

Port Torque 3D to Linux - klaussilveira
http://www.indiegogo.com/torque3d-for-linux

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mr_luc
As one of the early Torque licensees (great way to spend $150 for a teenager),
I have a soft spot in my heart for Torque.

I somehow completely missed the announcement that it was MIT licensed now!

For people wondering what Torque's 'special sauce' is - Torque has a world-
class multiplayer/networking layer, one which was pretty amazing even when it
cost money (considering its competition). It handles 100+ players on the same
server, together with vehicles, etc. It also has/had really great
heightmap/world editing built in, but plenty of other engines have this now,
and better.

Its achilles heel was always the content pipeline for non-terrain geometry - I
haven't heard much recently so I don't know if that's changed? (Ie, so much of
the worlds we interact with in 3d games nowadays are built with the same tools
as player models are; while the hills may be heightfields, the rock
outcroppings and cliffs and other things are often 3d models. Last I remember,
Torque still needed its non-terrain geometry to be built with the kinds of
BSP/subtraction-based editors we all used in the Quake 3 days.

~~~
joeld42
AFAIK (and it's been a few years since I've looked), most people still block
out interiors with the DIF (bsp-style) editor, but do most of the details and
decorations with a bunch of static DTS shapes (very similar to your
heightfield/rocks example). And there is now a pretty nice native DIF editor
and you no longer have to use Hammer and weird converters or something wonky
like that. Mostly due to hardware getting faster, the engine handles a lot
more DTS's than it used to.

I'd say the content pipeline is pretty good these days. There's exporters for
practically every 3d package.

It's certainly still designed like a "last-gen" engine, but that's not a
terrible thing since those techniques are well-known and refined by now, and a
lot of that makes it a better fit for mobile than a more "modern" engine.

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justinsb
Anyone know if the plan is to fix up WINE where it doesn't work, or is the
plan to write a Linux abstraction layer for their tools?

Either way is good, but fixing up WINE would have benefits even for non-gamers
(such as myself).

~~~
raphman
They are porting the engine to Linux. One of the main advantages is that this
allows Linux developers to develop natively and use Linux libraries and
toolchains.

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waffenklang
Didnt they succeeded a kickstarter campain lately? why are they doing
indiegogo too?

~~~
raphman
I couldn't find any information on this. Maybe you are thinking of this game
that uses the Torque 3D engine?

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-
the-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/70755535/dead-state-the-zombie-
survival-rpg)

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lallysingh
Huh. I've been using the older Torque (still 3d, but no shaders) on Linux for
years. Anyone know how different these are?

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speeder
As one of the early Torque licensees...

I wish that it rot in hell, and I don't suggest it to anyone ever, not even my
enemies.

~~~
TypeSafe
The Torque code base is really awful. One of the most broken pieces of code
I've ever seen.

~~~
speeder
Exactly...

When I used torque I was already doing some professional game development, the
only thing worse than torque was gamestudio a7

~~~
erdevs
If you guys looked at several years ago, you should probably say "was" awful,
as opposed to "is".

I haven't followed for years... but even circa 2007 and 2008 it had undergone
huge rewrites from the old 90s and early 2000s nastiness with their simulation
layer, scripting hooks, and high level classes. Was moving to a much cleaner
componentized system with much better patterns throughout.

Or, maybe the codebase has actually gotten _worse_ since 2006+, when it was
shaping up pretty nicely. That could well be, I don't know. But such comments
would be higher value if you at least reference approximate timeframe, as this
product has been around in various forms for 10+ years, if I recall correctly.

