Torsion vs Xcode

#1 Keep in mind that Torsion is for scripting exclusively.

Torsion has an integrated telnet debugging so you can connect to your application to debug it (even when on the device given its on the same network and you know its ip)

Didn't have much fun using XCode for scripting.

#2 Xcode doesn't do that?
Torsion is a must then right?

#3 As far as I am aware, Torsion is the only way to debug your code on the scripting side. I use it a lot, and personally I wouldn't attempt to develop a large application without it. XCode can only be used to compile and debug the source code, not the scripts, unless there is a plug-in for XCode that I'm not aware of.

#4 Torsion is a must. Get it... that will be the best thing you do.

#5 There is / was an xcode plugin but it does not offer debug

do you need it to do debug: nope
Torque uses Telnet for the debugging, you can hook up with any telnet console you have for example.

its just not as "direct" as with torsion

but debugging on the device isn't all that trivial either, as you need to know the ip of the device etc. and you can naturally not debug the script startup cause by the time you can connect to it, it will have run through half the stuff.

how impacting it is depends on how your game was written and for what device, as that defines to what degree scripting is an option at all to you.

#6 Actually, I've found with tbe 3rd gen ipod Touch that I can a do lot in script and it still runs fast enough, at least with my game. Initially I was a bit disappointed with the performance of the engine as a whole, but it runs very nicely on the 3rd gen devices even with a lot of scripting. I'm not doing anything heavy in script though, just game logic.

I did a lot of porting to C++, and this helped a lot and made the game run a lot more smoothly on the 2nd gen iPod, but the difference wasn't really that noticeable on the 3rd Gen. With the 1st gen, even porting to C++ didn't help much, and 20-25 fps is about the best I can get out of it.

In future, I'm anticipating that I will be able to do a lot in script, especially for 3rd and 4th gens, and beyond. At least that's what I'm hoping.

#7 the 3rd gen device has a new cpu, a faster cpu and one with a magnitude more cache ... 3 important beneficial factors for TS :)

thats why ipad and iphone 4 are even stronger. their cpu is another 66% faster and actually higher than the min reqs for tgb

#8 Yes, I'm excited about the iPhone 4, and looking forward to the next iPod touch. Also, the larger d/l size of 20 MB for the apps store makes a big difference too. The mobile world is starting to look very interesting!

I've only had my 3rd gen iPod a couple of weeks, and I'm really impressed with it.

#9 :-)
Have had the 3rd gen itouch since last autumn cause I want / need a test device of every generation to be able to test stuff when doing contract work. "should theoretically" is among those sentences I try to avoid unless there is just not enough practical data collected to have any kind of certainity.

The 20mb on the other hand are nice but its important to keep in mind that the ipad likely has helped there cause the ipad commonly uses 4 times the amount of pixels sized assets in case of games, without a raise any kind of game would basically have been totally impossible for ipad 3G ;)


I'm looking forward to the iphone 4 as the 3G iphone is getting kind of slow. question will just be by when I can early upgrade and pack up another 2 year fixed contract ($40 / month for the iphone contract)

#10 @dan I use torsion a lot! I do lots of stuff on the PC, use torsion to edit the torquescript. It works pretty well on the mac as well. There is a caveat, to use the latest xcode etc targeting iPad iPhone 4.0 you need to use SnowLeopard 10.6.2. WineBottler does not yet work under 10.6.2.

I guess apple gets away with this because their market share is so small. If Microsoft required the latest version of W7 to do development there would be rioting in the streets.

#11 It would work out on windows too and I actually would welcome a drop of any software support for pre XP / 2k3 software asap.

Microsoft just does not do it cause it binds users much better than apples "we give a shit, go and pay again to use your payed software" approach

#12 @Dan on the mac I use this in xcode, not as good as torsion but better than nothing.

http://www.torquepowered.com/community/resources/view/15089

You haven't given up on TX have you?

#13 thanks guys
I'll get Torsion

@Henry:I think maybe so- TGB editor has so much more- just bought an Ipad
c# was a lot simpler but this time I'll pay for programming

I can't think of what to put on the XBOX,- my sprites look dumb in HD

#14 Can anyone tell me why you'd pay for Torsion when TorqueDev is free?

www.torquedev.com/

#15 anyone gonna answer O'Kane?
seems like a good question :)

#16 Last update - May 2009? :)

#17 Thats no reason, cause Torsion was last updated in 08 or alike (around TGEA 1.7 and TGB 1.5)
newer betas etc existed but no newer version was released that included those nice new beta functionality.

So the date is really of least importance, the features, stability and performance is (especially when you want to run it in a virtualized environment under osx)

#18 Dan - I'd say try them both and see which you prefer. If you end up liking Torsion more then I guess it's worth the money. It's not that expensive really.

TorqueDev runs nicely under VMWare by the way, I use it all the time on my 2008 macbook.

#19 I purchased Torsion long before I even knew there was a torquedev.

This is all such a misery though to try and use it on the mac. Oh this one works if you use some convoluted install process (winebottler) well ok it works, sorta. Its still not really native has issues with the filesystem. Then the other one works if you use VMWare? So you have a fairly expensive program to run a free program? I dont use VMware I have a pc.

So really you don't have much you can do with editing on the mac. Maybe Sickhead can be influenced to make a mac version, or netMercs.

I just tried installing TorqueDev on the mac using winebottler, two tries and no deal.

EDIT: OK here is the netmercs page www.netmercs.net/Index.html so I doubt there will be any more updates to TorqueDev

#20 This is misery.
I can't get iTGB to do anything consistently.
Is it because I'm on a Mac? Should I be using iTGB for windows?
Or is it because I'm trying right away for the IPad.
I can deploy to my Ipad, but it never updates my scene properly or at all. (but sometimes it does, magically)
Clean targets, reload project, rebuild, delete old app on Ipad before deploying, add resolution code fixes...
Still causes issues- it's unusable. Does iTGB camera even work?
Sorry for the rant boys-

Is someone else doing Ipad via iT2D on Mac?
I don't have torsion yet, but that shouldn't affect deployment of my scene artwork?