Torque X 2.0 - Release Notes

Torque X 2.0 Release Notes

Installing XNA 2.0 Game Studio
The biggest change to note is that Torque X 2.0 is based off of XNA Game Studio 2.0. That means you can finally uninstall XNA Game Studio 1.0 (Refresh), but there's no rush. I've found that both XNA 1.0 and 2.0 work just fine side-by-side. You can download XNA Game Studio 2.0 from here. XNA 2.0 runs a bit faster with optimized dynamic vertex buffers. It also manages render targets consistently between Windows and the Xbox 360. Overall, you should find that your games run a little faster with Torque X 2.0.

Pay Attention to Build Configurations
When you create a new project from an template, or open one of the demo projects, be sure to keep an eye on your build configuration. At the top, you will notice the platform (x86 or Xbox 360) and the configuration (Debug, Release, or GGBinaryRelease). You never want to see the platform set to "Mixed Platforms" because that means art assets and game code are probably compiling differently and wont work together.

The New 'Content' Folder
Pretty quickly, you'll notice the new Content folder. In XNA 2.0, all art assets are managed in a dedicated sub-project that is attached to the game project. This content project is compiled first, turning all sounds, models, images, etc. into compiled .xnb files. The good news is that Torque X Builder has also been updated so that assets brought into TXB will update the new content project, just as before.

Deploying to Xbox 360
Xbox 360 deployment has changed in this release. Instead of providing a dedicated Xbox project converter, Torque X 2.0 uses the built-in converter provided with XNA 2.0. To deploy your project to the Xbox 360, select your game project from within Visual C#, then right click on the solution, and choose "Create copy of project for Xbox 360". This will add another project file to your solution. The good news is that it's just a wrapper project that points to the original project's files - this means that as you update your game code, the xbox version gets updated at the same time. This is also a much better soltion since this approach will let you deploy to other future devices, such as Zune. Keep in mind that "Pro Version" licensees will need to create an xbox project for the Game project AND the Torque X Engine project. Also note, that with XNA 2.0, there's a new deployment utility, called XNA Connect, available to Creative Club members and downloadable from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. You'll need the new XNA Connect utility to deploy Torque X 2.0 games.

3D Framework Improvements
There have been a lot of enhancements that open up the Torque X 3D Framework. In 1.5, a lot of classes were internal or did not have get accessor methods. This means that you can work more easily with the 3D classes in code instead of having to do everything in XML. The Starter Game 3D has also been improved to add basic physics to the scene. This way, you can more easily add objects to the scene which won't fall through the terrain. There's also a new T3DComponent template... just a little convenience for those creating a new 3D component.

Converting an Existing Torque X Game to 2.0
I also suspect that several developers that have existing Torque X 1.5 projects will want to upgrade them to Torque X 2.0. Overall, it's not too difficult. Download the XNA 2.0 Project Upgrade Wizard. To use it, open Visual C# and select File + New Project. Select the XNA Game Studio project type node and the "Project Upgrade Wizard (2.0)" template and enter the new name of your game project, like "Game2". Next browse to your Torque X 1.5 project source and then click the Upgrade project. In the new project, you will need to update your project references to point to the Torque X 2.0 assembly DLL.

John K.