[casual_games] Casual Tools?

[Andrew Lum]

All of the games we've done at Fugazo (Fashion Fits, Cooking Academy, 
World Mosaics) have used the PopCap Framework.

However, as far as I know there are no longer providing updates to the 
framework so at this point we're making our own changes to the Framework 
to suit our needs. The only requirements for PopCap are to list the 
framework in the credits.

If I'm mistaken and PopCap is still providing updates to the Framework 
please let me know!

Andrew Lum

Jeff Murray wrote:

> Hey Aaron .. Good surname – I don’t think we’re related ;)

>

> Off the top of my head, here are the ones I would consider...

>

> Unity3d – Excellent 3d engine and awesome support. Downside is 

> Mac-only authoring, but well worth the switch. Not too great on UI or 

> 2d at the moment, though, so UI-intensive games may be a pain to 

> implement. Extremely nice to use and you can get things up and running 

> very quickly.

>

> Popcap framework – If you want to go the C++ route, there are a few 

> frameworks available and Popcap is probably the most well-known of 

> them. There’s also Playground and a few other good ones, though be 

> sure to read the licensing agreements carefully first. You are certain 

> to get great looking, polished results as long as you’re willing to 

> put in the extra coding time.

>

> Flash – Flash is absolutely awesome for 2d games, though it can be a 

> little tricky with performance when you get into the more complex 

> eye-candy. Hopefully that will change with the new Flash version, 

> which allegedly has hardware rendering capability. We’ve produced a 

> lot of Flash games, though mainly advergames or mini-games as opposed 

> to full-blown titles.

>

> Director is still pretty good for download games and can be a solid 

> solution as long as you aren’t asking for too much because of the 

> dated engine. It’s got an uncertain future, sadly, as it used to be a 

> leader in the field.

>

> BlitzMax – Nice little engine (very low cost) mainly for 2d games, but 

> I think someone wrote a 3d plugin. Ideal for budget projects, but can 

> be a little cumbersome due to it’s custom language implementation.

>

> Torque Game Builder – Very cool for getting things going fast, though 

> if you want to do things that aren’t ‘out of the box’ you may have to 

> dig into the engine code a little more than you might like.

>

> Torque Game Engine – Great for 3d budget games, but the engine is a 

> little dated and source code is messy and can be awkward to work with. 

> We’ve produced two retail titles with TGE and the game engine side has 

> always proved to be that way.

>

> C4 Game Engine – I haven’t actually used it, but I hear good things. 

> Seems like a nice budget-level engine.

>

> Gamebryo Casual – Gamebryo now have a casual version of their AAA 

> level game engine. Licencing costs may be out of reach for smaller 

> studios, but you can guarantee that it’s going to be a high class 

> result. As this is C++ coding, though, it may mean an extended 

> production cycle compared to something like Unity or Flash.

>

> As for audio, a friend of mine recently found and passed on a link to 

> this awesome audio library, specifically designed for casual games ... 

> http://somaengineering.com/demo_video.html

>

> Sadly, I don’t know what the licensing costs are yet and I haven’t 

> been able to check it out fully. Definitely something I want to look 

> into, since it gives your audio guys complete control over game audio 

> and gives them a lot of freedom to create more dynamic audioscapes.

>

> JeffM

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-- 
Andrew Lum
andrew at fugazo.com
www.fugazo.com
P: 206-349-7805
F: 206-568-3455
CEO, President
Fugazo, Inc.