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Topic: Torque Game Builder Pro - vs.- GameMaker7 (Read 12877 times)
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xenoclone
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To be honest, I only got TGB because I got an early adopter deal ($100 for pro). At $250, I'm not sure it's worth it. The company has had a cultural change since they were bought out a month or two ago. They've shifted from focusing on developer-enabling over to self-publishing. It's quite disappointing.
The only advantage TGB offers is that if you want to modify the engine extensively, that's something you can't do with GameMaker. I wrote a chess game, for example, that has an AI implemented in C++ -- an AI that simply couldn't have been done without integrating it into the engine.
Does GameMaker come with particle effects and all that? If so, I'd say go with GameMaker and see how far it takes you.
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xenoclone
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There are some demos that come with the software once purchased, but i don't know about something that shows off its ability. One thing to consider is that TGB is going extinct. They're working on a new unified 2D/3D engine. So there's only a year left of life in TGB before it's officially outdated. Overall, I find it hard to recommend them at all right now. Maybe in a year or two when the dust settles and they're refocused. But right now it's a bit of a mess at Garage Games, imo.
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guesst
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Of the two I'd say GameMaker. If fact, if it were a choice of the torque engine and a slightly browning banana I'd go for the banana.
If you've got $250 to spend check out BlitzMax or BlitzBasic. Friggin awesomeness where on another board that I've migrated to there are guys cranking out full game in a weekend in.
Personally, however, I don't like any game making package things. They all stack so much overhead into their programs that you need a top of the line system to play something that looks 15 or 20 years old. 10 years, minimum. Personally, I like the hands on-ness of C/C++. Sexy, streamlined, and easier to get under the hood. Actually, everything you do is under the hood, so there.
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RTyp06
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If you've got $250 to spend check out BlitzMax or BlitzBasic. Friggin awesomeness where on another board that I've migrated to there are guys cranking out full game in a weekend in.
Thanx, I will.
Personally, however, I don't like any game making package things. They all stack so much overhead into their programs that you need a top of the line system to play something that looks 15 or 20 years old. 10 years, minimum.
Good point.. Keep in mind though that games made twenty years ago were made by one person or small programming teams.. 
Personally, I like the hands on-ness of C/C++. Sexy, streamlined, and easier to get under the hood. Actually, everything you do is under the hood, so there.
Absolutely. I still have Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 on my PC although I haven't fired it up in over a year. To me, C++ today is what 8086 Assembler or Machine Language was in the 80's. But as machines get faster and faster, I believe C++ will fade away as higher level programming tools and languages will gain popularity. I personally believe using icons with drag and drop scripting may be the future of programming.
GM7 has Game Maker Language (GML) that is very similar to C or Delphi. you don't have to script using drag and drop, all can be done in code. But all in all, GM is nothing more than a fun toy. No serious game developer would use it..
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xenoclone
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That's cool RType. Personally, I think there's tons of room for lots of little top-down space melee games. For some reason, they fell off the map despite (potentially) deep gameplay. I'm glad there are still people out there interested in making and playing them. I think the hook is going to be style, hence why I went for the Manga theme.
@guesst
I agree that these generic packages tend to be bloated. TGB could certainly stand some trimming. But I don't really have the time/interest right now in writing my own engine from the ground up. Unfortunately, I think bloated-but-easy is the future of independent games development. 
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Matt Langley
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To be honest, I only got TGB because I got an early adopter deal ($100 for pro). At $250, I'm not sure it's worth it.
I'm sorry to hear that, though a completely fair statement. We have a good ammount of people that feel it is worth it, though for others it isn't as well. Feel free to express your concerns in what you think may limit TGB's value in your experience, we are always wanting feedback 
The company has had a cultural change since they were bought out a month or two ago. They've shifted from focusing on developer-enabling over to self-publishing. It's quite disappointing.
I'm sorry it has appeared that way. In all honesty things have changed somewhat... in my opinion for the better. I've been on the TGB dev team since the team's incarnation at GarageGames. I still spend time working on TGB in fact (coincidentally my last couple weeks almomst exclusively, we're trying to get 1.5.2 fully QA'd and out with some good fixes and general updates). We really haven't abandoned our technology.
We knew that announcing what we did would risk people getting that impression, so we tried our best to counter that potentional, though obviously we didn't succeed completely. Without giving too many details, the cutlure of the company has changed very little, if anything we now have more resources and are more serious about making improvements (via our current and future tech) that is most beneficial to our users and our potential users. Previously things were added and improved in TGB in a fairly ad-hoc way. It worked fairly well, though in the end doesn't provide the biggest gains for our community and potential community since a lot of our decisions were made on the go. Now the company has been structured a lot better, though we have been bought out, we still are GarageGames and still have -full- control over what we do (not as if our parent company has been trying to stiffle that, the partnership was based on us continuing to do what we do).
