Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Torque3D Engine Goes Open-Source

Posted by Soulskill on 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!"

9 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Could have sworn... by taktoa · · Score: 2

    I think I saw this article a few days ago

    1. Re:Could have sworn... by RenHoek · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

    2. Re:Could have sworn... by zill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Comparing a FOSS game engine and a close-source one, isn't that comparing apples and oranges?

    3. Re:Could have sworn... by Tough+Love · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    4. Re:Could have sworn... by Grayhand · · Score: 2

      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 smoke and a volcano. You could hear lava bubble as you crossed the field and there was even a great wall and functional gate. All in the space of one working day. The speed you could work was amazing. I loved the texture system because you could layer so I would stack textures at two different scales so I could fade between them to kill that cloth pattern look you normally get with landscapes. I could bring in content and textures and set basics like gravity without a line of code. It's gotten much friendlier but even back 5 years ago it was amazing. The rendering looked better in Torque but it was a headache. I also like the particle system better in Torque but it's a real hassle and less stable than Unity.

    5. Re:Could have sworn... by Tough+Love · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  2. V12 by AstrumPreliator · · Score: 4, Informative

    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!

  3. Re:Why is this relevant? by flimflammer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Because not everyone needs or even wants a top tier 3D engine to make a game? Torque was designed to be extremely easy to use and newbie friendly, while still powerful. id Tech 3/4 is most assuredly not.

    Also, I know people hate on commercial software but the GPL version of id Tech 3 is just that. GPL. You can't make commercial closed-source games (spare the "why would you want to do that" comments please) with it unless you buy a commercial license.

  4. Re:Why is this relevant? by iamnothing · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think there's some confusion. The id tech engines are under the GPL, so all games/tools/etc created from it must have their source released.

    Torque 3D is under the MIT license, so no one has to release their source regardless of the type of project.