Torque 2d - 3d... ?

#1 It is great!



Just kidding.
Coding with t2d is so much easier than coding with torque 3d, I managed to code a pong-game with alot of features in just under three hours, and I've never coded pong or even played pong before.
The fact that you can mount, rotate, scale and flip every image makes things easy to handle, and the animationframe-system is easy to understand.
The particle editor is great, because I don't have to rely on artists to create explosions, I can code them on my own.
Going from concept to prototype for a certain feature takes no time, I can think of something, try it out the same day, and then scrap it or refine it.

I hope this made some sense, I've had a long day. I'll let someone else cover the non-basics. :)

#2 If you are new to game programming then you will find T2D a *lot* easier than TGE. It is easier getting art into the game, it is easier starting a project, you will make progress faster.

The heart of T2D is torque script. To use TGE you also have to learn torque script but in addition to that there will inevitably be C++ programming as well...so T2D is also a great place to learn about some basic torque concepts such as datablocks and the scripting language.

hope this helps

#3 I had TGE for over a year and did nothing significant with it, partly due to the learning curve combined with a lack of time to commit to it. By contrast, within 24 hours of purchasing T2D, I was rockin'. In no time I had grasped the concepts of datablocks, the scripting language as a whole was coming together in my head, and it felt great, especially after having been stumped by TGE. Same thing, different scope, I guess. It also helps that Melv commented pretty much everything. :p Also, the amount of stuff that Melv has exposed to script is fantastic, which means very little mucking about with source. Most of my initial problems that seemed to require source alterations ended up being doable with some creative scripting.

#4 Wow... after 30 minutes, i've had three replys, so i dont think anyone needs to mention the great community!

Do anyone have some kind of "Work-sample" of what they have been doing (Done) with Torque 2d?

/Anders

#5 I bought the TGE (the 3d engine) several years ago. I remember thinking how cool it was to have such a huge, fleshed out engine at my fingertips. I also remember feeling staggeringly overwhelmed by the amount of 'stuff' I had to learn in order to start making games with it. First I had to figure out the scripting; ok, easy enough.. TorqueScript is pretty straightforward and I enjoy using it. But wait- you'll need to learn some C++ in order to do anything other than an FPS with it. Oh, and if you want to make your game with something other than stock graphics you'll need to learn how to model and texture. But wait- you'll need to learn how to build levels, as well! With a team, this process probably isn't so painful, but as a hobbyist developer, it's a discouraging amount of work.

Now, i've always been a fan of 2d games. People always preach gameplay over graphics, and nowhere else is this better realized than in the realm of 2d. I have tried many of the other commercial and free 2d libraries and development systems, and continuously I encountered 'invisible walls'. That is, I would always find myself fighting with the limitations of the system I was using, and this would cause my projects to go into a state of limbo. It's hard enough putting together a game by yourself, but getting caught on these nags would really take the steam out of the process. I followed Torque2D for a while leading up to the release of EA, and was among the first handful of people to buy a copy, and not once have I regretted it. I could gush about how easy it is to use, and how powerful it really is, but I understand you'd rather know more about how it preforms, and what people have been doing with it.

Within the first week or two of buying T2D, I had put together my first game. It was called Pyrotechnics, and was essentially a flashy Missle Command clone. A tutorial was included with my copy of T2D that shows you how to put together a side-scrolling shooter game. Initially, there were some errors in the tutorial which would lead to problems when trying to run the game; this ended up being a boon to my knowledge, as it lead me to discuss in the forums with other users about what works, what doesn't, and why, and I ended up with a deeper knowledge if how to get things done- lo and behold, it was actually pretty simple! I immediately started into my own game. I put together some placeholder graphics in photoshop and started into the code. Within about 4 hours, spread between two days, I had the basics of the game in place and functioning. I spent about 5-6 additional hours on the project, spread out over a week or two, adding in features and making better graphics. In all, I had spent about 11 hours on the project and it was in a quite playable, quite enjoyable state. It felt really nice to have put something tangible together. I found the whole process to be straightforward and smooth. I never found myself fighting with the software to get the results I wanted, everything simply worked.

