Considering Programming Languages
by Tyler Stach · in Technical Issues · 01/02/2006 (11:59 am) · 1 replies
Would it be a good idea to program a game in Torque, or should I really go learn OpenGL and buy all the nescessary compilers first? I want to make it a good game and I'm not sure if Torque Script has the power to do what I need it to do...
Also: I didn't want to start another post to ask this question. Are the namespaces like $pref::Video::displayDevice "property" of the Torque Engine or are they part of the Torque Common Library?
Also: I didn't want to start another post to ask this question. Are the namespaces like $pref::Video::displayDevice "property" of the Torque Engine or are they part of the Torque Common Library?
Associate David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake
Torque's source code is in C++, a super-set of the C programming language. It uses OpenGL as its graphics interface. It also uses DirectX on Windows through a GL wrapper. TorqueScript is a scripting language within the Torque Engine which allows rapid prototyping features for game logic. Just about every language can hook into Open GL or DirectX, though most of them utilize an interface originally programmed in C or C++ to bridge the gap.
Compiling the GL examples can be done in Visual Studio, XCode, Eclipse, etc. TGE can be compiled in Visual Studio, XCode, Eclipse, etc.
Your experience, the experience of your team, the game you are designing, budget, and the realistic ability to create it (as opposed to the desire to make it) will determine your engine selection, tool selection, and language selection. If you have experience building games/engines from the ground up and like BASIC syntax, BlitzMax, Blitz3D, PureBasic, or DarkBASIC may be good choices. If you are primarily concerned with rendering, OGRE, Irrlicht, Nebula 2 or TSE would be engines to help you out. If networking is a huge requirement, TGE is one of the best out there (though networking is a widely divergent field and different types of networking models are implemented in very different games). If your art requirements will take a team of 100 artists thirty years to create assets of the quality you require, then you'll need to reconfigure your project.
The best things to ask yourself (and be honest with yourself about) is "what is my experience?" "What type of game am I creating?" "What type of game is it modeled after?" "How many names were in the development credits and what was the budget of the exemplary title?" "How can I cut corners?" "How many people are on my team?" "How much do I have to spend on the tools necessary to make the game I want?" "What skills do I need to make the game I want (what do I have to learn?)?" "Do I have to learn a programming language from scratch?" "Which language would best facilitate the type of game and target audience?" "What is my target audience and platform?"