MCVenom
June 5th, 2010, 06:25 PM
Hey y'all. Some of you might be familiar with the Torque family of game engines; if not the basic gist is that the Torque Game Engine is a popular game engine among independent & commercial developers available for Windows, Mac, and formerly Linux through a community supported effort. I'm planning to send them a email through their contact page here ('http://www.torquepowered.com/company/contact') and maybe post a blog post on their community blog. Right now, the email looks like this:
Dear TorquePowered:
Hello. My name is John King, and I am currently a high school student with game development aspirations. A few years ago, I used Windows as my main operating system and was teaching myself about 3D game development using several books on your Torque Game Engine 1.4 & 1.5 products. I found it to be an ideal environment for independent game development; and all of the books I had read touted Torque's cross-platform nature. Then, a year ago I left Windows and have not desired to look back since; I've been using Ubuntu, a Linux based operating system as my main OS as of August of 2009.
Unfortunately, TorquePowered does not have Linux builds for it's newest generation of Torque, Torque 3D. My only option now is to use the older Torque Game Engine iterations, which I believe to have been phased out by your company; or buy a license to the source code, port it and over compile it myself, which I lack the technical knowledge (to be honest I haven't learned C or C++ yet) to do.
I understand how it might seem apparent that Linux doesn't offer you enough of a revenue source to support it; but there are arguments that point to the contrary. Ubuntu for example, is an operating system growing in popularity and is estimated to have at least 12 million users as of the beginning of this year. It is a user friendly operating system used by programmers and grandmothers alike, requiring no profound technical knowledge to use.
TorquePowered could be missing out on a great opportunity to be part of a growing market -- a big fish in a growing pond, if you will. And what else; Linux users tend to show appreciation for those companies that show interest in it. Take for instance Wolfire Game's 'Humble Indie Bundle' promotion. The Humble Indie Bundle was a collection of five games, some open source and some closed, offered to all computer platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux). Customers could choose the price they wished to pay for the bundle -- Thousands of dollars, the $80 the games were worth (according to Wolfire) or a single US penny.
According to Wolfire Games, the average Linux user paid $14.50 for the bundle; as opposed to the average Mac user's $10.18 and the average Windows user's $8.05. The average amount paid overall was $9.18. Linux users also amounted to a quarter of revenue generated by the bundle, or about $318,403.25 USD. (all stats from the Humble Indie Bundle homepage at http://www.wolfire.com/humble)
It seems that from a search for more information on this subject, TorquePowered displays a disheartening lack of knowledge on Linux; a blog post about the subject from a indie game developer reveals this, only two years ago:
"The Torque Game Engine itself looked promising since it listed actual system requirements, but then I saw: “NOTE: Linux is community supported. The last known version to run on Ubuntu was TGE 1.4.1. Using Linux requires expert knowledge of C++, the compilation process, and Linux itself. Please do not try to use Linux if you are new to the OS.” The current version of the engine is 1.5. (from http://gbgames.com/blog/2008/03/torque-dropped-linux-support/)"
As I have stated, I have no knowledge of C++; nor much about compiling things, and only a passing familarity with the components of a Linux OS. Absolutely none of those were required to use Linux in 2009, I would assume the same was true in 2008. I could assume that this was simply a poorly worded way to describe the knowledge requirements needed to get the community supported client to work, but this forum post seems to back up the former interpretation:
"On 03/15/2005 (8:18 pm), Jeff Tunnell wrote: If you are a noob, Linux may not be the best choice of operating system. It is our assumption, and one we will continue to make, that people that choose to use Linux are experienced. (from http://www.torquepowered.com/community/forums/viewthread/27415)"
Unfortunately, sticking to an assumption does not make it correct. As I have stated earlier, the days of Linux as a confusing, technical operating system used only by uber geeks are long over. Linux is coming into the mainstream, slowly but surely and it's easier to use than ever.
As companies such as Valve, the company behind the well known Portal and Half-Life games plan to port their games and game engines over to Linux, now is as good a time as ever to consider porting the Torque 3D Game Engine over to Linux. I hope I was able to convince you of this.
