TDN is still dead!?
by Michael \"Evic\" Wales · in Torque Developer Network · 01/21/2011 (7:38 pm) · 24 replies
Been a *long* time customer of GarageGames, 6-7 years or so. The past 2-3 years of complete mismanagement and ignoring the community was depressing and I pretty much took off for greener pastures. Imagine my surprise to learn that GG was once again independent, under new management, and good things are on the horizon! This good news made me hit the domain again, login and see what's up - as well as download copies of Torque3D and Torque2D which I've owned licenses for a number of years.
Unfortunately, TDN is still not accepting logins - an issue that has been around since 2009. There are a lot of valuable resources within the TDN and I'd estimate 70-75% of the links on the product's official support pages point to the TDN.
2 things:
1. Is the TDN coming back? Any reasonable time estimate as to when?
2. If not, can we get some edits / changes to the support pages? It's completely unprofessional and paints a bad picture of GG when the majority of the support documentation is inaccessible. It's representative of the past 2-3 years where the mantra has essentially been "screw the small guy / we've got a core group that is making money for us" - I understand this policy wasn't because of the original GG guys, just an unfortunate result of the whole Barry Diller/InstantAction period.
In short: please, can we have the old GG back? I'm not talking about the red header background, I want the old "let's empower the small guy, let's help people make great games" GG. This corporate greed, rule the browser-based gaming market phase sucked and you weren't very good at it - you were good at empowering developers, forming communities and letting people realize their dreams. Stick to that.
Unfortunately, TDN is still not accepting logins - an issue that has been around since 2009. There are a lot of valuable resources within the TDN and I'd estimate 70-75% of the links on the product's official support pages point to the TDN.
2 things:
1. Is the TDN coming back? Any reasonable time estimate as to when?
2. If not, can we get some edits / changes to the support pages? It's completely unprofessional and paints a bad picture of GG when the majority of the support documentation is inaccessible. It's representative of the past 2-3 years where the mantra has essentially been "screw the small guy / we've got a core group that is making money for us" - I understand this policy wasn't because of the original GG guys, just an unfortunate result of the whole Barry Diller/InstantAction period.
In short: please, can we have the old GG back? I'm not talking about the red header background, I want the old "let's empower the small guy, let's help people make great games" GG. This corporate greed, rule the browser-based gaming market phase sucked and you weren't very good at it - you were good at empowering developers, forming communities and letting people realize their dreams. Stick to that.
#2
01/21/2011 (9:47 pm)
It was working recently (before IAC closed), though a bit convoluted. It seems someone already jumped in..edited to reflect that. 
#3
01/21/2011 (10:04 pm)
TDN must stay, get cleaned up, updated by a pack of volunteers (make the tutorials work with the latest relevant engines) and most importantly the login cookies should be made to work more smoothly. Other than that, we just demand world peace and free iPads.
#4
Yeah, I know that's what the message has been for the past 48 hours (I'm very happy to hear it). Honestly, this thread started as a "don't forget about TDN" post and I kind of went off on a tangent. :(
Nonetheless, glad to see GG is back!
01/21/2011 (11:14 pm)
@Michael PerryYeah, I know that's what the message has been for the past 48 hours (I'm very happy to hear it). Honestly, this thread started as a "don't forget about TDN" post and I kind of went off on a tangent. :(
Nonetheless, glad to see GG is back!
#5
01/24/2011 (3:20 am)
Its still down, we REALLY need that. 
#6
01/24/2011 (7:22 am)
@Krisian - Same here. I use TDN daily for my work as well. When I get to the office this morning we are going to have status update on the most critical bugs.
#7
01/24/2011 (9:54 am)
Putting in my vote as a new user. I have never seen anything on TDN, can't login, and much of the docs internally link to it.
#8
Just remove the requirement to login to view the content and then we'd also benefit from some decent google indexing.
01/24/2011 (11:39 am)
What was the reasoning again behind requiring a login to view? Other Torque on-line documentation is openly accessible.Just remove the requirement to login to view the content and then we'd also benefit from some decent google indexing.
#9
01/24/2011 (12:44 pm)
There is other documentation on TDN than just engine specific stuff. There's docs for multiple Add-Ons as well and you need to own those Add-Ons in order to view the documentation for it.
#10
01/24/2011 (2:24 pm)
TDN is now back online. You should be able to login and access the articles.
#11
01/26/2011 (10:41 am)
TDN endlessly redirects me when I try to log in, then Safari says nuh-uh. Clearing cookies doesn't help.
#12
01/26/2011 (11:02 am)
Thanks for the heads up, I've passed it along so hopefully we'll be able to get it sorted quickly enough.
#13
01/27/2011 (2:08 am)
Ditto, annoyingly after being up for a week, it goes down at the exact time my student needed a tutorial off it =( 
#14
I cannot open it via Firefox.
01/28/2011 (2:17 pm)
TDN is not down,it seems it opens with Internet Explorer.I cannot open it via Firefox.
#15
On a semi unrelated note, I realise alot is going on and I'm all for the new GG direction, so cheers guys.
01/30/2011 (9:32 am)
Not sure if it's gone down again then as I can't access via either IE or Firefox.On a semi unrelated note, I realise alot is going on and I'm all for the new GG direction, so cheers guys.
#16
01/30/2011 (12:02 pm)
I can get it to load in IE, but I can't login.
#17
01/30/2011 (2:15 pm)
TDN is still in the same state from my last post when Ronny reported the redirect issue. The web dev had much higher priority tasks last week that occupied the entirety of his time. This was the next highest priority task on his list, so he should be getting to it this week.
#18
Perhaps there could be a announcement placed on the front just to let the community know what is up with TDN? Also for updates to be placed in the meantime?
It took me a few tries with the search to find this post about TDN having some technical issues.
01/30/2011 (5:35 pm)
Thanks for the update Scott.Perhaps there could be a announcement placed on the front just to let the community know what is up with TDN? Also for updates to be placed in the meantime?
It took me a few tries with the search to find this post about TDN having some technical issues.
#19
01/31/2011 (1:43 pm)
TDN should be back up now. Give it a try.
#20
01/31/2011 (2:25 pm)
It's up. Thanks! 
Employee Michael Perry
ZombieShortbus
TDN has been up for a while, it just went down during our server change the other night. Login should be working very soon. Believe me, I want it back up as bad as anyone else.
Well, that's been the whole message for the past 48 hours. I've said it. Eric (CEO) has said it. Erik and Justin (Owners) have said it. The message is clear. We want to get back to empowering Indies. Step one was reducing costs of the engines back down to the TGE days. While this is going on, we are fixing a lot of things in the background like site search, forum maintenance, revival of the Associate program, and so on.
Specific to TDN, I've been fighting for it ever since I came on board. Twice before someone tried to kill it completely and I defended it. I even came up with an action plan to revitalize the whole system. Save all the good content, archive the bad stuff, then move it all onto a newer version of the wiki software. This plan was shut down previously. When Eric came on board, he actually invited me to meetings to discuss TDN and figure out how to repair it. Now it's looking like it can become a reality again. The last thing I want to see is the death of the longest running GarageGames community project.
As soon as we can get everyone logging back in, downloading their software, and we stabilize our servers, we can get back to improving everything else.