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State of the Garage
State of the Garage
| Name: | Mark Frohnmayer |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Aug 04, 2006 | |
| Rating: |  5.0 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Mark Frohnmayer |
Blog post
It seems that we are entering a pivotal stage here at GarageGames, with the departure of a key member of the team, the release of Torque Game Builder, the imminent release of a few other long-awaited products, and several exciting announcements on the near horizon. I figured this presented an ideal opportunity to post some thoughts on where we've been, where we are now, and where we're heading. That, and I had to post something before IGC to keep my "one blog post per year" streak going.
Jay Moore
What can I say about Professor Jay Moore that hasn't already been said? It should come as no surprise to anyone that has met Jay that his presence at the Garage will be sorely missed. Jay was our very first "employee," and provided a much needed face and energy to this thing that Jeff, Rick, Tim and I were trying to build. Over the years he has played an integral part in defining the heart and soul of GarageGames, and as he leaves he will take a little bit of that heart and soul with him. I have no doubt that Jay's next venture will be an exciting opportunity, and everyone at GarageGames wishes him nothing but the best.
What's New with Torque?
We released Torque Game Builder! Ok, I know I'm a bit behind the times, but what do you expect from a guy who only posts once per year? If you haven't tried it out, check out the free trial. I hope you all agree that TGB has been our most polished release product to date. It is this standard of quality that we are now pursuing across our whole product line.
Speaking of our whole product line, we have cool stuff happening in all areas of development. A point release update to TGB will be released very soon, version 1.5 of TGE will also be released very soon, the Torque Shader Engine is nearing final release, and Constructor is getting very close as well. In addition, we will be making some very cool announcements in the very near future. Keep your eyes on the news section of the site!
On the game side, we're putting the finishing touches on an update for Marble Blast Ultra, including bug fixes and new multiplayer maps, and we're about to go into beta testing on our first fully internally produced TGB game.
IndieGamesCon
We've come to a realization. We realized that IGC was not heading in the direction we wanted it to. We don't want IGC to be a mini-GDC. We want IGC to be of much more value to independent game developers. We want IGC to be a place where Indies to make valuable contacts, learn useful information, and have fun doing it. To that end, we are making some adjustments to IGC this year. Round-table group discussions will take the place of speaking sessions, and we will be putting up a wiki on the IGC site so that anyone can sign up for any discussions they find interesting, or can even start their own. We already have several parties interested in speaking, so several of these discussion groups are already planned. In addition, there will be the usual show-off center and Player's Choice awards, and plenty of time for networking with PC and console downloadable game publishers. We are cutting some of the extravagance as far as food and drink are concerned, and knocking $100 off the registration price to pass those savings on to you. Anyone who has already purchased a ticket will be refunded the difference in price. We realize that the registration cost is just a small fraction of the cost to travel to Eugene for IGC, but we want to provide savings to our community whenever possible. I hope to see many of you out here in October!
I think that's about long enough. In conclusion, I would just like to thank all of you for sharing this wild ride with us, and hang on, because there are some exciting twists and turns just around the corner!
Jay Moore
What can I say about Professor Jay Moore that hasn't already been said? It should come as no surprise to anyone that has met Jay that his presence at the Garage will be sorely missed. Jay was our very first "employee," and provided a much needed face and energy to this thing that Jeff, Rick, Tim and I were trying to build. Over the years he has played an integral part in defining the heart and soul of GarageGames, and as he leaves he will take a little bit of that heart and soul with him. I have no doubt that Jay's next venture will be an exciting opportunity, and everyone at GarageGames wishes him nothing but the best.
What's New with Torque?
We released Torque Game Builder! Ok, I know I'm a bit behind the times, but what do you expect from a guy who only posts once per year? If you haven't tried it out, check out the free trial. I hope you all agree that TGB has been our most polished release product to date. It is this standard of quality that we are now pursuing across our whole product line.
Speaking of our whole product line, we have cool stuff happening in all areas of development. A point release update to TGB will be released very soon, version 1.5 of TGE will also be released very soon, the Torque Shader Engine is nearing final release, and Constructor is getting very close as well. In addition, we will be making some very cool announcements in the very near future. Keep your eyes on the news section of the site!
On the game side, we're putting the finishing touches on an update for Marble Blast Ultra, including bug fixes and new multiplayer maps, and we're about to go into beta testing on our first fully internally produced TGB game.
