Torque replacement?

#1 If you're looking at a 2D engine, there is nothing like TGB. The closest you get is Cocos 2D, but it's lacking in built-in tools. It's more of a framework than a ready to run engine. Decent community, though. Any other alternatives have the same problem: They're frameworks and don't have a readymade scene you can start to drag objects into.

#2 With all due respect to Torque, I decided to switch to Blitzmax. It's not an engine but a complete language and a powerful one at that and I'm loving it.

#3 I use Unity 3. It allows for straight-forward cross-platform development targetting the PC, Mac, Web, iOS, and Android. You won't get the soure code, but the engine is flexible and updates are plentiful. You use C# instead of C++, but the learning curve for C/C++/Java programmers is very short. OpenGL is built-in. PhysX is built-in. You can plug-in DLLs you wrote or bought in your language of choice. The asset pipeline is in my estimation faster (i.e., it's easy to add textures, terrain, models, music, or animations). With Torque closing down I hope this will be taken as a good-heartened endorsement by a developer who tried Torque and not as spam for a competing engine. Cheers, and best of luck!

PS, I wouldn't discount Torque if you otherwise have your heart set on it just because it's closing down. After all, you will have access to the source code, and even if this forum closed down, another would surely pop-up.

#4 How is Unity with speed on the iPhone/Android platform? I feel like C# + physx + shaders spells bad news for hardware that has trouble displaying large tilemaps..

Isn't unity more of a 3D engine too? I seem to recall reading it isn't very well designed for completely 2D games. Just curious. The extreme cost and lack of source is why I ended up going with iT2D, but someday it could be an option I suppose.

#5 I Personally do not believe Torque is replaceable as I have never yet found a game engine what offers everything one receive with Torque(including the Torque communities very unique 'spirit' and passion of game development and helping/sharing with fellow Torque community members).

"The Engine Survey" article presents some good information to consider about game engines.

I have also found "In-Depth: The State Of Game Engines At GDC 2010" to be quite enlightening.


The unique Torque community is the only reason I still use Torque. Other game engines have great technological offerings, but fall flat on the community 'togetherness' feeling that Torque offers.

If developer collaboration and community are not a primary concern, many other game engines could easily be substituted as a Torque replacement.

#6 There's no PhysX on iOS, I'm sure. Shaders are recommended to switch off (i.e. set it to OpenGL ES 1.1 mode). And yes, Unity is a 3D engine through and through. Just ignoring the third dimension doesn't reduce the amount of extra bits included. Oh, and terrains aren't supported on iOS, plus GUIs kill the framerate.

Performance can still be very good, though. I have seen some Unity-based games which push nice framerates on my 2nd generation iPod touch. The C# is not an issue, because it's compiled ahead of time. You also have native code support whether you have pro or not, unlike desktop Unity3D. But I'd really pick a dedicated 2D engine for that purpose.

#7 "There's no PhysX on iOS, I'm sure."

You directly interact with Unity's Physics API and not PhysX, so this detail tends to be unimportant, no?

"Shaders are recommended to switch off (i.e. set it to OpenGL ES 1.1 mode)."

Unity supports OpenGL ES 2.0. What's recommended depends on the range of devices you're targetting, among other things, but quite often support requirements will dictate using OpenGL ES 1.1.

Note, even with the fixed pipeline of OpenGL ES 1.1 there's room for skilled and creative developers: http://www.youtube.com/user/JessyUV#g/c/31F6A116DCCC9F61

"Just ignoring the third dimension doesn't reduce the amount of extra bits included."

Unity can make 2D games, but if that's your bread and butter, I agree you'll want something more specialized.

"GUIs kill the framerate"

I have a complex, animated HUD in my latest game and it's not slow at all. Unity offers two GUI interfaces. One is more feature-rich but slow, for out-of-play menus. The other is less feature-rich, but capable of keeping up with the pace of real-time animations or even being animated itself.

"Performance can still be very good, though"

Aye. Another snag with using Unity (or other game engines) on iOS would be filesize. Many try to make apps <20MB so they can be downloaded via 3G networks, and it's worth noting the engine eats up a good chunk of that. A common work-around is to setup a webserver and stream in in-game content.

#8 "The extreme cost and lack of source is why I ended up going with iT2D, but someday it could be an option I suppose."

In my estimation, development time easily trumps Indie engine costs. If you even make a modest programmer's salary of $80,000 you will recoop the cost of a $1,500 engine within a week. We all can agree whether you buy from Garage Games, Unity Tech, Shiva, or Terathon you're saving yourself more than a week of work rolling your own engine. ;)

Most of these engines also offer lower price points for hobby programmers.

#9 Spending months making it do something it isn't meant to might not be cost-effective ;)

#10 Agreed. If you exclusively develop in 2D, I would definitely explore other options. Unity makes more sense if you do at least some 3D development. To enumerate the main 2D development options in Unity:

(a) Make a 3D scene w/ locked camera and orthogoal view (costs overhead)
(b) Buy Sprite Manager 2: http://www.anbsoft.com/middleware/sm2/ (costs $150 extra).
(c) Implement 2D sprites moving on a plane or thin box (costs dev time).