d-log

There is an interview with Brett Seyler at Gamasutra. He discusses why he left GarageGames to go to Unity3d, and what he would have done if the opportunity to work with them wouldn’t have been available. An interesting read.

Brett still posts on the GarageGames forums (or TorquePowered, depending whether the new name catches on). Keeping tabs on the competition I guess

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After the merger/takeover between Daz 3d and Gizmoz, many expressed their reservations that the combined companies would continue in the direction the Daz3d community was used to, and was expecting.

Some had doubts about the reason for the merger, specifically because it was indicated that the founder of daz3d would step down after the merger. That, according to them could be seen as a move that Gizmoz was calling the shots, and that Gizmoz only wanted to take over the Daz3d webshop. read more »

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Unity Technologies has hired Brett Seyler, who oversaw Torque engine development for InstantAction and GarageGames, to serve as its VP of strategy. After Brett Seyler announced that he was leaving TorquePowered (former GarageGames), nobody thought he was leaving for a direct competitor.

In the torrent of comments following his blog, Brett indicated indirectly that he already had a next challenge in mind, but he didn’t specify. It was assumed throughout the Torque community that he would follow in the footsteps of his former GarageGames colleagues now at Pushbutton Labs. That company was founded by the former GarageGames owners, after the sale to Interactive corp. In fact, it was at that time that Brett took over daily operations at GarageGames.

The move to Unity3d is both a surprise and a read more »

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Quite a while after the 1.0 was released, GarageGames’ flagship 3D engine Torque3D now has added a binary-only ‘Artist’ version at $250 to its lineup. And to continue the party, all Torque3D Artist version bought before the end of the year are at the astonishing low price of $100 – just like the original TGE at the very beginning. read more »

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Torque Powered

Alpha Release – quicker than expected

Garagegames has just posted the first Alpha of Torque3D on the website for the current licensees of Torque3D Professional. This was a surprise for many, as the current communications coming out of Garagegames were all around the ongoing development of Torque2D, the successor to the Torque Game Builder.

Not much was known in advance about what was going to be in the Torque3D 1.1 release, and some rumours were that it would be a paid upgrade. I was happy to see that it wasn’t the case.

New Features

While Torque3D 1.0 was quite stable, quite some features scheduled to be added later.Some features, like the road editor, felt a bit light on features at the beginning. That has been remedied, and much quicker than any of us could have hoped. Let me give you some highlights of what’s coming: read more »

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At the current Unite 09 conference, a new release of the Unity3D was announced, bringing it up to version 2.6. According to the website, this new version brings along  more than 100 enhancements in respect to the previous version.

The most notable thing, however, is the fact that the $200 Indie variant of the engine has disappeared. It has now been replaced with a free version and has been renamed to “Unity3d”.  The new version includes read more »

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Torque Powered

Garagegames has not been resting on their laurels after the release of Torque 3D 1.0, their long-anticipated new engine. Just a few weeks after that massive release, they’re back. With a vengeance.

The announcement that all sales of TGE and TGEA would be stopped on november 1st naturally has started heated discussions in the community. People especially were complaining that TGEA was just now becoming with 1.8.1 what it should have been at the 1.0 release.

The forum contained a thread with known fixes for problems in TGEA 1.8.1, and community members were afraid that there would be no more release. That it was end of the line for TGEA at version 1.8.1. Today, Alex Scarborough as done some back-porting of features from T3D into TGEA, and along with a massive amount of bugfixes, released TGEA 1.8.2.

Bugs have also been exterminated at a frightening pace in T3D lately, leading up to the release of Torque3D 1.0.1.
Good news at the beginning of the cold and wet seasons for all those planning some “Torque Work” at home.

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Along with the official announcement about the release of Torque3D 1.0, the Garagegames website also mentions casually that as of November 1st, they will no longer be selling their ‘older’ engines such as TGE or TGEA.

It makes sense business-wise to try to force your customers towards your new product. Microsoft is doing it quite vigorously with each new release of Windows or Office, so GarageGames isn’t doing something unheard of. The problem which has lead to the outcry of the community is that new licensees are looking at a price hike of 7 times the original price for the original Torque Game Engine (TGE) (150 USD to 1000 USD). read more »

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Garagegames today released the 1.0 version of the Torque 3D game engine. This comes after several months of open beta testing, where licensees could try out alpha and beta releases of the technology. During that time of beta testing the engine was available at a discount to compensate for the unfinished nature of the technology at the time of the purchase.

Of course, the open beta enabled third-party developers to get their extensions and content packs ready for the official release of the engine. At the moment, many of the high-profile extensions already have a T3D version in the works or available. This ensures read more »

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First of all, I want to wish everybody a very nice Christmas (a few days late) and a Happy New Year (a few days early).

This entire Christmas period has had its influence on the release schedule for 3mension.com, as we’ve been visiting family and doing some special Christmas-time trips (Weinachtsmarkt in Cologne for example). Normally I take a laptop with me to tinker a bit during the trips by train our coach, but this year I decided to leave everything at home, and have a few days without a computer at hand.

The direct consequence of that was of course that progress has slowed because of those other activities, and I’ll try to get the first alpha of 3mension.com working on the first day of the new year. At the moment, I have the basic functionality working. I can see a list of the different models that are available in the database, and I can upload a new model via the publishing page.

For now, the functionality is available, but it’s looking rather plain. I won’t bother with the looks right now, and I’ll flesh out as much of the functionality as I can get ready before the end of the year. I’ll push it on the website and invite people to test it.

Another part of the effort will be content gathering. There are many links to different files already on the garagegames forums. I’ll need to contact the different authors and ask permission to add them to the site, along with their models or other game-related files.

I’m seriously considering getting help at least for that last part, as that will be much work to combine with the initial development. Interested people can always shoot me a mail (in my profile on GG) if they would be interested.

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