Developer's Blog

Torque2D: Rocket Edition Released!

As usual, I have been busy coding and not writing blog posts. So today I’m happy to be talking about the release of a major update to Torque2D – The Rocket Edition, Early Access!

For those who don’t know, Circuit Hive is closely tied to the Torque2D game engine since being placed in charge of it several years ago by Garage Games. Since that time, we’ve made a few releases but have never done anything truly game-changing. With the Early Access release of the Rocket Edition (which translates to version 4.x) we’ve started down the road of something important for Torque2D. The life-cycle of the Rocket Edition will focus on editors. This first release lays the ground work for editors but it also includes the basic functionality of the Asset Manager.

The Asset Manager will allow a user to create new assets without hand-coding XML files. Most importantly, the Asset Manager allows a user to edit in real-time a particle effect. Since the original release of Torque2D as open-source, there has been no real way to create particle effects. As a result, games like our own beloved Pirate Code, have had to scrape by without truly exploring the incredible visual beauty of particle effects. Well no more! The Rocket Edition allows us to finally create particle effects! In time, it will lend itself to a wide range of enhancements that games will benefit from and I’m excited about what’s coming.

I’ve created a roadmap for Rocket Edition development. You can also learn more about Torque2D on its official page.