Game Development Community

CodeOnce?

by CodingChris · in Torque Game Engine · 05/21/2007 (6:59 am) · 5 replies

Hi,
I've got a question: There will be a version of Torque Game Engine Advanced for developing XBOX360 games, would there be a version of Torque Game Engine for developing XBOX360 games, too? What about CodeOnce(would it be part of the next torque version)?
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Torque Owner Matt Vitelli
#1
05/21/2007 (7:39 am)
If I understand correctly, CodeOnce is just the idea that all the engines are written under similar architecture. TGE to TGEA is pretty much a painless process. TGEA for the Xbox 360 is probably similar though the architecture is probably somewhat different. Oh well though, it's very unlikely that 99% of the community will ever see the code since you have to be an approved Microsoft developer.

Edit: TGEA for the Xbox 360 already exists, you just need to be a licensed developer with a nice indie budget to access it.

Torque 3D Owner CodingChris
#2
05/22/2007 (5:24 am)
You mean as an indie I cannot make games for the XBOX360?

I think I can. There's XNA Creator Club(http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/xna/bb219592.aspx)

Torque Owner Tim Heldna
#3
05/22/2007 (5:41 am)
What Matt means is that you need A LOT of cash (upwards of $10, 000) upfront; to get anything PUBLISHED on any of the Xbox platforms. I believe both TGE and TGEA can be ported to Xbox however this requires the purchase of an additional, separate license from GG and it's not a matter of "code once". I.e. you will need to PORT your game to the Xbox platform and that's only if you have been able to obtain a license from GG, have the funds, have a completed game working on PC and the game is interesting enough for them.

XNA does not give you the rights to publish or distribute, it only allows you to build, develop and test Xbox games on your PC. It also requires a yearly fee of around $99. It uses managed code (C#) and at the moment the only product that GG have that runs on this platform is the Torque X engine, which is only for 2D games and is basically a reworked version of TGB.

If you're looking for another Xbox engine alternative, look here: Blade3d

Associate Manoel Neto
Default Studio Name
#4
05/22/2007 (5:44 am)
XNA Creator Club is different than Torque 360. You can use both to create games, but the circumstances are different.

XNA Creator Club is a service offered by Microsoft that allows you to run your XNA-made games on the Xbox 360 through a cable (you can't run the games off a DVD). Only Creator Club subscribers can execute the games on their consoles and they need the game source code to do so, so you simply cannot make commercial 360 games this way.

Torque 360 is a port of TGEA to be used with the official Xbox 360 SDK to create commercial Xbox 360 or Xbox Live Arcade games. Since the Xbox 360 platform layer depends on the official SDK libraries and headers you need to be a licensed Xbox 360 developer before you can license Torque 360, since those files and the related documentation are under Microsoft's NDAs.

Employee David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake
#5
05/22/2007 (7:16 am)
CodeOnce is the buzzname for TorqueScript. Code it once in TorqueScript and it will compile on the various platforms (not TorqueX) to which TGE/A belong. Which includes TGEA360, I believe (I do not know personally because I do not have an official XBox 360 dev kit, a license to Torque 360, or the money for either one).

However, if you make any changes to the underlying C++ code, you will have to make sure that you are very careful and debug it thoroughly since the C++ code is not part of the CodeOnce ideology.