit on updating the community via this channel, but hey, better late than never, right? After working on GarageGames from its inception and leaving its top post in the eminently capable hands of Josh Williams, I took a step back to in order to refocus on the games side of the business and get the creative juices flowing again. By the end of the summer I was ready to get into some new projects, most of which were outside the scope of the GarageGames mission. Before starting GG I never really thought of myself as an entrepreneur, but as Jeff T describes, once you get the itch, you've got to scratch it :) I thought I might take the one year anniversary of my departure to recollect what has been an obscenely busy year.

Project 1: Bad Habit Software. At around this time last year I was casting about for cool game projects to work on for the upcoming launch of Instant Action. At the same time, some of the Tribes alums were looking to start something new. Josh and I decided that the way I could most effectively contribute to the Instant Action effort would be to spin up an indie game studio making games in close cooperation with GarageGames. Bad Habit Software was quickly incorporated - Greg Lancaster came on first followed shortly thereafter by John Folliard and John Alden - all three stellar engineers. Fellow Bad Habit original Nels Bruckner joined the team in the spring time and has been instrumental in rounding out our production and design efforts. He's also our online chronicler and wrote a more detailed version of our backstory.

After a couple months of false starts we got rolling on our first game which was an upgrade to the "Robotron meets Tribes" game Zap! I worked on while at GG. ZAP went live on Instant Action in March with retooled graphics, enhanced gameplay, vastly improved AI and a single player training campaign. If you haven't had a chance to play yet, head over to InstantAction.com, fire it up and let us know what you think. We just recently launched the mac version, and there's another bug-fixing point release about to go live.

Our current and recent work includes maintenance of Marble Blast Online, the finalization of the recently released update to MBU on XBLA, ongoing ZAP upgrades and a cool new social networking application called Bumperstickr (because everybody loves bumper stickers!). We're also doing pre-production work on a couple new game ideas that will rock on IA in '09.

Project 2: Arcimoto. I'd been carless for 3 years, but in the summer of '07 I figured I could really use a vehicle for the occasional trip to the home improvement store or to go visit my folks across town on bad weather days. Those of you that know me know I try to roll as eco-friendly as possible, so I was adamant that the vehicle I was seeking would not burn its fuel. I test drove the Zapcar (a bucket of bolts) and drooled a little on the inside over the Tesla (which, though it just didn't hit on my practicality scale is a truly amazing car to drive -- I had an opportunity to test drive a Tesla a couple weeks ago and it was freaking sweet, but that's another story).

In any case my quest for an appropriate vehicle in the summer of '07 came up a total bust... until the Eugene Celebration Parade. In the parade there were a couple of people driving some really cool looking one-seat vehicles. Have you ever been driving down the road to work, or school, or the gym, or wherever... on some solo short trip and wondered, "Why am I taking 3000 pounds of steel, passenger capacity for 5 and fuel to travel 300 miles with me when I use my car almost exclusively for short range, solo trips?" The BugE was created to answer that question. Designed by Mark Murphy of Blue Sky Design in our figurative back yard and sold as a kit, the BugE is a sweet looking minimalist approach to utilitarian sustainable transportation.

Which is why I got a couple of the kits and corralled some of my friends into putting one together. What started as an effort to put together one or more of the BugEs soon cascaded into a full-blown vehicle design and assembly effort - Arcimoto. Our blog at www.arcimoto.com charts the evolution of the beast, and right now the team is really cooking. We're getting close to the build of our "beta" prototype of our fully-enclosed one-passenger three-wheeled EV. It'll plug into a standard outlet, have a range of ~50 miles, top out around 50 MPH and cost pennies a mile to operate. We think it's going to be a fun to drive, practical, affordable and environmentally friendly way to get around. We should have our full web site up soon along with some pretty pictures of the new vehicle, so if you're into EVs, stay tuned!

Project 3: The Station. Since two startups leaves one with way too much free time, I thought it would be fun to help open a cafe/restaurant/performance venue/design gallery as well. Well... it wasn't so much a decision up front as an evolving idea for a really cool space.

