Torque X: is there any future?
by Giuseppe De Francesco · 02/01/2011 (8:52 am) · 38 comments
I guess that this blog post is overdue because the emails I'm receiving and the posts I read around are all showing fear about Torque X being a dead product as GarageGames decided to end the support and maybe also the sales.
First off, let me tell you that the End of Sales is not written in stone: GG people are working to find a solution to keep the licensing availability to newcomers, but the problem is that there aren't enough resources to maintain Torque X and not enough market (actual sales) to allow them to hire a person to guarantee the product maintenance. That's understandable, but GG people are aware that there is no other viable XNA engine out there so they are looking for a solution to keep it running while not engaging them in maintaining it.
My personal contribution to this is quite evident I guess: I do publish games on XBLIG so I do need to maintain the engine anyway. This position of mine is shared with many other community members and the overall of our commitments is known as Torque X CEV (Community Enhanced Version), which now supports XNA 4.0 on both Windows and Xbox. We are still working to a lot of tasks to make Torque X better so I'm confident that GG will find a proper solution to avoid the feared end of sales.
Bottom line: the CEV is available to the licensees and to GG as well. When we go in the GA (General Availability) phase GG can take the CEV and make it the current product (maintained by the community) or just leave the current disclaimer and continue selling the 3.1.5 just as a way to get the right to have the CEV for anybody buying the 3.1.5 will be granted access to the 4.0 CEV so... no problems going forward and no maintenance commitment for GG. This is why I'm confident that Torque X will stay on the market till a new product will replace it.
Moderated: For clarity, this is not an official GarageGames statement. While we encourage community driven projects like CEV, it is not a GarageGames sanctioned product.
About the author
In the software eng. field since 1981, in charge of R&D during last 10 years. IEEE Senior Member (and volunteer).
#2
Have the engine sell for 20-50 dollars. And give pino a cut. That price point will be hard to ignore for AH members. If we make it so that we have a sharing attitude as we do now. the quality will improve. I would love to have a lot of code base for TX.
More users = more people working with TX. This will make the engine better than it is.
02/01/2011 (9:06 am)
There is always strength in numbers here is my possible plan.Have the engine sell for 20-50 dollars. And give pino a cut. That price point will be hard to ignore for AH members. If we make it so that we have a sharing attitude as we do now. the quality will improve. I would love to have a lot of code base for TX.
More users = more people working with TX. This will make the engine better than it is.
#3
02/01/2011 (9:08 am)
I must admit. Because of the CEV I am tempted to buy a licence. 
#4
In the end I waited and waited and waited and then (about a year later)GG/IA annouced "Oh Hey, we're completely changing the product, spiltting it into two and raising the price, but it really will be a complete engine.. one day.. honest... so you should buy it again!"
At this point it's so marred in GG marketing hype that I don't even really know what I would get if I had nothing but money and decided to repurchase it.
If you pair that with Microsoft's asinine surge toward Windows Phone 7 at the expense of doing anything "new" with XNA I really have no desire to return to Torque X.
It looks to me like "some" of you guys... aka Guiseppe are happy with the engine, but it also looks to me like anyone who is happy with it has done a considerable amount of engine coding in order to get it into a state where a decent game is actually doable. As a hobbyist I don't want to do much engine coding, I just want to play at making games, which is not really realistic to even attempt with an engine that is only partially complete.
02/01/2011 (10:35 am)
I have to say that I feel I got "burned" in buying TX 2.0. It was at that point an incomplete product (in my opinion), but I thought I was supporting development and would get at least a couple of service releases. In the end I waited and waited and waited and then (about a year later)GG/IA annouced "Oh Hey, we're completely changing the product, spiltting it into two and raising the price, but it really will be a complete engine.. one day.. honest... so you should buy it again!"
At this point it's so marred in GG marketing hype that I don't even really know what I would get if I had nothing but money and decided to repurchase it.
If you pair that with Microsoft's asinine surge toward Windows Phone 7 at the expense of doing anything "new" with XNA I really have no desire to return to Torque X.
It looks to me like "some" of you guys... aka Guiseppe are happy with the engine, but it also looks to me like anyone who is happy with it has done a considerable amount of engine coding in order to get it into a state where a decent game is actually doable. As a hobbyist I don't want to do much engine coding, I just want to play at making games, which is not really realistic to even attempt with an engine that is only partially complete.
#5
I do feel your point, but things are a bit different now. Using the current CEV you can create your game without doing any engine coding. We do want to make it better and better thus we keep coding in it, but that's not a must-do anymore. We still do that because we believe that as we have invested quite some money and time in Torque X it'll be madness to let it go... double madness as there are no alternatives ;)
02/01/2011 (10:46 am)
Hey Nathan,I do feel your point, but things are a bit different now. Using the current CEV you can create your game without doing any engine coding. We do want to make it better and better thus we keep coding in it, but that's not a must-do anymore. We still do that because we believe that as we have invested quite some money and time in Torque X it'll be madness to let it go... double madness as there are no alternatives ;)
#6
02/01/2011 (10:51 am)
Well, if you just want to play at making games, why not play with a tool which has been proven to deliver high quality games, instead of starting from scratch?
