Torque3D 4.0.3 Released!

[JeffR]

Greetings and salutations everyone!

Another nice batch of various fixes to accompany your traversal through the winter months!

As usual, first the changelog:

 

And now a list of our lovely, fantastic contributors for this update:

• JeffProgrammer
• Azaezel
• CouleeApps

Itching to get started? Nab it here:

 

Or you can get rolling with the Project Manager from here:

 

Again a fairly light run of fixes, but important ones, such as a few showstoppy-type bugs which necessitated the release. We've been getting a lot of good feedback on the tooling and I/O workflows since 4.0 went live(which was the plan) and have a ton of ideas on how to better facilitate the USAGE of the engine. Which brings me to the immediate point:

Reshuffling the Feature Releases

In the last release, I'd highlighted that we were going to be pushing forward with the DOCs implementation - the planned home-grown take on the ol' Entity-Component-Systems shindig.

But, with the increased traffic of newer(or away-but-returning!) faces, and general usage of the engine being up, we've noted a lot of various painpoints and hangups that slow people's productivity down. This lead to the aforementioned tons of ideas for improvements to the actual usage of the engine.

While 4.2 had been slated for GUI and tools updates, if a lot of the friction people are having is with those, and not the existing game classes, and people are already beginning to work out contributions or improvements to the GUI/Tools stuffs like @Nils then it makes sense to direct the effort rather than trying to octopus our way around.

So, we're gunna reshuffle the feature releases. A little. Basically pulling the ol' switcheroo on 4.1 and 4.2. This lets us immediately prioritize updates to the tools suite and GUI systems, both of which haaaave been requiring some TLC for a while now. And it gives me more time to draft up some examples of the DOCs stuff in practice, rather than mostly theory at the moment.

This way we can maximize productivity and keep the improvements flowing without a big holdup while some more R&D for DOCs happens to make that as smooth as possible.

I've got a pretty solid gameplan for how the GUI/Tools stuff will get updated, and don't worry, we won't be throwing the existing stuff into a volcano or anything. The plan is 100% to consolidate and update more or less in-place. But come out the other side with a much easier to use and expand tools suite foundation(meaning easier to add your own custom tools!) and streamline out some bits that are sort of all over the place and limiting their usefulness in the current suite.

When all's said and done, everyone should be able to be much more productive in cranking through their games, without needing to waste a bunch of time trying to figure out new how-do's.

Hopefully that gets everyone's workin' hands twitching for what's to come. If you wanna see how things are shaking out, or just wanna listen to us be massive nerds about UI/UX and Tools design, feel free to jump into the discord!

Later everyone, and happy game dev'ing!
-JeffR