Introduction and the Future of Torque

Let me start off by introducing myself. My name is Kenneth Hamilton, or you can call me Kenny. I don't really consider myself a developer. I have no published titles or experience in the gaming industry, indie or otherwise. I do consider myself an artist. I have been drawing for well over 30 years and transitioned into the world of 3D a little over a decade ago. I very rarely speak to people, in real life or otherwise. Because of this, I feel that my communication skills may be lacking, but please bare with me. I guess one could call me a self-imposed pariah. I do, however, research and observe things, a lot.

I grew up in the days of 4bit graphics on the Atari 2600 transitioning over to 8bit NES and so on. I got my first PC when I was in high school, almost 25 years ago. Ever since I discovered the possibilities of the computer, I've been fascinated with learning everything I could, including a desire to make games. I have been an avid user and supported of open source software for over a decade. That's what in turn led me to this community when Torque went MIT.

I have noticed a lot of talk lately about the future of Torque. People saying Torque can't compete with what's out there, and needs features, features, features. I've seen that some people are afraid that since Torque is now open source it will fade away because open source projects rarely succeed. I've seen the community fractured in places, and some people leave, while others just remain silent. I've seen a lot in this community in the short time I've been here. Having said that, I am no stranger to these things as I have seen many open source communities go through these same struggles. In way, I guess one could call it growing pains. As I said, I have been around open source software for well over a decade and was there when Blender was initially released as an open source project. And if anyone were to visit blenderartists or some of the other blender forums, they would probably find a lot of similarities to this community with one notable exception... size. Because this community is so much smaller, things that might be par for the course in larger forums automatically sticks out like a sore thumb here and gets noticed more. Case in point, if you go to blenderartists, you will probably find way too many threads started for feature requests, or other threads talking about how blender's UI sucks or this or that. What sets that community apart is that Blender is techinically a success in the open source community.

I don't think Torque MIT has truly had enough time yet to gain traction to be the success that Blender has become. And I think that might be why so many people are wary of its future. But we have to remember, Blender has been at this a lot longer and had to take some big strides to get noticed. And that brings me to my next point. Development. As I said before, I don't consider myself a developer, so take anything I say with a grain of salt, and feel free to correct me if I am wrong in any of my assumptions. I think that in order to get Torque up a level playing field with Blender as an open source project, there are certain things that need to happen. First and foremost, we need to grow the community. The problem is, how to do it? Depending on who you ask you'll get a different answer, and this is mine. Although it is only an opinion, I think what would help grow the Torque community is a closer relationship with Blender. Don't take that the wrong way, I don't mean the Blender Foundation, but rather the Blender community. If Torque can leverage the size of the Blender community and start getting people to adopt Torque as their engine of choice, then the user base could grow exponentially. I think this is why Valve and Epic have started to develop a closer working relationship with the Foundation because they see the huge potential that Blender has for the indie community, and let's face it, isn't that who Torque should be geared towards?

So how could we get that leverage then? I've been thinking about this too. I spend as much time at the blenderartists forums as I do here, I observe a lot of the converstaions that happen in the threads, the BGE threads in particular. I've seen a lot of the same conversations take place in there, as to why people use BGE.

1.) It's built into the editor. I have seen so many people use that as a primary reason, because they don't have to export their assets. I think Torque is already on its way to dealing with the import issue. If Assimp gets fully integrated into Torque for the importing of meshes before caching them out to DSTs it would help tremendously especially since Assimp reads blend files. I don't know how well that would work with animated meshes, but its a start.

2.)Python. Many of the BGE users use it because they can script in python. One user compared it to programmer's crack because it was so addictive. Personally, I am not the biggest fan of python, but to each their own. I do think if we had access to other scripting languages besides TorqueScript it would at the very least tempt more users to try it out. I believe that there was some talk on getting other scripting languages implemented, but I don't know if its still an ongoing thing.

3.)Linux support. Many Blender users are very picky about their operating systems and refuse to use Microsoft prodcuts at all, which completely cancels out DirectX. Once the the Linux and OpenGL ports of Torque is completed, I think that in itself will add to the adoption rate.

These are just a few things that could be done to help integrate some people over to using Torque. But by itself, it isn't nearly enough. I said before that Blender had to take some major strides to be noticed. One thing it did to really set itself apart from other open source projects was when it produced the open film projects. Starting with Elephant's Dream, the Blender Foundation started using Blender in a production environment and developing tools as it went. That was actually a very good decision, not only for publicity, but it allowed the developers to focus on areas that were lacking in the current toolset and target those areas specifically. To apply this to Torque, I think what would work is a community developed game. Although I've never actually played it, I heard that Tribes was a very good game and the backbone of what Torque is known for. If the community could come together and develop something similar, developing the tools as they go, then the end product would be good for marketing but also serve to further engine development. I think spilitting the focus for this project would be what's best however. I know some people would want those tools to be focused on graphics but I don't think that would be best. I think for the initial development it should primarily be focused on usability. I also think if every step of the production was documented, whether through text or visually like a developer's diary so that others can see how things are done. I think it could actually help get more people involved in the development phase if they know how things are working. And example might be just making a basic asset and importing it into the engine and getting it set up. Or using various modular assets in conjunction with each other to flesh out a level. If it's simple enough that a caveman can do it, then people might actually start coming in from other communities to help.

As for the graphics side of things, I do agree that to remain relevant the graphics are going to need to be upgraded at some point. That's just the simple truth of technology. But I think that would work better as a tech demo. Think Samaritan or Infiltrator. Those were realtime demos, but they weren't games. I think if we had just a 3 or 4 minute demo showcasing what Torque was capable of as part of an upgrade that would have mass market appeal. Again though, it would have to be a community driven effort.

All of these things are well and good, but the question remains, where do we start? Honestly, all I can say is what I would do if I were the one in charge. I think it would be ideal if the steering commitee got together as a group and decided on a future roadmap. If the idea of leveraging the Blende community lies within that roadmap, then I would draw a proposal for a Blender integration pipeline and present it to the community. I can't speak for anyone there, but I do think if you were to show that you are sincere in your attempt to bridge the two softwares, you'd be well received. I would think about doing myself except as I said at the beginning of the post, I very rarely talk to people. Not to mention that I think it would be better if it were coming from an "official" representative of Torque.

In closing, I'd just like to add my own personal thoughts on the engine. I whole heartedly believe that Torque as an engine is great. I think that in the right hands, stock Torque could do things that would make people question whether its Torque or not. If we focus more on the usuability right now and try and lighten the perception of a programmer's engine, and focus more on the artists side, with things such as nodal logic we could get a lot more people to use the engine. I think that's why Unity took off the way it did. As I said at the beginning of the post, I don't consider myself a developer so everything written here is just my own personal opinion and is probably very wrong in many instances. I'd also like to apologize for my long-windedness. Please feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.