In the spring of '07 my good friend and neighbor Eric acquired a couple of mostly uninhabited buildings just down the street from where we live. He thought it would be very cool to make a different kind of social gathering space, and about this time last year I came on as a partner in the effort. Through a bunch of hard work and sweat, Eric and crew opened the Whiteaker Station coffee shop in the spring, our mutual friend Dalton opened a plant store in the early summer and we're only a short time away from the opening of the Centre Camp (named so because it's the gathering space in the middle, and also because we have been influenced by Burning Man), which will serve as a combination restaurant, design gallery, community space and venue.

All told, the Station is about 10,000 square feet of entrepreneurial fun. Bad Habit Software is HQ'd upstairs, and Arcimoto inhabits the big warehouse in back. Once the center space is done we'll open the full restaurant with fresh local food, sustainable infotainment and organic design. If you ever find yourself in the area, be sure to drop by...

It's a strange time to be working on new things. We're on the cusp of a hugely important election, the global economy is in the crapper and the consequences of our culture's impact on the planet are impossible to ignore. It will be interesting to see what the next year brings. I'll continue to post here (intermittently, ahem!) any of the future game related stuff we're working on at BHS, and you can get my updates on all the rest on The Big Adventure.

Oh, and don't forget to vote!

Deborah Marshall : Vote for Torque: Front Line Award Finalist!

Deborah Marshall — 2008-11-04T00:28:09+00:00

Here in the United States, tomorrow is a pretty important day. Tomorrow, we will be electing our next president and vice president for the coming four years. Voting is a very important part of the democratic process, and I have already cast my mail-in ballot.

It's an epic battle of Spiderman vs. Batman in tomorrow's US presidential elections.

As it turns out, voting is not just about politics. Every year, Game Developer Magazine holds its annual Front Line Awards to honor excellence and innovation in tools for game development. Five nominees are accepted in the categories of programming, art, audio, middleware, and game engines. And this year Torque Game Engine Advanced 1.7.1 is in the race for the best game engine of 2008! While I wish this announcement could have come just a week earlier to be referenced in my blog last week, I still think this is significant enough to try to encourage people to come on board and rock the vote for Torque.

Why should you vote for TGEA 1.7.1? Well, there are quite a few reasons:

Because lots of games have been made with TGEA. If you don't believe me, check out our ever growing "Powered by Torque" list. We make our own high quality games like Fallen Empire: Legions with TGEA, and other development houses such as Tilted Mill have followed suite. We believe in empowering everyone to make games, and we only expect to see more games made with TGEA in the coming months.

Freedom of Game Development is made possible by the current version of TGEA.

Because we are taking TGEA to new levels in the coming months. We are already kicking it into overdrive with TGEA on a Mac, which will be released as a free beta to all current users very shortly. And we don't plan to stop there. Lead developer Matt Fairfax and the rest of our internal GG dev team has been drafting out the future of TGEA, and given your TGEA wishlist, you ain't seen nothing yet.

It's my Torque on a Mac!

Because you like what we do and you want to see the community grow. The reason we can continue selling AAA engines and tools for all levels of game developers is because the community is willing to spread the good word about us. Just like any business, we thrive on the continued success of the product we sell. You've already voted with your dollars, and we hope we are offering you a product that you will also vote with your Front Line Award ballot. The more people that know about Torque, the more sales we get, and the better community and feedback we have to improving our already awesome line of game engines.

Hothead Games' Vlad Ceraldi made Penny Arcade Adventures for PC, Mac, Linux, and the Xbox 360 and Wideload Games' Alexander Seropian made Cyclomite for Instant Action...all using Torque technology.

