Today, GarageGames announced that Torque 3D, the newest version of the Torque game engine technology, will be available for pre-order in conjunction with the Game Developers Conference (GDC). Starting on Tuesday, March 24, 2009, Torque 3D will be available for pre-order on GarageGames.com at a $200 per seat discount. Attendees of the Conference who visit the GarageGames booth #6240 in the San Francisco Moscone Center will have a chance to see demos of the new engine, and use its new tools and editors.

Architected from the ground up for maximum flexibility and support for a wide range of hardware that includes PC, Mac, next generation consoles and even the iPhone, Torque 3D will help developers and publishers reach the broadest audience possible while still enabling cutting edge, modern graphics performance expected from today’s AAA games.

“Torque 3D has a very low barrier to entry price-wise, and a huge, generous community of developers behind it,” said Brett Seyler, VP of Business Development. “We’re empowering a whole new set of game developers with technology that lets them target a broad audience with great support for low-end hardware like netbooks, and lets them reach that audience on any platform, including the web browser.”

Available with two tiers of features, the first beta build will be delivered to pre-order customers in April with the full release delivered to customers by the end of May. Upon the shipping of the full release, the pre-order discount will expire, but Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA) owners may still apply their full investment ($295) to Torque 3D Professional. The Torque 3D Professional feature set includes the following:

• Easy Deployment to the Web: Torque 3D will give developers and publishers the opportunity to make any Torque 3D project playable on the Web, supporting all major browsers and operating systems with zero effect on quality of play.
• Innovative World Editor: Torque 3D introduces an all new World Editor, an entire suite of WYSIWYG tools for designing and editing a game or simulated environment. The World Editor is fully integrated with the Torque runtime and provides full access to all Torque subsystems allowing for real-time editing of lighting, scene objects, terrain, and water.
• Sophisticated Graphics: Torque’s flexible, powerful rendering is as well suited to photorealistic simulation as to achieving a custom, original looking style. All modern features are supported by the Torque 3D renderer, including Ambient Occlusion, Depth of Field, HDR and Glow.
• Custom Support: GarageGames provides dedicated personnel for custom support contracts on any Torque projects with some of the best developers in the industry.

Tiers of service and pricing

Basic - $250 per developer, new features to Torque include:

• Advanced physics
• COLLLADA content pipeline
• Material editor
• Unified terrain system
• Datablock editor
• Decal editor

Professional - $1,000 per developer, includes all of the above as well as:

• Advanced globally dynamic lighting
• Web publishing
• Source code included
• Genre kit compatible

For more information on Torque 3D visit http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-3d