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The iPhone Announcement
The iPhone Announcement
| Name: | Brett Seyler |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Jul 24, 2008 | |
| Rating: |  3.7 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Brett Seyler |
Blog post
Hey guys,
It's been a while since I posted a blog, and I'm really happy actually to be writing on this subject for the first blog back in a bit. I want to say that I'm *really* encouraged by all the great work you guys have been doing. There are plenty of community members who really deserve special recognition and praise for some awesome work. Apparatus is wowing us with his gorgeous art, Ryan Mounts is doing cool stuff (and sharing it) on ambient occlusion for TGEA, Blackskull Studios is offering some great Torque-ready assets at a discount to GGers, and Dave's Fry Up is genius. Lots of kudos to go around and it would take the whole blog to cover all the posts and forum activity that's made me laugh or smile in the past few months, so I'll try to stay on track and just say "thanks" and please keep it up!
Okay...back to the iPhone thing...so we've been wrangling together work that various Torque users have done and combining it with our own updates and work to pull together a good game development solution for the iPhone using Torque. Essentially, as with the Wii, TGB and TGE both being OpenGL-based and Mac compliant make their use for iPhone development a natural fit. Both products do plenty to tax the iPhone's already impressive hardware, but we'll be adding lots to the iPhone specific version of Torque over time to really get it optimized. Why do the iPhone? That's pretty easy to answer :) The iPhone is at its peak in terms of popularity, and now with the Apple Developer SDK open to anyone and the iTunes App Store hosting games, there's a real path for indies to do very well with their games.
MBU on the iPhone? Accelerometer inputs? Oh the possibilities...
I wanted to write this blog to let you guys know what was up with the announcement, but also to see how many of you were interested in joining the effort. The product should be considered "beta" at this point, but really so should the iPhone SDK. Torque happens to be a great fit both in terms of its memory footprint and hardware support out of the box, but we'd like to take all that further if possible. If any of you are already using the iPhone SDK or have done some thinking about how you might improve TGE or TGB for deployment on the iPhone, feel free to get in touch with me and we'll see if we can loop you in.
Last thing I wanted to address here was the possible perception that this iPhone thing has in any way distracted us from the main Torque lineup. It definitely has not. We have SO much cool stuff going on for Torque on PC it's scary. Seriously, we're full steam ahead and though we're taking a longer cycle on our next couple releases, they'll be well worth it. More details to come probably toward the end of August, but I'll see if we can't preview some of what we're working on just a little earlier than that.
Thanks again guys for making the community so much fun to watch and work for. You make this job fun :)
It's been a while since I posted a blog, and I'm really happy actually to be writing on this subject for the first blog back in a bit. I want to say that I'm *really* encouraged by all the great work you guys have been doing. There are plenty of community members who really deserve special recognition and praise for some awesome work. Apparatus is wowing us with his gorgeous art, Ryan Mounts is doing cool stuff (and sharing it) on ambient occlusion for TGEA, Blackskull Studios is offering some great Torque-ready assets at a discount to GGers, and Dave's Fry Up is genius. Lots of kudos to go around and it would take the whole blog to cover all the posts and forum activity that's made me laugh or smile in the past few months, so I'll try to stay on track and just say "thanks" and please keep it up!
Okay...back to the iPhone thing...so we've been wrangling together work that various Torque users have done and combining it with our own updates and work to pull together a good game development solution for the iPhone using Torque. Essentially, as with the Wii, TGB and TGE both being OpenGL-based and Mac compliant make their use for iPhone development a natural fit. Both products do plenty to tax the iPhone's already impressive hardware, but we'll be adding lots to the iPhone specific version of Torque over time to really get it optimized. Why do the iPhone? That's pretty easy to answer :) The iPhone is at its peak in terms of popularity, and now with the Apple Developer SDK open to anyone and the iTunes App Store hosting games, there's a real path for indies to do very well with their games.
I wanted to write this blog to let you guys know what was up with the announcement, but also to see how many of you were interested in joining the effort. The product should be considered "beta" at this point, but really so should the iPhone SDK. Torque happens to be a great fit both in terms of its memory footprint and hardware support out of the box, but we'd like to take all that further if possible. If any of you are already using the iPhone SDK or have done some thinking about how you might improve TGE or TGB for deployment on the iPhone, feel free to get in touch with me and we'll see if we can loop you in.
Last thing I wanted to address here was the possible perception that this iPhone thing has in any way distracted us from the main Torque lineup. It definitely has not. We have SO much cool stuff going on for Torque on PC it's scary. Seriously, we're full steam ahead and though we're taking a longer cycle on our next couple releases, they'll be well worth it. More details to come probably toward the end of August, but I'll see if we can't preview some of what we're working on just a little earlier than that.
