My Torque related .Plan for 2011!

Hello everyone!
My #1 plan for 2011 is to turn over a new leaf in life.
This means that you'll be seeing more elaboration in my posts concerning my inquiries..as I have learned that being short-worded tends to rub a few people the wrong way and steer them in the direction to mistaking my tone(sometimes anyhow). Note: I will still where my heart and mind on my sleeve.

Alright! Time for the Overview!
1. Contracting Chat and Thanks
2. G.A.S. Tools and G.A.S. in general
3. G.A.S. Tools sales chat
4. T3D Video Tutorial Series
(this one is pretty cool and it's currently closing up the planning phases, so add your thoughts and ideas!) but..read section #4 first!
5. Games/Projects up my sleeve
6. Unofficial Torque Public File System uploader is changing into: Unofficial Torque Central @ TorquePowered.info

1. Contracting Chat and Thanks

Most of my work comes from contracts and thankfully I stay pretty busy with them. A portion of my contract work comes from Torque related projects; During 2010, I found myself working deeply in animations with few different custom animation systems, piecing custom character rigs(nearly 80!), consulting for PhysX use in T3D, level designing, plus many other things..and ALL of it was great fun! Everyone I met was very friendly and that is always nice to find! Thank you to everyone I worked with and I hope to work with more of this great community in 2011!

2. G.A.S. Tools and G.A.S. in general

G.A.S. (gameartstore.com) has yet to have it's Grand-Opening-0pening and before that grand opening, it needs to be stocked with content. Well, throughout 2010, when I had spare time, I made models,textures,sound loops,animated objects, dev tools/helpers,etc etc., with the thought of populating the G.A.S. Storefront. Sometime in early 2011, I’ll populate the store and do a grand opening sale. (G.A.S. will *not* be a Torque-only game dev site..yet all models will come with the DTS format as well as several other formats.)
- Now, having one of these stores is not profitable towards a means of business sustenance, however, it is great for name recognition and demonstration of skill sets and task ranges. Hence, this store is being built and will stay online whether it makes big sales or not! Also: G.A.S. will either become an LLC. or a division of an LLC. in 2011.

Here is an example image of a “fence&gate kit”:

3. G.A.S. Tools sales figures

- I like to see sales figures so I assume that some of you do too.
I'll talk about the 2 tools I sell through G.A.S.; "Doit!" and "Physit!".
I have also made, but not released yet; "Breakit!" and "EasyLight!"..but I will only be covering “Doit!” and “Physit!” here as we'll be discussing sales stats.
- "Doit!" was released as a small 3dsMax helper panel for $10 in February of 2009.
It’s feature-set quickly grew and the price followed suit up to $29.95. Doit! quickly became a nano-scale hit (when considering the target market)!! I have even received a bunch of emails sending me praise about it! (which is awesome & thx!)

..here's the approximated figures..
- Doit! currently has around 210 paid licensees(5 commercial) ..and with friends/contest winners, there are over 230 licenses of Doit! in action! If you're not keeping track in your head..here's the math: Around $6k in sales in under 22 months! So thank you to everyone using Doit!. I never expected $200 from it, .seriously.
*To Licensees: Doit! 2.0 was completed in July of this year but my hard drive ate itself before I made a 2.0backup, I had a 1.9 backup and I will work on finishing & polishing that for release as a remade 2.0. (2.0 will be the final release of Doit!)
- Physit!, .. Physit! was made for T3D/3dsMax, so the market niche, to start, is small. Physit! still has room for improvement and years of saleability! (..& yeah, it's a complex tool that makes a complex pipeline automated..so it's definitely not for the feint of heart! ;) )
Physit! started selling @ $100 and 4 indie licenses sold for a total of $400. I soon reduced the price to $49.95 for the reason that I would rather have many people using the tool even if it meant less money per sale..and 17 sales have followed, 1 being a commercial sale. The revenue generated is approximately $1400. I feel like I have broke-even with Physit! ..and I am sure there will be a few more sales trickling in over time.
- Thank you to everyone using Physit! I hope that everything is going well with your use of it!
Note: Physit! will most likely only ever be for Max 2008 and 2009. My apologies, it's simply not viable when comparing work to benefit.
*To Licensees: I have a casual-video of how to use Physit! to easily create hinged doors, licensees can email me for a link.
Thank you to everyone who purchased a G.A.S. service or tool in 2010!

