Pulling the plug from the Torque X 4 CEV SVN Repository
by Giuseppe De Francesco · 05/05/2014 (10:16 am) · 12 comments
Hi all,
I've been keeping the Torque X CEV 4 alive for years even not seeing any activity on the repository, just because it didn't feel ok to pull the plug.
I've asked the community on the private repository forum about what to do and I got no answers, so I have to assume that nobody is using TX4.
Surely after Microsoft pulling the plug from XNA on January 2013 it makes not much sense to keep it live.
The code and the full SVN dump will be kept safe on my archive and will be made available upon request (usual licensing verification applies), but the private (paid) repository I've been keeping live will go offline by the end of the month.
It's been a great journey and I've been honored to keep this great engine alive this long :)
Cheers!
Pino
I've been keeping the Torque X CEV 4 alive for years even not seeing any activity on the repository, just because it didn't feel ok to pull the plug.
I've asked the community on the private repository forum about what to do and I got no answers, so I have to assume that nobody is using TX4.
Surely after Microsoft pulling the plug from XNA on January 2013 it makes not much sense to keep it live.
The code and the full SVN dump will be kept safe on my archive and will be made available upon request (usual licensing verification applies), but the private (paid) repository I've been keeping live will go offline by the end of the month.
It's been a great journey and I've been honored to keep this great engine alive this long :)
Cheers!
Pino
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
I proposed this last year, but there is a licensing issue with a light rendering component. AFAIK the copyright holder won't allow its usage nor distribution.
Honestly, in v4 we revised the lighting system, so I doubt it's still that one, anyhow it's not something I can decide, but I'm all for it :)
Pino
05/05/2014 (12:08 pm)
Hi Will,I proposed this last year, but there is a licensing issue with a light rendering component. AFAIK the copyright holder won't allow its usage nor distribution.
Honestly, in v4 we revised the lighting system, so I doubt it's still that one, anyhow it's not something I can decide, but I'm all for it :)
Pino
#3
05/05/2014 (1:22 pm)
You could strip out any 3rd party systems that aren't Open Source compatible and leave it to the community to replace them. It'd be better than nothing. 
#4
05/05/2014 (3:09 pm)
With XNA shutting down, though... :/. Cheers for keeping this service alive, Giuseppe! Any chance we might see you in T3D-land sometime soon? ;)
#5
@Daniel: I've been following T3D and T2D quite closely, but they require more time than TX for what I can see, so it's difficult. There is a lot of code to parse and a lot of feature that are missing, and I'd love to help out. Let's cross all the fingers and hope my overbusy life comes to a slower pace soon :) if that happens you'll see a few pull requests from me :)
05/05/2014 (3:27 pm)
@Chris: that's not for me to decide, it's a GarageGames call, I can only say that I'm all for it but it's up to Eric & C.@Daniel: I've been following T3D and T2D quite closely, but they require more time than TX for what I can see, so it's difficult. There is a lot of code to parse and a lot of feature that are missing, and I'd love to help out. Let's cross all the fingers and hope my overbusy life comes to a slower pace soon :) if that happens you'll see a few pull requests from me :)
#6
05/05/2014 (4:24 pm)
Please feel free to mention these issues and missing features! I was never familiar with TorqueX, but it seemed like it had some stuff going for it. I definitely get that T3D especially is a massive engine and difficult to grok.
#7
05/05/2014 (4:56 pm)
Daniel, just to mention a few (then let's try not to get this OT!): Advanced lighting is pretty limited and is Windows only; baking of lightmaps is not there unless I missed something big time... and the occlusion culling, looks computed instead of being baked. Rendering is pretty basic, very little built-in shaders and post-process effects, reflections and refractions look pretty basic as well from what I can see. I believe that a lot of effort has been focused on covering multiple platforms, and that's nice, but... looks like it's been done at the expenses of bringing lighting and rendering (and related missing EDITORS!) up to speed with the other AAA+ engines on the market. THese are the points where I'd focus all my attention if I had some time to invest... let's hope so ;) 
#8
05/06/2014 (4:22 am)
Makes sense. Thanks for all your efforts to keep TX alive over the years. 
#9
05/06/2014 (11:39 am)
Giuseppe, why not trying to migrate TX over to Monogame?
#10
@Andy: to what end? only TX licensees can get access to it anyway because of the mentioned license issue. Moreover, TX is still great in the Xbox Indie channel world, but with the ID@Xbox Indie program it's likely that the current indie channel will be dismissed as well, and TX is not in any condition to compete with native engines available on the new Indie scheme.
05/06/2014 (3:47 pm)
@Mich: thanks man ;)@Andy: to what end? only TX licensees can get access to it anyway because of the mentioned license issue. Moreover, TX is still great in the Xbox Indie channel world, but with the ID@Xbox Indie program it's likely that the current indie channel will be dismissed as well, and TX is not in any condition to compete with native engines available on the new Indie scheme.
#11
[With XNA shutting down, though... :/. Cheers for keeping this service alive,]
I second that...
Give a Torque X a chance... or will die... :'(
Plese check this open source engine (XNA based), and the last engine used by www.sickheadgames.com/ in Armed game.
MonoGame: github.com/mono/MonoGame
"MonoGame is an open source implementation of the Microsoft XNA 4.x Framework.Our goal is to make it easy for XNA developers to create cross-platform games with extremely high code reuse"
06/09/2014 (10:01 am)
[why not release it under MIT like Torque 3d/2d is][With XNA shutting down, though... :/. Cheers for keeping this service alive,]
I second that...
Give a Torque X a chance... or will die... :'(
Plese check this open source engine (XNA based), and the last engine used by www.sickheadgames.com/ in Armed game.
MonoGame: github.com/mono/MonoGame
"MonoGame is an open source implementation of the Microsoft XNA 4.x Framework.Our goal is to make it easy for XNA developers to create cross-platform games with extremely high code reuse"
#12
-1- GarageGames should get sorted the license issue or ask the holder to contact me to discuss this.
-2- I need to see a decent group of people willing to commit to the port to MonoGame.
There are also 2 more issues that are blockers to be worked around:
-1- The 2D editor is based on Torsion-coded T2D (it doesn't even open in TGB interface) so it should be ported to either C# or the current MIT edition.
-2- The 3D editor depends on a paid (and costly) 3rd party library, and it's anyway quite broken (it's always been), so that level editor shall be rewritten anyway.
So... the first 2 are out of my hands... if those are sorted (#1 first!) then I'm available to keep it going.
06/09/2014 (10:44 am)
@Javier: I'm all for it, but there are2 requisites: -1- GarageGames should get sorted the license issue or ask the holder to contact me to discuss this.
-2- I need to see a decent group of people willing to commit to the port to MonoGame.
There are also 2 more issues that are blockers to be worked around:
-1- The 2D editor is based on Torsion-coded T2D (it doesn't even open in TGB interface) so it should be ported to either C# or the current MIT edition.
-2- The 3D editor depends on a paid (and costly) 3rd party library, and it's anyway quite broken (it's always been), so that level editor shall be rewritten anyway.
So... the first 2 are out of my hands... if those are sorted (#1 first!) then I'm available to keep it going.
Torque Owner Will Zettler
Digital Lightstorm Game Studio
Will