Applying Torque to Game Development II
When I wrote my first entry about iTGB and GarageGames, I mentioned that I would do a second post detailing my actual experience using iTGB and my impressions of it. So this is where I do that 🙂
But before I get started on that, I should mention one thing – the people I talked to at GarageGames were not sales people. GG does not appear to have any sales people as such. Everybody appears to wear several hats at GG and the people I spoke to were involved in development and documentation as well as handling the workload on the support forums. This might be another reason why things were so chaotic and I, as a potential customer, wasn’t getting the answers I wanted. But then again, I heard from somebody else later who said that they got an immediate response from GG, so maybe it was just me 🙂
But enough of that, on to the actual evaluation of iTGB. Now the way GG appears to position iTGB is that anybody who can work with their demo version of TGB can get going on iTGB quite easily. Unfortunately, this is not quite the case. If you have some knowledge of XCode and know how to troubleshoot XCode projects and so on, then you can get iTGB to work after some fiddling around. The default project that they ship with iTGB is not configured correctly. If I recall correctly, it was compiling the application under one name but was trying to launch it after compilation as another name and so would always say something like “Application <name> is not found at this location” or something to that effect. This could potentially confuse a user who bought the app thinking that things just worked out of the box.
In fact, the whole feel of iTGB is that it’s not quite ready for primetime. It’ll work but only if you are willing to put the time and the work in. You might have to go trawling through the source code to figure things out. You might have to modify source code. You might have to search the GG forums till you find a solution. You might have to apply patches. And so on. It’s rather deceptive of GG to sell it as a complete product when they don’t appear to have a complete product nor are they willing to support customers who’ve purchased the product and are having trouble with it after they bought it.
For instance, there’s forum threads like this one where a customer bought iTGB based on the hype and found that the product did not work out of the box. That thread has not one but two new iTGB customers asking for help. Have any GG support folk responded there? No. At the time of this post, even a month after the original post by the customer, and despite me having pointed to that specific thread several times in my conversations with GG employees, nobody has bothered to answer their questions. The attitude at GG appears to be, “The answers are there on the forums. You just have to search for it.”
Yes, the answers are there on the forums. But there are a lot of forums to trawl through. And while some of us might do it, a lot of people will throw up their hands in disgust and move on. Given that there are no refunds for iTGB (or TGB for that matter) once you pay for it, a part of me can’t help but wonder if perhaps this is what GG wants. They might consider it an easy way to winnow the serious developers from the wannabes but it’s again not a good way to run a business and certainly not a good way to build customer loyalty.
Speaking of loyalty, there are users on the GG forums who respond to support threads more often than the GG employees do. Some of them, as I’ve seen, do take the time to answer newbie questions. Of course, some of these people also have frustrations with GG because they’re questions and comments are probably ignored for months on end. So they tend to tell you how things are when you talk to them – they’ll tell you the good and the bad. But the response of one GG employee to these comments was to say something like “I wouldn’t pay too much attention to his words – he spends so much time here dissing stuff but has does not submit any patches to fix things” or words to that effect.
Excuse me? A customer has to pay for your product and then also help you fix it because you shipped something substandard? Are you serious? Well, apparently GG is. Or at least, some of the people who work there are.
I don’t like to criticize for the sake of criticism and when I do criticize I try to also offer suggestions as to how things can be improved. I did so when I talked to GG and they did make the usual noises about “We’ll pas it on”, “This will be given serious though” etc. but nothing appears to have come of it. If this is the same treatment that the forum folks get on a day to day basis, then I can certainly understand their frustrations and anger.
But back to using iTGB. I worked out the main issues with compiling for the iPhone and managed to get their demo application working. I then started working on a project of my own. Setting things up for left-right or up-down movement and gameplay appeared fine. There were a few issues but overall it worked. And being able to set up a game scene visually was certainly a great boon. But when I wanted to get some of the physics working – such as have a cannon ball being fired from a cannon and moving according to the laws of physics, things didn’t work so smoothly. There are a lot of settings to get physics working and some of the settings would interfere with others. Sometimes I’d have things working right but at other times it wouldn’t work so well. It was a frustrating mess where I basically was reduced to changing a setting, compiling the game, running it to see how it operated, and then going back and changing another setting, and then repeating the whole process.
I finally gave up and did something I should have done in the first place before I got all caught up in the glamour of using a WYSIWYG game editor – I gave about a day of my time to cocos2D. I was able to achieve my aims quickly, in a manner which made sense and I didn’t have to go through a whole bunch of trial and error cycles. And since cocos2D is free, the price is definitely easier on the pocket than iTGB 🙂
If you are not a hard-core programmer and want something easy to work with, and don’t mind the outdated documentation, the lack of proper support, and the need to sort through various XCode issues before you can get started, iTGB still would probably work for you. But if you don’t mind working through a bit of code to get what you want and actually enjoy seeing how things work when you do your game, then cocos2D might be more your cup of tea (or coffee or brew of choice). Of course, it also depends on the kind of project you want to do … but in the end, my final conclusion has been that you just can’t beat the price of cocos2D. And as far as I can tell, it’s being developed much faster than the paid game creation solutions 🙂
5 Responses to Applying Torque to Game Development II ↓
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You were upset that you couldn’t get a source code demo for free, that you had to modify source code for your project and your conclusion, after everything, was to go with the free, open source solution framework with no tools? Haven’t dozens of games been made with the this tech that you’re saying isn’t “ready for primetime”? Didn’t Bioware use it for Mass Effect?
