Will Torque make my life easier
by Shane Drury · in General Discussion · 11/24/2012 (4:05 pm) · 4 replies
Hi,
I'm a commercial developer with 12 years coding experience, but only limited game development experience. I'm in the process of learning the syntax of C++ and I've been planning a game for some years now (a 2D game)...however if I don't have to do the whole thing from the ground up it would be great. Not being too specific, can torque help me build a game with components like:
* Building a starship from blocks and then navigating that ship around an open universe
* Allowing the player to zoom into the ship and see the crew carrying out their duties
* Zoom in further and allow the player to control a crew member
* Is there any network support in Torque 2D?
* If you can think of other possibilities in an open starship simulation like this, it's probably in the game plan ;).I'm kind of an ambitious person.
Will this stretch Torque too far? Network support is kind of a clincher, this game must support some form of multiplayer.
I have a couple of prototypes of parts of the game in C++ and Lua, and I'm keen to avoid doing everything by hand if a tool like Torque can do a bunch of the heavy lifting in the background and allow me to focus on the gameplay. I have no aversion to coding but I don't believe in reinventing the wheel, surely a lot of the underlying gaming mechanics already exist (and in a better form than I could create) in a tool such as Torque.
Cheers. Sorry for the length :).
I'm a commercial developer with 12 years coding experience, but only limited game development experience. I'm in the process of learning the syntax of C++ and I've been planning a game for some years now (a 2D game)...however if I don't have to do the whole thing from the ground up it would be great. Not being too specific, can torque help me build a game with components like:
* Building a starship from blocks and then navigating that ship around an open universe
* Allowing the player to zoom into the ship and see the crew carrying out their duties
* Zoom in further and allow the player to control a crew member
* Is there any network support in Torque 2D?
* If you can think of other possibilities in an open starship simulation like this, it's probably in the game plan ;).I'm kind of an ambitious person.
Will this stretch Torque too far? Network support is kind of a clincher, this game must support some form of multiplayer.
I have a couple of prototypes of parts of the game in C++ and Lua, and I'm keen to avoid doing everything by hand if a tool like Torque can do a bunch of the heavy lifting in the background and allow me to focus on the gameplay. I have no aversion to coding but I don't believe in reinventing the wheel, surely a lot of the underlying gaming mechanics already exist (and in a better form than I could create) in a tool such as Torque.
Cheers. Sorry for the length :).
About the author
Ex commercial app and web developer with over 10 years experience. No longer code for a living, instead I'm making games for fun.
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#2
The advantages of Torque3D are
1. Its FREE!
2. Fully Multiplayer enabled.
3. The ability of having just about any game type you can think of (not just FPS)
4. Full source code so your not just stuck with TorqueScript
5. Bags of 3D resources out there, there was even someone working on 3D Worlds that you could fly to and then fly around/walk & drive on
6. did I mention its FREE!
As Frank says there are many ways of representing a Large craft, having it always there even if you never look at it for hours is a bit of a system resource waste and I would personally go with the different zone method myself, so when the player zooms in (or presses the 'goto starship' button) it loads in the starship and lets you mess about adding bits to the ship, fighting off enemy boarding actions and doing the crews hair etc. etc.
11/25/2012 (2:05 pm)
After reading your post & Frank's reply I do think you are probably better tackling this in Torque3D until the new version of Torque2D comes out.The advantages of Torque3D are
1. Its FREE!
2. Fully Multiplayer enabled.
3. The ability of having just about any game type you can think of (not just FPS)
4. Full source code so your not just stuck with TorqueScript
5. Bags of 3D resources out there, there was even someone working on 3D Worlds that you could fly to and then fly around/walk & drive on
6. did I mention its FREE!
As Frank says there are many ways of representing a Large craft, having it always there even if you never look at it for hours is a bit of a system resource waste and I would personally go with the different zone method myself, so when the player zooms in (or presses the 'goto starship' button) it loads in the starship and lets you mess about adding bits to the ship, fighting off enemy boarding actions and doing the crews hair etc. etc.
#3
Thanks for the replies and sorry for the delay in responding - yesterday was my birthday.
Couple of questions about Torque 3D:
* how many people would it support in multiplayer?
* Can I build the game in 2D even using the 3D version? I'm only interested in a top down 2D look. I have no experience whatsoever with doing 3D work
You both have the general gist of the game right. Zoomed out views only show a generic sprite, while zooming in far enough shows the ship layout. Never considered adding hairdressing, but I like how you think... In my mind I want to add every possible feature that might be fun :).
I might check out the 3D version when I get a moment. Still studying up my C++ syntax...is that actually useful for Torque or should I be looking at something else?
