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 »
Torque Powered
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.
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 »
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.
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 »
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 »
Penny Arcade
The first episode of Penny Arcade passed my attention without being noticed, which is a shame. I guess I had a period of less exposure to internet, and was preoccupied with work-related stuff. This time however, I noticed the availability of a Linux version for the second episode of Penny Arcade : the Rain-slick precipise of Darkness, and decided to check it out.
Oh boy. I wasn’t disappointed. read more »
The Garagegames community is great. Many people on the forums are glad to help you out when you are having problems, and it’s not like on some other forums where most of the time they tell you to use the f*!#ing search functionality. No, in most circumstances, when they can help you, they will. But it’s not only programmers and game designers on the GG forums. Luckily, more and more artists have found the way to the forums to deliver us game players from the dreaded programmer art.
Sadly, many models have been lost in the meantime because of them being posted on free and limited hosting programs. Other hosting plans provide just a few megabytes of bandwidth every 24 hours (like geocities), which is rather limiting when hosting 3D models. That’s sad, as many of these models are really great additions to the portfolio. read more »
