Sunday, January 18, 2009
Blender Torque Exporter Update
With the redesign of the GarageGames website, the forums dedicated to particular tools have vanished - with apparently no intent to break them out into separate threads again.
To help preserve the community of Blender / Torque users (though it also separates the community a bit), Joseph Greenawalt, the guy who has been maintaining the exporter for Blender for many moons now, has effectively moved that forum & community to his own site, and is looking to find out who is still interested.I'll just direct you to the shoutout thread here:
Post Here If You Are Using (Or Plan To Use) the Torque Exporter for Blender
I think this might be of interest to exactly TWO people here, but if you are a regular here you already know that I'm a big fan of Blender. It's an open-source, FREE, professional-quality 3D modeling package that is frankly about 100x more powerful than *I* really need. The inset art in the upper right here is called "Sign of the Juggernaut" by Derek Watts, created and rendered within Blender. It's a really powerful tool, but it is known for having an interface that deviates from that of the popular commercial competition. You can check it out at Blender.org. I think it's a great tool, and the price is more than right for indie game development.
I wish I had some kinda clue as to where GarageGames is going these days. I've been a fan of what they've been trying to do over the years, even if I've been frustrated from time to time with their engines. But it's a different crew now, and a different mandate. We'll just have to see what happens.
Labels: game art
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:31 PM (Permalink)
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I wish I had a clue, too, but to be honest I haven't liked the look of things for a while now. Once a lot of the old GG guard started leaving one by one, I knew things were changing. I still think they have some good tools and I'll continue to give them the benefit of the doubt for a while, but I really think their acquisition will prove to be a Bad Thing.
The new web site rollout was really awful, I have to say. I can only conclude that either (a) they didn't anticipate the backlash from all of the missing features, or (b) they didn't really care about the backlash. Either way, it's not good. They really screwed the pooch rolling that web site out before it was ready, and then making it sound as though they absolutely had to do it and couldn't wait any longer. And on top of that, it's just a generic, boring web site. Sigh.
The new web site rollout was really awful, I have to say. I can only conclude that either (a) they didn't anticipate the backlash from all of the missing features, or (b) they didn't really care about the backlash. Either way, it's not good. They really screwed the pooch rolling that web site out before it was ready, and then making it sound as though they absolutely had to do it and couldn't wait any longer. And on top of that, it's just a generic, boring web site. Sigh.
Right there with ya.
There definitely seems to be a shift of focus going on there. I don't think the original GG guys got rich on their Big Audacious Goal. Maybe the shift is to find more customers with actual money.
I've noticed that their game store has now been shuffled off to the back of the "Developer Store" area. So it looks like publishing games is no longer a priority. It has become a pretty crowded space, but there's still a dearth of non-casual indie gaming portals. I imagine in the future, it'll be Instant Action or nothin'.
Ah, well. I've always been more interested in their tools, content packs, and community anyway. While I'm not too sanguine at the moment about the impact of the new website on the community, I'll wait and see.
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There definitely seems to be a shift of focus going on there. I don't think the original GG guys got rich on their Big Audacious Goal. Maybe the shift is to find more customers with actual money.
I've noticed that their game store has now been shuffled off to the back of the "Developer Store" area. So it looks like publishing games is no longer a priority. It has become a pretty crowded space, but there's still a dearth of non-casual indie gaming portals. I imagine in the future, it'll be Instant Action or nothin'.
Ah, well. I've always been more interested in their tools, content packs, and community anyway. While I'm not too sanguine at the moment about the impact of the new website on the community, I'll wait and see.
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