I have also created; EasyLight! And Breakit!
- EasyLight! is a lightmap/blendmap texture baking tool, with lighting toolkits/managers and out-of-the-box lighting generator tools. I am currently using Easylight in-house for a project before I release it for sale. ..there will be an example short game to demonstrate the Easylight! feature set! So that you can see videos and play a short game before deciding to buy into EasyLight!
- Breakit! is nearly done..it's an extension package for "Physit!" for 3dsMax & T3D. It is based upon the new fashion of physics object creation introduced in the T3D1.1 betas. It's basically another tool that will 'take hours of work and automate it into seconds by (to an extent); dynamically reading your scene. I'll blog more about it when it's released.
*Physit! Licensees get the Breakit! Add-on for free.*
Note: “Breakit!” works in Max 9 or newer!

*if you are interested in obtaining Breakit!, then keep an eye on this thread because I plan to release it soon. Thread #119211
(it would have been released earlier but my grandmother had a stroke and then passed a week later. So, December was not normal.)

The image below has Easylight! baked textures and it is a destroyed-model from a Breakit! creation! ..so it's a double-whammy of an obligatory blog image!

4. T3D Video Tutorial Series(Video Courseware)

It's obvious that people like/LOVE Video tutorials.
- I have laid out plans for an in depth video tutorial series for T3D. Filming begins in January. For those of you who may be wondering:I have taken previous video criticisms into account; there won’t be any loud mouse clicks and I'll try my best to speak slower & very clear.
Here's the main plan:
I will be starting out covering the areas of the sdk, like a book would cover the sdk; starting with an overview, then chapters will follow and sub-chapters will be used to detail intricate areas. I have asked 2 skilled people to collaborate with me and they are waiting to hear back from me about this.
Here's the details;
As a buyer of the T3D video series, you will get all of the current T3D videos for the series, future videos for the series, and whatever work files that I can legally supply.
*Every Buyer will be able to request 2 videos that will extend the library of videos for all buyers!
There is a system of checks and balances that will be in place as so we don’t end up with 14 parallax trick videos.!! What’s the system ?
..the other buyers vote on the video requests to make sure the most requested are covered/completed first. ..and I may add an objection if it’s for the greater good..but the end result is to make everyone happy and highly informed! (So: if there are 100 buyers, there should eventually be an additional 200 Videos or until every topic(within sanity) is covered. )

Example Video Chapter/subchapter/section/subsection:
Chapter 8:Textures
SubChapter 5:Parallax textures
SectionA:Photoshop-> SubsectionA: SuperPNG ->SubSectionB: DDS
SectionB:Gimp

- The first few videos will be free.
The rest can purchased with a 1 time fee; I am planning for the price to be the cost of a book.
$59.95 sounds fair to me but there should be a reduced price at first.

- *This is a serious venture without worry or regard for it's final capacity. It should and will grow to be a large comprehensive package. Once near completion, I presume it will be one of the top resources for learning T3D.
- I do plan to open discussions with TP’s new buyer (if there is one) as this may turn a head or two. ;)
*Launch date of the videos is TBA*.. but a safe expectation is Q1 2011

5. Upcoming Games/Projects:

In 2011, I have these things in motion for my own projects using Torque Tech:
1. I am in discussions with musicians in NYC, L.A., Ireland, and a few other places for a collaborative effort in making a game based around certain professional musician's music/songs/loops/effects/etc. The style of game is broad and includes a few types of gameplay such a "lock and key" and "puzzle solving".
I am *not talking about superstar popularity for these musicians but they are well respected in their field & most are Ivy League trained. Anyways, ..it's not your mother's idea of a video game,..not in the least!
More news to come on another day.
2. Another thing is going to be small games built upon over-the-top ideas/creativity without limitations or heed based on social taste(or anything for that matter).
Basically; games that will take and hour or more to play through and they'll be made with ideas that are "outside of the box". Some free, some for sale. I certainly hope I have enough time to make several of these.
3. Example mission packages for T3D;
We’ve seen many packages and missions created for showcasing features. We were promised to gain several & we have received none. So I plan to piece together small missions file for people to dissect as learning tools. Of course this is only if I have time to do such things. :P

6. The "Unofficial Torque” file uploader (public file system) + other unofficialness

The uploading resource will be moving over to “torquepowered.info” at some point soon and include
file upload locations for different file types including but not limited to screenshots,art,scripts,zips,etc..
(The current location will eventually be too much of a mess to bother using: .aBigHole. )

That is my Torque related .Plan for 2011.

What’s yours ?!

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