Torque 2D 3.0 Roadmap (includes Android)

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