The next update

#1 For the moment, I sadly have to agree.
I really hope that more work force is pushed into iTorque to make the technology an iPhone technology, not a PC / Mac technology with some ported code for the iPhone.

Right now I am asking myself, if it was a good decision to invest into iTGB just for the sake of beeing able to work on Windows instead of getting Unity iPhone. UT seems to have done a much more professional job at working together with Imagion Technology to optimize the technology and working together with Apple to get the most out of it and get a superb workflow (using the iPhone as an input device for live testing in the editor instead of build and install on iphone over and over again which costs masses of time for nothing. Would really welcome to see a similar capabilities for the iPhone TGBGame build).

I assume that GG / iTorque Team has put quite some effort into building a good relation to Imagion Technology & Apple to get the best iTorque possible. Is that right?
Not working together with Imagion Technology isn't an option to me, so if that should be the case, please let me / us know of that, so we know that we can skip iTorque and get a serious iPhone technology.

I think it is highly needed that the iTorque licensees are handled in a much more open manner, that the "whats going on" and "what is going to happen soon" is communicated.
Otherwise I'll likely request a refund within months timeframe as the advertisement is not met and unlike on TGEA, I do not have the time to wait for 12-18 months until the technology reaches the real 1.0 state , neither am I willing to do so, as iTGB cost 3 times as much and has per title fees.

#2 For the iTGB developers:

http://bang2d.com/?p=22

Bang2D is a LUA based 2D engine running at 28 fps on iPhone.

#3 If I wanted to make it hard, I would use the oolong engine 2, which is a kick ass 3d engine actually
But after all I payed for this and by indie measures a serious buckload (3x of TGEA and on TGEA there was at least some serious work on developing the pure shader tech, somewhere between 1 & 2 years ... iTGB feels like a 2 month port attempt)

#4 I could argue the "indie measure" cost statement, but there's no need since the important point is the update that would improve performance on the device. When that information is provided to me, I'll pass it along to you all or send the developers themselves in here.

#5 Well the cost would be fair, if we got an iPhone technology. But as a mather of fact we didn't. It misses even the basic features of an iPhone technology.

1. No support for the defacto standard texture format of the iPhone, pvrtc 2 / 4. That it does not autocompress them or at least offer to do so, is already worse enough. But that it does not even support to load them definitely is more than slightly a problem.


Continueing the same on the technical improvement points from the Imagion Technology guideline for iPhone optimization

2. No batching / ordering by states for anything from what I see
3. No optimizations in the tile system which basically is the base of many TGB games. With little effort, large gains are possible here, because the tile renderer in the powervr will resort the depth early drop.


I like Torque otherwise I wouldn't own all regular licenses. But this totally unfinished beta technology sold at 1.0 price (instead of EA as commonly done at GG) and the missing communication totally frustrates me.

Its not like I can't do above stuff myself. But if I am forced to do so, it will be my effort that made it happen and therefor iTGB won't be advertised as well.


EDITED to reflect the fact that 1.0.1 includes a barebone multi touch functionality. See below

#6 This early release can kill our schedule. I will evaluate Unity3D for iPhone today when it is available. :(

#7 I am also one of those people disappointed by the current releases. I paid $750 dollars for an engine that honestly didn't meet any of the advertised capabilities well. I will not compare you guys to the competition's releases as it's not really helpful for you.

I will say though that please on the next update, make sure that steps 3 and 5 is unnecessary, and don't release incremental updates, I would prefer more to wait a month for a significant upgrade than bi-weekly updates that doesn't live up and gets my hopes crushed.

Don't take this the wrong way guys, I'm still rooting for you, I like TGB, and still hoping and wishing that the next update would finally be the one.

#8 Based on my experience with TGB (which is a fantastic platform) I recommended to my company that we try to develop an iPhone game with iTGB. We have purchased commercial licenses of TGB and iTGB and all the hardware necessary to develop for iPhone. I'm now in the slightly embarrassing situation of having a game that's about 80% finished, and plays great on the simulator, but is unplayable on hardware and I have no idea of when it will be playable.

