Questions of "can

#1 1-5. Yes.
6. You would have to implement isometrics yourself as it is not currently part of the tiling and collision scheme.
7. Yes.

The easiest way to do animation is to load each frame and then cycle through them accordingly. And yes, you will want an artist to do this.

#2 Tactics also used polygons for the stages that could rotate. You would have to find a way to intergrate the Torque 3D engine into your T2D game if you want to do a Final Fantasy Tactics type of game. (I'm no expert on Torque technologies though)
-Ajari-

Edit: Oh and as far as the other games you mentioned. I imagine that T2D could do even better than those games when it comes to graphics and animations. I haven't seen proof of it yet but you gotta figure those games were made 10+ years ago for old technology and T2D was made 5 minutes ago for PC.

#3 A search on orthographic projection on the private forums for TGE will give a fun take on exactly how to do that.

#4 I'm specifically looking to do 'old school' AoE and Stronghold type games.

It would seem that T2D would be ideal for that, but it seems to read from these posts that
such isometrics are not handled by the engine.

Is this so? If not, what is the development milestones for support these types of games?

I'm willing to add them, but I may wait to purchase the engine until they are there and supported.

#5 At least two people have independently implemented isometric support into the engine, so I bet you could, too (or ask them nicely to share, or maybe there's a resource). :)

#6 I've purchased T2D and found it quite light. I do not like the OGL/D3D restriction.

The more I look at it, the more I think that Granny3D with the Pixomatic render core would be more ideal.
I may use T2D between here and when/if I purchase that engine.

I will most likely replace:
2Dto3D layer with a frame buffer mechanism
collision with Novodex physics engine (axis constrained)
various curve interpolations
state mahine (perhaps boost::fsm)

That doesn't leave much but the core driver. I've not looked in depth yet at things like the timing 'whee'.
I hope to reuse the resource system, but I will probably use JPEG2000 for all images, and MPEG4 for
movie animations. JP2k can be readily acquired, but I'm not sure about MPEG4.

#7 Granny's not an engine - it's a 3d character rendering library. Admittedly, it's full featured so you could build an engine out of it, but if you want a 3d engine, why did you buy Torque 2D to begin with?

The technology package you're assembling is also going to be pretty costly. Something on the order of $10,000, I imagine. Maybe much more. For sure, it'll be very nice, but I'm not sure it'd be that much more effective than T2D for developing 2D games.

T2D already does some interpolation stuff (and easily extended to do more), and if you want a state machine system, why not add one in? T2D does not propose to be an AI framework.

There's also the other stuff that Torque does, vis a vis, resource management, scripting, object system, simulation framework, memory manager, journaling, cross platform input, debugging aids, profiling, GUI library.

It may be for your own situation that this approach will work out well, but I think that your post in general is a gross misrepresentation of what T2D is, and is all about, which is making high quality 2d games on the cheap.

#8 @Nanomid

"I've purchased T2D and found it quite light."

What do you find "light" about it?
It does everything you would expect for a 2D engine.
Displays Sprites, animates them, get input, plays sound, has a great particle engine, Tilemaps etc....

The only thing i would say that is light about it would be the lack of ISO support, editors and networking.
When T2D goes gold, remember that its in Early Release right now, you will have more editors than you can throw a stick at and fully networkable objects. ISO tilemaps may or may not be included, but so far 2 people have extended the engine to use ISO tiles, so those may be able to d/l and add in.

" I do not like the OGL/D3D restriction."

What other major Graphics API's are there?
Or are you saying that you want a software renderer?
There is really no point with having a software renderer, any computer you could by today and for the last few years have hardware support for OpenGL and DX, you may not have all the pixel and vertex shaders a graphics card would give you with these budget comps. Even my ultra cheap laptop handles T2D great.

#9

Quote:... but I think that your post in general is a gross misrepresentation of what T2D is, and is all about, which is making high quality 2d games on the cheap.

Dont worry Ben, he aint scaring away thr customers you are catering to.
Im wiping the corners of my mouth for the chance to get my hands on Torque2D (so far away ...).
/me is impatient

#10 I imagined that th T2D would have a frame buffer renderer ala Pixomatic, QT4 Arthur, anti-grain, etc. I've been looking at
these for some time, and worked with the Qt4 and anti-grain to some extent.

I'm fairly sure that a non-trivial portion of my desired target market will not be able to rely on OGL for much. Many have old machines,
and will continue to have old machines, because for many people even a $400 computer is too much.

I remember Michael Abrash's ModeX code doing quite well on my machine many years ago. I would imagine a
2D tile based game could utilize a card that can do a decent BITBLT without resorting to OGL/D3D.

I believe that Pixomatic does well on these older machines and still approximates DX7, albeit at a $10k cost.

If I'm still imposing a 3D restriction, I could write some helper libraries to approximate the T2D in TSE, OGRE, etc., and then
at least utilize shaders if available. If I'm going to use 3D, why not use as much as possible?

I'm only 10-20% through the code, so I'm not sure if it is easier to do it via specialized 3D scenegraph or not.
I've read through others ISO ideas, and still think that I will need non-trivial work for a hexagonal tile system (for
GURP like games). I may yet discover it's not very hard.

The Novodex engine allows for maintaining a realistic 3D world, mapped to a 2D tile system, and provides a fast
spatial index as well, with callbacks.

I have a JS engine I can extend easily with native C++ objects. I've not yet extended the CS engine, but if it's easy to
extend, that could well make it easy to provide hexagonal support.

I don't mean to slight the engine. I've perused quite a few, and worked on one myself and know they are non-trivial affairs.
I may yet find that in future incarnations the T2D may be quite sufficient, and retract my 'light' statement.

#11 Ah. ModeX and ModeY. When my 386 was brand new. Much better than the Hercules and CGA cards (do you want definition or color?) in the 8088 I had. Yes, they do work well on older hardware, but conformance to older standards has been slightly shifting in newer hardware (as long as Windows can utilize the card in 16 color mode, the manufacturers have been happy). 13h calls and the subsequent modes than can be leeched from them are fun. I remember playing with Abrash's Zen books. Ah, fun memories. That was back when Brian Hook was accused of never getting a job in the industry because his matrix math sucked and Abrash was a god. Then he went to work with id...working directly with Abrash. Good times, good times on usenet. If you want a fun library that works in modex/y, grab YakIcons by Victor Putz. It uses Borland C++ 3.1 (I believe that was the version...it sticks out in my mind). I wonder what Dr. Cat's been up to since Furcadia's expanded. Man, so many memories!

Novodex is a fun physics engine. My only beef with it is single-platform support. But targeting multiple OS's isn't in your sights anyway, so it's a moot point. For Windows, it's a rather nice little engine. I like Tokamak as well, though Novodex is more intuitive.

If you're looking at a 3D scenegraph, why not drop T2D on top of TGE (other than the GL issue)? It works very well with next to no work on your part.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. That was quite enjoyable!

#12 IM HALF WAY THOUGH DOWNLOADING IT STARTED AGAIN BY IT SELF SO I CANT START AGAIN CAUSE I HAVE
TO PAY AGAIN.WHAT DO I DO?

#13 Whoa...easy there on the caps lock Sophie. What are you trying to download?