Cheers,
Shane
11/27/2012 (12:55 am)
Hi all,Thanks for the replies and sorry for the delay in responding - yesterday was my birthday.
Couple of questions about Torque 3D:
* how many people would it support in multiplayer?
* Can I build the game in 2D even using the 3D version? I'm only interested in a top down 2D look. I have no experience whatsoever with doing 3D work
You both have the general gist of the game right. Zoomed out views only show a generic sprite, while zooming in far enough shows the ship layout. Never considered adding hairdressing, but I like how you think... In my mind I want to add every possible feature that might be fun :).
I might check out the 3D version when I get a moment. Still studying up my C++ syntax...is that actually useful for Torque or should I be looking at something else?
Cheers,
Shane
#4
You could fake 2D in the 3D engine by simply constructing all objects as planes with your 2D art on them and locking the camera to a plane. It'd be a waste of resources, sure, but workable. If you're interested in the 2D engine, though, I would highly recommend downloading the T2D demo and running through some tutorials. You'll be surprised at how quickly you can have a running game.
As for your particular game design, you'll have to implement a lot of custom code to make things work the way you want. That said, yes, Torque (2D or 3D) will make your life easier. By using any engine you cut down massively on the amount of work you need to do.
With respect to multiplayer in T3D, the networking backend is the one that ran Tribes 2, which supported 64 players in a game. There isn't a theoretical limit on the number of players you can have (beyond the limits of integer representation in hardware, I guess), but that gives you some idea of a practical limit.
C++ is very useful for Torque, 2D and 3D engines both. The engines are written in C++ (though they use a C-like scripting language on top) and if you're adding any sort of major functionality (which you will, it sounds like), then you'll be digging into the source code.
11/27/2012 (1:42 am)
Happy birthday for yesterday!You could fake 2D in the 3D engine by simply constructing all objects as planes with your 2D art on them and locking the camera to a plane. It'd be a waste of resources, sure, but workable. If you're interested in the 2D engine, though, I would highly recommend downloading the T2D demo and running through some tutorials. You'll be surprised at how quickly you can have a running game.
As for your particular game design, you'll have to implement a lot of custom code to make things work the way you want. That said, yes, Torque (2D or 3D) will make your life easier. By using any engine you cut down massively on the amount of work you need to do.
With respect to multiplayer in T3D, the networking backend is the one that ran Tribes 2, which supported 64 players in a game. There isn't a theoretical limit on the number of players you can have (beyond the limits of integer representation in hardware, I guess), but that gives you some idea of a practical limit.
C++ is very useful for Torque, 2D and 3D engines both. The engines are written in C++ (though they use a C-like scripting language on top) and if you're adding any sort of major functionality (which you will, it sounds like), then you'll be digging into the source code.
Torque Owner Demolishun
DemolishunConsulting Rocks!
* Building a starship from blocks and then navigating that ship around an open universe
+ If you mean modular or zoned then yes you can build a modular object with multiple zones or even missions if the ship is really large.
+ As far as navigating a universe you will most likely do missions with different contents.
+ Or you could keep the ship stationary and move everything else relative to the ship to simulate a much larger space. The AI or Players would just move about the ship as if it were a solid unmoving object.
* Allowing the player to zoom into the ship and see the crew carrying out their duties
+ There are multiple types of cameras employed in Torque. I believe one of those is a follow cam amongst others. Cameras can be scripted.
* Zoom in further and allow the player to control a crew member
+ I have personally played with taking over AI Player objects and it is very simple. It would just require management of their behaviors so that when you take them over those are paused or canceled until you are done. This is all exposed to the scripting.
* Is there any network support in Torque 2D?
+ Not that I know of, but since T3D is now MIT you could pull the networking code out and make T2D networked. I am not going to say this is easy, but it is possible.
* If you can think of other possibilities in an open starship simulation like this, it's probably in the game plan ;).I'm kind of an ambitious person.
+ This is a tricky problem. If you keep the ship stationary then it makes having other large ships difficult.
+ If it moves you have to have a way for the players to mount to the ship.
+ Or another way to do this is make is so the ship internals are a stationary object and the ship view ports are attached to an object representing the ship that is moving in free space. The ship internal area would have to be hidden for every large ship somehow. When you move the ship itself you are not actually moving the interior. So any rotations would not matter to the player objects. The only time it would be an issue is when you space walk or fly a smaller ship. Actually I really like this idea. Haha, this is funny. This is pretty much how they film all Sci-Fi shows. They have models and/or computer models they move around and the set is a stationary area with blue screen view ports.