Thanks for listening. Obviously, you have many game engine choices and there are some other good solid engines on the Front Line Finalist list. However, we want to continue to be number one on your list of game development tools. So keep giving us the good feedback, please vote for whomever you deem the most worthy, and keep making hundreds more awesome games with Torque. d(^_^)b

Channa Langley : Halloween at GG 2008

Channa Langley — 2008-11-03T18:42:17+00:00

Halloween 2008

Halloween this year showed an even greater turn out of trick or treating than ever before. We were visited by many interesting people and things, as the blog will share with you.

Fights were common. Samurai, Ninja, Vikings, Gun carrying maniacs where common place and with all that weaponry hanging around things where bound to explode in to violence.

Note the ghost orbs in the photo (Even spirits showed up to our most spirited event

Everyone seemed to get into the action

Ninja and Samurai fought it out as well, but the ninja nimbling escaped the huge weapon

And as you can see here Lance was amazed at the size of some of the weaponry that was being swung around.

Swords were not the only weapons brought to the garage.

Finally Josh had to get between them and put a stop to it all for the sake of safety and so we all chilled out and watched the Lawn Gnome that showed up, do what they do best. Drinking! LOL

So then everyone was happy and enjoyed the rest of the fun.

Even Shaun of the Dead showed up to hang out after a vigorous zombie killing spree.

We even had a Roman Empire representative show up.

But what had to be the most explosive part of the whole affair had to have been the pumpkins. They where pretty hot!

Note to that we again where visited by more strange orbs.The black orb appeared over Chris' right eye. Very strange!

Overall it was a great time and by the time it was all over we were all exhausted. Mike probably the most of all.

Happy Halloween!

Matt Fairfax : CyberRifle

Matt Fairfax — 2008-10-31T21:02:21+00:00

Happy Halloween!

A few months ago I stumbled across these plans for a awesome Steampunk rifle. So when Halloween rolled around I decided it would be pretty cool to build one for myself and use it as the centerpiece for a "cyberpunk assassin" costume.

My finished product definitely isn't as nice as the one I was inspired by but I think it came out really well given that it was my first attempt at something like this. I figured you guys might enjoy some of the "making of" pictures. I learned a lot doing this and it was a ton of fun!

Are you sure want to report that TGEA bug again?

The assembled "barrels" made from shelf brackets and copper pipes.

Cutting out the template and coverings from heavy vellum. A closeup of the bracing holding the wooden stock and "barrels" together.

A full shot of the "barrels" and stock attached. The rounded part of the stock was built up from pieces of heavy vellum.

Waiting for the glue to all dry and a closeup of some of the finished metal details

One awesome CyberRifle ready for use!

Michael Perry : October Documentation Wrap Up

Michael Perry — 2008-10-31T19:48:51+00:00

"Happy Halloween! (and Celtic New Year)"

Samhain

What Went Down In October

On the surface, iTGB or TGEA were the engines that received the most amount of new content. iTGB got its first set of documentation. TGB's docs acted as a base, then iTorque specific sections were added. We were able to post a few simple tutorials on how to setup your work environment (iPhone SDK, xCode, iTGB, etc) and simple games that allow you to touch and drag sprites. I definitely had fun writing these.

TGEA will be entering 1.8 beta very soon. To complement that, I am going to place TGEA 1.8 docs in beta as well. What this means is TGEA users can preview the docs as I write them to get a heads up on the new systems and updates the engine will receive.

Of course, the above work is just on the surface. Behind the scenes, I'm currently working on TGEA 1.8, TorqueX 2D and 3D, and iTGB documentation. I'm still trying to launch and organize new TGEA and iTorque sections on TDN. I'm behind on my community management, but there are users I'm going to be checking in with very soon.

All in all, last week I was one more assignment away from going fetal. It's very easy to get overwhelmed when multiple engines are up for release or in need of content updates. However, it's safe to say the community has provided some good feedback that helped me get back on track. Thanks everyone =)

IRC Hour Getting Hot

Though we are only having one IRC Hour a month, the content and announcements are getting hot. Those that do attend are really happy with what was discussed. Those who knew about the talk, but missed it, regret it.

