Torque 2D 3.0 Roadmap (includes Android)
by Michael Perry · 06/18/2013 (3:41 pm) · 51 comments
Torque 2D 3.0 Roadmap, Development and You
On February 4th 2013, we launched Torque 2D MIT (2.0) on GitHub. The Steering committee was formed shortly after the launch and helped forge a new, better T2D with the help of an eager community of hobbyists and professional developers.One of the Steering Committee's duties is creating and revising Torque 2D's roadmap. We have a meeting once a week to discuss Torque 2D and try to take the best decisions regarding the future of our beloved engine.
The point of this blog is to show the roadmap we have come up with. More importantly, this blog is where the entire community will ratify the roadmap. The final decision is not up to GarageGames or the T2D steering committee. This is merely our best suggestion, based on our own desires and understanding of the engine. This is our official quote:
Quote: Torque 2D 3.0 will be our first major release since the initial launch and will contain many updates, new features and a lot more documentation. It also represents a more stable starting point for new users and provides a much easier learning curve.
Torque 2D 3.0 Proposal
The following lists make up our ideal Torque 2D 3.0 launch. This is all subject to change, mainly based on your feedback and contributions. These are just suggestions, some of which have already been worked on just to test feasibility.Android
This features needs no verbose introduction. MaxGaming attempted to fund an Android port via KickStarter. Sadly, the campaign failed. Despite that, GarageGames, its owners, and MaxGaming have decided that Android support is too important to ignore. In order to support indie developers and further the greatness of the engine, Torque 2D is coming to Android! What we need from the community are testers, doc writers, and supporters. Spread the word and volunteer your doc writing skills.Leap Motion Controller
This small device can detect your hands and fingers over it and report on their absolute positions and rotations. It is a new way of interacting with applications and has a lot of potential. The Leap Motion won’t be available before July 22nd (they are taking preorders on their web site) but they have been sending out hardware and the SDK to interested developers.Spine Support
Spine is a skeletal animation editor which allows for really dynamic animations that are not possible with traditional spritesheet-based animations. The goal would be a complete integration of Spine functionality into T2D 3.0, which includes the bone system for character animation, skinning, full animation control, mixing, and access to bones.Tiled (.tmx) file support
Tiled is a general purpose tile map editor, built to be flexible and easy to use. In addition to its own map format, Tiled supports read/write plugins for using it with proprietary map formats or formats used by other editors. Physics Editor support
PhysicsEditor allows you to create collision shapes easily and export them for use directly in games that use Box2D. Unlike content creation tools like Spine and TexturePacker, PhysicsEditor generates actual objects for game play and physics simulations. Because Torque 2D has moved toward being data driven via TAML and the asset system, PhysicsEditor support has to be designed before coding start. I have started a thread here, hoping to get suggestions and volunteers for the work.Sandbox Refactor
The Sandbox demo is becoming quite cluttered and clunky with all the toys. Our goal is to cleanup the modules and make the Sandbox a little simpler. This will consist of consolidating several toys and updating the UI to allow for easier to access controls.
Massive Documentation Update
The Steering committee has steadily updated the wiki with guides and tutorials to help you better understand and master the power of T2D, and will continue to do so in the future. However, other Torque 2D users have started contributing lately.
Community member Mike Lilligreen has also contributed documents on par with our highest standards. Take a look at the Blending Guide and Input Guide. In order to have the best documentation possible for 3.0, we are urging others to follow Mike's lead.
In addition to the wiki, Charlie Patterson has been helming a major update to T2D will make full reference documentation a reality. Much of his work consists of updating the engine so support Doxygen style commenting, rather than explicit strings found in ConsoleFunction and ConsoleMethod. This effort will make it easier and safer for anyone to contribute documentation for all functions, objects, variables, and callbacks exposed to TorqueScript.
General Improvements
As with any update, several general improvements will make their way into the codebase. Some will be a result of new features, while others will come from one-off contributions. The following is a simple list that will likely grow before 3.0 launches:
- Image and animation cells can now be referenced by name
- TAML system will be updated to support JSON format for persistence
- TAML visitor updated to support new formats
- CompositeSprite improvements
- iOS platform improvements
- OS X platform improvements
- Performance improvements
- Many bug fixes
Torque 2D 3.0 Timeline
The Steering Committee aims to is aiming to have three or four releases a year, where a release is defined as merging all development branch changes into the master branch. To that end we are hoping for a September 2013 release for T2D 3.0. Ultimately, that is up to everyone. It takes a village to raise an engine. If everyone agrees on the road map proposal, then we will need everyone to start contributing.Now, let your voices be heard! What do you think about this roadmap? What would you change, add, remove, or applaud? Who will help the actual development and documentation? Let's hear it people!
