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GarageGames Starts IndieGoGo Campaign To Port Torque 3D To Linux

Posted by timothy on from the if-you-want-it dept.

Open source (as Torque 3D recently became) is one thing; cross-platform is another. Now, reader iamnothing writes "GarageGames is heading to IndieGoGo to port Torque 3D to Linux. The campaign is centered around hiring a dedicated developer or team to port Torque 3D to Linux. The primary target is Ubuntu 32bit with other flavors of Linux as stretch goals. All work will be done in the public eye under our Github repository under the MIT license."

44 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. interesting by Trepidity · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not a lot of offerings in Linux game engines so far, so this would be a nice addition. Afaik, the only real options are various derivative of older open-sourced Id Software engines, and Ogre3d. Plus Unity recently added the ability to export builds to Linux, but not to develop on Linux.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    1. Re:interesting by iamnothing · · Score: 1

      Yeah, Unity and Shiva both have export options, which is an awesome thing for gamers. But for developers, you still have to use Windows or a Mac with those engines. I love that they've added the export option, though. That means more games on Linux, which is always a good thing!

    2. Re:interesting by iamnothing · · Score: 1

      Wow. It's probably been about 10 years since I used CS. It was really rough around the edges at that time, mostly just a rendering engine. I'll have to take a look at it again. I'm sure it's improved by leaps and bounds over the years.

    3. Re:interesting by ikaruga · · Score: 2

      The problem is that it doesn't really make a lot of sense to create a linux native client yet because most content creation tools are also windows/mac only(not counting wine/darling workarounds), specially considering the fact most of these game engines for indies depend a lot on user created content. Big "Pro" graphical design apps like Adobe CS or Maya have no signs of getting linux ports, less popular and cheaper Sai or Lightwave have no signs either and all FOSS apps have versions for all OSes. Sure for debugging that would be great, it might be still a bit too early for that. Lets take one step at a time.

    4. Re:interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Big "Pro" graphical design apps like Adobe CS or Maya have no signs of getting linux ports

      That's surprising, given that Maya's system requirements page lists Red Hat and Fedora as supported operating systems.

    5. Re:interesting by WhiteDragon · · Score: 1

      Not a lot of offerings in Linux game engines so far, so this would be a nice addition. Afaik, the only real options are various derivative of older open-sourced Id Software engines, and Ogre3d. Plus Unity recently added the ability to export builds to Linux, but not to develop on Linux.

      I suppose Cube counts.

      --
      Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
  2. Why 32bit? by Bradmont · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why is 32 bit still the target platform for so many software projects? My computer is 5 years old, and has been running 64bit linux that whole time. Are 32bit PCs even sold any more?

    1. Re:Why 32bit? by MtHuurne · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's easy to run x86 binaries on x86-64, but vice versa is not possible. I don't know of any x86-only CPUs being sold anymore, the last ones I remember were the early Atoms, so maybe in a few years we can bury the arch.

    2. Re:Why 32bit? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Drive a stake through its heart, decapitate it, bury the body under a cross-road and burn the head.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re:Why 32bit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      64bit binaries are also larger, meaning that for the same hardware configuration the CPU can cache more 32bit code than 64bit. 64bit binaries also take more RAM, increasing swap times.
      This is why I'm running a 64bit kernel with most of the userspace being 32bit, the exception are numerical computation tools (numpy and friends) which live in a 64bit chroot. This is my personal laptop, office computers are fully 64bit.

    4. Re:Why 32bit? by miknix · · Score: 4, Interesting

      64bit binaries are also larger, meaning that for the same hardware configuration the CPU can cache more 32bit code than 64bit. 64bit binaries also take more RAM, increasing swap times.
      This is why I'm running a 64bit kernel with most of the userspace being 32bit, the exception are numerical computation tools (numpy and friends) which live in a 64bit chroot. This is my personal laptop, office computers are fully 64bit.

      If you want "the best of both worlds", you have the new x32 ABI which gives you 32bit pointers and the extended 64bit CPU register set:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI
      Gentoo is already publishing release candidate stage tarballs for x32, official support should be coming pretty soon..