Here's a link to the latest build of Pyrotechnics I have put together

Since then, i've learned more about the individual systems in T2d, and have started a new project. My only problem now is deciding what I want to make, which is a much better problem than being overwhelmed and frustrated with roadblocks! If I had to buy Torque2D again, I would. The amount of freedom it gives you to put ideas into action is far more valuable than the price tag. Ok, enough rambling, sorry for the long post :).

One last thing- the community here can't be topped. Period. I challenge anyone to find a more helpful, knowledgable, friendly development community than T2D's.

#6 Check out:

Grim Inventions under games for Little Gods

and

Gaping Wolf for Cloudburst

for two fantastic products showcasing the capabilities of Torque2D. There are others out there as well (commercial title called Gold Fever for instance) ranging from a couple of hours and programmer art to some highly polished and elaborate titles. In all cases however the developers were able to concentrate on making games and not game engines, because T2D comes with that much power and flexibility.

If you're looking to learn and play around, then your choice between 2D and 3D is partially based on what you're interested in, but I'll say the curve in T2D is a LOT less steep, with almost no tool pipeline to worry over (one of TGE's bigger hurdles for a newcomer).

If you're looking to develop serious games (perhaps with commercial goals) as a small team or individual, again assuming you don't have pre-dispositions toward one game type over another, then Torque2D enables you to get to a polished, shippable product MUCH more rapidly (that pesky third-dimension does multiply the man-hours quite a lot).

On top of that, Torque2D is built on fundamentals that are directly shared with TGE/TSE and is an incredible stepping-stone, so you can move on to TGE with a great deal less friction afterward.

#7 I have TGE for a while now and Im not doing anything with it
and according to what you said I think I should buy T2D :)
But I feel like Im not that good when it come to 2D images
(Im not bad either) maybe render images will be good :)

A question that I got is, does TorqueScript has a big roll in T2D as in TGE?
even though I know C a bit, Im having trouble with TorqueScript
is it easier to learn TorqueScript with T2D than TGE?

#8 Yes, T2D is designed to be entirely TorqueScript driven. And it has a lot of good tutorials to show you how to use it.

#9 Having already purchased TGE (so you have access to more of the syntax docs and references; an issue that'll be solved for non TGE owners by Torque Developer Network's release) I think you'd benefit from having T2D. In terms of understanding Torquescript, the best part of T2D is how much you can do with so little script; jumping right in with a 'Hello World'-type app that does real 2D game functionality is trivial, as the Space Scroller demo tutorial demonstrates nicely. T2D does have its own Torquescript objects and functions to learn, but they're not that complex either.

#10 I had a great time looking at those demos. I think T2D is on the top of my list at the moment...

Thanks for all of the great answers. When speaking of the Tutorials, how good is the documentation that comes with it?

#11 The tutorial documentation is adequate, if a tad brief. It basically steps you through the exact code changes necessary to produce the space scroller demo with (intentionally) little delving into the mechanics of the functions it is using, so you can get visual results quickly focusing on the T2D functions. The changes are broken into chunks, each ending with a run of the code so you can see the latest result. It touches on loading and using graphic sprites, applying movement to objects, assigning keyboard controls, adding projectiles with collision, creating tilemaps in the background, and I believe adding a few particle effects as well. Each of these steps also covers some specific T2D capabilities such as mounting objects to each-other, etc. Overall though it is kept very straight forward.

There were a few minor hiccups in the tutorial at one point (small typos or detail omissions) and I don't know if those were ironed out or not, but they're documented in the forums. Nothing too hair-pulling though if I recall (anyone else who has run through it more recently than I please feel free to jump in ;)

Of course the drawback is starting small is a good thing but where do you go from there? There are actually a bunch of community-contributed tutorials on a bunch of other topics as well and the message boards are pretty active with a bunch of helpful folks.

#12 I wanted to reinforce that there literally dozens of contributed tutorials by Matt Langley and several others that cover nearly every aspect of using T2D. Their contributions have been amazing, and extremely useful to all T2D developers. These tutorials are all accessable via the T2D private forums and resources.

