d-log

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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