Just Getting Started with TGB

Maurice Ribble — 2007-01-05T03:47:12+00:00

I bought TGB nearly a month ago, and I thought it was time for my first blog post on GG. Progress has been going great on the game logic for the space shooter I'm making. Art on the other hand is not going so well, but that's no surprise. I still haven't decided whether I am going to try and finish this game or use it solely as a learning experience. No matter what I decide, I should have a little playable demo in a few weeks with my crappy art. It has amazed me how fast I can make a game with TGB. It's a great product.

Now I want to talk about two tools I'm using that make TGB even more productive for me. I'm sure they're not new to the experienced programmers, but I think this information might be helpful to some of the newer game developers out there.

Torsion

Torsion is a nice text editor, but what really makes this tool shine is its ability to debug Garage Game script just like Visual Studio can debug C++ code. If you're new to programming and still think you don't need a debugger because you can use printf or echo, do yourself a favor and setup the Torsion debugger. I can't imagine how someone wouldn't see productivity improvements from using a debugger. Really, even if you don't think a debugger is for you, try one. If you don't like Torsion for some reason try another one. You will thank me.

It took me less than half an hour to download this tool and get the debugger running. It might take some people a little longer, but it's an easy tool to use.

Tortoise

Tortoise is a source control tool that integrates into windows explorer. It allows you to efficiently keep a record of all the changes you've made to your code, art, and any other data files you want to track. It keeps a database of all the previous versions of all the files so you can revert back to any version at any time. It also has tools, such as the merging tool, which make it easy for multiple team members to work on the same project without fear of anciently overwriting changes. Most of the time people keep their data base online so that the whole team can access it, but I use it even for individual projects and just keep the database locally in a directory that I backup. I find it gives me ease of mind when making changes since I can always go back to the previous version. Also when I submit my changes to the database I write a little blurb telling me what the changes are so I have a record of the work I do.

If you've never used any source control tools you will need to take some time reading about how this tool works. I use perforce at work so I knew the basics of source control and because of that it took me less than an hour to setup Tortoise. If you like command line tools check out Subversion.

I love pictures so I have to include one of my current game. It's still under heavy development, but this screen shot captures a lot of what I've done so far. There is a black hole on the left. The light gray is the area affected by it's gravity. The play is shooting an enemy and another is about to hit him. The white square with a red X is the enemy base that constantly spawns out new enemies. Ummm, did I mention my artistic skills are lacking?

Blog for Maurice Ribble at GarageGames.com

Just Getting Started with TGB