TGEA 1.7 is Officially Released!

TGEA 1.7 is Officially Released!

After an extremely successful beta test (Beta 1 and Beta 2, TGEA 1.7.0 has been officially launched!

We absolutely could not have done it on our own and owe a huge thanks to our community and to some individuals who have helped us immensely: Tom Spilman, Michael Perry, John Kabus, Jeff Faust, Rene Damm, Joseph Greenawalt, Kirk Longendyke, Stephan Goebels.

I also have to give a huge thanks to Clark Fagot, Joe Maruschak, Brian Richardson, Andy Maloney, Pat Wilson, Robert Blanchet, Justin DuJardin, Dave Wyand, and John Quigley. They are the giants whose shoulders we stand on to bring you TGEA 1.7.0.

Lastly, I want to say a very special thank you to Brett Seyler, Deborah Marshall, Eric Fritz, Derek Bronson, Matt Langley, Ken Holst and Josh Engebretson. Ken and Josh in particular have been living and breathing TGEA 1.7.0 alongside me for the last few months. They have been there through the good, the bad, the ugly, and The Awesome and it has been an honor for me to work with them.



Cool New Features!

This FREE update to TGEA includes a ton of updates and new features. It is easier than ever for game developers to get up and running with the latest and greatest technology.

TGEA 1.7.0 brings:

• 1) GFX Power - TGEA 1.7.0's rendering is faster and more powerful than ever offering huge speed increases, full screen anti-aliasing, and support for non-shadered video cards. You can deploy your games to a much wider audience and trust that it will "just work."



"Gears of Torque" Video


• 2) MegaTerrains - The new MegaTerrain system includes all the amazing real-time terrain editing features of the original Terrain system along with the larger size that the forward thinking game developer demands.



MegaTerrain Flythrough Video



• 3) Polysoup Collision - We've taken Ben Garney's OPCODE Polysoup Collision implementation and extended it to better integrate with the environment and lighting. Quickly drop in your mesh objects and levels and get up and running with them in no time.


• 4) SFX Sound System - The brand new sound system provides proper abstraction and tools for using sound in games including a robust FMOD implementation.



• 5) New Content - There is a ton of new content in TGEA 1.7.0 including the jaw dropping Forge Demo and three new Player characters!



Forge Demo Video


• 6) Torque Build System - The new Project Generator automates generating up-to-date projects files. This powerful, modular system makes maintaining new code and staying in sync with your team a snap.


• 7) Getting Started - A primary focus of this new release is making sure that new users can get up and running on TGEA as quickly as possible. We have done this by making sure that TGEA owners have top notch docs available to help them hit the ground running. We are also providing a great selection of game examples to show tried and tested implementations of the most common problems you will encounter when building your game.



Hit the ground running! Get it? =P

Awesome Support

I touched on it above but I will reiterate: we could not have done this without the amazing GarageGames community. Your support for our Beta program was overwhelming. We really appreciate how professional and thorough your bug reports and bugfixes were. Moving forward we are going to continue to work closely with our customers, community, and Associates.

Your encouragement was so inspiring to us that I simply have to share a few of the comments that most warmed my heart:

Quote:
"I just got that "lump in my throat", "feel like I'm gonna burst" sensation that you get after getting out of an engineering final that you thought was going to be super hard, but you feel like you did really well, and now you're leaving the building with this joy and relief welling up inside that makes you want to scream and dance in the middle of campus, but you can't 'cause you might scare the other students. Yeah, that's kinda what it's like. :) I'm at work, so no screaming or dancing allowed."

- Ryan Mounts

"I have to say, even though I am at work right now I have gone through the new documentation and it is amazing how much difference a well organized set of docs can make. It looks great guys! Thank you and Congrats again!"

- Syllus

"Matt, Michael, Stephen, Jeff and the rest of you guys!
You simply make this place worth lingering in, totally great and awesome work (brushes off nose).
Im so pleased that I found, and choosed to use your engine -keep it up folks!"

- Christian S

"I just recently bought TGEA and was having a bid of an headache going through all the tutorials in TGEA. Then trying to convert some of the sample demos from TGE to TGEA. This new update is extremely helpful. Just wanted to say Thank You!
The documentation is great a help to new comers like me! :-)"

- Lathieeshe Thillainathan

"Now THIS is what I'm talking about! Kudos to the TGEA dev team, this is absolutely amazing!
This beta release of TGEA is what I've been needing for a long time wrapped up in one little neat package.
This is definitly a milestone for GG as a whole, and gives some great insight on what to expect in the future."

- Trenton Shaffer

Did you know that the Penny Arcade Adventures are being made with a version of TGEA?

What's Next?

GarageGames is committed to producing quality products. We will continue to work long and hard to improve our engines and our tools. You are going to start seeing far more frequent releases and bug fixes being pushed out to our customers. But we need your help! Keep offering us professional bug reports, keep giving useful feedback, keep pitching in to make things better for all of us. In that spirit, we would love to get to know you and your needs better and ask that you take a few minutes to fill out a quick survey for us:

Survey
* I know those of you who have been paying attention have seen some of the same features highlighted in my previous blogs =). Since we are putting some major effort into marketing TGEA 1.7.0, this blog is going to be reaching a much wider audience and we felt it was important that they get to see all of the cool things that are in TGEA 1.7.0.