Hey remember me? TorqueDev is open source!

Well hi everyone! Remember me? Yeah, probably not. It's been something like five years since my last blog post.

I'm posting here again, once again, to let all of you know that TorqueDev is open source!

Some of you may still be using that software that I wrote nearly ten years ago in my late teens. Originally, it was supposed to be just for me so that I could get a better handle on the Torque engine's scripting language, but then a friend of mine encouraged me to post it on the GG forums, and the rest is history. It took off quite a bit and was in the spotlight for a long time. I never wanted to charge for it, and donations were sparse, but that's okay because over the years, tens of thousands of people have downloaded it. It's been mentioned in a couple of books, too, which is cool, but unfortunately I never got around to "finishing" it because life took me in a different direction.

Over the years, I've received a lot of e-mail from people about it (and still do!), and the number one request (besides "can you fix XXX bug" or "release a new version!") is "can you release the source code?????" I've always been hesitant for a number of reasons, one of which was I was very, very conscious about how terrible the code is. You see, it was my first major project in a language I knew only moderately well, and I was merely a self-taught programmer with no formal university training, so I just sort of hacked it together to the best of my abilities. Add to that the fact that it was never intended to actually be a program for anyone else to use besides me, its framework was pretty shoddy.

But the e-mails asking me to make it open source never ceased, and, well, I guess I'm over all my insecurities about the it (and now that the company that took it over and intended to make it a product but never did is out of business and long gone), so I think it's time to close that book once and for all and release the code for anyone to do whatever they will with it.

I never would have made it open source, especially not after all these years, but every now and then I get an email or two from random people about it, and the downloads on the website are always pretty decent, which sort of led me to believe there's still SOMEONE out there using it. So if someone here can benefit from it, that's worth it I guess.

Anyway, enjoy it, for those of you who still use it and/or care. Maybe someone can take over where I left off and make it way, way better than I ever could have. Or, likely, they'll realize it's a giant pile of mess and start over, or go do something more productive :P

Oh, before I forget: The binaries / installer package has been updated to include a version that removes a bunch of useless stuff, namely the whole licensing thing, the auto updater, a bunch of old and broken links throughout the program, etc. So if you want, you can re-download the final install package that will ever be.

Cheers!

Get the source code here or download the latest installer