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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."

13 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 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.

  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 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.

  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: 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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?

  6. 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.