iTorque 2D 1.4 Release

From Mich

Hey everyone. Delays be damned, we have release iTorque 2D 1.4! You can download it from your accounts now.

I want to take this time to express how proud we are at Torque. It's not just the engine we are proud of, it's the development team, the QA department, and most importantly you the community. In the past, we were severely punished by the community for posting a release date and missing it. This was not the case with iTorque 2D 1.4. So, what changed?

1. When a slip occurred, the iTorque team messaged it immediately. The back and forth communication in the forums have been AWESOME. You all asked the right questions and were patient, we disclosed everything we knew.

2. The iTorque users stated they would be willing to accept delays if it meant a more polished release and good QA cycle, and they delivered on that statement. DOUBLE AWESOME.


So with all this back and forth updating, there is not a whole lot left to talk about in this release blog. By now you all have seen our bug tracking, release notes, etc. We will still post, but I think a big take away from this blog is what it was like for iTorque to finally go through a full QA and development cycle. So, let's get to the news, changes, and release notes:

Also, I want to give credit for most of this blog's content to Luma. I've been slammed getting iT2D released and working on Torque 3D documentation, so they stepped up to help write. Thanks Luma =)

From Luma

A great few months have passed, a lot learned and a lot gained, we have made it to another release of the engine. From the development side, there is surely a lot to post about and many changes to see, they are listed later and for now some notes on the road to 1.4.

For me, a strange feeling was working with a QA team – bugs magically appear in the project tracker and every time you check back there is something new and exciting to work through. Of course, this leads to delays; it leads to confusion sometimes and more importantly, it leads to a far better product. It also leads to understanding and growing together as developers and team mates, so the next product can get even better.

For me it also means, we are extremely glad to have gone through the QA process and hope the end user will see and appreciate the hard work from each and every piece of the puzzle, from QA team right to the developers end, and all the helpful management and direction in between. There are also the ever helpful Torque developers all around, where I would personally thank Rene Damm for lending a hand on testing and working through some bugs with us, many others have helped out whenever they could and that means a lot to the development of a successful release.

Without forgetting the great community feedback and testing throughout the alpha and beta process we have come a long way to a release what we feel is a great step forward from the previous releases, keeping the momentum gained and bringing your dreams to the iPhone and iPad family of devices. We have already seen an immense amount of amazing development going on in the community, games and applications alike - the community keeps creating and coming up with fun titles, even improvements and fixes to the engine. I can only hope to see more community involvement as I am really proud to see some of the people rising up to contribute to an already helpful community. Keep it up guys; you may even earn yourself a reward!

From head of QA, Scott Burns

Being the second engine to pass through QA iTorque 2D was able to benefit from the lessons learned during TGB's QA, which resulted in a revised process and even stricter standards. Due to these stricter standards iT2D actually failed to pass release certification and in the end resulted in a better product because of it. As I've always been a PC-centric guy, earning my Mac wings was an interesting experience. Fortunately, iT2D kept those "learning Mac frustrations" localized to Xcode and OS navigation.

New features and improvements

Engine:

Support for iDevice Location Services, Compass and GPS
Support for iDevice iPod Control
Support for iDevice StoreKit in-app purchasing
Support for iDevice auto rotation in landscape mode
Per Project XCode projects for MacOSX builds
Audio can now play alongside existing iPod music
Complete IPad support
Full OSX Snow Leopard support (Build against 10.6 SDK)
Automatic CADisplayLink support for devices above OS 3.1
Clean prefs folder for each iteration to avoid settings clash
Bugs with scene persistence fixed
Bugs with avar/fps spamming the console fixed
Behaviors and components stabilised in the editor

Editor:

Level datablocks editor for datablock management.
Project iDevice settings panel for configuring deployment target
Project iDevice feature panel for configuring code that gets built into bundle
Better versioning on the start page
Fixed bug with large image maps not being selectable
Fixed all missing executable problems, and added more debug output if something goes wrong

Examples and project templates:

New Location Services example
New Music Player Example
New UIKit Integration Example
Templates now include a console by default ( Ctrl ~ )

Documentation:
First online documentation available: Official Documentation Home
Start to finish tutorial - New Aquarium Tutorial

Important changes

$pref::iPhone is now $pref::iDevice
$game:: is now $project::game
Camera size is now set the device resolution (not 100x75)
XCode build settings controlled by T2DBuild.xcconfig
Behaviour directory changed: game/behaviors to game/scripts/behaviors
UseUpdateCallback on sceneGraph is now always implied, still optional
Visual Studio 2003 projects dropped

Repeat Changelogs

- 1.4 Beta
- 1.4 Beta 2 / RC 1

Conclusion

And we're not done yet folks. The next update is already being planned to address known issues, update docs, add new tutorials, new demos, and bringing the engine up to 4+ standards. We hope you all enjoy developing with iTorque 2D 1.4 as much as we enjoyed developing it. Happy iDeveloping!