+
+ | 1998 |
+
+ Starsiege: Tribes
+ Developed by Dynamix and
+ published by Sierra,
+ Tribes was a landmark online shooter and the first incarnation
+ of what would later become the Torque Game Engine, introducing the
+ engine's signature large terrains, efficient fast-paced
+ networking and bespoke scripting language.
+ |
+
- 
-
- Torque began as the game engine behind Starsiege: Tribes, one of the venerable
- online shooters of the late 90s. When Dynamix folded after releasing Tribes 2,
- members of the company decided to continue by reconfiguring the game engine
- as a standalone product called the Torque Game Engine. The game engine was
- written in C++ (with a couple of files of assembly to do the heavy lifting of
- terrain texture blending), used TorqueScript for gameplay scripting, and ran
- on the Big Three - Windows, Linux and Mac.
-
+
+ | 2001 |
+
+ Dynamix closed
+ Tribes 2, enhancing the original Tribes' gameplay and graphics,
+ was to become one of the last games developed by Dynamix before
+ their closure. Several Dynamix veterans went on to found
+ GarageGames,
+ licensing the Tribes 2 game engine which was
+ released under the name Torque Game Engine.
+ |
+
-
-
- GarageGames sold TGE for around $100USD throughout the product's lifetime,
- increasing this to $150 with the release of TGE 1.5. Its selling point against
- other engines was its strong networking (which had powered 128-player games
- of Tribes 2), its terrain rendering, and the fact that a license bought you
- the entire engine source code. During this time, GarageGames spun off numerous
- other products - TorqueX focused on delivering the same strengths to the XNA
- platform, and Torque Game Builder refactored the engine to render 2D graphics
- instead of 3D, though using the same platform core and scripting engine.
-
+
+ | 2007 |
+
+ Torque Game Engine Advanced
+ This incarnation of the engine focused on updating the rendering
+ engine, including per-pixel shading and a new terrain system.
+ |
+
-
-
- Eventually, as game technology moved on, TGE was superseded by TGEA, the Torque
- Game Engine Advanced. This kept a lot of TGE's strengths (and weaknesses) but
- added more modern graphics capabilities and enhancements to the terrain system.
- TGEA was available for roughly twice the price of TGE, with the same open-source
- (not free and open source) license. Eventually, TGEA was replaced by
- Torque 3D, which brought the engines all the way to the modern era with a
- deferred rendering engine, Collada asset loading, and revamped editors. At
- this point, unfortunately, the burden on GarageGames of maintaining OSX and
- Linux versions began to show. Linux support was dropped entirely and OSX support
- began to lag behind (the last version of T3D that officially supported OSX
- was 1.01).
-
+
+ | 2009 |
+
+ Torque 3D
+ The next evolution in the Torque line introduced a modern deferred-
+ rendering engine, an abstract physics layer with a PhysX
+ implementation, and a COLLADA-based asset pipeline.
+ |
+
-
-
- Shortly after the release of Torque 3D, business machinations forced GarageGames
- to increase the engine's price to $1000, and introduce a script-only version
- that sold without access to the engine source code, only the TorqueScript
- starter projects and editors. The company began to run into difficulty and
- found it increasingly difficult to sell licenses at a profit. When their parent
- company folded, GarageGames was left looking for a buyer to keep them alive.
-
-
-
-
- They found one, who stepped in and encouraged GarageGames to re-release Torque 3D
- under the original source-included license for just $100. Unfortunately even
- after several updates, Torque 3D (and its new sibling, Torque 2D) were not
- able to sustain GarageGames. Faced with the inability to continue being solely
- engine developers, they released both Torque 3D and Torque 3D as free open-source
- software for the community to maintain, and moved their focus to consulting
- in video game software.
-
-
-
-
- Torque 3D's first two years as an open-source project have been rocky at times
- and exuberant at others. GarageGames set up the first Steering Committee, a
- body of members nominated from the existing developer community to become
- custodians of the official repository, determining the future direction the
- engine should take and guiding community contributions in this direction.
- Under their leadership, Torque made great advances such as integration with
- the Oculus Rift virtual reality display and Razer Hydra and Leap Motion input
- devices. Unfortunately the first Committee, after several membership changes,
- found itself unable to perform for a variety of reasons, and a second committee
- was enlisted from old and new community members.
-
+
+ | 2012 |
+
+ Torque 3D MIT
+ As part of GarageGames' move towards being a service provider and
+ consultancy, the Torque 3D engine was released as free open-source
+ software. The first Steering Committee was set up,
+ |
+
+
+
+ 
+ 
+ 
+