[RampantCoyote]

Hey all ---

The reduced pricing for the Torque 2D Game Builder with full source code is still in effect for a few more days. I reviewed it over the weekend against the first release candidate. They've now released a second candidate, which I have not yet played with:

Tales of the Rampant Coyote:
Torque 2D Game Builder 'First-Time User Experience' Review

Based on my "first blush" playing around with the system, it seems like a good solution for doing a 2D RPG (with some limited 3D elements as well). The obvious downside is that doing an RPG using this system would require a bit more elbow grease than using a dedicated RPG game engine. But if you are doing something less traditional, it could be a good option.

If you are interested, I'd recommend going for it in the next couple of days, as the Early Adopter pricing may be going away early next week.
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[Rainer Deyke]

I bought T2D last year, played around with it, decided it would be more work to get it to do what I want it to do than writing my own engine from scratch, and haven't looked at it since. YMMV.

[RampantCoyote]

Since you already own it, you may want to try out the new version to see if they've improved on it much since then.

I did my own engine from scratch for Void War, and I've done a lot of engine modification and optimization for Playstation 1 and Sega Dreamcast games. After dealing with the headaches of hardware incompatability and importers for modeler formats and so all that other kruft, I said, "Forget it! I'm going to make games instead of engines from here on out."

I've been working with their 3D engine (TGE) for well over a year now --- and I have to admit, it's kind of a PITA to work with. But now I've gotten used to it, at least. I've been working on an RPG project in that engine off-and-on for a little while with it (temporarily on hold for a quicker, dirtier action game)


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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[RampantCoyote]

I got on an Ultima 7 kick the other day, and tried to see what I could do in a couple of hours in TGB with "borrowing" some Ultima VII graphics to play around with. Sort of an Ultima 7 with some Forrest-Gump style doctoring. A little write-up can be found here:

http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2006/06/forrest-gump-meets-avatar-of-virtue.html

I also got some Z-sorting work done in another 4 hours of effort, so the little tech demo of mine has the character correctly passing behind buildings, and through doorways, etc. I didn't mention that in the blog. Anyway - there are a lot of people pursuing RPG development using Torque Game Builder right now, so it's got potential. I think the 3D Shape capabilities are a killer feature, but it's still a little buggy for prime time. But the rest of TGB seems to be reasonably solid at this point, and games are being released with it commercially now.

A little pic (note the girl in the Avatar's party... she's a 3D fully animated model):


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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz