Original Torque Game Engine The original Torque Game Engine, which has been superseded by Torque 3D, provided networking code, scripting, in-engine world editing, and
GUI creation. The
source code could be compiled for
Windows,
macOS,
Linux,
Wii,
Xbox 360, and
iOS platforms. TGE shipped with starter kits for a
first-person shooter and an off-road racing game. A
real-time strategy starter kit was also available as a separate purchase. These starter packs could be modified to suit the needs of the developer, or the developer could start from scratch. The engine supported loading of
3D models in the DTS and DIF
file formats. DTS models were typically used for characters and vehicles though occasionally for buildings and interiors. They could be animated using either
skeletal or
morph target animation. It was also possible to blend multiple skeletal animations together by playing them simultaneously or automatically
tweening the different positions of bones in the skeleton. DIF models have
pre-calculated lighting and as such are ill-suited for animation. Instead, they were used for buildings and interiors. They automatically had
bounding boxes that perfectly match the visible geometry. This was so that it was not made overly difficult for a player in a Torque Game Engine game to move or fire weapons around them. The game featured a terrain engine that automatically created
LODs of the ground so that it rendered the fewest polygons necessary at any given time. The terrain was automatically lit, and textures applied to the terrain could be blended together seamlessly. The game's rendering engine featured
environment mapping,
Gouraud shading, volumetric fog, and other effects such as decals that allowed 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 left a bullet hole in the wall, and the bullet hole would be a decal). Torque supported networked games over LAN and the internet with a traditional client-server architecture. Server objects were "ghosted" on clients and updated periodically or upon events. TorqueScript (also known as TS) is a coding language designed specifically for the Torque Game Engine, with a syntax similar to
C++.
Torque 3D Torque 3D, version 1.2, was released as open-source software under the
MIT License on September 20, 2012, and is being actively maintained, the current version being 4.0.3. Originating as a successor to Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA), Torque 3D features
PhysX support, modern shader features, an advanced
deferred lighting model, as well as build support for Windows, macOS and Linux. Torque 2D started as
Torque Game Builder because the ultimate goal was to make it a game-making suite. It was used for instance to create the puzzle game
And Yet It Moves (2009, Broken Rules, WiiWare) and dozens of other games. The latest "Torque game builder" release was 1.7.6 from December 2011. In 2012 a
Torque 2D MIT edition was created as combination of the previous "Torque Game Builder" and iTorque 2d, an iOS fork. On February 5, 2013,
Torque 2D MIT was released in version 2.0 as
open source software. Torque 2D's development continues on
GitHub with latest version being v.3.4 from May 2018. features such as
dynamic lighting and shadowing were added. Torque Lighting Kit was later included as part of Torque Game Engine 1.5 and Torque Game Engine Advanced. In 2008, Kabus and Synapse Gaming stopped supporting Torque, began a partnership with
Microsoft, and packaged their lighting technology and other new tech into the Sunburn XNA Game Engine.
Torque X After the release of Torque Game Builder, GarageGames began to develop Torque X, a game engine based on Torque Game Builder using a component system that allows multiple game objects to have the same abilities, running on
Microsoft's XNA Framework. Many of the 3D features were left incomplete and never finished. Specifically, 3D terrain using RAW height maps suffered from a lack of working examples, shadows were substandard (consisting only of a spherical shadow texture projected on the terrain), the ability to use skinned meshes for animated models was not working (non-skinned meshes worked), and the 3D rigid-body physics suffered from several issues. == Reception and usage ==