Regards,
Mich
About the author
Programmer.
#22
We are going one step further. We will still create a sticky thread, but it will point to a link outside of GarageGames.com. We have created a Trello board for task tracking, which we will be making public very shortly. This will allow everyone to track and volunteer for known issues, features, and docs. It's must cleaner than GitHub's issue system.
06/19/2013 (1:10 pm)
@Mike - Quote:it might be good to have some forum sticky threads that detail what work still needs to be done for certain features.
We are going one step further. We will still create a sticky thread, but it will point to a link outside of GarageGames.com. We have created a Trello board for task tracking, which we will be making public very shortly. This will allow everyone to track and volunteer for known issues, features, and docs. It's must cleaner than GitHub's issue system.
#23
06/20/2013 (10:25 am)
We will need to raise more money for the Android port to finish it up. We will be posting a way to do so soon and email everyone who contributed to the kickstarter before. Do not take that as a negative though, we are confident we will be able to raise the rest. (less than what we got via kickstarter) 
#25
06/20/2013 (7:38 pm)
Android support is awesome! Would be nice at some point in the future to have a GUI based particle editor that a non coding artist can use to create effects. 
#26
06/22/2013 (2:17 pm)
Android support, woohoo! Let me know if you need any testers!
#27
06/24/2013 (12:20 am)
How about licensing Torque and torsion under GPLV3. You are porting torque 2d to android but not to ubuntu and ubuntu touch. Another cool feature would be a software that could convert torque 2d games to html5 like this https://www.adobe.com/products/flash/flash-to-html5.html Would it be possible for torque 3D to also have a feature like this? Also will you be doing a kickstarter for Torque 2D 3.0 Here is an example of a succesful open source software kickstarter http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/421164014/openshot-video-editor-for-windows-mac-and-linux?ref=category
#28
We are not the owners of Torqsion, so we cannot change its license. That is up to Sickhead Games.
I think porting to Linux would be great for the open source effort. I would love to see that, but no one has really stepped up to port. At least, I have not seen anyone try yet.
To advance the engine in any direction, the Torque 2D steering committee is asking the community to help out. The committee does not have enough time, nor the full responsibility, to drive coding. It just so happens that we are working on features for 3.0, but we cannot do it all.
I would love to see more features and more platforms, but they will fall outside of the 3.0 scope unless we have more volunteers.
06/24/2013 (4:44 am)
@John - Thanks for the post. Why do you suggest we switch Torque to another license? Everyone seems very happy with the MIT license.We are not the owners of Torqsion, so we cannot change its license. That is up to Sickhead Games.
Quote:You are porting torque 2d to android but not to ubuntu and ubuntu touch.When say we, who are you referring to? GarageGames is not porting the engine, nor is the work on the Torque 2D Steering Committee. That work is being performed by Max Gaming Technologies.
I think porting to Linux would be great for the open source effort. I would love to see that, but no one has really stepped up to port. At least, I have not seen anyone try yet.
Quote:Another cool feature would be a software that could convert torque 2d games to html5Same as above. The more platforms the engine supports, the better. Having more platforms will improve the core engine as well as bring in more users. The tool you linked to would not work for Torque 2D, since the engine is C/C++. Again, someone in the community will have to step up to make that possible.
Quote:Would it be possible for torque 3D to also have a feature like this? Also will you be doing a kickstarter for Torque 2D 3.0Torque 3D is outside my realm. There is a separate steering committee for Torque 3D.
To advance the engine in any direction, the Torque 2D steering committee is asking the community to help out. The committee does not have enough time, nor the full responsibility, to drive coding. It just so happens that we are working on features for 3.0, but we cannot do it all.
I would love to see more features and more platforms, but they will fall outside of the 3.0 scope unless we have more volunteers.
#29
06/24/2013 (7:28 am)
The reason I say GPL V3 is because of this http://producingoss.com/en/license-choosing.html and this http://oreilly.com/openbook/osfreesoft/book/ch02.pdf .Mit allows the code to be used in proprietary software and does not require that open source versions of the code be dis-ributed. Though if your feeling really adventourus you could license torque 2d under GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License
#30
06/24/2013 (7:32 am)
Quote:Mit allows the code to be used in proprietary software and does not require that open source versions of the code be re-distributedCorrect. That's as flexible as you can get. Why switch the licensing to something more restrictive?
#31
We did not want to tie people's hands unnecessarily.
06/24/2013 (7:34 am)
When I worked at GG, we chose the MIT license specifically for that reason. There are a large number of educational, government, and corporate closed-source projects that are benefiting from the MIT license. And a number of those groups have released significant pieces of code back to the community. But we wanted the best option for people to be able to work and publish on closed platforms. No touches and actually abides by the GPL on closed platforms. Note the word abides, since there have been many cases settled out of court where this has been an issue in the past.We did not want to tie people's hands unnecessarily.
