So I haven't been around GG much in the past few months, which is why I missed out on the early stages of Torque 2D development. I just found out about it in the press release I got about it being previewed at DesktopSummit. I was immediately intrigued, since I've always been a fan of GG (Hell I still wear the GG hat I got two years ago at GDC). I've never wanted to use Torque (or any 3D engine for that matter) for 2D, and none of the 2D engines out there ever seemed to offer what I wanted. This lead me to the development of Katana (another reason was also to gain more programming experience). However now that my time is being used up more by GDnet and GI, not to mention my (soon to be two to cover the cost of my new car payments) day jobs, developing Katana has fallen by the wayside. It was coming along nicely, and I could have had it finished and ready for testing in a month or two, but now I have no idea when I'll finish it.

So Torque 2D is kind of a Godsend at this point. In order for me to free up time to get back to Katana (I'd still like to finish it, it was turning into a decent 2D pure-SDL engine), Blade Edge has to start making me some money so I can justify dedicating more time to it (and hence Katana). T2D will enable me to finally work on the games rather than the engine. Blade Edge already has two games waaay past prototype and ready for immediate development and release, so using T2D to get the job done seems the smartest thing to do at this point.

Anyways, I found a lot of prelim info in some of the GG .plans:

Melv May
Josh Williams

Josh's .plans in particular are the most informative at this point, detailing a lot of T2D's inner workings and features. There's also a video for download that shows off the engine's particle engine, scrolling, tile mapping, sprites, physics, and more. It's quite impressive.

So I'm definetly on board for the Early Adopter release - anyone else as excited about it as I am? Can't friggin wait! I still have to finish reading through the latest of Josh's massive .plans, and I think I'm going to go watch that video again and imagine the possibilities...

Random Observation

There are too many damn journals now [smile] I can't keep up with them all!! AARRGGH!!!

Edit

I posted a link to this pic over in Josh William's .plan file on GG, but here it is again so none miss it. GG rocks!! [grin]