iGame Radio

Thursday’s iPhone OS 4.0 announcement included a controversial change to the developer agreement, as seen in this post by John Gruber in which he pointed to a particular clause in the agreement, 3.3.1, which states:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

That last phrase, “Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited” became the dominating conversation in the forums of many game middleware tool sites, such as Unity3D, Torque 2D for iPhone, and GameSalad, about whether games developed using them would no longer be allowed on the App Store.

GarageGames, developer of iTorque (the Torque 2D for the iPhone engine) is confident that users of the tool should have no concern with games being rejected from the App Store. In a conversation we had with Michael Perry, Associate Producer for iTorque, he stated that he believes that iTorque still falls well within the 3.3.1 framework.

“Our source engine, which is completely open to licensees, was written originally in C++,” Perry said. “We have a platform layer dedicated to the iPhone, which is completely written in Objective C. Both parts of the engine are bound to each other, with no intermediate layer. At any time a programmer can directly access native API calls from the iPhone SDK. You can not get anymore direct than that.”

As with other middleware developers, Perry does not yet have confirmation from Apple that iTorque is in the clear. But he stated that iTorque’s flexibility would make it easy to alter to conform to Apple’s requirements should it need to.

“If for any reason we have to change the way iTorque functions to comply with the current license agreements, or future changes, we are ready,” Perry said. “Apple’s iPhone SDK is very easy to work with, and modifying iTorque to work with any changes is easy for our team and for our licensees.”

Perry also felt that Apple’s reasons for doing so, while controversial, could not be for reasons of cutting middleware companies out of the picture. “Will it put some software out? Possibly. Will it put every middleware provider out? I don’t see Apple making that kind of move. The addition of the Game Center shows their commitment to game developers, and game engines like iTorque allow people to work with the iPhone SDK at a higher level and get games to the app store faster. They can’t be against that.”

Perry said he was pleased with the iPhone OS 4.0 large list of new features, the Game Center, and the overall attention to criticism with action, rather than words. Having already downloaded the preview SDK, he said that he was “very pleased with the new functionality and how well it’s been exposed.”

“The surprise of a game center and iAd were like icing on the cake. These are not subtle notations. Apple is really getting behind game developers and gamers with this update.”

GarageGames mentioned in their newsletter a new contest called the Indie Game Challenge, a development contest sponsored by GameStop, the SMU/Guildhall, and the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, offering as much as $100,000, as well as a chance to meet publishers like Sony, Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Capcom, Microsoft, NAMCO/Bandai, THQ and Ubisoft. From twelve finalist teams, one professional and one non-professional Grand Prize Winner will be selected and awarded $100,000. Three of the twelve finalists will also be awarded $2500 each for Technical, Art, and Gameplay skill.

All finalists will have a chance to go to the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas to pitch their games to professional publishers, and also may be considered for a $50,000 scholarship to attend Guildhall at Southern Methodist University for professional game development. For more details or to enter, read the Torque blog or go to the Indie Game Challenge website.

UPDATE: I read over the blog post, and a couple of things caught my eye. First, as of November 1st, 2009, past versions of Torque (TGEA, TGE) will no longer be available for purchase. Secondly, as much as GarageGames tried to achieve Mac parity for Torque 3D (and they were all aglow about it when I last talked to them), they weren’t able to achieve 100% parity upon release. Advanced Lighting just won’t run well enough on OSX to ship with this release.

The other very interesting thing I read was that GarageGames is considering dropping PhysX because it doesn’t support Mac OSX. Well, this was news to me, because I thought it did. I am apparently not the only one to think this, and not the only one wondering why Nvidia doesn’t provide any answers. But I do know that Torque 3D is used by more than just Mac developers, and Nvidia will lose a valuable customer if they don’t get off their collective butts and make some kind of response.

GarageGames announced the release of Torque 3D version 1.0 on Monday. Available for Windows and Mac, Torque 3D spent 6 months in intensive beta before its release. The engine features “best of breed rendering, live asset updating, lighting-fast iteration, a fully integrated toolset for scene construction and the ability to publish games to the web.”