      PS: Parent is also me, I forgot to login.. sorry about that.

    5. Re:Why 32bit? by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      Are Net Books and Tablets 32bit?

    6. Re:Why 32bit? by Desler · · Score: 1

      And what does that have at all to do with porting and compiling your software for x86_64 machines? You really think people have to license the processor patents to do that?

    7. Re:Why 32bit? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The only thing you get out of running x32, apparently, is saving a little memory on pointers. And meanwhile it will almost certainly cause problems as compared to amd64. And amd64 finally works properly for me on Ubuntu, for example I can install wine and lsb-base at the same time. IOW, a not-too-bad idea whose time has already passed.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    8. Re:Why 32bit? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I don't know of any x86-only CPUs being sold anymore, the last ones I remember were the early Atoms

      Also, the early Core Duo. But who do you know still running one of those? There's probably way more Atoms still in use.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    9. Re:Why 32bit? by Patch86 · · Score: 1

      I am on my work laptop (running a 32 bit Core Duo, that is). Obviously not relevant in terms of game development, but more so in enterprise software development. My company has somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 PC units out there in the wild at the moment, and a non-trivial number of them will be running 32 bit processors and/or OSs, and will be for a flipping long time yet.

  3. I already donated a few years ago... by borfast · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Crowdfunding to port Torque to Linux? Interesting... but I'm not falling for that one again. I already "donated" a few years ago, when I shelled out over a couple hundred dollars for both Torque3D and Torque2D under the promise that they worked on Linux (they actually sold three versions: Windows, Mac and Linux), only to have all my requests for help completely ignored when I complained that neither of them worked, and see the whole Linux ball dropped a few months later. So GarageGames: screw you, you're not getting my money again.

    1. Re:I already donated a few years ago... by EvilIdler · · Score: 5, Informative

      That was IAC, not GarageGames. This company bought GG and renamed the sub-company Torque, jacked up prices and devoured souls. I'm sure the CEO also ate babies, but I have no picture evidence. People close to the company can testify this is the sort of thing they would do, though.

      I have more hope for the engines now than the IAC days, especially after having seen the improvements on the 2D side. There is still much work left, but people who are really interested in more platforms (like Android) are free to contribute. Please somebody start on Android ports of both engines so the whine can stop ;)

    2. Re:I already donated a few years ago... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I bought Torque and Torque2D before they were IAC [according to my GG account, I purchased it on 2004-10-19]. Linux support was the reason I bought Torque, and T2D was filthycheap and could be built into Torque [it made an awesome overhead map widget]. Looking at my GG profile, I also purchased TGEA on the promise that Linux would be supported eventually.

      Then they summarily dumped Linux support; the code already existed and mostly worked, and GG made the pre-meditated decision to expel Linux, despite it taking genuinely minimal effort to make it work [I even submitted patches but they were never accepted]; that was when I quit using Torque. There's something immensely infuriating about someone having a great, portable codebase, and instead of just keeping it cross-platform, continuously making decisions that led to massive platform-dependence. Even back then, it was obviously a bad decision.

      I also successfully had the Linux/X11 codebase building and running on OSX back in the day. That was kinda fun to actually make work. [ooo ! screenshot: http://icculus.org/~chunky/stuff/x11osx.png ]

      Nowadays there's so many perfectly viable options. Going back to a company that deliberately gave me the finger in the past just feels like asking for more pain, especially when they're asking the community to pay money, when the past the community offered *code*. Turns out I can hold a grudge like nobody's business.

    3. Re:I already donated a few years ago... by Chunky+Kibbles · · Score: 1

      Huh, I posted as AC by accident. Well, to make up for it, here's the post where they officially gave Linux the finger: http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/9244 . The post was titled "Linux Expectation Management"

    4. Re:I already donated a few years ago... by iamnothing · · Score: 1

      Jeff had to make a hard business decision, and posted the reasoning behind it. I don't think his intent was to give the finger to Linux.

    5. Re:I already donated a few years ago... by Chunky+Kibbles · · Score: 2

      Aye, I understand that. Eventually a fiscal decision was made, rationally, by a company teetering on the edge. And that's OK.