#13 Ok, thanks Luke, and you as well Stephen. That is good to know. From what i

#14 The classic GUI editor is the same one available to TGE and uses the existing gui objects. For T2D specifically there are two editors currently released, with more on the way.

The first is the particle editor, which allows you to build and edit complex particle effects. The interface is rough and takes some getting used to, but that's mostly because there are so many knobs and dials exposed to you, allowing you to craft some pretty wicked particle effects. I also am pretty sure a much much better interface will come about eventually.

The second new editor is specifically for building tilemaps. This one is much simpler and lets you create multi-layer maps from a list of tile sprites you've loaded. It's pretty functional as-is but I'm sure this too is going to get a facelift and a feature boost. If you're doing any kind of game map using tiles (think original Zelda for example) then this is your world/map editor. It is useful for many other uses as well.

Otherwise there are a few community-offered helper add-ons for stuff like collision-meshes or T2D-based guis that are either available now or have been at least announced/shown off in plans and whatnot. Also the T2D team has spoken of scene editors and object editors that are coming in future updates, making game scene building even more trivial.

I have never seen an error or problem in either of the two T2D official editors, they've been rock solid for me. I've not used the tilemap editor much at all but I have used the particle effect quite a lot (you can easily get lost for hours playing with the different settings, its fun!) and once you grasp the concept of how the particle effects are built, it is fairly efficient.

Granted, grasping the particle effect system cold-turkey has a decent learning curve but it is well worth it. If you want some idea of the potential of the particle effect engine, I recommend checking out the demo of Particle Illusion (www.wondertouch.com) which is used for video post-production. The engine in T2D is capable of a large majority of the effects this product is capable of, which is astounding. :)

#15 Ok, and thanks again, Luke D. Yeah, the particles i have seen so far in demos and such really looks amazing.

Yeah, it was something like a simple Zeldaclone i had in mind (After i had learned the basics).

Once again, thanks for the answers.

#16 Fyi, i wasnt sure what to start with either, and people recomended t2d.

so that's what i got, and probably they are right.

there is a lot of frustration with documentation however, as some docs are TGE only, even though they are relevant to T2D. So generally you need to post a topic asking for people to post the code you need.. a big pain, but to-be-fixed by TDN (torque development network) we are told.

from what i see in form posts, one of the biggest issues with TGE is the complexity of adding artwork/content. this obviously is much easier in the 2D world, so if you are ramping up (like me) then it's nice to not have to worry about that big "artwork" headache yet.

But take my ramblings with a grain of salt.. i havent tried tge, so i am obviously biased.

#17 Melv posted more info about Torque 2D's progress here.

#18 Thank you all for the information
Im really thinking about buying T2D, after I will be sure
I can do some images for the game.

How do you create the images?
got any tutorials? :)

#19 There's not a whole lot that's special about T2D game art. Preferred formats for 2D sprite images are png or jpg. If you use png you can use transparency in your images. Images should be sized in powers of 2 (64, 128, 256, 512, etc.).

You can use anything from Microsoft Paint to Photoshop to the open-source and free Gimp or anything else provided it outputs either jpeg's or png's.

For animations, you need to have one image that contains multiple frames of the animation spaced out evenly. For example, if you had a jpeg file that was 128 pixels by 128 pixels in size, you'd have four equal areas of 64 x 64 (the upper-left, upper-right, lower-left and lower-right areas). Each of these areas is a single frame or cell of your animation. These numbers are arbitrary, you could have an image that was 1280 pixels by 64 pixels and you'd get twenty 64x64 frames (or fourty 32x64 frames or eighty 32x32 frames, etc.) all depending on how you define the cell properties in the datablock.

There are also a number of third-party tools to help stitch together images into these animation cell 'strips', people are discussing them in the private forums to some degree.

#20 Thank you Luke for the comment, but you got my post wrong
well it's my fault, I should have explain myself a bit better.

Im a Paintshop Pro 8 user and I know how to create images and animations
but Im having a hard time creating 2D characters with animation.
I thought about modeling, textureing, animating and then rendering to animations
but it seems too mych work for one single character.
and I was wondering how do you guys make your images?