You might have noticed that the Torquebay site is offline, and has been offline for quite some time. Also, the message isn’t really clear : the site will be back on the 12th. The 12th what? Two 12ths have passed (12th february, 12 March), and nothing happened. Maybe the 12th month 
Well, I’m not prepared to wait for that.
This has pushed me to start working back on getting 3mension up and running as soon as possible.
Given the Torquebay situation, I’ll focus the site initially on GarageGames related stuff. There are tons of real gems to be found on the forums at GarageGames, but the site isn’t really constructed as a catalogue. If you want to log interesting stuff, you’d need to use Delicious or some other bookmarking alternative.
The first iteration of 3mension aims to be a collaborative bookmarking tool for Torque engine users, with tags and categories to make it all easier to find what you’re looking for. I’ll start posting links to interesting stuff, starting on the GarageGames site, but maybe also looking on to other sites.
It isn’t any more news now, as the story has been around for at least 2 weeks, but the parent company of InstantAction, IAC, has decided to end operations at InstantAction. InstantAction is the company that has the Torque game technology in its portfolio.
Read more…
After some teasing online, Bryce7 has been released, which is the latest version of the landscape and environment rendering tool by Daz3D.
This version comes in two flavors : standard and a Pro variant, with enhancements and new features for both versions.
The Bryce7 feature comparison table gives in fair detail what is the difference between the two. The pro version does seem to have quite a bit of new features that are meant for the power user, but could also be quite helpful for the hobby user:
- Lighting enhancements
- Atmospheric additions
- displacement mapping
You might have noticed that the landing page on 3mension.com now has a brand new template, currently (still) telling you that we’re under construction. It was also my first attempt at adding jQuery functionality to the 3mension website, and I must say I’m quite impressed by the functionality and the ease of the integration. Given that jQuery is standard included in ImpressCMS, I plan to use it much more often in the future.
I skipped mentioning some ImpressCMS releases, but this one is too important to just pass over it. The ImpressCMS project has released version 1.2 final of their Community Management System (CMS).
This release contains many changes, enhancements and new functionality, with the most important ones listed here:
Read more…
ImpressCMS 1.2 has released its first beta. This is quite old news, but given that 3mension is building upon the 1.2 codebase, it certainly was worth mentioning. The release of the beta marks the feature freeze of the 1.2 codebase, so the functionality that is available in the beta should give a good indication of what to expect in the upcoming release candidates and final release packages.
The team is still working hard to get the release stable and secure. I you would like to see what is coming in Read more…
I’ve been working on and off on the first beta incarnation of 3mension, but most of that effort has been invisible in code. That is about to change, as I have started contacting some logo design contractors in order to create a logo for 3mension.com.
This is a significant step, as the logo will be used as the base for the theme created for the website. It will also help with the development of the site, as it is the first really visible part of the site that falls into place.
It seems ImpressCMS 1.2 might come out before the 3mension site goes live. A beta of ImpressCMS 1.2 is forthcoming, and the package should be feature-complete by now. During the wait for answers on the queries for a logo design, I plan to migrate all the work that is done towards that version, in order to have the newly added functionality and enhancements at my disposal.
After a slightly longer wait than foreseen, the ImpressCMS project has released the second Alpha of the upcoming 1.2 version into the wild. This is the next step towards a beta release, which will be coming if no major problems are found in the next few weeks with this alpha.
The ImpressCMS 1.2 branch is particularly interesting, as it marks the end of Xoops compatibility. That doesn’t mean the developers are trying to break as much of the Xoops functionality just for the heck of it of course. It does mean that ImpressCMS can choose its own path to greatness, Read more…
Contrary to my previous post, development of the impressCMS module is advancing steadily. I’m no seasoned iCMS developer, and neither am I a PHP guru, so it is taking quite some time to achieve functionality some might wrap together in a few hours. Most of the time, I’ve been experimenting with possible approaches to code organisation and finding my way in the iCMS API documentation.
I am happy to announce that Read more…
Since last weekend, I have been working on imRating, an ImpressCMS module that will provide a standardized way for modules to handle voting of content and showing ratings. The module is based upon the structure of the similar imTagging module.
This is what I call Read more…