SGreth
Shared on Wed, 02/07/2007 - 13:13So, I got a great idea from a friend of mine to create a pinball game. I cooked up a good table layout, designed an awesome theme and started doing some template artwork. Then I did my first bit of prototype work with Torqe Game Builder. Let's just say the physics for a pinball game leave much to be desired. I hit a show-stopper bug about 45 minuets into testing (the ball falls through the lane guides when it's moving slow enough..). After doing some research it turns out they didn't really put time into doing a full-blown physics simulation that is available via many other (free) 3rd party API's. If anyone recalls I was doing a 2D multi-player space-shooter with TGB only to find out their networking was practically non-existent. So...as you can tell I'm pretty unhappy with the product thus far.
At my day-job a good chunk of my time is spent making tools for other people to use. So, I have a little experience in the area of tools development. Naturally I have to wonder...what would it take to cook up my *own* 2D game builder?
1) No 'coding' is required - All 'coding' by the end-user is done via a scripting language
2) Excellent documentation - I'm talking about top-notch here. Examples, in-depth descriptions, quick-starts, the whole ball of wax.
3) Fully integrated networking (client-server and peer-to-peer)
4) Integrate with a 3rd party physics (and collision detection) library
5) GUI library
6) External debugging facilities (this will be dependent on the scripting language)
7) Level / GUI editors and asset management
8) 3D Sound (well, this is better described as "positional audio" since the engine is only 2D)
9) Keyboard / Joystick / Controller input
10) Particle effects
11) Way more that I don't want to list here ;)
The bulk of the work will be coming up with a quality editor. Since that is where the users will spend most of their time (except for writing scripts) it needs to be intuitive, have a good work flow, and be feature-rich.
Time to start thinking about details....
Picture of the day: (Nintendo valentine cards)
....By the way...if you don't get the last one...you don't belong on this site....shame on you.
At my day-job a good chunk of my time is spent making tools for other people to use. So, I have a little experience in the area of tools development. Naturally I have to wonder...what would it take to cook up my *own* 2D game builder?
1) No 'coding' is required - All 'coding' by the end-user is done via a scripting language
2) Excellent documentation - I'm talking about top-notch here. Examples, in-depth descriptions, quick-starts, the whole ball of wax.
3) Fully integrated networking (client-server and peer-to-peer)
4) Integrate with a 3rd party physics (and collision detection) library
5) GUI library
6) External debugging facilities (this will be dependent on the scripting language)
7) Level / GUI editors and asset management
8) 3D Sound (well, this is better described as "positional audio" since the engine is only 2D)
9) Keyboard / Joystick / Controller input
10) Particle effects
11) Way more that I don't want to list here ;)
The bulk of the work will be coming up with a quality editor. Since that is where the users will spend most of their time (except for writing scripts) it needs to be intuitive, have a good work flow, and be feature-rich.
Time to start thinking about details....
Picture of the day: (Nintendo valentine cards)
....By the way...if you don't get the last one...you don't belong on this site....shame on you.
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Comments
Submitted by BrokenDesign on Wed, 02/07/2007 - 14:23
Submitted by SGreth on Wed, 02/07/2007 - 14:46