Blog for Keith Johnston at GarageGames.com

Vacation - Time to Relax and Start a New Game

Keith Johnston — 2006-11-09T02:59:40+00:00

So I finally took the plunge - I took 3 days off from my day job to relax, unwind, and start working on my new game idea with TGB.

TGB is so incredibly easy to work with - I am amazed at how fast I am making progress. Of course, it does help already knowing TorqueScript.

I am trying hard to take an object-oriented approach with this game. I've found "The Game Programmer's Guide to Torque" *very* useful in understanding exactly how ScriptObjects and SimSets work for example. I'm using these all over the place now. It is my goal to make the game completely in TorqueScript to ease portability.

I did already have to add one engine change in - I needed a 2D text object (not a GUI component). This resource provided that functionality: www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=1013.... I hope that this becomes part of the standard TGB at some point.

Something else I am finding very helpful this time - I used to use JEdit for editing scripts but I was not very happy with the interface. Now I am using Eclipse, with this wonderful TorqueScript plugin that provides syntax coloring: www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=7200.

I made good progress these last 3 days - nothing ready to show yet, but its getting there.

The 2D Renaissance: Flash vs. TGB

Keith Johnston — 2006-09-02T15:36:26+00:00

I have an idea for a 2D game that I've been kicking around for some time now. At first I thought I would use TGB, but at the time it was not nearly at the level that it is now, so I started looking into Flash.

After studying Flash for a while now, I am ready to come back to TGB. What changed my mind?

1. Flash was originally designed for making animations, and it shows. Everything revolves around the "MovieClip" object, and it does have some impressive capabilities. But it really feels like you are stretching the bounds of the framework when making a game with MovieClips as the fundamental object. I took at look at their new toolkit Flex as well - there they are trying to make a new UI platform for rich Internet applications using GUI components built out of MovieClips. I think it is interesting, but it seems sluggish to me - again I think the strain of bending the Movie framework to do other things is showing.

2. The Flash community is split. While there are a few sites and books dedicated to making Flash games, most of the books and sites are on making movies and animations. The TGB community is dedicated to making games and that's it.

3. Super Mario DS: I just got a DS and finished playing the Super Mario Bros. game. I completely missed out on the NES / N64 consoles so this was my first Super Mario Game that I've played all the way through. What really struck me was the fantastic blend of 3D characters in a 2D environment. I would not have thought that it would make that big a difference, but it really did. The characters seem so much more alive and real than in the old sprite based games. Good luck trying to integrate 3D characters into a Flash game (again, I'm sure its possible, but prob. a lot more work than in TGB).

4. Flash seems to have variable performance. I know some people have made some really performant Flash games, but I'm worried that it will be tough to make a smooth game with it.

5. ActionScript vs. TorqueScript + TorqueX/C#. OK, ActionScript is a really nice language - very object oriented. But C# kicks its ass. And with TorqueX on top of XNA, I'll have TorqueScript PLUS a complete feature-rich OO language.

6. TorqueX on the 360. This was the killer blow to Flash. Perhaps MS will support Flash on the XBox at some point, but for now their strategy seems focused on XNA. And TorqueX will be right there on top of it. So if I use TGB to build my game, an XBox version becomes that much more of a real possibility.

So anyway, I thought I'd throw up my first ever blog entry on GG to show how pumped I am about TGB, TorqueX, and the direction GG is going. And also to help anyone else who is trying to decide between Flash and TGB. As I get further into this project I'll post more about it. (Hehe - I guess this is my 3rd blog post - it's been so long since I posted anything I had forgotten).

Thursday Oct 16 1:24

Keith Johnston — 2003-10-16T01:24:09+00:00

IGC Rocked

IGC 03' was fantastic. It was great once again to meet with such a group of dedicated gamers.

I really appreciated those who played TubeTwist, and your feedback will definitely change the direction we will take the game. IGC provided a great usability lab for testing the game, and I realize now that the game has too steep a learning curve.

The most frustrating thing for me was to watch someone start up the game, play around with it, and then exit - not having even played the game. Lesson learned - make the first levels of a puzzle so trivial that all you have to do is push a single button to 'go'. :-)

The best thing was that the two things we had concentrated on in the last few weeks - the camera controls and the look of the tubes, seemed to be well received. I think the areas we need to concentrate on for the final release are:
- ordering the puzzles so the 2-D puzzles come first
- fixing the piece placement bugs
- making it easier to place new pieces: switch from drag and drop to select-and-click, and show where the new piece will go before the user clicks on it
- clean up the UI so that the controls are even more obvious

I loved Jeff's slide from the keynote: "If you don't innovate, you're dead, and if you do innovate, you're dead". I know that what we are trying to do in TubeTwist is new - we just have to work to make it not "too new".

Keith