Moving from TGE to iTGE
by Jason MacWilliams · in Torque Game Engine · 04/23/2009 (10:27 am) · 5 replies
How streamlined is it to port a TGE game to the iphone? We have a completed TGE game that we want to deploy on the iphone and we're wondering how quick and easy it would be to move to iTGE. We do have engine mods built in but most of it is in TorqueScript.
Any help would be appreciated, since good info on iTGE seems to be scarce.
Any help would be appreciated, since good info on iTGE seems to be scarce.
#2
04/23/2009 (12:53 pm)
So TS is the most significant change? All the extra resources we integrated (in C++) won't cause much trouble will they? 
#3
04/23/2009 (1:04 pm)
It depends on what you integrated. There could be something there that works smashingly on a desktop under Windows that chugs like crazy on a Mac or more especially on the limited hardware that the iPhone has to offer. It's pretty beefy for a mobile device, but tons behind the times compared to desktop hardware.
#4
04/24/2009 (5:32 am)
We're coming from a purely windows environment and our team has very little experience working with macs and xcode, what kind of learning curve are we facing? Will iTGE do all the nitty gritty xcode for us? Or do we have to build+deploy ourselves? 
#5
There might be a few tweaks you want to do to iTGE, like removing chunks of code you find that you aren't using (to reduce binary size), adding support for new data or upgrading any components (PNG and gzip libs are potential candidates). A lot of that is drag & drop with the C++ knowledge you already have.
It does help to read a little about Mac development, though. If you get the Hillegass book, you'll learn about Interface Builder. You might run into that if doing a desktop port of anything, and you want to integrate, say, Sparkle for program updates.
Getting to know what unique things you can do on the iPhone OS is also very useful. If it hasn't been added to ITorque yet, you can quickly add support yourselves.
iTGB is getting auto-build-run in simulator in the next release, so that'll probably get to iTGE too. But the way Apple made it, you can't avoid Xcode to deploy. It's mainly cmd-R and wait, though.
04/24/2009 (6:33 am)
Xcode isn't too difficult. IDEs are pretty similar all around. You might want to see what hotkeys are there, and add more in the preferences. I've added shortcuts to open the project build settings, for instance. I honestly only use a few keys: The build settings hotkey I made, cmd-B to build and cmd-R to run.There might be a few tweaks you want to do to iTGE, like removing chunks of code you find that you aren't using (to reduce binary size), adding support for new data or upgrading any components (PNG and gzip libs are potential candidates). A lot of that is drag & drop with the C++ knowledge you already have.
It does help to read a little about Mac development, though. If you get the Hillegass book, you'll learn about Interface Builder. You might run into that if doing a desktop port of anything, and you want to integrate, say, Sparkle for program updates.
Getting to know what unique things you can do on the iPhone OS is also very useful. If it hasn't been added to ITorque yet, you can quickly add support yourselves.
iTGB is getting auto-build-run in simulator in the next release, so that'll probably get to iTGE too. But the way Apple made it, you can't avoid Xcode to deploy. It's mainly cmd-R and wait, though.
Associate David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake