Three years after the concept was originally discussed and two and a half years after its initial release, the Torque Lighting Kit (TLK) has completed its life-cycle.
With last week's release of TGE 1.5 and today's release of TLK 1.4.2 (the final release, not including any necessary maintenance releases), TLK is no longer available (though it's still supported).
Leading the Pack (er... rather the Kit)
Originally named the Lighting Pack,TLK broke new ground when it became the Torque Game Engine's first code expansion pack/kit, and after three years it's still Torque's only third-party code pack/kit.
In that time nearly every TGE based game produced used TLK to streamline level creation, and improve and customize its lighting and rendering - including several IGF finalists (TubeTwist, Venture Africa, and Lore to name a few).
TLK Lives On
Synapse Gaming's lighting and rendering technology is now integrated into all Torque engines (except TGB), making it available to everyone using Torque, and easier than ever to use. This means more users to customize, adapt, experiment with, and create awesome resources for the technology.
Moving Forward
I've received a lot of questions over the years about the business side of TLK, and how things evolved, business and technology wise.
Ideally I'd like to do a postmortem of TLK's entire history, from non-Torque tech to today's lighting and rendering systems. And I'll likely do that someday, but the evolution is still underway, and a lot more is still to come...