We now have a full division of the company that is interested in our products, this includes our current technology and tools as well as our future tech. No longer is there a weird balance in the company since everything was mixed and matched. We also now have funds to do things, before we pretty much existed in a month to month basis. We did well albeit, in fact we were growing quite fast even then, though everything had to be justified based on what it would net us in a shorter run since we couldn't afford to make bigger investements and gambles, this includes game dev and tool dev. Now we can do some of those things without having to justify it with the most immediate gain to support the resources.
We have not abandoned our current tech, especially not TGB. We are considering various things and are working on various things to improve it. We are wanting to give it the best improvements in the most efficient way, though it's far from being abandoned
So from my perspective, as someone who was in the GG community -> community Associate -> contractor -> employee working on TGB for the past year and a half, very little has changed except the company structure and funds now enabling us to do things we couldn't before
In fact, as Josh Williams said when announcing the buy out, the deal went down earlier this year... since that point we have done more releases than we have ever done.
There are some demos that come with the software once purchased, but i don't know about something that shows off its ability. One thing to consider is that TGB is going extinct. They're working on a new unified 2D/3D engine. So there's only a year left of life in TGB before it's officially outdated. Overall, I find it hard to recommend them at all right now. Maybe in a year or two when the dust settles and they're refocused. But right now it's a bit of a mess at Garage Games, imo.
I'm sorry you've gotten that impression, hopefully we can prove that impression wrong with our actions. I mean we are working on future tech and tools, though TGB is still going to be a viable engine and toolset for while (as it currently is for many people)... we plan to make some improvements that will hopefully increase it's usefuleness. It may be a while before we get something out that attempts to replace TGB, and if anything a lot of the concepts will carry over very well as well as some of the code possibly. The future is still a ways out so I can't get into details, though in a very real way it's updating to a new version of the tool, a version that has some fundamentals changed (for the better, by far), though it definitely won't be an alien peice of technology for those that are used to our current engines.
btw, if you have any specific questions I'm more than willing to answer them to the best of my ability and very honestly.
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Matt Langley
Lead Tool Development Engineer
GarageGames
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Matt Langley
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"btw, if you have any specific questions I'm more than willing to answer them to the best of my ability and very honestly." Is this for Xeno or any patrons of this fine board? Because I have one. 250$ a pop? Makes me wonder if sombody's ferrari payment isn't due...
"Is this for Xeno or any patrons of this fine board? "
For anyone... I'm a fairly open person, in fact I came from the GG community as a user of our tech before coming to GG (a good portion of the community came from that in fact), as well as other tech. So it's definitely targeted to anyone
"Because I have one. $250 a pop? Makes me wonder if sombody's ferrari payment isn't due... "
haha... only if. I wish that were the case... well possibly. We at GarageGames have been some of the longest standing supports of indie game development, even back 7-8 years ago when we offered a AAA engine used on a commercial game at only $100, including source. So though we are obviously interested in making a living and being rewarded for our efforts (quite often 12+ hour days), we are far from money grubbing and definitely are not driving ferrari's). $250 for software is actually not very expensive, for example:
Flash - $699
Adobe - $649
On top of that we do offer a version without source code for $100, while the $250 version has source code for the entire engine as well as the editors (something Gamemaker and some solutions don't offer at all).
Torque engines are based off a very solid commercially viable engine core, there have been a moderate amount of game developed using Torque engines, some at a very large scale (such as MMO). Our goal is to provide TGB as a solution that is fairly easy to use and has documentation for people new to game development, as well as be fully flexible and powerful (with a source code option) for commercial developers.
For $250 you get quite a bit, everything that you get with the $100 version plus all of the source code so you can expand it to whatever limits you choose. Even at that price we come under quite a few software products that don't offer source code, we also offer improvements and new versions rarely every requiring an upgrade fee (we've never required an upgrade fee for TGB yet).
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« Last Edit: December 06, 2007, 01:36:55 am by Matt Langley »
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Matt Langley
Lead Tool Development Engineer
GarageGames
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xenoclone
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Haha, you know I wondered if someone from Garage Games would see this. It certainly wasn't my intention to be seen. I just responded within the appropriate context. These aren't professional game developers here (including myself). A $20 gamble for GameMaker just makes a lot more sense than a $250 one. How can you not recommend GameMaker?