Thank you for your time,
-John King
If you were able to stay awake through it, do you have any suggestions for revising it? What do you think?
Dear TorquePowered:
Hello. My name is John King, and I am currently a high school student with game development aspirations. A few years ago, I used Windows as my main operating system and was teaching myself about 3D game development using several books on your Torque Game Engine 1.4 & 1.5 products. I found it to be an ideal environment for independent game development; and all of the books I had read touted Torque's cross-platform nature. Then, a year ago I left Windows and have not desired to look back since; I've been using Ubuntu, a Linux based operating system as my main OS as of August of 2009.
Unfortunately, TorquePowered does not have Linux builds for it's newest generation of Torque, Torque 3D. My only option now is to use the older Torque Game Engine iterations, which I believe to have been phased out by your company; or buy a license to the source code, port it and over compile it myself, which I lack the technical knowledge (to be honest I haven't learned C or C++ yet) to do.
I understand how it might seem apparent that Linux doesn't offer you enough of a revenue source to support it; but there are arguments that point to the contrary. Ubuntu for example, is an operating system growing in popularity and is estimated to have at least 12 million users as of the beginning of this year. It is a user friendly operating system used by programmers and grandmothers alike, requiring no profound technical knowledge to use.
TorquePowered could be missing out on a great opportunity to be part of a growing market -- a big fish in a growing pond, if you will. And what else; Linux users tend to show appreciation for those companies that show interest in it. Take for instance Wolfire Game's 'Humble Indie Bundle' promotion. The Humble Indie Bundle was a collection of five games, some open source and some closed, offered to all computer platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux). Customers could choose the price they wished to pay for the bundle -- Thousands of dollars, the $80 the games were worth (according to Wolfire) or a single US penny.
According to Wolfire Games, the average Linux user paid $14.50 for the bundle; as opposed to the average Mac user's $10.18 and the average Windows user's $8.05. The average amount paid overall was $9.18. Linux users also amounted to a quarter of revenue generated by the bundle, or about $318,403.25 USD. (all stats from the Humble Indie Bundle homepage at http://www.wolfire.com/humble)
It seems that from a search for more information on this subject, TorquePowered displays a disheartening lack of knowledge on Linux; a blog post about the subject from a indie game developer reveals this, only two years ago:
"The Torque Game Engine itself looked promising since it listed actual system requirements, but then I saw: “NOTE: Linux is community supported. The last known version to run on Ubuntu was TGE 1.4.1. Using Linux requires expert knowledge of C++, the compilation process, and Linux itself. Please do not try to use Linux if you are new to the OS.” The current version of the engine is 1.5. (from http://gbgames.com/blog/2008/03/torque-dropped-linux-support/)"
As I have stated, I have no knowledge of C++; nor much about compiling things, and only a passing familarity with the components of a Linux OS. Absolutely none of those were required to use Linux in 2009, I would assume the same was true in 2008. I could assume that this was simply a poorly worded way to describe the knowledge requirements needed to get the community supported client to work, but this forum post seems to back up the former interpretation:
"On 03/15/2005 (8:18 pm), Jeff Tunnell wrote: If you are a noob, Linux may not be the best choice of operating system. It is our assumption, and one we will continue to make, that people that choose to use Linux are experienced. (from http://www.torquepowered.com/community/forums/viewthread/27415)"
Unfortunately, sticking to an assumption does not make it correct. As I have stated earlier, the days of Linux as a confusing, technical operating system used only by uber geeks are long over. Linux is coming into the mainstream, slowly but surely and it's easier to use than ever.
As companies such as Valve, the company behind the well known Portal and Half-Life games plan to port their games and game engines over to Linux, now is as good a time as ever to consider porting the Torque 3D Game Engine over to Linux. I hope I was able to convince you of this.
Thank you for your time,
-John King
If you were able to stay awake through it, do you have any suggestions for revising it? What do you think?