Thanks again guys for making the community so much fun to watch and work for. You make this job fun :)
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 12/31/08 - Torque 3D Development - Luma's racing kit 12/22/08 - Torque 3D Development - Apparatus and Warrior Camp 12/22/08 - iTGB 1.1 released, more to come! 12/17/08 - Torque 3D Development - Kickoff 11/18/08 - Torque's 2D and 3D Future Vol. 2 10/14/08 - iTGB 1.0.1 released! 10/03/08 - The Fortress 10/01/08 - iTGB 1.0 in the Wild |
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Submit your own resources!| Ed Averill (Jul 24, 2008 at 16:35 GMT) |
| Jerrod Putman (Jul 24, 2008 at 16:45 GMT) |
Like I said, I'd love to help out (because, after all, helping you helps me in the long run). :)
| David Montgomery-Blake (Jul 24, 2008 at 16:53 GMT) |
| Dave Young (Jul 24, 2008 at 17:27 GMT) |
| Dave Young (Jul 24, 2008 at 17:31 GMT) |
Think of it... playing like mad up to the last second, oops gotta go, but let me grab my iPhone so I can finish this conversation or check in on the raid status, etc.
Edited on Jul 24, 2008 17:32 GMT
| Canon (Jul 24, 2008 at 18:31 GMT) |
I sent a email to Davey Jackson about the licencing and Mathieu sent you an email to help and share his experience about the Iphone SDK.
Great blog! Keep us informed!
| Lateral Punk (Jul 24, 2008 at 18:47 GMT) |
Brett, I've sent you an email and also licensing (Davey Jackson). Would love to get involved in beta testing this beast!
| Tallyn Turnbow (Jul 24, 2008 at 18:57 GMT) |
| Greg Tedder (Jul 24, 2008 at 20:09 GMT) |
| Michael Hartlef (Jul 24, 2008 at 20:28 GMT) |
| Andy Pfiffer (Jul 24, 2008 at 20:55 GMT) |
I'm glad to see renewed (public) interest from GG for the platform.
Would I have to use a "stock" build of TGE and/or TGB? If so, my interest would drop to near zero.
| Craig Fortune (Jul 24, 2008 at 22:20 GMT) |
Cheers for the mention of Dave's Fry Up too. It had gone kind of unnoticed on the forums it seems. In fact, Dave's Fry up with accelerometers sounds like a rather neat idea!
| John E. Nelson (Jul 24, 2008 at 23:31 GMT) |
So I would sign up to take part in testing.
| Joshua Dallman (Jul 24, 2008 at 23:59 GMT) |
| Craig Fortune (Jul 25, 2008 at 00:33 GMT) |
| Guimo (Jul 25, 2008 at 01:12 GMT) |
Luck!
Guimo
| Kostiantyn Teterin (Jul 25, 2008 at 01:25 GMT) |
| Aun Taraseina (Jul 25, 2008 at 03:16 GMT) |
| Paul Dana (Jul 25, 2008 at 12:50 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Jul 25, 2008 at 13:45 GMT) |
Would love to see the Flight Game Example running on the iPhone... :-)
| David Janik-Jones (Jul 25, 2008 at 15:41 GMT) |
1. The per title licensing bothers me and there will be a very fine line between reasonable and "I'm not paying that!"
2. How do you go abut in TGB telling the play area to be smaller than 640x480 ... the screen you're shooting for is 480x320 (max) and you can't change the settings in TGB to go that small for your project.
DaveyJJ, CEO
http://www.cocoatouchgames.com
| Ben Versaw (Jul 25, 2008 at 17:17 GMT) |
| Brett Seyler (Jul 25, 2008 at 19:56 GMT) |
I just wanted to say thanks for the kind response and enthusiasm. You wouldn't believe how much this announcement has buried my inbox. Please be patient as we dig through the inquiries. We'll get to everyone over the next few weeks and potentially be contacting those interested in testing and improving the engine on a selective basis.
-Brett
| Benjamin L. Grauer (Jul 26, 2008 at 10:40 GMT) |
I would happily port part of the IceWolf code for some nice and simple platformer greatness. Considering that the hardware is fixed and with a LD screen, that would make some things a lot easier to do.
I need to get an iPod Touch now...
