Torque 2 Tranparent Development

#21 I've seen bug report "codes" posted in the forums, are these for looking at/updating bug reports online somewhere?

I'm also curious of any TD progress.

#22 It's what we currently use and are trying to let people know what is in there and that it has been logged. The TD environment is not ready yet, which is unfortunate, but that's the way creating something new goes sometimes.

#23 Any updates?

#24 Nope. AFAIK, we're waiting on the tech and have been supplementing it with fast-betas of TGEA and TGB.

#25 Update: It'll be late. It'll be 2/3 of what was proposed. It will be buggy to the edge of non-functional. By the time everyone realizes this, Torque3 will be announced.

But I'm not jaded or anything.

#26 @ArmedGeek - Unfortunately, I think you are right. I've decided to move onto C4.

#27

Quote:It's holding up the TD portion--they've been working solidly on the engine since before we announced it in October.

So exactly how is it transparent development when the engine is likely past its first year of development by now?

(my appologies if you have to boot up the Marketing Bullshit Generator for this)

#28 Brian, my guess (at best) is that they are working on something to actually show the community. Being a member for so long, I am sure you are aware that there is a great deal of work behind engine development.

GG have indeed been a little slack on the whole TD front, but they need to have something to bring to the table. This means that they need both the foundation for an engine and a method of getting information to the community at a minimum. There have been whispers of a new GG site in development which I imagine will be focused on making TD clearer.

#29 Phillip, your points are well taken. It's just the promisses of transparent development now feel like a gimic to maintain customer loyalty. Otherwise, why even mention it in the first place? And it worked. There are just several of us that feel that they haven't delivered on the items they used to keep us loyal to the GG brand.

Certainly in a year of development, there is more than enough to show the community. I'm not even asking for screenshots. Something simple as a high-level overview of completed milestones would be cool.

It just seems that a site redesign is a poor excuse for no TD. More than likely, myself having 25 years experience in Fortune 500 businesses, and now that GG is owned by IAC, I get the feeling that marketing is getting in the way of TD. I fear that TD will be nothing more than a marketing tool, and information will only be released when it is tactically beneficial, rather than being a service to the customer as it has been implied.

I hope I'm wrong. I look forward to when I am. Perhaps I'm just eager to see something and getting jaded off of expectations born from misinterpreted statements...

#30 @Marcus: yeah, that's where i went too. I keep dropping back by here hoping something will change.

#31 It's been mentioned a few times in various blogs from Brett Seyler and Matt Fairfax (Plan 1, Plan 2, Plan 3, Plan 4, and Plan 5) , but there was a change in roll-out strategy for new technology that can be summed up as:

Instead of long development cycles and a complete break between "current-gen Torque" and "next-gen Torque", features and capabilities are constantly being brought in to TGEA as they are developed within the R&D development branches. This has changed our original vision of transparent development and we're still working on the most efficient process for getting useful development information out to you guys.

For the time being, that means increased blog posts, closed and open beta periods, and more frequent engine releases.

From Brett's blog linked above:

"From now on, with every opportunity we can, we're going to do beta releases on products so that we can get your feedback during development. This is just the first step toward a transparent development process that we talked about months ago. The TGEA 1.7 beta is the first time we've done this in a while, but not only do we want to do this every time we have a big release, we also want to find ways to get more of you involved. Right now, the open beta for TGEA is open, but before that, we also did releases closed to GG Associates. Associates are basically GG community superstars, but there are many of you out there who can help just as much and we want your input too. We're in the midst of building a web interface to support this kind of community development and feedback. If it goes well, you all will be able to use this system to host, track, and communicate about your own projects as well."

From our perspective, the increased feedback and communication really helped us put out a quality product in TGEA 1.7.1, so we'll continue to look at ways to increase that communication flow.

#32 So, basically, TGEA is becoming "Torque 2"?

#33 I think Brett's blog explains what "Torque 2" really is, the R&D of future engine & tools. So that does mean some of our R&D ("Torque 2") is probably going to go into TGEA. We also have other plans, ones that are further down the line not finalized and don't make sense talking about now. Matt F. has been very transparent with TGEA and Melv with some TGB, those both involving releases to come would seem the most important to be transparent about :)

#34 I really HOPE that GG will, with Torque 2, will stop coming out with so many different versions of there engine and focus on 'documentation' and ONE product. Torque A, Torque B, Torque C, Torque X, Torque X2... With the current version of TorqueS, it really feels like 'sink or swim'.

#35 Well, one version is focused on 2D (and that's my current interest), but a unified version would be possible. That's what the Wii version is supposed to be. Not sure if I want to pay for the combined always, until I have some REAL projects in proper 3D.

Torque X is a whole different beast, though, being based on XNA. I think Torque just HAS to be available in different versions. TGE and TGEA should merge, and they will hopefully do that sometime in the future - with three-platform support, of course. It's not like OpenGL doesn't have shader support.

I just consider TGEA the experimental branch for people who can tolerate working in Windows ;)

#36 I too currently focus on 2D. Most in part because I HATE BSP, I have always found it cumbersome to work with. From the little I've read, Torque 2 is moving to Octree - I would assume that you can construct whole levels in Max or Maya. And that would be great!! My one gripe is documentation and tutorials have always been weak or outdated. If they can make Torque 2 accessible by providing new tutorials every now and then... I mean, just take a look at the 3d Gamestudio community, they have more things going in terms of tutorials and how-to's

#37 @Edel - I'm working on it =)

#38 /me develops angina with shock....a full-time documentationarianalist? At GG? No f****n way!

@Edel: you checked out the polysoup code? My games are 100% BSP free, and it's pretty sweet.

#39 Hey Lee, your game looks good! And FUN!

#40 :-) Thanks. It's free*, you know.