IndieGamesCon
We've come to a realization. We realized that IGC was not heading in the direction we wanted it to. We don't want IGC to be a mini-GDC. We want IGC to be of much more value to independent game developers. We want IGC to be a place where Indies to make valuable contacts, learn useful information, and have fun doing it. To that end, we are making some adjustments to IGC this year. Round-table group discussions will take the place of speaking sessions, and we will be putting up a wiki on the IGC site so that anyone can sign up for any discussions they find interesting, or can even start their own. We already have several parties interested in speaking, so several of these discussion groups are already planned. In addition, there will be the usual show-off center and Player's Choice awards, and plenty of time for networking with PC and console downloadable game publishers. We are cutting some of the extravagance as far as food and drink are concerned, and knocking $100 off the registration price to pass those savings on to you. Anyone who has already purchased a ticket will be refunded the difference in price. We realize that the registration cost is just a small fraction of the cost to travel to Eugene for IGC, but we want to provide savings to our community whenever possible. I hope to see many of you out here in October!
I think that's about long enough. In conclusion, I would just like to thank all of you for sharing this wild ride with us, and hang on, because there are some exciting twists and turns just around the corner!
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 06/13/07 - An inconvenient game? 08/22/06 - Sometimes you can't do everything. 08/04/06 - State of the Garage 10/17/05 - Plan for Mark Frohnmayer 07/29/05 - Plan for Mark Frohnmayer 05/25/05 - Plan for Mark Frohnmayer 03/28/04 - Plan for Mark Frohnmayer 03/18/04 - Plan for Mark Frohnmayer |
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Submit your own resources!| Peter Simard (Aug 04, 2006 at 22:14 GMT) |
Edited on Aug 04, 2006 22:34 GMT
| Martin Schultz (Aug 04, 2006 at 22:27 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
Mark, I really love the way you write your blogs (call me a fan of your blogs) and I really like to read more of this - more than once a year.
What I'm mising a bit is what you announced in the first paragraph - an outlook where GG heads to. I mean not only product-wise (and I was surprised to read that TSE is near final! We even have not seen MS4 so far!), I mean things like the GG staff, the company and what's going on behind the scenes. For example I'd like to know who is going to - if possible - replace Jay? And If I'm already at begging, please tell Tim Gift to post a new plan. What the hell is this guy doing? :-)
Again: Please, more than one blog post a year. :-)
Your blog-fan,
Martin ;-)
| AcidFaucet (Aug 04, 2006 at 22:31 GMT) |
| Logan Foster (Aug 04, 2006 at 22:41 GMT) |
Thanks for the update, especially about IGC. I have to say that I like the idea of the round-tables more than the sessions (oddly enough, Danny and I had discussed wanted to do more of these for the art track at this years IGC than sessions if it was possible, so its a good coincidence). After a few years of IGCs it was getting hard to plan the sessions to meet the needs of unknown attendees. Years when we would plan art sessions to cater to new Torque users, we got a lot of intermediate guys who wanted some advanced knowledge, and vice versa last year when we tried to push the bar up higher we ended up with a lot of new users who wanted basics.
Looking forward to meeting you guys in Eugene once again for more foolery and laughs.
| X-Tatic (Aug 04, 2006 at 22:52 GMT) |
| Phil Carlisle (Aug 04, 2006 at 23:01 GMT) |
| Jeremy Alessi (Aug 05, 2006 at 00:26 GMT) |
Other than that ... sounds good ;)
| Joshua Dallman (Aug 05, 2006 at 03:03 GMT) |
wait, TGE 1.5 soon? and we just upgraded shelled to 1.4 this week! oh, cruel iterations...
well the difference between GDC and IGC is also about $800 -- so I always appreciated the breakout sessions and always took a LOT away from them, especially since I could never afford the sessions at GDC, and the sessions at GDC aren't really geared towards indies so they're of nominal value. I'm open to this new roundtable idea, but skeptical. about the price change w/o food - great idea, especially since my food-sensitive ass could never eat most of what was served. oh - and you forgot to mention the bigger venue for IGC this year - so we should see more people there I hope!
| Anton Bursch (Aug 05, 2006 at 07:28 GMT) |
Are you sure?
| Donald \"Yadot\" Harris (Aug 05, 2006 at 07:31 GMT) |
Also we have food...
| Tom Eastman (Eastbeast314) (Aug 05, 2006 at 19:15 GMT) |
And I really hope I can go to IGC when I get to Eugene!
| Spencer Boomhower (Aug 06, 2006 at 05:18 GMT) |
If there's one thing that would make the IGC waaaaay better, it would be soundproofing between the session areas.
Whatcha going to do about food? If it's at the same venue, I don't remember a lot of restaurants around there. I certainly don't mind buying my own food, as long as it's there to be bought :)
Details aside, I'm still looking forward to it!
| Aaron (Aug 07, 2006 at 02:39 GMT) |
It's in a different venue this year, IIRC.
| Scott Burns (Aug 07, 2006 at 12:55 GMT) |
| Mark Frohnmayer (Aug 07, 2006 at 16:18 GMT) |
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