I’m shocked that you’re complaining about one of the very few companies that’s out there trying to provided productive tools for development on the most open, accessible platform there is today. Torque might not be easy enough to use for *everyone*, but I sure am glad that it’s there and the Torque team keeps working on it. The tools are awesome and the performance is fantastic considering that the full list of PC features are supported. I don’t think there’s any questions that for making 2D games, Torque’s got the very best solution.
Lots of other developers are doing *quite* well (http://www.garagegames.com/torquepowered/iphone-games), so it might be time to ask whether or not your issues are more to do with your skills than your tools.
Did the Torque guys respond to this blog at all? Offer you a refund?
First of all, use iTGB for iPhone development, then tell me if the product is ready for primetime or not or question my skills 🙂 Secondly, I’m not talking about TGB – it’s a good tool and appears to do what they claim it does and that’s what Bioware et al are using – not iTGB.
Incidentally, you come off as an employee of GarageGames or a sock puppet. You don’t say you’ve used iTGB, so what are your qualifications for defending it? You talk of TGB being used by Bioware and drop links to GG pages – would a casual reader know these things? Finally, you disparage Cocos2D for lack of tools – what tools are lacking? And how would you know it lacks tools? (Sure, you could be a game developer but in that case, most people start off with something like – “I’m a game developer myself and have been doing development for x number of years and I can tell you that based on my experience …” etc.
Sure, it’s possible to do a game with iTGB. Plenty of others have done so. I didn’t say it wasn’t usable … with a lot of effort. My gripe is with a company marketing a product that has so many little (and big) bugs in it. They market it saying that it makes game development easy for anybody and what I’ve seen is that many users who are new to development drink in the hype and pony up $750 for a product that they can’t use.
I wasn’t in the same boat – which is why I can go with Cocos2D and in fact, comparing the two, I find Cocos2D easier to use. But I do feel bad for all the people who get taken in by this false hype and the post simply intended to set the record straight.
As far as responding to anything, as I’ve mentioned, GarageGames isn’t big on responses, support, or any type of interaction. So that would be a “No” 🙂
“use iTGB for iPhone development”
Check. Done. Best tool I’ve used on the platform.
“Incidentally, you come off as an employee of GarageGames or a sock puppet.”
Cute. I like sock puppets. Next time I’ll drop my resume on you *blog* before posting comments. Didn’t know that was a prerequisite. My qualifications for defending it are that I’ve used it, presumably the same qualifications you boast for complaining about your experience with it.
“would a casual reader know these things?”
Maybe not, but someone who uses “the Google” would. I usually research the products I choose before using them.
“Finally, you disparage Cocos2D for lack of tools – what tools are lacking? And how would you know it lacks tools?”
It sounds like you’re affirming that there’s a lack of tools after asking me how I know? I know because I’ve used it. It’s a *very* nice framework. I’m not disparaging it. I’m comparing it’s utility with something different: tools that increase productivity.
“Sure, it’s possible to do a game with iTGB. Plenty of others have done so. I didn’t say it wasn’t usable … with a lot of effort.”
I see…I should have read your previous post first. You thought making games was easy? Or was supposed to be?
“My gripe is with a company marketing a product that has so many little (and big) bugs in it. They market it saying that it makes game development easy for anybody and what I’ve seen is that many users who are new to development drink in the hype and pony up $750 for a product that they can’t use.”
Hmmm…just checked out the web page for iTGB (or is it iT2D?) and I don’t see anything about “makes game development easy for anybody.” Of course they are going to say their tools are “intuitive” and make iPhone deployment “straightforward,” but these don’t seem like unreasonable claims to me, especially when you’re reading marketing-speak.
“I wasn’t in the same boat – which is why I can go with Cocos2D and in fact, comparing the two, I find Cocos2D easier to use.”
Cool. Bravo. It might be for your project. Notepad is easier to use than Word in some cases too.
“But I do feel bad for all the people who get taken in by this false hype and the post simply intended to set the record straight.”
False hype? Obviously posting your opinion on your own blog is fair game, but I assume you don’t mind your opinion challenged where readers disagree, no? Anyway, I regret bothering to comment since your response was to call me a “sock puppet” or Torque employee. No way anyone could disagree with you otherwise huh?
I see there is nothing productive to be gained in a discussion with you 🙂 Somebody who is actually trying to engage in a debate would come in and say something like “Hey, I’ve used the tool. It’s not as bad as you make it out to be – what about this, this and this?” Whereas you appear to think that the only way to engage in a debate is to come ask borderline-insulting questions about the qualifications of the person making the post because obviously, you know best and nobody else can have an opinion – the same thing you accuse me of, incidentally. It’s the attitude which you show which makes me question whether you’re a sock puppet since it didn’t sound like a debate to me – you came in guns blazing. Of course, I do acknowledge that you can’t read emotion in a text-based communication, so my apologies if I misread your intent. But the fact still stands that your tone was aggressive from word one and that you consistently misinterpreted what I wrote.
I have pointed out other users who have had issues with the tool. I’ve tried it and as I mentioned, even the default project did not appear to be set up correctly so that somebody who wanted things working out of the box, couldn’t get it going. I didn’t expect game development to be easy, but getting the tools working to do any development at all should not be this hard from a tool that claims to be *professional* level.
That’s all I have to say about this. It’s my opinion and I stand by my opinion that iTGB is not ready for primetime and the hype by GarageGames is not justified by the actual product.
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