      But speaking as a developer, I keep going back to my earlier statement; each moment when you're working on code and you have to make a decision, you weigh up the pros and cons of each option and pick the one that you want. The decisions they were making back then were, each time, to choose a windows-specific choice.

      Somewhere along the way, the small marginal improvement in development time outweighed the benefits of keeping the code portable. I'd understand if it was a pathologically windows-only tool to begin with, but it wasn't; it was a fantastically portable codebase that they chose to decimate!

      I would wager that when they eventually developed mac support, the time and developer resources that it took was way more than the time saved by choosing Windows-only options in the past. As someone who works on portable codebases a lot, the ability to run Valgrind on Linux, and Shark on OSX, is alone worth the extra time it took, because it so significantly offsets debugging time on windows. Difficult-to-debug bugs that manifest only in rare cases on one platform oftentimes manifest far more easily on other platforms, somehow that's the nature of the beast.

    6. Re:I already donated a few years ago... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Jeff had to make a hard business decision, and posted the reasoning behind it. I don't think his intent was to give the finger to Linux.

      That might not have been the intent but that was clearly what happened. Should you be able to use the excuse that you didn't originally set out to shoot someone in the face? They took people's money and they didn't deliver. Don't overpromise is one lesson to take away from this. Another is, don't pay for stuff that doesn't exist yet. Which is why anyone who puts any money into this that they cannot afford to lose and not care is a dumbass.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:I already donated a few years ago... by iamnothing · · Score: 1

      Actually, that post is about managing expectations, which leads to discussing how things happened. The post was about transparency. It was actually about delivery and letting people know what they weren't getting, which is hard in any business. And it's something that you have to mitigate with any commercial release.

      We don't have to do that now since Torque 3D is open source. We can be transparent in ways that we never could before.

      This campaign is about accelerating Linux development by hiring a dedicated team to get it there. And everything they do will be available to everyone on GitHub under the MIT license.

      You can call anyone who wants to develop games on Linux natively dumbasses all you like. It's the internet. But there are already people working on the port, and people who would love to get paid to work on the port full time. We're hoping to pay those "dumbass" Linux supporters for their engineering skillset. Because engineers need to make a living.

      If the campaign doesn't make it's projected money, then someday it will still be on Linux from the great teams who are working on it in their spare time. All we want to do is pay them to get it there faster.

    8. Re:I already donated a few years ago... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      You can call anyone who wants to develop games on Linux natively dumbasses all you like.

      I may well be an asshole, but you're a disingenuous douchebag for attempting to put these words into my mouth. I hope you get all that is coming to you for your bullshit.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    9. Re:I already donated a few years ago... by borfast · · Score: 1

      It's the first time I'm hearing about IAC. That was not the company when I bought the two products, it was GG, nothing else. And at the time they actually had one guy from the community who was officially creating patches for the Linux version, and he was doing it for free. Suddenly they decided that the Linux version would be "community supported", which could be fine for a lot of people (myself included), but what infuriated me was when they simply decided that they would completely remove Linux support and not accept any more patches from that guy. This wasn't really costing them more money but they deliberately decided to fuck all the people who showed them their support, when they could have very easily maintained Linux as a target platform. So, as I said before, screw you GG.

  4. This is awesome! +1 for GarageGames by lagi · · Score: 1

    now i can get rid of this waste-of-space-8-alien i have on my hd. and it will really accelerate game development on the Linux platform. .

  5. The year of Linux Gaming? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Can't help but notice all the gaming-on-Linux news popping up recently with Steam coming to Linux, the first Unreal Engine 3 game for Linux and so on.

  6. Not worh your $. by goruka · · Score: 3, Informative

    Disclaimer, worked as a consultant with many companies and helped them deal with this engine.
    Torque is just bad software that was abandoned by developers when much better alternatives (such as Unity) appeared, despite it being much cheaper.
    Even with source code fully published under MIT license, developer interest towards it is almost non existent. I mean, I welcome this move, but even when free and OSS, developing a game with this engine will cost you more time and money than pretty much any of the closed alternatives.

