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Nix
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« on: November 16, 2010, 09:59:48 PM » |
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Garage Games (or InstantAction now, I suppose) is apparently shutting down operations and they are going to try to sell Torque to someone who may be able to do something useful with it. Whatever comes of that, though, I doubt it will ever be the same as it was under Garage Games. I never spent any time with Torque, but it always seemed like a very valuable resource for indie devs and it's a sad day that it drowns in the corporate cesspool of profitability. http://www.torquepowered.com/community/blogs/view/20495 |
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« Last Edit: January 20, 2011, 08:47:45 AM by Nix »
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lostmercenary
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« Reply #1 on: November 16, 2010, 10:10:31 PM » |
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That company has had a hard life. From Dynamix to this. I was always kinda hoping that they would some how create Tribes 2 successor from Legions. Hope they sell the engine to someone who cares about it. But nix is right, the chances are probably slim.  |
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wsworin
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« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2010, 03:28:19 AM » |
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It's too bad. I'm using the A8 engine for my game, but it was always to good to see more competitors for Indies to choose from.
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Perrin
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« Reply #3 on: November 17, 2010, 04:59:29 AM » |
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I feel sorry for people still working with the engines who might have been relying on future support and updates. Personally though I never got on with Torque, I bought both their 2D and 3D engines and felt they always failed to live up to their promise of being easy to work with. I'm sure some would disagree with me but I always felt like they were not great products.
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Peevish
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« Reply #4 on: November 17, 2010, 06:42:39 AM » |
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I used Torque very briefly and thought it was awful. I've never heard a single person say anything good about it. It sounds like they went under because their product was inferior to the alternatives.
But it's still a sad thing. Having a cross-platform game dev tool was valuable, and I wish they'd managed to work out a better interface instead of losing the game completely.
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Nix
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« Reply #6 on: November 17, 2010, 07:58:13 AM » |
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I used Torque very briefly and thought it was awful. I've never heard a single person say anything good about it. It sounds like they went under because their product was inferior to the alternatives.
But it's still a sad thing. Having a cross-platform game dev tool was valuable, and I wish they'd managed to work out a better interface instead of losing the game completely.
I think that their engine technology was doing fine (there are plenty of people who would disagree with you and who enjoy using Torque). As far as I understand, most of their issues came out of the failure of the InstantAction portal which pulled the rest of the company down with it. (I don't really know, of course. All we can do is speculate) |
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Peevish
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« Reply #7 on: November 17, 2010, 11:10:27 AM » |
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I mean, I think it had fine tech, but it's UI was impenetrable. 2D Torque also had about the least informative documentation I'd ever tried to use. The tutorial showed you how to put an object on the screen and make it run away from the mouse. That was it. Somehow you were supposed to extrapolate how to make an entire game from that.
I'm sure many people who figured out how to use it were very happy, but it was an incredible barrier of entry. Some people are simply willing to put up with a lot of bad design if you can get good results, but with both Unity and Game Maker offering user-friendly alternatives, I don't think Torque could have lasted.
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Richard Kain
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« Reply #8 on: November 17, 2010, 02:45:47 PM » |
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I haven't cared about Torque or Garage Games since Jeff Tunnel left. (one of my all-time favorite indie developers) I played around with Torque and Torque 2D a little bit, but found them to be a bit too annoying to use effectively. By the time I knew enough coding to actually make headway with them, I had already moved onto open-source projects.
Unity had been gaining ground on Torque for years. When they released a free licence of Unity alongside Unity's Windows debut, that was the final nail in the coffin for Torque. Unity has always been much, much more friendly in terms of resources. It is so much easier to get models and textures into Unity.
That said, I was always a big Tribes fan. I'm hoping the guys who bought the Tribes IP will do something great with the series. It just might be that Torque's involvement with the Tribes franchise is at an end.
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wsworin
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« Reply #9 on: November 17, 2010, 06:45:57 PM » |
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Yeah I too feel sorry for any developers making projects with Torque! It must be a stressful time not knowing the future. More times than not updates can make or break a game. I really got lucky in that 3dgamestudio stuck through 10 years. lol, oohhhh how naive I was when I first started developing Silas!  |
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Nix
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« Reply #10 on: January 20, 2011, 08:47:03 AM » |
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Update! And it's an exciting one: http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/20775Looks like they got rid of the InstantAction and TorquePowered branding and brought back GarageGames (though I, like many others, never stopped referring to them as GarageGames). They are returning to their "indie roots" and putting their engines back up as the number one focus of the company. I am definitely excited about this. What do you all think? It's perfect timing for me, too. I was considering using Torque X for my current project but was unsure about the future of GG. The indie community is lucky not to lose such a great resource. |
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moi
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« Reply #11 on: January 20, 2011, 08:48:33 AM » |
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They're selling all their products at $99 for a limited time.
That puts their IOS engine at $198, which is rather cheap for a IOS game engine.
(of course the usual caveats about Torque engines still apply) |
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Nix
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« Reply #12 on: January 20, 2011, 08:51:14 AM » |
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Where did that quote come from?  |
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moi
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« Reply #13 on: January 20, 2011, 07:18:46 PM » |
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The magic kingdom where people go when they die, but that's not where you are expected
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Chris Z
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« Reply #14 on: January 20, 2011, 08:08:25 PM » |
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Cool that they were rescued. I was personally let down though after getting excited about the $99 deal, as their most compelling products for me are getting discontinued (TorqueX and iTorque 3D). If it means that they'll focus on improving their existing tools then it's definitely for the better, I remember TorqueX's interface being a mess and it sounds like it wasn't unique to that offering.
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moi
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« Reply #15 on: January 20, 2011, 08:09:32 PM » |
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TorqueX was really a mess. You'd finish your game ten times faster by just creating your own engine in XNA really.
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Nix
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« Reply #16 on: January 20, 2011, 08:57:54 PM » |
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TorqueX doesn't support XNA 4 anyway, so I'm not going to be able to use it regardless. I guess I'll just keep pretending to be a Torque fanboy without having ever actually used one of their products (though I think I played Marble Blast at one point).
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moi
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« Reply #17 on: January 21, 2011, 05:55:44 AM » |
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Sweet! Is it a good idea to get Torque 2D now? I currently use Game Maker 8 but, after my current project gets completed, I may move on.
I would recomend TGB (all their product names are rather confusing aren't they), it's very good as long as you don't want to make something too complex. Anyway you can try the demo and see for yourself. |
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Player
