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Graphics Open Source Programming Games

Torque3D Engine Goes Open-Source 68

Posted by Soulskill from the go-forth-and-build dept.
New submitter DangerOnTheRanger writes "Torque3D, the game engine behind games such as Blockland and Tribes 2, has gone open-source. The engine itself — in addition to four game templates — are all included in a Git repository hosted on GitHub. Documentation is available in a separate repository. Quite the exciting time in the world of game development!"
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Torque3D Engine Goes Open-Source More

Torque3D Engine Goes Open-Source

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  • I think I saw this article a few days ago

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RenHoek ( 101570 )

      Yes, our conclusion then was: Torque3D is already irrelevant due to the success of the Unity engine.

      • Re:Could have sworn... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by zill ( 1690130 ) on Friday September 21, 2012 @06:33PM (#41416319)
        Comparing a FOSS game engine and a close-source one, isn't that comparing apples and oranges?

      • Re:Could have sworn... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Friday September 21, 2012 @06:38PM (#41416367)

        our conclusion then was: Torque3D is already irrelevant due to the success of the Unity engine

        Which orifice did you pull that conclusion out of? Unity offers a free-to-use version that is very definitely not open source. There is value in that to be sure, for people who want to work with a state of the art engine, but for many devs the open source aspect just matters a whole hell of a lot more. Look at the vast majory of mobile games, the form factor rapidly dominating the game market. Those 3D engines are, to put it succinctly, pure crap. But a lot of those games are fun and successful, and better yet, production values are within the reach of small teams. I say: open source Torque is worth more to the community than the free Unity engine, without in any way belittling the value of the latter.

        • You know that Unity supports both iOS and Android, right?

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            You know that Unity free version sucks monkeyballs right? Need a list on how awfully restricted that version is?
            You know that Unity doesn't have a AAA title yet but Torque does, right?
            You know that having a complete open source AAA engine (albeit outdated) opens up possibilities Unity can't hope to match right?
            You know that people who download Torque 3D doesn't care what you think right?
            You know that 1500$ + IOS, Flash, Android = $6000 vs 0$ is a no brainer right?
            etc... right?

            You sir, are an idiot.

          • Re:Could have sworn... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Friday September 21, 2012 @09:00PM (#41417619)

            You know that Unity supports both iOS and Android, right?

            Good point. Because the source code is available, Torque3D can be ported to both iOS and Android. And to any other platform anybody cares about. Thankyou for illustrating the power of open source.

            • Good point. Because the source code is available, Torque3D can be ported to both iOS and Android. And to any other platform anybody cares about. Thankyou for illustrating the power of open source.

              Ported to isn't the same as supports. I believe that you can compile code using unity for multiple platforms. Who cares if torque gets ported to all sorts of esoteric *nix flavors? I want write games on one platform and compile for multiple platforms. That could be done, but I am not holding my breath.

              • Good point. Because the source code is available, Torque3D can be ported to both iOS and Android. And to any other platform anybody cares about. Thankyou for illustrating the power of open source.

                Ported to isn't the same as supports.

                Yes it is. You better get a refund on that dictionary you're using.

                • Unity can publish to: Web Player, Flash, iOS, Android, Desktop, Wii, PS3, Xbox 360. Torque3d is an engine that publishes for one platform. I could give a fuck what exotic flavor of *.nix that Torque gets ported to, it still doesn't publish to more than one platform without radical re-writes being done by the OS community which I don't see happening any time soon.

                  So, 'ported to Ubuntu' is not the same as supports publishing to Web Player, Flash, iOS, Android, Desktop, Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, sorry.
      • Torque3D has one advantage: its name won't be easily confused with that of the "Fisher-Price" style desktop environment that recent Ubuntu releases have adopted.
      • I've been a fan of Unity for a lot of years. The easy to use interface and browser player were early favorites for me. I remember doing a large island you could explore in a week's worth of evenings five years ago. That was trees and plants with custom textures and some structure models. I had a version of skull mountain including a cave in the mouth and a log bridge you had to cross. In that first week I had a huge canyon through the middle and several bays. I also had a Stonehenge and lava field with smok
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The previous article said they were going to release it to the open source community. This one announced the opening of the actual git repository. Subtle difference.

      • The previous article said they were going to release it to the open source community. This one announced the opening of the actual git repository. Subtle difference.

        Unfortunately, a difference subtle enough to be lost on the submitter.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      That was the announcement that it was going open-source. This is the actual release you can download right now and play with.

      Close, though.

  • Or, when will it run on GNU/Linux?

  • Well how nice...i'm gonna need a 3D engine soon...right after i get the cluster put together...:D

  • V12 (Score:5, Informative)

    by AstrumPreliator ( 708436 ) on Friday September 21, 2012 @05:58PM (#41416037)
    Actually Tribes 2 used the V12 engine. This later became the Torque Game Engine, then Torque Game Engine Advanced, then Torque3D if memory serves me. The V12 engine was also an improvement over the Darkstar engine used for the original Tribes. Before that I have no idea, but this engine has been getting updates for at least 15 years.

    It's not exactly the best engine in the world, but open sourcing code is never bad. So thanks GarageGames!

    • Its the best to me because:

      I messed with it a lot in Tribes 2. So I can only assume it has gotten better but:
      Its net code was not tied to frame rendering and was object oriented from the get-go.
      Had a built in world editor that worked while live games were running. You could prop a server up and edit the world real-time.
      Supported scripting and compiled it on the fly for faster run-times
      had the best vehicle code I've seen outside of a racing game...

      Hopefully one can learn this, perhaps consider publishing, an

  • The real question is if this could be simply used to make an updated version of the tribes 2 linux client.. assuming that was even built on the same engine.

    • Most likely not without a lot of repurposed work. V12 had a lot of proprietary Sierra code that was removed so that we could release V12/TGE. You would have to identify the missing pieces and then find an alternative solution to ensure that Tribes 2 and its mods ran well.

  • At least, once people like the ones that upgraded the Freespace engine to more modern standards get ahold of ths one.

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