Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Game engines
Generally speaking, each engine can serve several purposes with regard to game
genre and no engine can be described as a single-gameplay-style-oriented one. But
it is also true that each engine has its own weaknesses and strengths, which make it
more or less fit for a specific game genre, a technology, or gameplay styles. In the fol-
lowing sections, we are going to provide a selection of different game engines, men-
tioning useful information on their strengths and weaknesses, and analyze which pur-
poses each one serves the best. Our selection won't obviously include all game en-
gines available as we write, we will only focus on the most popular, with regard to their
features, target platforms, and professional versus educational purposes.
2D game engines
Generally speaking, there are several reasons why a newly assembled team should
begin dealing with 2D games.
One is that touchscreens of today's smartphones offer a better support for 2D-style
gameplay. Another is that 2D games are usually easier to develop, as they require
less mathematics and algebra to be coded, while sprites and 2D backgrounds are
easier to craft. Finally, 2D games have lower hardware requirements to run on mobile
devices.
As you are going to begin the development of your first game, we suggest you to go
for a 2D game. The following engines can help you fulfill this goal.
Torque 2D
Torque 2D is a 2D game engine, which is based on the popular Torque Game Engine
developed by Garage Games (
http://www.garagegames.com/
).
A former version of the engine, called iTorque, was designed to develop games spe-
cifically for the iOS platform, though its latest incarnation also supports publishing for
Windows OS and thus the development, for example, of browser games. We will now
review the features of Torque 2D:
