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Torque Network Gaming Library Released Open Source

Posted by simoniker on from the ping-marvellous dept.

An anonymous user writes "GarageGames launched the Torque Networking Library under the GPL today - this is the PC game networking technology behind Tribes and Tribes 2. It's also available under indie and commercial licenses for closed source projects, but OpenTNL.org is the home for the open source release, which also has an official FAQ online. Along with the library itself is a master server implementation for game tracking, a graphical test app, Zap and a retro-styled space shooter."

6 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Linux Games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Tribes 2 was as Linux Friendly as Quake 3 and UT2004: I have the linux client and it works very nicely.

    Nice try though

  2. I've been working with Torque by oskillator · · Score: 5, Informative
    I've been working with the Torque engine for a while, and my assessment is that it's very solid where it counts (assuming you want to make a tribes-like game), but surprisingly flimsy in areas like extensibility and documentation.

    I imagine it's par for the course in the game industry, where code is written to be abandoned within a few years.

  3. Re:Other good network layers by ezavada · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hmm... I guess I really should have hit preview.

    I meant to say:

    Other network layers to look at are OpenPlay and SDL net, both of which are also also free and OpenSource.

  4. Re:Awesome news! by silentrob · · Score: 4, Informative

    Tribes and Tribes 2 will be available for free download on May 4th. Or will also be available bundled in Computer Gaming World on the same date.

    IGN Article here.

  5. Re:Awesome news! by Mark+Frohnmayer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, TNL can easily handle 60 players who all have line of sight to each other. TNL takes a different approach - for most simulations the TNL server allots a fixed amount of bandwidth per client (Tribes 2 was 3K per second), regardless of how many objects are visible to that client. For each packet the server sends, it proritizes objects based on relevance to the client and then writes updates based on that priority. TNL performs a bunch of other tricks to reduce bandwidth usage as well. Take a look at the design fundamentals for more in depth info.

  6. Re:Awesome news! by Jagasian · · Score: 3, Informative

    Quakeworld is nothing more than a patched Quake that optimizes the networking code and fixes some physics bugs (mainly bugs that prevented people from being "bounced" into the air from standing by explosions). The project was started in 1996, but the release that allowed for 64+ players was in 1997, when Quake was at the peak of its popularity and servers started running those death32 maps that were basically a bunch of smaller Id software maps glued together into one large contiguous map.

    Quakeworld also was the testing grounds for other improvements/features such as radiosity in maps, improved score boards, a global ranking system, extended server settings and gameplay modes (deathmatch 3, deathmatch 4), etc...

    I am not sure how beefy the server was that was running the 64+ players, but I was there. The problem was that everyone started to meet in the same room. It brought clients to a crawl as back then everyone only had 28.8 dialup. It was also killing everyone's framerate to have to draw 60+ player models.