October - Community in Mini-Review

It has been quite an interesting month for me. I thought I'd share a bit of it with you. Some people have cool stuff to blog about...I have other people's cool stuff to blog about.

I had a chance to attend IGC and meet a number of great developers. I had a chance to break bread with Ben Garney, Matt Fairfax, Pat Wilson, and Jay Moore (and he and Julie's beautiful Samoyed) through a serendipitous arrangement. I got to meet Jeff Tunnell and Josh Williams and Dave Wyand. I even got to stand behind Dave with a video camera while the Instant Action and Torque 2 sessions were happening as Dave monitored the IRC for his webcast. Magnus Blikstad even got a picture of me with a camera. I got a chance to meet Mike Rubin and play Vespers3D, which was one of my personal highlights--yes, I know, I could have seen it prior to that if I didn't have other obligations during Utah Indie Nights! I got a chance to play Marble Blast Ultra on IA and look at a ton of very cool games. I was even lucky enough to get to stay for the TorqueX workshop presented by Stephen Zepp to me, David Dougher, the Q/A team, and a couple of other yahoos. Unfortunately, it was announced too late for most conference attendees to go to--changing flights can be sketchy. Which meant more time for me to be there. I'm not gloating or anything, you understand...okay, I am.

The forums have been somewhat lively with a good amount of friendly and helpful activity around here as well throughout this month. Brian West has been working hard on his third-person GameCamera resource. It's quick, it's painless, and it works. Try it out. I implemented it and Jeremy Alessi's Double-Jump Resource and F.W. Hardijzer's Air Control Resource. It worked nicely, and other than the facing direction for the model, I had a very simple prototype for a Devil May Cryish control scheme. In only a few minutes of playing with resources. It wasn't very robust, but it is a beginning. Too bad I'm not making a 3D platformer.

Among my picks for "that's totally cool" this month are Shawn Simas' Integrating a Physics Engine into TorqueX, Bill Vee's DayOfWar Planetary Test Render, John Kanalakis' TorqueX prototypes (including a Guitar Hero-esque prototype), the port of MMOWorkshop's TGB Web Browser resource to TGE, Until I'm Gone, Mi Pueblito, and other really cool projects and posts.

And then there's a whole new level of coolness that has happened this month. Information about Torque 2 and Transparent Development from Stephen Zepp. The gist of it is that Torque 2 will be developed in full view of the community, breaking the silence from the TGEA era. GG will have full say on the development of Torque 2, but the community can weigh in, be heard, and be made aware as features are added, cut, refactored, etc. It also provides a short overview of the component based architecture shift in Torque technology.

Ben Garney released his Forest Pack, which is totally sweet! If you've been following the project, it allows developers to populate areas of their TGE terrain with trees. Lots and lots of trees. It makes creating forests and clearings much, much easier than placing a million trees by hand in the world editor. It should not be confused with Tom Spillman's work with TGEA and Speedtree, however.

There's a ton more stuff that has been happening in the community, but I thought I would highlight just a few cool things.

I'm planning on posting a blog about the community, community management, ideas for mentoring, and the like. I just need to organize my thoughts into digestible chunks to get feedback from the community and see what all of us want.

EDIT:
I can't believe I forgot to mention the totally sweet Yak Pack release!