April 20, 2004 - Eugene, OR GarageGames announced today that it has released its award-winning network code as the stand-alone, cross-platform Torque Network Library (TNL) under their trademark 'indie' license, a full commercial license and a GPL Open Source license.
The Torque Network Library is a robust, secure, easy to use cross-platform C++ networking API intended for integration into high performance simulations and games.
"TNL allows developers to support more players while using less bandwidth per client than any other solution on the market. Even under adverse net conditions TNL delivers a lag free experience," explains Mark Frohnmayer, GarageGames Founder and Director of Internal Development. "In less than a day you can have a minimal TNL implementation up and running in your game or network product, within weeks you can take advantage of all the advanced features of the TNL."
Designed to be easily integrated into existing products, its features include:
* Robust connection architecture
* Multiple levels of data guarantee
* Bit-level compression for optimal bandwidth utilization
* Server Object replication (ghosting) and management
*Simple and efficient event and RPC (remote procedure call) framework
*Extensible master server framework
*Documentation, tutorials and example code, and full library source code
Were known for providing top quality game development tools to independent developers, comments Jay Moore, GarageGames Evangelist, but we still play the mainstream multiplayer games from the major studios and now there is just no excuse for any game to have poorly performing network code.
Torque Network Library ships with several example applications, including Zap, a retro space shooter featuring robust networked physics, a simple client/server example application, and a master server for matchmaking and game tracking. TNL makes use of the publicly available libtomcrypt library for cryptographic operations, and GLUT for cross-platform OpenGL setup and rendering in the graphical example applications.
With an ongoing commitment to lowering the barrier to top quality technology GarageGames is releasing the Torque Network Library with three licensing options. The commercial license, for closed-source commercial products, is available for $995 per programmer seat. The Independent Game developer license, for closed source, independently produced game titles, is available for $295 per seat. Finally, for Open Source projects, GarageGames is making the Torque Network Library available under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Details about the open source TNL project can be found at http://www.opentnl.org. Full licensing information is available at http://www.garagegames.com/tnl.
About Torque Network Library:
The network architecture in TNL has powered some of the best internet multiplayer action games, including Vivendis Award-Winning Starsiege: TRIBES and Tribes 2 products, as well as independently produced titles including Bravetrees ThinkTanks, 21-6 Productions Orbz, and the Mecha title Dark Horizons: Lore.
About GarageGames:
GarageGames mission is to change the way games are made and played. GarageGames provides the technology, community and market to empower game makers to build commercial quality multiplatform games. Known for bringing the Torque Game Engine to independent developers for $100, GarageGames is located in Eugene, Oregon and on the web at www.garagegames.com and is the presenter of the annual Indie Games Con.