TGB addons also for iTGB?
by Chanan Eli · in iTorque 2D · 08/27/2009 (9:25 am) · 2 replies
I'm in the process of deciding if I should buy TGB and iTGB or to use Cocos2D for iPhone as I do today.
I'm thinking about creating a 2D adventure game in isometric or orthogonal view. As far as I can tell Cocos2D has very basic support for isometric and orthogonal view. It also lacks a proper level editor. The "Tiles" editor seems a little too basic and I haven't found anything else that seems useful.
The TGB Adventure Kit seems quite nice, but my question is, will it also work with iTGB or is it only for TGB?
If it doesn't work with iTGB, how much work am I looking at to make the "Tile handling" and editor? With Cocos2D it seems I would need to do the tile handling mostly from scratch, as well as the editor which is a lot of work for 1 guy.
I would really much like to use isometric view but all can find for torque is orthogonal or have I missed something? It would be nice to be able to create several floors/layers as in the old X-Com games.
I'm thinking about creating a 2D adventure game in isometric or orthogonal view. As far as I can tell Cocos2D has very basic support for isometric and orthogonal view. It also lacks a proper level editor. The "Tiles" editor seems a little too basic and I haven't found anything else that seems useful.
The TGB Adventure Kit seems quite nice, but my question is, will it also work with iTGB or is it only for TGB?
If it doesn't work with iTGB, how much work am I looking at to make the "Tile handling" and editor? With Cocos2D it seems I would need to do the tile handling mostly from scratch, as well as the editor which is a lot of work for 1 guy.
I would really much like to use isometric view but all can find for torque is orthogonal or have I missed something? It would be nice to be able to create several floors/layers as in the old X-Com games.
About the author
#2
You could do some sort of fake perspective in TGB, because it relies mostly on the art then. The editor is purely for square/rectangular tiles (overhead or sideways views, typically). As recent activity has shown, Neo is still alive and considering his isometric kit again...I hope something comes out of it soon :)
The Adventure Kit is usable with iPhone if you are prepared to do a bit of work. The issues are:
1.You'd preferably need to scale down the art. Some quality loss is expected then. Tiles still look good, though.
2.The example game logic is made of large scripts. I don't even want to try it in iTGB :)
If perspective like in the AK works for you, clearly TGB has the edge over Cocos2D. If you are not afraid of C++, it's the better option. You can rapidly prototype and build levels, and hey, the prototype is almost ready for use! Note that the AK uses nothing but regular square tiles, faked perspective and clever use of collisions and layers. Studying it should help you a lot in creating something isometric-like.
If there was such a thing as an agreeable level editor compatible with Cocos2D, I'd go for that with a hex or iso project. Without an editor that actually works on my Macs, I reserve Cocos2D use for games with screen-sized maps or dynamically generated levels, or OpenGL games where I need a ready-made timing/GUI system.
08/27/2009 (11:06 am)
Yeah, I've found the recommended editor for Cocos2D lacking. In fact, I have not been able to set it to 32x32 or 64x64 sprites, because the height field is not editable for me!You could do some sort of fake perspective in TGB, because it relies mostly on the art then. The editor is purely for square/rectangular tiles (overhead or sideways views, typically). As recent activity has shown, Neo is still alive and considering his isometric kit again...I hope something comes out of it soon :)
The Adventure Kit is usable with iPhone if you are prepared to do a bit of work. The issues are:
1.You'd preferably need to scale down the art. Some quality loss is expected then. Tiles still look good, though.
2.The example game logic is made of large scripts. I don't even want to try it in iTGB :)
If perspective like in the AK works for you, clearly TGB has the edge over Cocos2D. If you are not afraid of C++, it's the better option. You can rapidly prototype and build levels, and hey, the prototype is almost ready for use! Note that the AK uses nothing but regular square tiles, faked perspective and clever use of collisions and layers. Studying it should help you a lot in creating something isometric-like.
If there was such a thing as an agreeable level editor compatible with Cocos2D, I'd go for that with a hex or iso project. Without an editor that actually works on my Macs, I reserve Cocos2D use for games with screen-sized maps or dynamically generated levels, or OpenGL games where I need a ready-made timing/GUI system.
Torque Owner Bret Patterson
I did a quick test with my game which uses tiles and aStar very heavily and it seems to work quite well. I just took a level, rotated the tilemap 45 degrees, and then started the game and the character was now walking in a isometric tilemap. You'd then just layer a couple of tilemaps in this perspective to give you "levels" and then use custom code for stairs to move your character between tilemaps before reverting back to aStar pathing.
You won't be able to use most of the kit's from GG because their all script heavy and won't perform on the iPhone, however primarily you can't use them because iTGB doesn't support TGB Resources which all of the kits seem to use.
The iPhone requires a lot of hand tuning and optimization that other target platforms don't require. Given this a lot of the advantages of TGB over Cocos2D are negated because you simply can't use them because they don't perform or won't work in a limited hardware situation. The primary advantages of iTGB over something like Cocos2D are:
1. Very Very well tested code. Very few bugs and their usually all minor/annoyances.
2. Excellent editor. Only problem is sometimes using the editor with the custom coding requirements that the iPhone demands can be challenging.
3. Scripting support. Scripting is nice for very small touches you want to add to the game and don't want to create a c++ object just for it.
4. Cross platform support.
5. C/C++ language versus Objective-C
And old style X-Com game would be very easy to create with iTGB assuming you know C++ which your going to need for iPhone games anyway except for puzzle games. There's even a ton of free isometric graphics out there on the web for you to use with simple attribution in credits.