What can be accomplished without scripting?
by Dan Thatcher · in Torque Game Builder · 06/30/2009 (4:49 pm) · 3 replies
I'm going to guess that this my question is on some FAQ somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. On the wikipedia page for TGB it says, "Torque Game Builder is the graphical editing suite that sits on top of the engine and allows easy access to some of the advanced engine features without the need to write code."
What I'm wondering is - just how much scripting is needed to build a 2d game in TGB? I suppose my next question is this - Is TGB the right platform for someone like me that is just simply trying to create prototypes that can be used to communicate what I need the real developers to build for me?
Now a little bit of background on me:
- I tried mightily to learn Flashes scripting language (Actionscript), but could never fully grasp it.
- I have zero experience as a programmer or scripter of any kind
- I'm a game designer with no on-shore development staff, so that means I have to be able to specify my game design to offshore developers.
Is TGB meant for me or people like me?
I'd love it if, along with answering my question, someone would point me in the direction of some entry level tutorials as I'm feeling lost on the gg site :-/
TIA
What I'm wondering is - just how much scripting is needed to build a 2d game in TGB? I suppose my next question is this - Is TGB the right platform for someone like me that is just simply trying to create prototypes that can be used to communicate what I need the real developers to build for me?
Now a little bit of background on me:
- I tried mightily to learn Flashes scripting language (Actionscript), but could never fully grasp it.
- I have zero experience as a programmer or scripter of any kind
- I'm a game designer with no on-shore development staff, so that means I have to be able to specify my game design to offshore developers.
Is TGB meant for me or people like me?
I'd love it if, along with answering my question, someone would point me in the direction of some entry level tutorials as I'm feeling lost on the gg site :-/
TIA
#3
I created the Platformer Starter Kit for users who are looking to develop a platform game. There are others though, the Adventure Kit and the Kart Kit. These packs will generally require *some* level of understanding of TGB and scripting, but they definitely do a lot of the work for you.
Also, the community here is great! There are so many really nice people here who are willing to put a great amount of effort in to help others.
Good luck Dan!
07/01/2009 (1:54 am)
It definitely depends on the type of game you are trying to make. If you are completely averse to scripting, you might want to checkout some of the addon packs available for TGB.I created the Platformer Starter Kit for users who are looking to develop a platform game. There are others though, the Adventure Kit and the Kart Kit. These packs will generally require *some* level of understanding of TGB and scripting, but they definitely do a lot of the work for you.
Also, the community here is great! There are so many really nice people here who are willing to put a great amount of effort in to help others.
Good luck Dan!
Nate Gertsch
As far as I can tell, the answer to your question is "It depends but probably not." (isn't that a great answer for anything?). As I understand what you're asking, you don't really want to create a full game without using torque script but you only want to create a prototype to show to other people. Whether or not you can do this in TGB alone depends on how functional you want your prototype to be. If you're happy with just items moving around on the screen with very simple physics, then you can do that with TGB but if you want anything like binding keys to actions, custom responses when events occur or dynamically changing something on the screen, then you'll have to use scripting. TGB doesn't remove the need for scripting, it primary provides a nice framework that does a lot of the work for you. I found it easy to get into but I do have a programming background. My artist co-worker doesn't have a programming background but he's managed to do some minor stuff in script when he needed to.
I started with tutorials at http://docs.garagegames.com/tgb/official/ and I worked through them before I got started on my project. I found the fish tutorial quite helpful when first starting out.