Questions before buying

#1 Waiting for a Torque2D based iPhone technology would basically mean wait till summer 2010 at best I think.

You can develop the game partly on windows.
But you also need a mac to optimize the stuff you find in testing on the actual device (ensure that you have a device of the minimum type you want to support. Only a 3GS or ipod touch 2nd generation won't cut it), as you have no way to get anywhere realistic data without the device.
30-50% of your time, especially during the first projects, will be purely testing and optimizing, as you are working with a phone, not with a slow pc

#2 Im new to this Iphone gaming app. So u need a Mac to run iTorque 2D? I thought it was more like installing the iTorque 2D in your PC, making games and deploying it in the Iphone? I purchased TGB some time ago, is there a discount on the iTorque 2D for customers who own TGB??

Thankss

Jay

#3 No, it's not just an app. It's a game engine, with source code, and you need a Mac+Xcode to develop iPhone games with it. What you've paid for TGB counts towards the iT2D purchase.

#4 If you are totally new to this and starting from scratch, I would not recommend purchasing iTorque. There is very little support, which is becoming less by day, and the product is full of bugs. I would recommend that you check out the competition first before committing to this. I've been using this engine for a while and if I am to be honest I would have to say that it is a poor product.

#5 hey guys, thanks for the replies, do u know any other 2D game engines for the iphone? I know Unity3D does iphone games but i think its only 3D.

thanks

jay

#6

Quote:There is very little support, which is becoming less by day, and the product is full of bugs.

Bugs, yes. But they are being worked on at a rapid pace. iT2D 1.4.1 development has already started and a release is on the way. As for lack of support (and decreasing at that), I think that is completely off. Employee activity decreases during major release cycles, but I'm always available to answer questions in IRC, forums and e-mail when I'm not jamming on docs or testing a release.

Quote:So u need a Mac to run iTorque 2D?

Yes.

Quote:I purchased TGB some time ago, is there a discount on the iTorque 2D for customers who own TGB??

Yes. The cost of TGB or TGB Pro is subtracted from the $750 cost of iTorque 2D.

Quote:do u know any other 2D game engines for the iphone?

Dedicated 2D engine with a full editor suite, full source, free updates, an active community, and numerous shipped games (that we can track)? No. I have not found one yet.

Quote:I know Unity3D does iphone games but i think its only 3D.

It is a 3D game engine. It is possible to make a 2D game with it, but it's not an out of the box feature. You will have to implement a community made sprite manager and do quite a bit of code work, as well as vertex animations on a 3D quad. iTorque 2D is 100% dedicated to 2D rendering and game play.

#7 I think Unity3D has by far the largest community, and documentation is good. There is also a version for Android. It is a 3D engine, but it's possible to create 2D games with it.

Another one is Cocos2D, which is a free open-source engine, so that might be worth taking a look at. It has integrated Box2d and Chipmunk physics engine, which iTorque does not. It's open source, but iTorque is more like open-source quality in my opinion, so I don't see much difference there.

All I'm saying is be cautious and evaluate the competition before making a decision. Who knows, after checking them all out you might decide that iTorque is the way to go. But, I would certainly suggest checking out the competition first.

#8 @Mark - Regarding your last paragraph, I think that is off topic and summed up to speculation. Let's get back on track.

For pure 2D engines, my second choice (after iT2D of course) would be Cocos2D. It's fast, it's got source, and the physics systems are good. You are looking at the good old days of classic hard programming, instead of an editor suite, but it's still in the top three for 2D solutions.

If you are dead set on making a 2D game, a true 2D game, in a decent amount of time...I would suggest iT2D or Cocos2D. It just depends on what your strengths and experience amount to. If you already have working knowledge of TGB, you already have a head start in the experience/knowledge category.

#9 My rating is like Michael's, except I can't think of a worthy third engine. Cocos2D is very barebone. No script engine, just plain ObjC all the way. Even worse for a beginner because of that, and it relies on an external editor for maps.

iT2D has a GUI editor and various controls, but Cocos2D is limited to clickable buttons placed individually or in grids. No sliders or other funky widgets. Certainly no tool to create them (yet at least). There's more code to write and test for certain things.

