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Torque Game Engine
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The Torque Game Engine, or TGE, is a modified version of a 3D computer game engine originally developed by Dynamix for the 2001 FPS Tribes 2. The Torque engine has since been available for license from GarageGames to independent and professional game developers. Several notable commercial titles developed using the engine include Blockland, Marble Blast Gold, Minions of Mirth, TubeTwist, Ultimate Duck Hunting, Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa, ThinkTanks, and Penny Arcade Adventures.
tly after the release of Tribes 2, many members of the Dynamix team left to create their own company, GarageGames.
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Encyclopedia
The Torque Game Engine, or TGE, is a modified version of a 3D computer game engine originally developed by Dynamix for the 2001 FPS Tribes 2. The Torque engine has since been available for license from GarageGames to independent and professional game developers. Several notable commercial titles developed using the engine include Blockland, Marble Blast Gold, Minions of Mirth, TubeTwist, Ultimate Duck Hunting, Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa, ThinkTanks, and Penny Arcade Adventures.
History
Shortly after the release of Tribes 2, many members of the Dynamix team left to create their own company, GarageGames. They negotiated a deal with Vivendi Universal to buy the Tribes 2 game engine. After extensive modification, the Torque Game Engine was created, though it was initially called the V12 Engine until a Canadian software company threatened GarageGames with a trademark infringement lawsuit.
Features
As well as being a 3D graphics engine, TGE provides robust networking code, scripting, in-engine world editing and GUI creation. The source code can be compiled on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Wii, Xbox 360 and iPhone platforms.
The game features a terrain engine which automatically creates LODs of the ground so that it renders the fewest polygons necessary at any given time. The terrain is automatically lit and textures applied to the terrain can be blended together seamlessly.
The model supports loading of 3D models in the .DTS file format and the .DIF file format.
The .DTS models can be animated using either skeletal animation or morph target animation. It is also possible to blend multiple skeletal animations together by playing them simultaneously or automatically tweening between the different positions of bones in the skeleton. .DTS models are typically used for characters and vehicles though occasionally, they are used for buildings and interiors.
.DIF models have pre-calculated lighting and as such are ill-suited for animation. Instead, they are used for buildings and interiors. They automatically have bounding boxes that perfectly match the visible geometry. This is so that it isn't made overly difficult for a player in a Torque Game Engine game to move or fire weapons around them.
The game's rendering engine features environment mapping, gouraud shading, volumetric fog, and other effects such as decals which allow for textures to be projected onto interiors in real time (for example, a player in a Torque Game Engine game might fire a weapon that leaves a bullet hole in the wall. The bullet hole would be a decal).
Torque supports networked games over LAN and the internet with a traditional client-server architecture. Server objects are "ghosted" on clients and updated periodically or upon events.
TGE ships with starter kits for a first-person shooter and an off-road racing game. A real-time strategy starter kit is also available as a separate purchase. These starter packs can be modified to suit the needs of the developer, or the developer can start from scratch.
Strengths
A sizable game development community has arisen around TGE, partially because of the low price-point (see Licensing). While the quality of the rendering engine may be matched or exceeded by other free, low-cost, or open-source engines, many users believe that TGE offers a "full-service" game engine beyond what most other low-cost engines are capable of.
Networking
Torque Game Engine's most acclaimed feature is its ability to interface with other programs over the Internet. It is considered to be especially low-latency on the whole and is able to, in most cases, hold relatively lag free games amongst fairly large groups of players who are using 56k modems.
Community
TGE's user community contributes a fair amount to the engine's feature set. Code and art resources can be posted to the GarageGames website which other developers are free to use. These resources are of varying quality in terms of polish and ease of implementation. Resources available for TGE include a shader-based water renderer, high dynamic range lighting, and an in-engine Flash player (based on GameSWF).
Shortcomings
Some users of TGE believe that it is not a well-made product. In forum threads and product reviews on DevMaster.net many people have expressed dislike for TGE though it is consistently ranked # 1 on the list. On the same site, however, in the overall rankings of all types of engines (including those not available to the public) its is # 72. Among other reasons, they cite convoluted pipelines for getting 3D content into a form that is properly usable by the engine, bad documentation, misleading marketing, inferior audio support when compared with Tribes 2, a lack of stable map editors, outdated graphics, and poorly organized, buggy code that feels "slammed together."
Documentation
Developers who believe Torque is poor often cite the documentation as one of its weaknesses. These developers believe that while a large amount of documentation exists, much of it "is simply lacking. It works, but it simply is not enough."
GarageGames has made efforts to mitigate this by hiring a dedicated documentation engineer as well as providing the largely community driven Torque Developer Network (or the TDN for short) to serve as a supplemental documentation for its products. The TDN is accessible if you are a member of the GarageGames community, regardless of engine ownership. However it is not always up to date and does contain missing and outdated areas of documentation.
Audio support
The audio support in TGE is significantly less robust than that found in Tribes 2. Tribes 2 was written using the FMOD proprietary audio library. In order for GarageGames to maintain TGE's low price, GarageGames had to port the audio code to the only cross platform audio library available, OpenAL. The two libraries have significant underlying differences, and as a result certain features such as Tribes 2s voice chat are noticeably absent from TGE.
Derivatives
Over time, Torque Game Engine has been expanded on with the creation of derivative engines. Notably, some are sold on the GarageGames website.
Torque Game Engine Advanced
Torque Game Engine Advanced (formerly known as Torque Shader Engine) is an expanded version of Torque Game Engine made to support advanced technologies including shaders, per-pixel lighting, and massive terrains. This version of the engine has been ported to Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems. Several Xbox Live Arcade games have been released using the Torque engine, most notably Marble Blast Ultra.
Torque Game Builder
Some time after the release of Torque Shader Engine, the company went on to create Torque 2D. Torque 2D was a game engine designed for 2D games based on the Torque Game Engine. The name was eventually changed to the Torque Game Builder because apparently the ultimate goal is to make Torque Game Builder a game-making suite.
Torque Lighting Kit
Torque Lighting Kit is a sort of expansion pack to the Torque Game Engine developed by John Kabus. It adds a variety of enhanced lighting features to the Torque Game Engine. In the latest release , features such as dynamic lighting and shadowing were added. Torque Lighting Kit is now included as part of Torque Game Engine 1.5 and Torque Game Engine Advanced.
Torque X
After the release of Torque Game Builder, GarageGames began to develop Torque X. Torque X is a game engine based on Torque Game Builder using a component system that allows multiple game objects to have the same abilities. It has to do with Microsoft XNA Game Studio.
Currently, many of the 3D features are incomplete. Specifically, 3D terrain using RAW heightmaps suffers from a lack of working examples, shadows are simplistic, consisting of a spherical shadow texture projected on the terrain, the ability to use skinned meshes for animated models is not working (non-skinned meshes currently works), and the 3D rigid-body physics suffers from issues.
Licensing
As of version 1.5, the Torque Indie License allows the engine to be used by independent game developers for USD$150.00 per programmer, provided the programmer is not employed by a company with an annual revenue of greater than $250,000. The alternate commercial license is available for $749 per seat. The licensing model is heralded by low-budget teams as it saves them the time and effort of programming their own game engine without requiring a large amount of money to license (compare to the $350,000 for the Unreal Engine 2).
The Torque Indie License requires that the TGE (or Garage Games) logo is displayed for 4 seconds before the game starts up in all released games, and a link to the Garage Games' website be included in the credits.
The Torque Commercial License does not omit these requirements.
It is worth mentioning that the Indie License only allows you to introduce games, not other types of software, to the market. For example, a database administration tool expressed as a 3D interface using the engine would not be allowed, and would require the commercial license.
See also
Tribes 2 Torque Game Engine Advanced (formerly known as Torque Shader Engine) Torque Game Builder GarageGames
External links
- - article in Business Week on the Torque Game Engine
- Thread in the GarageGames message board which brings to light many of TGE's shortcomings.
- Company that uses Torque simulation engine.
Tools
TorqueDev) - A free integrated development environment for TorqueScript - The official TorqueScript IDE.
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