Unity comparison And question about torque2D for 2D games

#1 @Kiori : Welcome to the Torque 2D community!

Any 2d project you may have can be achieved with Torque2D; it is well suited for a pixel-art platformer.

Torque 2D does not support 3d models as of yet(.fbx or otherwise); you have to stick to PNG, BMP and JPG.

Unity Free's 2d toolkit is really awesome...until you get to what's not included in the Free version.

Basically, the animation curves. What they showcase in the video about creating and tweaking animations is absent from the Free version.

T2D has no restrictions. You must however do everything by hand and the learning curve is steeper than Unity. Make sure to get really familiar with the Wiki, which contains everything you need to know about T2D's systems.

And remember that Torque2D does not have any editors as of now, except for a Particle Effects Editor.

Unity is still a great framework but you won't get all the features you expect out of the free version.

--Animation in T2D --

You can have a simple sprite sheet and create a new animationasset specifying which frames to use in what sequence, at what framerate OR you can use Spine for skeletal 2d animation. Note that the basic functionalities of Spine are implemented into Torque2D, make sure to test it out if that's the way you want to go.

#2 I don't mind the curve as long as there is a path to learn, I've been a programmer of many sorts since i was 10 or so.
I know C and have learned basic c# in the past(terrible lang. and i'm not found of it) so naturally i can understand c++, at least from a concet stand point, I'm guessing torquescript is similar, the language per se is not my main concern.

How hard is it to implement physics in Torque2D?

Also do they have plans to include fbx as an import?

Another thing is, i migt use "spriter" as an external animation tool since its cheaper than spine atm. I'm guessing support for them will eventually come.(I read in their forum they want to suport every engine in the future)
I'm not sure what you mean by basic functionality of spine.

Also are there any plans to support consoles, like xbox, in the future?
I mean i believe android and iOS are supported, but xbox and others would be great, even though i beleve the future of consoles is steamOS.

My last question was if i could use Torque3D to make my 2D game and use some 3D functions like in unity.
Whitch would pose the question, how would i go about 2D physics simulation, can I use the 'rigid body physics system'?
I'm guessing that if i implemented box2D myself it would be a lot of work, i checked it out, there is lot of coordinate-specific calcs going on, and i rathe reduce my time programing to a minimum.

Does this "On top of PhysX, Torque 3D also includes a rigid body physics system for older hardware and Mac support." mean that Torque3D only works on desktops?
I'm naturally aiming for mobile also, so this is important.

I'm not 100% decided on the style of the game yet, so I'm exploring all possibilities.

All questions aside, I'm a linux user and OSS enthusiast, so I'd much rater be using and promoting Torque, I'm just not 100% on its feature set and tool kit yet.
Like if i can't use 3D features with it(like the fbx i meantioned), then why would i use Torque2D instead of a cheap-ish 2D engine like say gamemaker(there are free ones also), with an all out 'make my life easier' editor n' tools?
(i think this is a very valid question)

Thanks if you got the time to respond, always nice to be welcomed. :)

#3 Another thing, what are the min reqs. for a game made with torque3D and 2D?
This is also important since i intended to make somethign that will run on old platforms.

#4 C++ is only required knowledge if you plan on modifying the game engine itself, which doesn't apply to a lot of users. It's always nice to be able to browse the source code and understand exactly what the TorqueScript layer is doing as well.

Torquescript is also explained thoroughly in the wiki.

Quote:How hard is it to implement physics in Torque2D?

T2D features out-of-the box Box2D physics; you have a pretty comprehenseive collision systems, a joint-binding system, etc.

Quote:I'm not sure what you mean by basic functionality of spine.

I think *some* work was done on Spriter implementation a while back but I think it has been scrapped; not 100% sure. The spine implementation is functional as in it will allow you to use an exported skeleton, play and mix animations but that's about it. My personal version of the Spine implementation features much more in-depth control such as bone and skin overrides as well as several helper functions but it is not clean enough to be officially integrated in the engine as of yet. Either way, lots of work down that road.

Quote:Also do they have plans to include fbx as an import?