"Integrated" is also too nice a word for what it does to physics engines - there are Xcode templates with the Cocos2D+Box2D or Chipmunk ready to compile, but you still need to delve into their respective documentation to actually do things. I think the Box2D resource I've seen around these forums just makes the built-in (simplistic) system use the physics engine, so there's very little extra to learn. But of course also less capabilities without digging into the C++ source code yourself.

People have released lots and lots of games with both engines, so there's clearly nothing major wrong with either.

#10 I apologise if you think the last paragraph in my previous post was a little bit too politically incorrect. I decided to delete it, because I agree in the sense that my opinion might not be proven, and so far it's based on a small set of examples. I still believe that my assumptions are correct, however, but I'm not trying to be anti Torque, I'm just trying to be to be a bit more realistic compared to all of the "our engine is the best" type of posts. If I was totally anti Torque I would have given up with it ages ago, but I am still using it so it's obviously not impossible to use. All I am trying to say to newbies is to use some caution, especially for those who have tried TGB and expect iTGB to be as good. Let's be honest here, TGB is an excellent product and iTGB is not, and I think it is unprofessional to make people believe that iTGB is anything like TGB, it just isn't.

Unity3D has a 30-day trial so I would suggest trying that first. Cocos2D is free, so that's a no brainer and I would try that second. Third on the list, for me, would be iTorque, mostly because it doesn't have a 30-day trial version, which I've always thought of as being a bit suspicious. After trying all of them I would then make a decision. If I could start again from scratch, that would be the approach I would take. I was sucked into purchasing iTGB because of how much I enjoyed using TGB, but when I started using iTGB I was very disappointed and I wished I had use my head a bit more before committing to it.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

#11 hey guys, thankss for your help! I will wait for the updates for the iTGB and see what gamers has to say about it, not in a rush to make iPhone games at the moment as im working on a 3D animation. Will check out Cocos2D.

thanks.

#12 @Mark - I can agree with a key point of your last post: research your engines before making a decision. Anyone looking to license/use a 3rd party engine should definitely evaluate options, compare features, see what games are made, and check the forums. I encourage that practice.

I do not think there is one single great engine. All game engines have pros and cons. Pick the right engine for your game, but do not be closed to using other engines for different games. I have witnessed this practice and those studios are successful.

#13 I was very critical of iTGB in my last post, so let me try to be a little bit more balanced.

Overall, iTGB isn't a bad game engine. It just takes a lot of getting used to. For somebody completely new to TGB/iTGB, it takes a lot of time to understand the basics. I remember way back when I originally bought iTGB in March of 2009 it took me days just to get a sample project working on the iPhone. And I wasn't completely new to Torque with TGB/TGEA experience. Compare that with Unity, where I got a sample project running the same day of purchase.

For certain types of games, iTGB is great. My previous game was perfect for it - no (fancy) physics, no long calculations, and completely sprite based. I did benefit from having access to the source code seeing how I really only used Torque Script for the glue that holds the game together. Any real logic/calculation was done in C++. I never had a problem with frame rate because of this.

My biggest complaint with the engine is the support - it seems like it is just Michael. There have hardly been any updates to the product, and more recently when there are updates it causes more problems than it solves (1.4). Though I have to say, I did successfully integrate my game to 1.4, mostly because I picked and chose what I wanted. I also didn't change any of the Torque Script.

Support on the forums could also be improved. At the minimum, when somebody finds a bug, an employee should post the fix as soon as they fix it. That's the benefit of having the source, isn't it? Instead all we see is that it has been logged in the Jira bug tracker and that's the end of it.

To go one step further with support, it would be nice to see iTGB devs commenting on the forums more. If somebody asks a good game play question, an iTGB developer should respond if the question has been stale for awhile (or even if it hasn't). I remember Sven commented on the forum awhile ago, but I haven't seen him anymore.

I still lurk the iTGB forums and will definitely consider the new iTorque 2D when (if?) it is released, but until then there is a lot that can be improved.