#7
02/01/2011 (11:25 am)
Before I started using TX. I made so many games from scratch. It was like a breath of fresh air when I started to use TX.
#8
02/01/2011 (11:32 am)
@Giuseppe - How frequent does Microsoft move the goal posts for a version beyond 4.0 to be obsolete making the CEV out of date?
#9
02/01/2011 (12:38 pm)
Speculation removed by moderator
#10
02/01/2011 (2:28 pm)
depreciation, like anything in the world. one product, cross platform for the win :) 
#11
But its the way to XBLA Indie and WP7 :)
And the CEV was as well the reason for me to buy TX. Didn't do so before cause it had a tendency to be always behind on the framework end and with Microsoft being pretty strict on the approval timeframes when a new version of xna was released, it stopped to make too much sense. Got in touch with the originally 2D TX when I got my hands on it for free as a side consequence of TGB Pro ownership, though it was a great experience and it had what most wanted from TGB (pixel shaders to do 2D lighting and normalmapping while having the great editor etc) :)
I really hope GG has a plan for TX & the CEV cause even if they don't have the resources to support it (and cutting it down for that is fine, better than persuading the same death end situation the torque engines were in the past years), they should at least lend a hand to the work done with the CEV in some form ...
Who knows, perhaps a "blender buyout to opensource" alike situation could be brought up, but I am not sure if the userbase is large and dedicated enough to even consider such a path.
02/01/2011 (3:40 pm)
Wouldn't call it cross platform for win, haven't seen a successfull game targeted at win done with it as far as I am aware. XNA install penetration on windows isn't that great after all.But its the way to XBLA Indie and WP7 :)
And the CEV was as well the reason for me to buy TX. Didn't do so before cause it had a tendency to be always behind on the framework end and with Microsoft being pretty strict on the approval timeframes when a new version of xna was released, it stopped to make too much sense. Got in touch with the originally 2D TX when I got my hands on it for free as a side consequence of TGB Pro ownership, though it was a great experience and it had what most wanted from TGB (pixel shaders to do 2D lighting and normalmapping while having the great editor etc) :)
I really hope GG has a plan for TX & the CEV cause even if they don't have the resources to support it (and cutting it down for that is fine, better than persuading the same death end situation the torque engines were in the past years), they should at least lend a hand to the work done with the CEV in some form ...
Who knows, perhaps a "blender buyout to opensource" alike situation could be brought up, but I am not sure if the userbase is large and dedicated enough to even consider such a path.
#12
02/01/2011 (4:07 pm)
@Marc - sorry, didn't mean win(dows) .. but multi-platform, allowing you to deploy to xbox, wii, pc, mac all from one solution. 
#13
I had a lot to say on this one so did a blog post on some thoughts in general
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/20813
02/02/2011 (6:13 am)
Hmm, good article Pino.I had a lot to say on this one so did a blog post on some thoughts in general
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/20813
#14
02/02/2011 (10:22 am)
Anyone know if you need to be licensed for a specific version of TX in order to get in on the CEV? I haven't really looked that much, but from what I remember in the EULA it just said you can't distribute source code to anyone who does not own a license for the product.
#15
the version you own doesn't qualify, but I'm sure that if you drop a line to licensing@garagegames.com they will find a way to sort that out ;)
02/02/2011 (10:45 am)
Hey Nathan,the version you own doesn't qualify, but I'm sure that if you drop a line to licensing@garagegames.com they will find a way to sort that out ;)
#16
02/02/2011 (12:05 pm)
Magicka is an XNA game :) 
#17
For the most part it seems the market is people who like to mess around with game engines and have a dream, more than guys who are actually releasing games.
I think GG should really keep the TX license available in some sense, just so the community can grow. Right now we cannot get new licensees.
02/03/2011 (7:39 am)
@Marc Just because you have not seen a successful game targeted at Win doesn't mean its not successful. Lots of guys are running TX and XNA and doing Win development and having fun. I'd dare to say that of all the engines TX has the highest engine license to released game of any torque product. I know we probably have less than 10 iOS games made with iTGB, How many T3D games are released?For the most part it seems the market is people who like to mess around with game engines and have a dream, more than guys who are actually releasing games.
I think GG should really keep the TX license available in some sense, just so the community can grow. Right now we cannot get new licensees.
#18
There are hundreds of iTorque 2D games released. I have barely been able to keep up tracking them in our Made with iTorque page. In fact, that's probably less than half that I have heard about or been informed of.
02/03/2011 (8:03 am)
Quote:I know we probably have less than 10 iOS games made with iTGB, How many T3D games are released?
There are hundreds of iTorque 2D games released. I have barely been able to keep up tracking them in our Made with iTorque page. In fact, that's probably less than half that I have heard about or been informed of.
#19
02/03/2011 (8:34 am)
@Mich: on those pages XBLA and XBLIG are mixed up and all show the XBLIG logo... and there is so little XBLIG games listed... really that should be corrected. 
#20
We actually received specific instruction from Microsoft for that change last year. If there are any that you see that are incorrect please email me a list of them.
02/03/2011 (9:00 am)
@PinoWe actually received specific instruction from Microsoft for that change last year. If there are any that you see that are incorrect please email me a list of them.
Torque Owner Josh Neider