    1. Re:Not worh your $. by AaronLS · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I shelled out for TGE at a time when that was alot of money to me, and alot of time went into learning it. I hated the script, which was about the only thing thoroughly documented. The actual engine itself was poorly documented and questions about the engine usually got no attention. Then when they basically abandoned it and started creating more products instead of improving the existing engine, I had enough. This created fragmentation in the community and help system, such that some people move to other engines and no longer participate in the community of the original engine. Rather than improve the documentation and flesh out the details of the engine architecture over time, attention was turned to other $ generating products with new marketable names.

      This really left a bad taste in my mouth. I believe there were other paths they could have taken to making 2D and RTS games easier, in a way that would have leveraged a single core engine to ensure the entire community was focused on improving the core.

      Obviously I recognize it's their engine to do with as they please. They claim to be a different kind of company now, and I think some of the moves they've made show this to be potentially genuine, so good luck to them. I think the only thing that would really give me renewed interest is to see them do some self-reflection, publicly admit past problems, and talk about what philosophy they will have going forward to avoid those past problems. Are they going to have a long term commitment to this engine?

    2. Re:Not worh your $. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I think the only thing that would really give me renewed interest is to see them do some self-reflection, publicly admit past problems, and talk about what philosophy they will have going forward to avoid those past problems.

      I'd want something for my previously-expended money, too. You bought a product and they never provided it. I don't care if they're owned by the same people or not; the company made promises and if you won't keep them, don't buy the company, or at least change the name. You want to ride the coattails of their success but don't want to make good on their promises? That just means that you've maintained them in a state of not keeping their promises. And they bought a legacy of unkept promises, was it worth it to get the codebase?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Not worh your $. by EricPreisz · · Score: 1

      Sure, I can provide that. I'm the current CEO. Now, I have to caveat that I really only have the insider story from Jan 1, 2010 until today. Prior to that, I was a community member so there's a lot of speculation in my opinions. From my side of the screen, GarageGames has been a company who has always just survived. In the early days, there was less competition and the indie market was much easier to please since there weren't a lot of options. What community members saw on the outside as a pump and dump mentality, was GarageGames' pursuit to build tech that drive the revenue that would sustain the company. What ended up happening, is that GG took a bite from the poison apple, branched the engines, and build many products -more than we could really support. The company achieved sustainability through paying below average salaries. Granted, the company at the time was a self-proclaimed lifestyle company, and it really lived up to that mantra. An early employee told me that the people that worked at GarageGames were the people they couldn't chase away. The company was sold in 2008. And there's no much to say other than the fact that a new digital distribution platform business was built inside of GarageGames. A lot of the talent moved from the engine business to that new business and the engine team suffered. The new owners were trying to build a billion dollar business and the game engine business isn't one...so the tech and tools became a red headed stepchild (by the way, I don't blame the large corporate owners at the time, that's why they bought the business). During that time, we pursued very aggressive development. Possibly too aggressive. Expectations were set really high (along with a major price increase) and the tech and tools business moved ahead. Ultimately, I don't think the resources were available to meet their goals. The launch was initially very successful, but many customers felt that the engine was not up to the level they expected...especially since they felt abandoned by the end of engineering of the previous engine. Two months before I started working here, Epic pulled the rug from under our feet by (essentially) giving away their products to the market we made our money off of. Like a sports club, we made the majority of our money through people failing at the product we provided (not a good business model). Now, UDK open a gym where you could fail for free. Unity followed. The low price engine market died...2 years ago...it's dead....forever. Since then, we've been working to reinvent ourselves still. We split the company into two. The first half focused on our existing tech, the second half started working on an engine that would consolidate our tools into one code base that was mobile focused. Ultimately, we didn't have enough money to pursue that. We needed a new direction. We decided to move our products to open source and pursue contract service work while we build tech on top of our code base (Google does this a lot too). By going open source, we cultivate potential customers of that service business. Even though we launched the open source engine in September, the contract service work started a year before that. We are currently under contract with several large (like Fortune 100 sized companies) and we are in contract negotiations with others. It's still going to take a lot of time to build the service business, but so far so good. Bellies are full and employees are paid fairly. As for company philosophy, I think we've found that our most important value is humility. We openly embrace each other's weakness and we help each other. We prefer to employ a humble beginner developer who is looking to learn over the arrogant veteran. Everyone here is happy with the biggest exception being that we want more stability so that we can continue to do what we love.

