Is TGB a good choice for realtime strategy?
by Darian Hickman · in Torque Game Builder · 10/03/2006 (12:22 am) · 2 replies
I'm trying to figure out what is the wiser platform (TGB or TGE) for developing Village the Game, a realtime strategy game similar to SimCity. After running through a few of the TGB and TGE tutorials I came up with a lot of questions for using TGB to build a realtime strategy game:
Is there is RTS starter kit for Torque Game Builder?
How much do the networking modules overlap between TGE and TGB?
Is there some ridiculously simple way to render a minimap from the bigger 2D map in Game Builder?
What are price and time differences between developing low polygon 3D art and high polygon 2D sprites? Do you have any artists/companies you would recommend for developing the artwork?
Is there some kind of TGB lightweight class for player units like there is in the RTS starter kit?
Are there hooks built into either engine that make it easy to communicate with a webserver? I want to explore building the lobby code as an AJAX application.
None of the TGB demos are RTS style games. Do you know of anyone who has built an RTS game in TGB?
Thanks in advance for helping me with this research.
Is there is RTS starter kit for Torque Game Builder?
How much do the networking modules overlap between TGE and TGB?
Is there some ridiculously simple way to render a minimap from the bigger 2D map in Game Builder?
What are price and time differences between developing low polygon 3D art and high polygon 2D sprites? Do you have any artists/companies you would recommend for developing the artwork?
Is there some kind of TGB lightweight class for player units like there is in the RTS starter kit?
Are there hooks built into either engine that make it easy to communicate with a webserver? I want to explore building the lobby code as an AJAX application.
None of the TGB demos are RTS style games. Do you know of anyone who has built an RTS game in TGB?
Thanks in advance for helping me with this research.
#2
Check here: http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/49241/10457 Neo is working on an isometric pack for RPG and it should be ok for RTS.
I make a lot of WW2 era 2d sprites using Rhino 3d to model, Flamingo renderer plug in for rhino and Im just playing with Bongo animator for rhino now. I render these and save as png with alpha. I used to use tools for compiling these that were made specifically for Sudden Strike by the Sudden Strike community but I am now investigating using sprite sheets. I will be testing glueit this weekend. Once I have the sprite sheet issue solved, importing into TGB is easy as ;).
Edit: Just tried Glueit and its perfect, made 32 200x200 png's with alpha's into a sprite sheet perfectly, then straight into TGB with all alpha's and no image degredation, tested the scene and no problem.
Cheers
Paul.
10/12/2006 (12:32 am)
Hi Darian,Check here: http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/49241/10457 Neo is working on an isometric pack for RPG and it should be ok for RTS.
I make a lot of WW2 era 2d sprites using Rhino 3d to model, Flamingo renderer plug in for rhino and Im just playing with Bongo animator for rhino now. I render these and save as png with alpha. I used to use tools for compiling these that were made specifically for Sudden Strike by the Sudden Strike community but I am now investigating using sprite sheets. I will be testing glueit this weekend. Once I have the sprite sheet issue solved, importing into TGB is easy as ;).
Edit: Just tried Glueit and its perfect, made 32 200x200 png's with alpha's into a sprite sheet perfectly, then straight into TGB with all alpha's and no image degredation, tested the scene and no problem.
Cheers
Paul.
Torque Owner Thomas Buscaglia
There is a slightly outdated, but fairly in-depth tutorial on creating RTS games with TGB. There is also an isometric-style adventure pack out that would probably be very useful.
2) How much do the networking modules overlap between TGE and TGB?
TGB has TorqueNet Lite, which is a simplified version of TGE's networking layer without ghosting. To make a typical real-time strategy game with TGB you would most likely want to go with TGB Pro and add in specific RTS networking functionality.
3) Is there some ridiculously simple way to render a minimap from the bigger 2D map in Game Builder?
Yes. It would be a matter of creating a simple gui file using the tools and then about three lines of script.
4) What are price and time differences between developing low polygon 3D art and high polygon 2D sprites?
I'm not sure what you mean by 'high polygon 2D sprites' as all sprites are just quads, but generally speaking 2D art is quicker to produce and requires less technical skill, so in most cases would be less expensive to contract out. Of course this depends on the style of your game and the level of detail of the art.
5) Do you have any artists/companies you would recommend for developing the artwork?
Sorry, I don't personally.
6) Is there some kind of TGB lightweight class for player units like there is in the RTS starter kit?
No. There are a lot of examples on TDN on how to create different control objects and manipulate scene objects.
7) Are there hooks built into either engine that make it easy to communicate with a webserver?
Many games made using both TGE and TGB have had functionality to do this, so it's undoubtedly possible. I'm not sure if it comes built in, but it would be incredibly easy to add (again, with TGB you might need Pro).
8) None of the TGB demos are RTS style games. Do you know of anyone who has built an RTS game in TGB?
Again, there is an RTS tutorial, though outdated, up on TDN that covers lots of the aspects of RTS games such as character selection, camera control, unit movement, etc.