Torque 2D 3.2 Released!

Rip Off the Wrapping Paper!

While you were singing carols door to door and sipping eggnog by the fireplace, the T2D Steering Committee was hard at work wrapping up one last present! Presenting Torque2D 3.2! This latest incarnation of everybody's favorite 2D engine sports several shiny new features! But before we get into that, let's take a moment of silence to remember the many bugs that lost their lives to make this release possible.

Now then, our first new feature is the FadeTo function. This works like MoveTo except that it changes the blend color over time instead of the position. If you ever wanted to fade a bad guy out when it died or fade a slightly transparent object in, then this function was written for you! It could be used to make your hero flash red when his life is low or slowly change the color of the sky as the sunsets. FadeTo comes with all the support functions of MoveTo including a cancel function and callback when it's finished.

We also added GrowTo which changes the size of an object over time. With GrowTo you can change the x and y at different rates and create all kinds of neat effects. But, there's a catch! Collision shapes don't grow with the sprite. So if your object has collision shapes attached you'll want to use it sparingly. Slight changes can do a lot. Like FadeTo, GrowTo is supported by functions to test and cancel. When an object reaches its target size it will fire a callback.

We also have support now for one way collisions. This is most commonly seen in platformer games when a character jumps up through the platform and magically lands on top of it, but in theory there's many other uses for it. This only works for edge and chain collision shapes.

And finally, last but not least, we have revived ogg! That's right! The open source, compact audio format is back by popular demand. You can start using ogg files again on Windows and Mac OSX.

The Road Ahead

We hope you enjoy your present! We've got a lot of work planned for the next few releases. We aim to break ground on the editors that you've always wanted and we plan on revisiting bitmap fonts to make some much needed improvements. If you like where this is going, we could definitely use your help! We're still looking for new Steering Committee members. In particular, we could use members who are dedicated to our advancement and domination on the Android and iOS platforms. If that's you then let us know.

Happy Holidays!

-Torque2D Steering Committee