"They" is "us". T2D and T3D are community-driven projects. If anyone wants to implement .fbx support, they are more than welcome to do so.

Console support is also something someone would need to implement and share with the community.

Quote:what are the min reqs. for a game made with torque3D and 2D?

T2D uses OpenGL implementation 1.2 I believe; it will run on pretty much anything! Of course, it's easy to get excited and start using an insane amount of physics objects and particles, which will bog down slower systems.

Quote:...if i could use Torque3D to make my 2D game and use some 3D functions like in unity.

Torque 3d and 2d have evolved from the same codebase but aren't compatible with one another. The subject comes up from time to time, wanting to merge both engines would be awesome but require a heavy rewrite of both.

For the T3D stuff, I will leave the floor to a T3D expert...(cue T3D expert)

#5 Thanks for all the replies. ;)

#6 If you are for open source anyway, what is your question then?
In the long run you will need the paid version of the commercial software anyway, sticking with pseudo-free software is not a good idea, they want you to pay for it, since they need to get their money from somewhere, they just want to attract you as a customer by giving you a little for free.

For a casual project where you want results fast unity may be better, but as said you cannot stick to the "free" version forever, you likely want or need the premium features later or the company changes their free plan to no longer free, as happened with other engines.

#7 It's worth nothing that Unity 2D and Torque 2D MIT use the same physics system, which is box2d as mentioned earlier. The main differences are how many box2d features are exposed and to what degree. Currently, Torque 2D has an edge in that all box2d features are exposed and have a 1 to 1 correlation in both functionality and name. You can reproduce every single box2d demo in T2D, only prettier.

As Simon mentioned, Torque 2D will run on pretty much anything due to its OpenGL implementation. It currently supports Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, Linux, and web deployment. It could easily be ported to Ouya console. The only thing that would limit T2D from running on some platforms would be if they required a specific SDK that only supports a language like C#.

Outside of that, no restrictions at the licensing or tech level. Even better, editors for T2D are starting to roll out and will make life a lot easier for newcomers to T2D.

#8 Isn't FBX a 3D format? How would an import of FBX work anyway? Or are you looking for something that generates a preset of views from different angles? That could be done with Blender 3D and some Python scripting. Might not even need scripting, but maybe just a camera on a track.

I did a search and it looks like 2.69 of Blender is able to read binary FBX. So that may be an avenue to produce a 3D object projected to sprite sheet. That method would work for any 3D object that Blender can read. It also gives you access to higher end ray tracers and texturing capabilities that no game engine has.

#9

Quote:My last question was if i could use Torque3D to make my 2D game and use some 3D functions like in unity.
Whitch would pose the question, how would i go about 2D physics simulation, can I use the 'rigid body physics system'?

You could do that, but you'd be in for a little bit of pain. You could either integrate Box2D with the engine in the C++ side of things, or use the default physics engine (or PhysX or Bullet) with some hacks to make everything stay in a 2D plane.

Quote:Does this mean that Torque3D only works on desktops?

Currently Torque3D uses DirectX so it only compiles in Windows, and as a dedicated server in Linux. Members of the community are working on an OpenGL renderer and have had success using it in Linux and Mac. We're working on getting that stuff polished and into the main engine. As for performance... I actually can't answer that question well. Since T3D has a fixed-function rendering pipeline it will run on older hardware without some graphical niceness. But I'm pretty sure nobody's every ported it to, for example, tablets or mobiles. We might be able to ask Mode7, as I imagine Frozen Endzone will probably head in that direction.

Another feature in the pipeline for T3D is using the Assimp library for asset import, which would allow you to import FBX files. Currently in Andrew's working branch only static shapes are supported (no animations), unfortunately. But again, we're working on it!

#10 T3D was used in an early prototype stage to make a Mass Effect title for iOS. I heard stories about how "fun" that was....

#11 I don't remember that, Richard. That's definitely news to me. I do know that iTGB was used to make Mass Effect: Galaxies.

#12 Ah - that was the one I was thinking of. Thanks Mitch