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Torque 3D Development - 1.1 Beta 3!

by Matt Fairfax · 09/20/2010 (7:00 pm) · 60 comments

static.torquepowered.com/static/upload/emp-985/Torque-3D_Development-Blog-Header.png
Torque 3D 1.1 development continues smoothly along. If you are a Torque 3D Professional owner, you can grab the Torque 3D 1.1 Beta 3 from your account page.

This release introduces support for Visual Studio 2010 and includes a prettification of the Deathball Desert level in FPS Example (the Deathball finally makes its appearance!) but this update was definitely focused on fixing bugs.

static.torquepowered.com/static/upload/emp-985/Deathball%20Desert%20-%20Updated2.png

The Deathball is back! Click image to see more!

QA Process


We've been working hard this year to improve our QA process so that we can deliver a more polished experience to you guys and to make it easier for you to track the progress of development.

Towards that end you may have noticed that we are now starting to add additional notes to the titles of your bug posts. This includes:

  • LOGGED - the bug has been logged into our internal bug tracker (you should see a ticket number posted)
  • CONFIRMED - the bug has been confirmed by our internal QA team and reproduction steps are submitted to the developers
  • RESOLVED - the bug has been fixed by the developers and the fix has been confirmed by the QA team
By tracking these updates to the bug reports, you can get a pretty accurate picture of the progress that is being made on getting you the next release.

We would also like to start editing the titles of the bug report threads to more closely match our internal bug titles. These are where we've dug into the bug a bit more and wanted to make them as descriptive as possible for the project managers and the developers who are scanning through the pool of unfixed bugs. Obviously, the better the bug title you post initially, the less likely we will need to change it.

We thought about beginning this process with Torque 3D 1.1 Beta 2 but we wanted to give you all a heads up first before we started changing the name of forum threads in a significant way since that is something we've never done in the past. To be clear, we only intend to edit the title of forum threads when they are a bug report (or violate our TOS).

Status Updates


The loyal followers of the Torque 3D Private forums already know that we have been posting regular updates about the current status of Torque 3D development. These updates come about once a month (give or take extraneous circumstances). If you are interested in the progress of Torque 3D development, I highly recommend keeping an eye out for these updates. You can see the ones we did for Torque 3D 1.1 Beta 3 here:

Resolved Bugs


Here is the full list of bugs that were resolved with Torque 3D 1.1 Beta 3. You can find the full changelog here.

Resolved Bugs:

Matt Fairfax's profile picture
Associate Matt Fairfax
PopCap

About the author

I am a Game Designer at PopCap who has worked on PvZ Adventures, PvZ2, Peggle Blast, and Bejeweled Skies. I am an ex-GarageGames employee who helped ship TGE, TGEA, Torque 3D, and Constructor.

Recent Blogs

• A Decade with GarageGames - Part 2
• A Decade with GarageGames - Part 1
• Torque 3D Development - 1.1 Beta 2!
• Torque Game Builder 1.7.5 Released!
• Torque 3D Development - Torque 3D 2010 Roadmap
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Torque Owner 000
-
#21
09/22/2010 (4:16 pm)
Fantastic news to read. :)

Torque Owner Andy Rollins
ZDay Game
#22
09/23/2010 (1:54 pm)
Wooo hooo you guys must have your boots on for stomping bugs at the moment *cries with joy*

Great work :)

Torque 3D Owner Sean OBrien
emaN oidutS tluafeD
#23
09/25/2010 (11:40 pm)
While I am glad and grateful to see the progress, I share Dave's interest in finding out if there will be a "catch up" version for OS X at any point.

The file timestamps from the 1.0.1 version that I'm using are October 14th, 2009 — that's 11 months now without a single update while the Windows version has gone through three complete beta updates. I'm not sure where all these changes are taking place but I'm willing to bet they aren't all in the Platform specific sections which means that either (1) they'd work with the other versions or (2) they'd work but might require some debugging to get integrated. Given a brief "hey this might work for you guys but it might not" caveat, why not post them across the board so that some of us somewhat capable Mac devs can, I dunno, help out a bit?

And, while I'm complaining, what's the deal with posting the Windows files as EXEs instead of just ZIPs? Sure I *could* find a way to extract them (I'm sure my boss would find that an interesting use of the computers at work), but if the OS X files are ZIP'd, why have a different publication format for the Windows machines?

/rant

Sean.

Torque 3D Owner Nicolas Buquet
#24
09/26/2010 (6:41 pm)
I'm interested too in Mac status of T3D as usual.

I know from Matt in other forum that a new Mac dev team was hired. Are they hard at work to catch up with the windows version ?

Torque 3D Owner Gareth Fouche
#25
09/26/2010 (7:08 pm)
Mmm, the deathbowl desert map is mighty fine. Good job!

Torque 3D Owner Brandon Keath
#26
09/27/2010 (6:50 pm)
I am excited for the new update to be out a beta, seems like a lot of good work is going into it.

Torque 3D Owner Peter Bengtson
#27
09/30/2010 (8:25 am)
Unity 3.0 was released today. With a product on the market which equals or exceeds Torque3D in quite a few respects (deferred shading on Mac OS X, anyone?), it's even more important for TorquePowered to start treating their Mac OS X developers and customers a little better.

The Torque3D beta announcement was made 10 days ago. Not a single word from the dev team as to when, and if, a Mac version is forthcoming.