#32
06/24/2013 (7:11 pm)
My fear with MIT is this (does not require that open source versions of the code be dis-ributed.) So in theory it could be possible with the MIT license that torque 2d could become closed sourced but if its is licensed under GPLV3 or GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 then it will remain open source forever right?
#33
06/24/2013 (7:23 pm)
Not necessarily. The code is out there in the wild. No one can close source it now. No one owns this engine exclusively. Anyone can close it, rebrand it, and sell it. At the same time, many developers are forking and improving it, making those improvements freely available. GarageGames reserves the copyright of the Torque 2D name, but the engine code itself belongs to the world. 
#34
Must have
Android, Android and Android
Tiled
Cleaning up the entvironment
Better tutorials
A complete reference of TS (Doxygene sounds good, maybe you could provide a UML diagram of TS classes, poster size)
And, of course, Android
--- Personally I think T2D will not survive without good documentation, demos and tutorials. In its present state, it is probably hard to attract new users
Nice to have
Leap motion controller
Spline
Other proposals
The support of a good particle designer was already mentioned. I would like to see this, too.
Any plans for browser support for on-line gaming? E.g., Html5 support would be great.
This new T2D reminds me at the very old version, with just the engine + a lot of external tools put together somehow. The "workbench" was really great, with all the tools integrated into a single program. Now we have to jump from one program to the other to provide the different resources. T2D has lost a lot of its charm, esp. for beginners. The learning curve has become much steeper. But I understand your reasons.
What I would appreciate most would be an upgrade of Torsion with an integrated TAML editor. This would help a lot. Any chance to see this happen? I would even pay for an upgrade. Hello, Sickhead Games!
Some new tutorials with animated graphics, I cannot stand the fish tank any more :)
Some weird ideas...
I always wondered if anybody else is interested in two-mouse-support. I am gaming a lot with my wife, using two mouse devices, however sharing only cursor. Is it possible to control two cursors/items with two different mice on Windows/Mac?
06/25/2013 (1:15 am)
My comments about the roadmapMust have
Android, Android and Android
Tiled
Cleaning up the entvironment
Better tutorials
A complete reference of TS (Doxygene sounds good, maybe you could provide a UML diagram of TS classes, poster size)
And, of course, Android
--- Personally I think T2D will not survive without good documentation, demos and tutorials. In its present state, it is probably hard to attract new users
Nice to have
Leap motion controller
Spline
Other proposals
The support of a good particle designer was already mentioned. I would like to see this, too.
Any plans for browser support for on-line gaming? E.g., Html5 support would be great.
This new T2D reminds me at the very old version, with just the engine + a lot of external tools put together somehow. The "workbench" was really great, with all the tools integrated into a single program. Now we have to jump from one program to the other to provide the different resources. T2D has lost a lot of its charm, esp. for beginners. The learning curve has become much steeper. But I understand your reasons.
What I would appreciate most would be an upgrade of Torsion with an integrated TAML editor. This would help a lot. Any chance to see this happen? I would even pay for an upgrade. Hello, Sickhead Games!
Some new tutorials with animated graphics, I cannot stand the fish tank any more :)
Some weird ideas...
I always wondered if anybody else is interested in two-mouse-support. I am gaming a lot with my wife, using two mouse devices, however sharing only cursor. Is it possible to control two cursors/items with two different mice on Windows/Mac?
#35
06/25/2013 (8:53 am)
How about changing the torque code to python that should attract a lot of people since python is the easiest language to use.
#36
06/25/2013 (8:56 am)
Completely and totally converting all C++/TorqueScript code to Python, Javascript (for HTML5 support), C#, LUA, Ruby, etc is an exercise best left to the reader.
#37
If it is realized, we no need to create new branch and easy to develop and test new features.
http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/133538
06/25/2013 (2:29 pm)
How about introducing plugin system.If it is realized, we no need to create new branch and easy to develop and test new features.
http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/133538
#38
06/25/2013 (3:04 pm)
Awesome!!! finally we would be able to use our beloved engine on commercial projects
#39
06/25/2013 (4:09 pm)
You've been able to do that since it was introduced... Or am I missing some strange inference in that post?
#40
if so, I missunderstood.
06/26/2013 (6:37 am)
Does it mean the plugin sytem was merged master branch and we could use it now right?if so, I missunderstood.
Torque Owner Bruno Campolo
@Charlie - Thanks for the link to that forum post about the GUI system. I'll reply there with my suggestions, but overall I like the current GUI system, it just needs a bit of work. Also, I've seriously thought about porting Invadazoid to iOS, but just don't have the time. I don't think you've seen the last of it though.