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[knight]

As the title of this topic may imply i am currently looking into developing for iphone. As far as i see it there are two main choices that fall into my budget.Torque 2d for the iphone (http://www.torquepowered.com/products/torque-2d/iphone/) or the apple sdk. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each. Thanks -knight

[Triplefox]

Torque 2D is an engine.....and the Apple SDK isn't, but you can build one on top?

Please say something about what you plan to make before asking for such a broad overview of technology. Unless you do that you aren't going to get any more information than is available with Google.

[knight]

Sorry I realize I wasnt that clear. I meant to ask if its better to use torque or create your own engine and why.

[biino]

Hey,

---
Consise summary for the lazy reader
- If you just want to make a game. Get an existing graphics\game engine that suits your needs.

- If you want to make your own tech for personal enjoyment\growth OR nothing out there suits your needs, build your own graphics\game engine.
--


I'll chip in a couple of cents.

Firstly, to answer in a meaningful way you need to understand what's better for you. You need to consider if you want to learn and grow as a developer and develop an engine for yourself or you do you just want to get a game done as quickly as possible? Or is your game so radical that you need to develop a lot of tech from the ground up? Life is full of choices

Well sometimes...



Anyway.

If you want to develop your own graphics\game engine. Go with the SDK. You'll have all sorts of fun with OpenGL. In addition, I recall talking to a mini gore developer on IRC and they used the PowerVR SDK http://www.imgtec.com/powerVR/insider/sdkdownloads/index.asp

Or do you want some of this background tech done for you so you can get to the good stuff and building a game? In which case I hear good things about Torque for the iPhone. It has a world editor thingy majig I believe. Without knowing what kind of game you want to do, you'll have to evaluate it yourself and decide.

There's also Unity but that's out of your budget so I went go there.

There are other alternatives.

I use the Irrlicht graphics engine. You have to download the iPhone port from SVN and sacrifice no less than 3 furry animals to get it to compile but once you have done that it's a really easy to use. (It's scenegraph based graphics engine). www.irrlicht3d.org My first game Impulse Soccer and Stair Dismount were done with it.

I sometimes see what Ogre is doing in this space. There's now an iPhone port but it doesn't appear to be production ready. Keep an eye on it, it might be a good choice when devices with shader capabilities are the norm. www.ogre3d.org

Then there's oolong http://oolongengine.com/. It's an interesting one to download and see how things are done. It has an example with the bullet physics engine. If you're a newbie coder I'd probably avoid this one.

The guy who wrote the bullet physics engine released a gamekit that works on the iPhone. I haven't looked into it. http://code.google.com/p/gamekit/

There's also sio2 but I've haven't really looked into it. http://sio2interactive.com

Those are the main ones I know of. There are probably more.

So basically. Be honest with yourself. Do you want to write a game, or do you want to write game tech and then a game. I prefer to work with an existing graphics engine and build my own generic framework around it to use in multiple games. I think a lot of people burn themselves out in the background tech and don't get around to the game side of things. But I don't know you. So you have to pick your path.

EDIT:

I forgot to mention, it'd help if you give us and idea of your skillset. Are you comfortable with C++? C#? mouse clicking? That's another important factor to consider. However for the iPhone you're pretty much going to need C++ or Objective C. I hear unity uses Javascript but that's out of your budget. However, Flash seems to be coming soon...

Bino

[knight]

Thanks very much ill have to check all of those out. Yeah as far as programming goes i've done C# with xna. I've also made a few small c++ programs but nothing that impressive.

[Richard Kain]

Torque is a Game Engine and toolset. Apple's iPhone SDK is just an SDK. (no engine)

The real question is how much of your game is going to be rendered. If most of the game your planning is event-menu driven, then you should probably stick with the iPhone SDK. There are enough visual editing tools in there that you should be able to largely get by with just that. Throw in a little Objective-C coding and you will be good to go.

If the game you are planning is going to feature a whole bunch of interactive sprites, then you might want to spring for a more robust solution.

At some point, you WILL have to acquire the iPhone SDK from Apple, and you will have to get your hands dirty with at least a little bit of Objective-C. Objective-C is much closer to C# than it is to C++. However, the syntax is bizarre, and a little hard to get used to. I would definitely go over some Objective-C tutorials, and possibly getting a book on Objective-C coding.

[mobilebros]

Don't forget www.cocos2d-iphone.org it's a 2D OpenGL engine closely itegrated with the iphone SDK.... it's glorious.

[Richard Kain]

Oh yeah, I've used Cocos2D for some of my projects before. It's a good starting place for graphical applications. It's especially good for dividing your project up into Scenes.