Torque Network Gaming Library Released Open Source

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."

Comments

Awesome news!

[TempusMagus]

I've been using the Torque engine for sometime. And I gotta say, these guys are doing it right! People still play Tribes 2 and it can handle 60 (yes six-zero) players on a beefy box with little lag. Props out to them.

Re:Awesome news!

[Lux]

That's certainly impressive, and it is related to the network, but in a kind of round-about way. The box being beefy helps, because processors scale so well. But the reason MMORPGs charge per month isn't processor consumption. Network bandwidth is much costlier, and doesn't scale as swiftly.

If you take the naive approach to implementing state synchronization in a real-time system (like a video game) your server consumes upstream bandwidth proportional to the number of updates per second, times the number of participants, times the number of items synchronized. In a game, you have to synchronize each player at least, so we're talking quadratic bandwidth in just the players. That's how I did it when I had to, and we scaled to at least six players with plenty of breathing room. (Our dev team had six players. I don't think we ever brought in more testers to push it harder. :)

If you take a less naive approach, you can get that from quadratic to n*log(n). And you can get a lot of constant-time and common-case improvements (the above is all worst-case.) You can find that approach somewhere in "Game Programming Gems," IIRC.

I don't know if that has been proven as a lower bound, but I'd squint hard at anything that claims to be faster.

Can it handle 60 players who all have line of site to each other? That's a tough stress test. :) I'd be blown away if they can do that over the Internet, and probably still impressed on a LAN. (I'm feeling too lazy to break out my calculation-envelopes. :)

Re:Awesome news!

[silentrob]

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.

Re:Awesome news!

[Mark Frohnmayer]

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.

OSS MMORPG

[7Ghent]

Great! Now, who's gonna extend this and built a P2P open-source MMORPG?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Re:OSS MMORPG

[QuasiCoLtd]

Hey... lets combine the two! See, heres the idea, you want to download something but instead of the search bar you literally have to go out and search for what you want. Perhaps you can bribe the drunk at the bar for some information as to the wereabouts of that song you wanted. Sercheth thou for pr0n? You ust first complete the task given to you by the local flower girl and she will present you with many naughty pictures of her and her sister (who she claims is 18). Watch out though, along the way you must fight many foul creatures such as leechers, corrupt files, viruses, and RIAA lawyers.

Re:Linux Games

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite likely ID Software is going to release the Quake 3 source under the GPL once Doom III is out, but only time will tell.

I've been working with Torque

[oskillator]

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.

opensource games?

[apachetoolbox]

Great! 100 sourceforge game project leaders just jumped for joy. Then went right back to not writing and linux games.

Other good network layers

[ezavada]

I've looked at the torque network layer while it was still part of the torque engine. It's well suited for developers who want a small scale (32 players or so) network game, particularly if its a first person shooter.

I wouldn't even consider it for a mid-size or larger multiplayer game, as it lacks important security features and IMO doesn't give enough control over the actual network protocol due to the emphasis on RMI.

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

Disclaimer -- I contribute to OpenPlay.

Re:Other good network layers

[ezavada]

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.

Re:Linux Games

[wideBlueSkies]

This is one of a couple of reasons why ID should be respected not only in the Gaming Industry, but in the Software Industry in general.

They create awesome games, awesome software. The technology rocks and is generally the cutting edge for their market.

Then a couple of years later they open up the whole thing and give it away. "Here community, take this and learn." Classy setup they have there.

Also, don't forget they started this with Wolfenstein. I think this was 1995. So they've been doing it for a while. They were one of the first commercial game houses to do so, if not THE first.

wbs.

Re:id is not being generous

[king-manic]

Carmac is a believer in OSS. although it's good business to ensure your engine has good penetration, by the time ID releases the code, the next generation looks nothing like the code GPL'ed. The benifit is much smaller then you imply.

Quake 2 c code looks nothing like Quake which both look incredibly different from Doom.

Re:id is not being generous

[thryllkill]

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense since Id wants you to license their new engine. Iirc they write a completely new one every time, not just incremental upgrades to previous engines. So having developers familiar with technology from 3-4 years ago does them no good.

It probably went more along the lines of:

Id employee 1: "Hey why don't we open the source from our last engine."
Id employee 2: shrugs "Sure, why not?"

Re:Volity?

[Bryan Ischo]

According to the front page of the site you linked to, Volity:

* "Leverages XML technology"
* Has a reference server "written in Perl"

This is not a serious development platform.