[casual_games] Torque? Popcap? Or DIY?

[Ron Carmel]

i also have a personal story to relate about frameworks.  my business
partner and i started out using popcap because we wanted to run on
non-hardware accelerated platforms and popcap has a solid software
renderer.  as time went by, we realized we're not going to get the quality
we want using software rendering, and started relying on hardware
acceleration, making popcap's big advantage irrelevant for us.

not much after that, we realized we will want to port our game to wii and
ran into a dead end with popcap.  i ended up spending about two weeks
abstracting away all the popcap specific stuff (sound, rendering, input,
timing, threads) behind high level interfaces.  i then spent another two
weeks reimplementing those interfaces with SDL, Direct3D, and BASS (great
library, ~$150 for a shareware license).  when we port to wii, it will just
be another implementation of the same interfaces, though it'll probably take
more than two weeks because i don't have any experience with wii.

writing a framework/engine for our relatively simple 2D needs wasn't as hard
or complicated as i thought, and i'm very pleased with the result.  the fact
that the game was already in good shape helped a lot, it was like the
ultimate unit test.  i implemented subsystems one at a time so the game kept
running on a hybrid framework implementation as i transitioned from popcap
to SDL/D3D/BASS.

also, it was FUN!  i derived a lot of satisfaction from getting it "just
right", something i never had the time to do when i worked under production
deadlines.  if getting this done had taken six months i would have
considered it a bad choice -- much better to have gone with an existing
framework and focus on the game.  but a month, and a fun one at that, was a
small price to pay for opening the door to an in-house multi-platform game
framework that does exactly what i need it to do.  an added benefit is that
since the interfaces are clean and the subsystems well encapsulated we will
be able to easily outsource the porting of the framework to other platforms.

if you're confident that you can do it, and you think you'll enjoy it, and
you can afford the extra development time i would recommend rolling your
own.  just be realistic about your schedule and don't reinvent the wheel.

ron

On 10/26/07, Michael Lee <michael.lee at ludoko.com> wrote:

>

>  First, some quick background info. A friend and I recently started a game

> dev studio a few months ago and decided as our first game project we'd do a

> simple implementation of Picross with the goal of completing such a project

> in a few months. To facilitate this goal after some research and advice we

> decided to use Torque Game Builder as a game engine, that way we wouldn't

> have to worry about creating our own engine and instead could focus on

> building art assets, filling the game with content, and ultimately pushing

> the game out in a short time span.

>

>

>

> So now a few months later we've succeeded in that goal and just

> self-published our game, Simple Picross, this week. Overall I want to say

> working with TGB was an "interesting" experience especially dealing with

> some major issues with the latest releases. It required some fair

> modification of the source code and frankly without access to the source

> there would be no way the project could have been completed.

>

>

>

> We're deep into developing our second title which is also using TGB, but

> we've started doing some longer planning for future projects and I'm

> beginning to wonder if using Torque is a long-term viable solution. I know

> there are a few larger casual game studios that use some variation of Torque

> or TGB including Large Animal Games and PocketWatch, but it definitely

> doesn't seem to a real popular choice. Additionally, in the few e-mails I've

> had with publishers/portals and just by general comments I see around the

> web it seems a lot of portals and publishers would rather you didn't use

> Torque. And the buggy releases of Torque haven't given me a great impression

> and I don't see why it would improve in the short-term.

>

>

>

> Basically we're newbies to this and I'd like to get some idea what people

> with more experience than I have think. Should I just continue using Torque?

> Should I switch to some of the more popular choices out there like the

> Popcap framework? Or should I just bite the bullet and develop our own

> internal solution? I don't mind having to learn something new, I'm just more

> concerned about going with a choice that makes it easier for us when working

> with other people in the future.

>

>

>

> Thanks

>

>

>

> Michael Lee

>

> Ludoko Studios

>

> http://ludoko.com

>

>

>

> _______________________________________________

> Casual_Games mailing list

> Casual_Games at igda.org

> http://www.igda.org/casual-subscribe

> Archive: http://www.igda.org/casual-subscribe

> Archive Search:

> http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=010373383720242846960%3Az3tdwggxil8

> List FAQ:

> http://www.igda.org/wiki/index.php/Casual_Games_SIG/Casual_Games_List_FAQ

>

>



-- 
"make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one
less scoundrel in the world." -- thomas carlyle
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/casual_games/attachments/20071030/397c9d4d/attachment.htm>