I'm holding in some very cool announcements for the next IRC Hour, so if you want to hear something awesome, talk to GG employees, and discuss pressing issues, you know where we'll be =)

Community MVPs

As I've said in previous blogs, I like to shine a light on community members who have been a great help to documentation. Some have been recent, others have been working for years without much public credit. I feel like some long overdue thanks and patting on the back are deserved for these guys:

Infinitum3D (aka Tony)
- You've probably seen Tony asking questions around the forums and providing feedback. What you may not know is that he turns around and gives that information back to the community via his Torque 101: Intro to Torque thread. Spanning 2 years and 141 posts, this is a great resource for any newcomer to Torque. Awesome!

Mike Lilligreen
- I've probably given him credit before, and if not this is long overdue. TGB users should be familiar with Mike Lilligreen's work. If you go to the Section of TDN, you will discover it is the most well organized section with up to date material. I'm actually going to be modeling the rest of TDN's updates and organization after Mike's work. When it comes to polish and initiative, we can all learn from his example and owe him much thanks.

Adam deGrandis
- Adam is one of those silent contributors. If you do a search for his name in available docs, you might not immediately find them. That's because his work has already been rolled into the Official Documentation. When you see artist docs, there's a good chance you are looking at Adam's work. When TGEA 1.8 ships, we will have a brand new deGrandis doc that will be a must read for all artists.

Next month...

Expect a flood of new content. Online and offline documentation will be updated, as well as new TDN sections. The Doc System will be receiving an update as well, which means you might see some new functionality added to your docs.

IRC Hour will go down Nov. 20th, at 5:00pm PST. I'll post another documentation related blog and remind everyone. All in all, October was very hectic and quiet. November will show the results.

Have a safe and happy Halloween everyone!

- Mich, Documentation Samurai

(...taken this morning at GarageGames)

Deborah Marshall : Torque Making AAA Headlines

Deborah Marshall — 2008-10-29T23:35:02+00:00

For those of you who didn't catch it yesterday, Gamasutra posted its top ten AAA game engine list. The original article was written for a summer issue of Game Developer Magazine, one of the most respected dev magazines in our industry. You can check out the full article here, or just read Torque's stats here.

"If any example were required to illustrate the explosion of Indie development combined with the rise of casual, downloadable games, GarageGames' Torque engine and development suite would be it." - Jon Jordan, Game Developer Magazine

Just like all of you promoting your own games, getting this kind of exposure is critical to GarageGames. We know that Torque is just as viable a commercial option as the Unreal Engine, Source, or even Crytek because a ton of games have been made with it. It's indescribable how awesome it is to have that independently validated by someone like Game Developer.

Speaking of the media, Torque-built games and partners have enjoyed a fantastic showing in the media in the last few months. A few highlights include:

First Person Shooter and spiritual successor to the popular Tribes series Fallen Empire: Legions earning praise in the August 2008 issue of Edge magazine.
Serious spoof game Harpooned making the Top Ten Indie Freeware Download Games in the August 2008 issue of Game Developer.
World class 3D animation tool Houdini making its mark with Torque in the games space in the September 2008 issue of Computer Graphics World.
Hilarious racing/poker game Arctic Stud Poker Run receiving a solid ranking in the May 2008 issue of PC Gamer.
And, of course, the highly anticipated Penny Arcade Adventures enjoying great reviews in issues of Play, Game Informer, and PC Gamer.

"We chose Torque for two reasons. It helped us get up and running very quickly which gave us more time to focus on core gameplay, the game's fun factor, and getting the look right. It also supports Mac and Linux out of the box and that was really important to us." - Joel DeYoung, Hothead Studios

As I hear about these success stories, I've been cutting out photocopies and taping them to my wall at work, as shown below.

The Wall of Media, as showcased by Vanna White (played by Jake Rolfe)

So it's a great time to be sitting in my seat. I get to see the years and years of development that has been going into Torque and watch as it gains more traction in this increasingly competitive space. And best of all, I get to play a wider variety of games made with our tech. What more can a gamer and game developer ask for?