Will I have to cut content from my game?
Will we have to put our own programmers on my game to improve the performance? This would drastically increase its development cost and may make the whole project no longer viable.
Will this engine be usable before Christmas?

I'm hoping all these issues will be resolved in the next few weeks as I'm really enjoying working on this and TGB in general is a pleasure to use. If these issues aren't resolved soon then this little experiment will come to an early end and we will have wasted our money.

#9 That is the point. Everybody of us invested time and MONEY in their project. Everybody have a time schedule for his project. Because of that the developers must know when this "1.0"-update will come. How long must we wait? 1 month? 2 month? Please tell us something. We must plan for the future.

#10 Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know that we are listening to you. I personally don't have the answers to your questions at the moment, but I will do everything I can to get those answers to you in a timely manner.

#11 Thanks, Kenneth!

#12 @Marc - You mentioned Multi Touch support.

Have you opened the iPhone Test demo? An example of Multi touch tapping is utilized in there. Open the game.cs file and look for this:

function oniPhoneTouchDown( %touchCount, %touchX, %touchY ) {

   for( %i = 0; %i < %touchCount; %i++ ) {
      %screenPos = getWord( %touchX, %i ) SPC getWord( %touchY, %i );      
      %worldPos = sceneWindow2D.getWorldPoint( %screenPos );

      if( $numBalls < $maxBalls ) {
         createBall( %worldPos );
      }
   }
   if( $CurrentMode $= "Bounce" ) {
      TextCtrl1.setText( "Images:" SPC $NumBalls );
      TextCtrl2.setText( "Touches:" SPC %touchCount );
   }
}

Just wanted to put that up to see if anyone has tried it yet.

#13 Actually no, I didn't realize that so far. Thank you for pointing out.

Thought this is a pretty barebone implementation / mouse down replication.
I would prefer if events were generated and put into a set to be iterated through as it done on the ObjC side as well.

Didn't look into those scripts, only through the notes on the new version and the documentation, which both don't hold any information on that. But perhaps I missed the change log

I've edited my above posting to reflect that.

#14 @Marc - Thanks for the feedback, and let me know how the multi-touch works out for you during testing. I'll try to get some new docs and change list up when I'm not digging into TGEA 1.8 docs.

#15 Sure
Will first have to think about how to do gestures best with the informations provided thought.

A changelog would be great as it would allow us to see on one spot whats new / fixed / changed
they shouldn't be too much work for the devs as well as most of what is written in such a changelog is about the same as the SVN commit comments for example (or whatever is used to keep track of the progress)

#16 Hi Mchael,

Have you got any news from iTGB?


Regards,

Jozsef Trencsenyi
CEO
Artex Studios, Inc.
www.CasualGameStore.com

#17 I am really disappointed in GG's lack of response.

#18 @Jozsef - The devs are still working on the engine, modifying the way script is compiled and evaluated. This should dramatically help with frame rate. I'm scheduled to check in with them today or tomorrow.

@Kenneth - We announced a release date for iTGB. We released the engine on time. There were issues with the engine, which the community felt needed immediate fixing. We worked hard to provide an update that addressed the majority of the criticism. This update was released within a week. I am being as vocal and responsive as I can be.

If you are disappointed in the tech, fine. I think TGB is an awesome engine, and iTGB will dominate when we release the update with the script engine updates. The tech, its flaws, and its strengths can be addressed as much as you want. That's why I'm here.

To say you are disappointed in GG's lack of response...well, that's a little bit of a slap in the face for us. That statement definitely makes me flinch considering the role I've taken in this.

#19 Thank you for your response, Michael. I look forward to hearing more news from the devs soon. It's been a rough launch, but I can't fault you for lack of communication.

#20 Good news Michael

Can't wait to see those changes.