Edited on Jul 26, 2008 10:41 GMT
| David Janik-Jones (Jul 28, 2008 at 15:21 GMT) |
To get a sense of how quickly one could develop a great 2D game using TGB, I "ported" both of my current iPhone/touch games that are pending release in the App Store (Bug Bounce and Garden Marbles).
Except for figuring out how TGB is going to get the camera cropped down to the required 480x320 pixels and writing some basic code to pull in data from a MySQL database and format into a two column table (I am still a newbie coder), I had it all done (all screen/scenes, physics and gameplay rules) in less than two hours for both.
It took nearly two months of part-time work in Xcode to get the first title finished.
Can't wait for TGB. Kudos to Brett and team at GG. Any good TGB coders want to help with my next couple of titles? :)
Edited on Jul 28, 2008 15:24 GMT
| ZzaJin (Jul 28, 2008 at 23:26 GMT) |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3UgsVBeqxM
I think Torque on the iPhone is a good fit.
| Benjamin Schneider (Aug 01, 2008 at 18:03 GMT) |
Further, there's no forum dedicated to this and no real discussion of pricing. The PR says that it will be per title licensing. Because there's no more information than given, I'll assume GG is taking the same approach as they are with the Wii and 360 platforms. If true, I think that's very unfortunate because that licensing model assumes you've got a finished title on TGE or TGB and now want to port to those platforms. Seems to me that designing an iPhone title from the ground up is going to get you a better game than porting a game that was designed for the desktop.
Another concern of mine is that GG can be a bit schizophrenic when it comes to their path forward. Observing over the last several years, TGE was their focus, then TSE/TGEA and that was to be cross platform (still waiting). Then came Constructor, which as soon as it shipped was all but forgotten by GG (and it is NOT solid). Then came the announcement of TGE 2, which would eliminate a need for a BSP tool like Constructor anyway (is that still happening?). Somewhere in there came all the platform porting announcements (360/Wii) and then all of a sudden GG's primary focus was Instant Action. Now we have the iPhone announcement but there doesn't seem to be any real GG support behind it. What gives?
I realize this may seem unfair. Like many Torque users, I recognize that the folks that make up GG are really talented, hard working, great people. I just think the leadership lacks focus and I think one way to alleviate that impression would be to be more forthcoming with the communication.
| Brett Seyler (Aug 01, 2008 at 21:47 GMT) |
The iPhone is a really key platform for us that we've been planning around for months, but it's not more important than continuing to improve our core technology offerings (TGB, TGE, TGEA). We're disclosing information to the people we've received inquiries from in the order they've been received and we already have a people making games. The most important thing for me is to make sure that everything I say to you guys will be backed with action, and you've seen that with unprecedented number of releases to TGB and huge improvements to TGEA. It's still early with the iPhone stuff, so I apologize if you're put off by the direct licensing path, but that's the only way we're comfortable finding the right licensing solution to start. In time, I expect we'll make the process much more transparent and public.
| Raphael Salgado (Aug 02, 2008 at 03:42 GMT) |
Where do I sign?!
| Ryan P (Aug 04, 2008 at 03:47 GMT) Resource Rating: 1 |
Simply put, how do I make games for the iPhone with Torque?
| Love Dahlgren (Aug 04, 2008 at 13:25 GMT) |
| David Montgomery-Blake (Aug 04, 2008 at 13:32 GMT) |
I did not realize that the official SDK from Apple for the iPhone worked out of the box on anything but a Mac.
| Martin Schultz (Aug 04, 2008 at 13:35 GMT) |
| David Montgomery-Blake (Aug 04, 2008 at 13:36 GMT) |
| Sailendu Behera (Aug 07, 2008 at 15:24 GMT) |
| Love Dahlgren (Aug 12, 2008 at 23:50 GMT) |
Has someone asked garage games what the price per title will be?
There are too many questions in my head right now. Can a torquescript game run smooth on the iphone? When is this ship ready to set sail? Are people beta testing it already and what are their opinions?
| David Montgomery-Blake (Aug 13, 2008 at 13:39 GMT) |
| Raphael Salgado (Aug 13, 2008 at 15:39 GMT) |
My focus is initially going to be 2D, so I'd hit TGB first. How many do you think GG is rolling out to more developers each week? With the latest stats coming from Apple, and now that developers on PCs will have a chance to put stuff together without even having a Mac, it's likely going to get pretty crowded here as well as the App Store.
Please, GG, get me into the program ASAP! Thanks.
| Orion Elenzil (Aug 13, 2008 at 22:57 GMT) |
| Brett Seyler (Aug 14, 2008 at 21:23 GMT) |
http://garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=78200
Thanks!
Brett
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