GDC, TGB, You and Me

Okay, so it's been a month since GDC, but I have to admit that I'm still recovering. The deluge of e-mails that follow such a huge gathering of developers is always a bit overwhelming. I got back to my desk on February 25th, looked down at my gi-normous pile of business cards, and didn't even know where to start. It was invaluable meeting so many Torque owners. I talked about every subject imaginable: what's cool about Torque, what sucks about Torque, casual games, WiiWare and XBLA games, you name it, I discussed it. It was awesome to meet so many of you and I hope to continue passing notes back and forth as you finish projects. (Hint: I love prototypes, alphas, betas, and all sorts of early versions of games! Send them my way! ^_^)

It really is true that you learn something new every day, but that goes triple for every day spent at GDC. For someone like me who is supposed to be an expert on what's going on with Torque, it's amazing to discover just what I don't know. Because it would be impossible for me to discuss everything, I'm going to limit myself to Torque Game Builder-related topics. But for those of you who ninja'ed other information on Torque out there, feel free to reply to my blog and let the world know.

Interesting TGB Tidbit #1: GarageGames has no idea how many games have been made with TGB.

It's embarrassing, but true. I've been trying really hard in the past few months to compile a list of everything made with Torque, and I felt pretty good walking into GDC. It's not so bad having your bubble burst for such a good reason. Here are two games I discovered at GDC that you might find interesting:

Creative Kingdom's Bubble Warrior: A fun side-scroller game where you play characters from the popular Thai cartoon of the same name. The game is still in active development and should have more playable characters soon. I ended up chatting with two guys from Creative Kingdom about their use of TGB to make Bubble Warrior. They are planning on making more commercially-licensed games for Thailand TV using TGB. I'm looking forward to seeing what they cook up next.

Thai studio Creative Kingdom lights up with Bubble Warrior

Eric Robinson's Kanji Kami: If you're interested in learning Japanese, like I am, than Kanji Kami is for you. Players take on the role of Matsuo Basho as they collect kanji characters with targetted radicals. Not only is the game beautifully stylized, it also promotes learning kanji in a much more accessible way than strict memorization. Eric Robinson, the guy who created Kanji Kami, and I ended up talking quite a bit in the booth. We found out that we both taught English in Japan on the same program, and that we both ended up using our time abroad to pursue our true passions: he made this game, and I wrote a novel.

Learn Japanese with poet Basho in Kanji Kami

Because of GDC, I've added about a dozen or so projects to the Powered by Torque list, and I'm adding to it all the time. If you notice anything missing on the list, please e-mail me and I'll add it on, ASAP.

Interesting TGB Tidbit #2: Platformers are the gateway drug into 2D game dev.

At GDC, there is a good mix of new and experienced game developers running around. Because part of my mission at GDC was to find interns for GarageGames, I ended up talking to a lot to aspiring game developers. There was an overwhelming number of students who choose 2D in order to make platformers. In fact, we got a little flack because so many students wanted to make a platformer, but the current TGB documentation and tutorials have very little support for that type of game.

I can hear Phillip O'Shea doing a happy dance right now because he just released the TGB Platformer Kit on the GarageGames site. Honestly, he couldn't have been working on this project at a better time. Here's another example of one of our awesome community members filling a need before we even saw it. Thanks a bunch, Phillip!

A Demon smiles with large bottom teeth in the TGB Platformer Kit

Interesting TGB Tidbit #3: There's a ton of TGB documentation if you know where to look.

Probably the most valuable thing I observed at GDC was the different way people liked to play around with our game engines. After watching people for two days, I saw a few patterns emerge and wrote down all the different ways people had tried to learn TGB for the first time. I was able to try out my new list on the last day in the booth, when one college professor approached me and wanted to know how he could learn TGB not only for himself, but also to teach his students. Here are the different places I told him he could start:

• 1. Go through the official TGB tutorials: You can find them by going to the "Help" drop down menu in TGB, clicking on "Documentation," and clicking on "Behavior Tutorials" and "Tutorials" in the left drop-down menu. Depending on what game you want to make, you can go through each tutorial in order, or you can pick and choose which ones are most appropriate to your game. These documents are available even if you are off-line.

Expandable lists make it easy to access official TGB Tutorials


• 2. Check out the TGB tutorials on TDN: Besides the official docs listed above, we also have a great page of tutorials you can find on the Torque Developer's Network, our community-managed wiki. HUGE props go out to Mike Lilligreen for largely taking over the maintenance of this part of TDN. To give you an example of this guy's work, he ported over GarageGames's Rainy Day Tutorial to TDN within 24 hours of Derek Bronson posting it. Lightning fast!

In the spirit of helping people learn tutorials, I also took a few hours and made this video version of the Rainy Day Tutorial. Feel free to check it out and give me feedback on whether it's useful to you!

Mike Lilligreen, we salute you on TDN's TGB page


• 3. Tinker around on the Behavior Playground Demo: For those people who have programming experience, I suggest modifying the Behavior Playground Demo that comes with TGB. Behaviors are little bits of functionality you can assign to an object, and they make TGB easier to use because you can simply assign script files to different objects to make them behave in a similar manner. To open the Behavior Playground, go to the place where you installed TGB, then click on the following path: Games > Behavior Playground > project.t2dProj. The script files for all the behaviors in the demo are under the "Behaviors" folder, so once you want to figure out how something works in TorqueScript, you can easily find its script file in the folder.

So many objects to play with in the Playground


• 4. Make a friend on our community forums: The above three suggestions will get you pretty far, but you'll need help at some point. That's where our community comes in. If you don't own TGB, you can access free user forums to ask questions as you use trial version of TGB. Once you own TGB, you can access a more comprehensive forum community.

You've got questions? The TGB forum guys have answers

Ultimately, I'm grateful I had the chance to meet so many of you at GDC. For those of you that couldn't make it, feel free to drop me a line (deborahm AT garagegames DOT com) and start an on-line conversation with me. I'm not going to know what's on your mind unless you talk to me. And as great as GDC is, it's just not feasible to meet everyone at any one event. I hope you stick around and add your name to this list of people who are proud to use TGB to make their own games. And stay tuned as we have more in store for this great 2D engine.