From the press release:

Built to cater to artists, Torque 3D’s COLLADA import pipeline loads content from any major modeling application in seconds. Models, materials and animations are perfectly preserved without a fuss. And for programmers, full source code access means the engine can be torn apart, put back together, and extended in unlimited ways. With hundreds of resources and add-ons available, from pureLIGHT for world class light mapping support to FMOD’s award-winning audio system, Torque 3D is as flexible as it is powerful.

For more information, or to download the demo, go to GarageGames.

Torque 3D has released their third beta, announcing among other things limited Mac support.

• Basic Lighting
• TerrainBlock
• Water
• ScatterSky
• CloudLayer
• Toolbox
• pureLIGHT

GarageGames stated in their developer blog post that they have more to do before the Mac and Windows side of Torque 3D have the same level of support. “We’ve still got a ways to go to fully catch up on the Mac / OSX side,” said Brett Seyler, “but we’re moving quickly. Full feature and stability parity with Windows is our goal for Beta 4.”

GarageGames is offering Torque 3D at a $100 discount through June 30. After that the discount will be reduced to $50. So pick it up now while you still have the chance to pick it up cheap, and you might still have the opportunity to have a say in what does and doesn’t get into the final product for the Mac.

Some of you may have already heard that Garage Games has made their great announcement regarding Tribes, that they’ve obtained the IP for the game, that they are going to implement it into the InstantAction format (like Legions) available in a browser-format, and that the game will be available as a stand-alone as well. Nothing will be changed content-wise, but a lot of the format for things such as images have been changed so that things are now open source or at least not proprietary.

But…no Mac support.

Cause, see, Tribes 1 came out back when Mac was OS 7, and Windows was 95/98. And whereas as much as Microsoft would like to babble about how it’s made such vast changes and improvements to Windows, it just hasn’t made the kind of changes that the Apple OS has going from OS 7-9 to OS X. Which means that to actually release Tribes 1 for the Mac or port it into InstantAction would mean an almost complete rewrite from the bottom up.

And GarageGames just ain’t willing to do that.

So, I’m going to propose something. GarageGames has the source code for Tribes 1. What if some energetic and inspiring group of Mac developers were to pull together and decide that they would actually rewrite Tribes 1 for the Mac, and in exchange, GarageGames would pop it up on InstantAction? This would not just be cool. It would be an example of the power of the Indie game industry at work.

Otherwise, maybe, just maybe, we’d see Tribes 2 for the Mac. I mean, didn’t someone out there almost complete a Mac build and then drop it?

Garage Games has announced that they have obtained the IP for the entire Starsiege universe, including the original Tribes, for InstantAction and will be showing it off at GDC.

From their blog:

In addition I’ve got some info straight from the lead on the project:

1. GarageGames purchased the ownership of the Tribes IP (all Tribes games) from Activision/Vivendi late last year.
2. We do have the source code to the game, and the build has been updated with bug fixes
3. The build will be distributed through the website, but still playable as a standalone game.
4. The game will use the existing Master Server system that the original game used. We will provide a new master server address with the release.
5. The game is not compatible with version 1.11 but you should be able to play the same demos as recorded on previous versions
6. Mods and configs used in 1.11 will not be directly compatible, without at least minor changes, as the base game scripts have been cleaned up considerably by Andrew
7. The game does NOT have updated graphics, this was a PR misunderstanding. The game does support modern file formats (PNG textures, Zip files)

Still waiting to hear back on any info regarding Mac support, though. But wouldn’t that be awesome!!

 

First day of PAX 2008 coverage. Including interviews with Meteor Games and GarageGames. Also, rumors and commentary from the expo floor.

Just finished posting the first podcast episode in the PAX series. Haven’t updated the website yet…I’ll get to that later. Also, this is just a basic episode…I’ll get to the enhanced version a bit later when I get some of the assets (screens and such). I’ll be honest and say that I’m beginning to think that maintaining an enhanced version is becoming a pain, and rather unrealistic, as anyone who is listening to the show can pop on over the the site in their iPhone/iPod Touch/Webpage while listening, and if using an iPod Classic or such, will only be able to see the pictures.

So, here’s a quick survey question:
Would you like to continue having me post enhanced podcasts or not? Post your responses in the comments (or email me at omaha@igameradio.com).

In other news, remember that announcement that Epic’s Mark Rein mentioned last year in July about Gears of War for the Mac, and then heard nothing else about since? Yeah. You’ll be hearing something about it in the next month or so. :D