14 DAY TRIAL // GarageGames has released a new version of Torque Game Engine Advanced, its next gen 3D game creation platform for Mac. The fresh version of the software adds cross platform support, as well as Dual Graphics API and a Mission editor.
Apple's Downloads section reveals that Torque Game Engine Advanced is “the most easy-to-use next gen 3D game creation platform available. Architected from the ground up for maximum flexibility and performance across a wide range of hardware, TGEA comes equipped with a full suite of tools and APIs to get your game to the finish line, no matter what your goals,” the description goes. “And when you create a game in TGEA, you can publish it across multiple platforms like Windows, Mac, Xbox 360, Steam, iPhone and even in your web browser. There are no limits to your game making abilities with TGEA.”
The release notes for Torque Game Engine Advanced 1.8.1 are:
- Cross Platform, Dual Graphics API - Mission Editor - Many more enhancements.
According to GarageGames, TGEA's Mission Editor provides an entire suite of WYSIWYG tools for designing and editing a game or simulated environment. Fully integrated with the Torque runtime, the Mission Editor provides full access to all Torque subsystems.
As for Torque's graphics API, it includes implementations for all types of hardware and operating systems, as the developers say. TGEA's DirectX implementation features graceful fallbacks all the way to DirectX 8 for support on older PCs. The OpenGL implementation allows Torque to perform on more than 96% of all gamer hardware, according to a Steam Hardware Survey. Lastly, console graphics implementations for the Xbox, iPhone, Wii and PSP provide a straightforward path for developers to reach gamers on those devices.
Torque Game Engine Advanced requires the latest version of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.6), an Intel processor, 2GB of RAM, 256MB video RAM (ATI or nVidia shader model 2.0+ video cards) and the latest version of Apple's Xcode tools available (3.1.2).