    4. Re:Not worh your $. by EricPreisz · · Score: 1

      BTW...here's my AMA on Reddit if you guys want to take the conversation there. http://www.reddit.com/r/T3D/comments/10h8s6/im_the_ceo_of_garagegamesama/

  7. Last ditch effort. by csumpi · · Score: 2

    This sounds like a last ditch effort to save their crappy 3d engine, which has been left in the dust years ago by unity3d.

  8. Re:Ubuntu this and Ubuntu that by maugle · · Score: 1

    I see nothing wrong with developers targeting a stable and popular distribution. Linux is Linux, and once it runs on Ubuntu, any who are interested can make it run on other distos.

    After all, a common reason developers used to give for not developing for Linux was the vast number of competing distros they'd have to deal with (tweaking their program such that it was able to run on each one, and each one had a different set of default libraries, configurations, media locations, etc...). That argument has all but disappeared now that Ubuntu has emerged as the "common face of Linux",

  9. Why IndieGoGo by phorm · · Score: 1

    For good or bad, everyone else seems to use KickStarter.
    Already the IGG website seems to be lagging, and would require yet another signup etc etc.

    Also, 32-bit only? Really? 64-bit is really a shining star for Linux in general

    1. Re:Why IndieGoGo by iamnothing · · Score: 1

      One of the key reasons was that IndieGoGo has better international support, and some of the best teams who are using Torque and looking to target Linux are from countries not supported on Kickstarter.

      We're starting with 32b Ubuntu since that's the common dev target that most engine and game developers target first. We need a solid base target to start from and we can branch out from there.

    2. Re:Why IndieGoGo by Antoine.Stroll · · Score: 1

      That makes sense. I have to say that the quality of the video is poor compared to virtually every other crowd funding project I've seen. People use game engines for polished expensive projects, so your videos should reflect that. I say this in terms of future videos and I plan on donating. As I hope you'll continue to use and be supported through crowdfunding.

  10. Title Correction by kelemvor4 · · Score: 1

    Some company I've never heard of starts some type of project I've never heard of to port some game I've never heard of to Linux. FTFY

    1. Re:Title Correction by flimflammer · · Score: 1

      I'm so sorry you are so out of the loop. It really pains me to see you in this terrible state. Reading the article might help. Not that I have any faith that you will.

  11. Re:Ubuntu this and Ubuntu that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    any who are interested can make it run on other distos.

    No, they can't. Ubuntu runs with bleeding edge libraries. While Linux has great backwards compatibility, its forwards compatibility is (obviously) not so great. (Whose is?) If these people would just port to Debian stable, for cryin' out loud, it would run on Ubuntu, and practically everywhere else! You'd think they'd get the hint that Ubuntu, like almost half the distros today, is based on Debian. But nooooooooOOoooooo.

  12. Seems genuine by Antoine.Stroll · · Score: 1

    This seems like a great thing. Garage Games decision is obviously a result of being out competed by other companies, but who cares? The recent moves seems like they are trying to build a strong community and be a company based on ideals. The engines are open sourced (maybe they'll get a gsoc student to work on an Android port) so people are free to change them as they see fit. If they survive as a company, hopefully address some of the problems with their engine. It puts more pressure on the dominant products like Unity as well.

  13. 32 bit? by strikethree · · Score: 1

    Why is anyone targeting 32 bit in this day and age? The inertia is absurd.

    --
    "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
  14. Re:"Arrogant Veteran" by EricPreisz · · Score: 1

    We employ the former director or R&D from Crytek. He's a veteran...not arrogant at all. "Nothing can beat skills and experience and if you want to build a long-lasting company, you better have some highly experienced, educated and skilled people in your company." Can't agree more. But I've seen really, really, good, but arrogant developers undermine an entire team. I'm 100% for talented team players...and there's a lot of them out there.