With Unity, the releases are simultaneous on all supported platforms.

http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-3?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonuqnIZKXonjHpfsX86e8qWKK/lMI/0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ASMJmI/qLAzICFpZo2FFNFOmBZdNE

Torque 3D Owner Maria C R Harrington
Virtual Field Trips, LLc.
#28
10/01/2010 (1:02 pm)
I have been watching Unity as well, but I differ in opinion with respect to T3D. I built a highly complex natural world in both tools, and believe me T3D is significantly superior.

Torque 3D Owner Matt Huston
Atomic Banzai Games
#29
10/01/2010 (5:28 pm)
Unity always supported Macs, they used to not support PC too much

Torque 3D Owner Sean OBrien
emaN oidutS tluafeD
#30
10/01/2010 (6:58 pm)
Unity 3 is a big upgrade and it's nice for what it does. Granted.

But my concern here is that it's been a year ( 352 days to be precise) since the last official release for OS X and there have been something like 1,000 bug fixes and tweaks made to the Win version in that same period. (Note: I'm not tossing around hyperbole, I think it's actually close to 1000 fixes. The progress is truly enormous.)

The point is that having a workflow that says "Hey let's fix everything in Windows and then go back and port those changes to OS X," is unacceptable to me — hence I complain. The reason is that, given that the HAL (implemented by Platform et al.) is working properly, then most of those changes should be workable for all versions of T3D. If that's not the case then the problem is that the HAL is insufficient to the task of supporting the rest of the engine and needs to be refactored. Aside from which, with a better HAL, I could implement features for the OS X version that Windows can't support — perish the thought.

Beta updates are just that: beta code that is still under development and might or might not work. Keeping all of that progress under wraps and restricted to one segment of the developers here (granted that segment is almost certainly the majority) is not only negligent towards Mac devs but it's just bad business as (once more for the cheap seats) WE COULD BE HELPING FIX THE F'ING BUGS.

TLDR: I don't want Unity. I want equal-access to the current beta bugs and all; not some year-late port of the Windows version.

Sean.

Employee Eric Preisz
GarageGames
#31
10/21/2010 (3:52 am)
Hey guys, this threads been going on for too long for me to just be making a comment now. My apologies. I'm working on the business side to get things moving again but I wanted to post in here so that you know that I/we are listening.

I should have something more definitive to share in the next week or so but I'd prefer to not post more detail until I have some feedback from QA on current progress.

Unfortunatly, to keep costs low, we need to serialize the support across the Mac and PC -this cost-saving is something we hope to reduce in the future with technology, but for now, we aren't there.

These days, almost all major platforms offer compelling opportunities for indies and the mac install base is big enough to take seriously.

Torque Owner TheGasMan
G.A.S. [+others]
#32
10/21/2010 (9:56 pm)
- What's the timeline on 1.1 final looking like ?

P.S.
Binary users trying to use the incomplete collada pipeline in 1.0.1 are being forced back to DTS exporting even though DAE is the "cool new advertised way" on the engine advert pages.

..You guys are walking all over your own reputations...whether you'll face that fact or not is for another discussion.

Employee Eric Preisz
GarageGames
#33
10/21/2010 (10:15 pm)
EB - We will be releasing an updated binary version for binary uers. Blog to follow when QA gives me to OK.

1.1 looks to be Q1 rather than Q4 at this time.

Associate Matt Fairfax
PopCap
#34
10/21/2010 (10:17 pm)
Essentially we are focusing on a Binary version of Beta 3 and a Mac version of Beta 3 at the moment.

Once we have those, we will focus on getting all 3 versions to a Final state.

Torque 3D Owner Jonathan Wood
JBWood Studio
#35
10/22/2010 (2:26 am)
Been a while since update, gives me something to play with over the weekend again.

Torque 3D Owner Henry Shilling
Smokin Skull
#36
10/22/2010 (6:56 pm)
@Eric & @Matt, does this mean us binary guys will also get in on a beta soon? While I appreciate the value of having source files and the ability to rewrite or add to the engine, I do not want that to be something I have to do to make a good product. I think the real power of a good engine is the ability to put out good games without ever having to write any C++.

The old TGB was that way, lots of people made lots of good stuff without ever writing a line of C++. I think that's one of the reasons that everyone on earth has purchased a copy at one time.

Employee Eric Preisz
GarageGames
#37
10/22/2010 (9:10 pm)
@Henry - Yes. Binary will get in on the beta soon. The final releases have been way farther apart than we originally planned; it's the right thing to do. The binary is in QA being tested now.

Torque Owner TheGasMan
G.A.S. [+others]
#38
10/22/2010 (9:39 pm)
Q1 eh ? sheesh.

Employee Eric Preisz
GarageGames
#39
10/22/2010 (10:17 pm)
@Eb - I wish I could tell you it would be sooner, but I also don't want to blow smoke to make people happy.

Torque Owner TheGasMan
G.A.S. [+others]
#40
10/23/2010 (9:30 pm)
I understand that you want to be up front about it. ..but I do feel like a dog on a treadmill with a hamsteak hanging in front of me, just out of reach.
Back to T3D..as long as it is more stable, polished, & less bugged than every other release has been, I really don't mind waiting. Yet, if it's not polished and not ready for prime time (after 1.x years of waiting)..then I'm simply jumping ship for a more expensive package. You already have my cash, so...

- I have been here with Torque because I see alot of potential in the 3D package. I am not here because of it's lower-end market price..and luckily in life, I have the cash to invest in a more expensive package. I don't want to buy an engine for the price of a new car but I'm willing to go around 6k. So, I'm crossing my fingers on you guys..but I also have safe guards in place.

The morale and public face of TP has matured, I hope the packages follow suit. ;)
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