I'm not sure comparing TGB to Photoshop or Flash (both industry standards) is fair. Corel Paint Shop Pro is $90, the GIMP is free, etc... so selective examples don't necessarily lend defense to the price point. I'm not saying you're wasting your money if you get TGB at $250. I just think it was a fabulous deal at $100 (with source) and not so much at $250.... from a hobbyist's perspective.
So, as I see it, spend $20 and prototype the game. If it works but needs more power, go for something like TGB. I don't think that's bad advice.
As far as company culture goes... well, I shouldn't really comment. I have my reasons. But this isn't the best forum to elaborate.
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« Last Edit: December 06, 2007, 02:34:23 am by xenoclone »
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RTyp06
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Flash - $699
Adobe - $649
That seems an odd comparison.. Adobe makes alot of products,and I'm not sure where you get those figures. Care to elaborate?
BTW Don't get the wrong idea, I'm an upper middle class American with a career. I am interested in your product. 250$ isn't huge to me. But I'm in the same boat as Xeno, just a hobbyist. Perhaps that isn't your target audience which one might think it should be hence "garage games" giving the impression of a motley, novice, garage band trying to write music.
Also, GM did cost me more than twenty dollars because I ordered a learning manual "GameMaker Apprentice" from Amazon.com. WHich I highly reccomend btw. I don't recall the price offhand bacuse I bundled the order with other books.
Oh and Mark Overmars,GM inventor, is a professor from the netherlands. How cool is that?
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« Last Edit: December 06, 2007, 03:11:33 am by RTyp06 »
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Matt Langley
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Haha, you know I wondered if someone from Garage Games would see this. It certainly wasn't my intention to be seen.
Well I think you had a very valid point and don't see anything wrong with your opinion being seen You have every right to hold the opinion you have and if anything I am glad to hear it... I always find it valuable to know what people think and whether or not people value it at the price it's at.
A $20 gamble for GameMaker just makes a lot more sense than a $250 one. How can you not recommend GameMaker?
Very true... in fact I myself purchased GameMaker at one point. I guess the argument towards your statement would be that it doesn't have to be a gamble. TGB has a trial and GameMaker has a free version, so you can get a good impression of the capabilities of the tools and what they are good for... also both have a good deal of users and have visible projects done with them so you can see results and also hear from some of those people what they are good for.
I agree, that at $20 GameMaker is a hard value to compete with, which is why we try to offer more and increase the price, unfortunately to some people the value matches the price and to others it doesn't... in the long run hopefully we can match those two together, which is where your opinions are extremely valuable. I definitely didn't mean to dismiss them.
[qoute]I'm not sure comparing TGB to Photoshop or Flash (both industry standards) is fair. Corel Paint Shop Pro is $90, the GIMP is free, etc... so selective examples don't necessarily lend defense to the price point.[/quote]
A couple of responses to this... to the first part, yes they are both standards, though they weren't always and they were never cheap, even when they weren't. I think they simply sold it at the price they thought it was worth and have tried to fill the value up to that price... many industry standards are in fact very expensive and take a simliar approach... max and maya in the 3D space for example... at $3,500 +, compared to Milkshape at $30. This does in fact support what I'm saying though, that the market has space for a big price differential... $20 for GameMaker, $100 for TGB Binary, $250 for TGB with source code (which you can't get with GameMaker).
I'm not saying you're wasting your money if you get TGB at $250. I just think it was a fabulous deal at $100 (with source) and not so much at $250.... from a hobbyist's perspective.
You do make a good point, that it's very subjective and relative to the person. Many hobbyists buy Flash, or Photoshop, then again many also buy paint shop pro (like you mentioned), in the past I have purchased paint shop pro for that very reason. I wasn't trying to dismiss your opinion, in fact I found it very valuable.
So, as I see it, spend $20 and prototype the game. If it works but needs more power, go for something like TGB. I don't think that's bad advice.
Neither do I... In fact if anything I was avoiding comparing TGB to GameMaker at all, I was simply explaining some context for the $250 price tag, though to be fair if you do compare it's $100 vs $20, since the $100 version of TGB comes without source code, like GameMaker.
There's a reason why I bought GameMaker even though I owned TGE, it's a hard value to beat. A great prototype tool and learning tool, also great for basic games.
As far as company culture goes... well, I shouldn't really comment. I have my reasons. But this isn't the best forum to elaborate.
I respect that... me personally I have only seen good changes and that's from an internal perspective. Of course there is a lot of perspectives to be had in something like this. Though I will ensure you that we haven't forgotten about our current tech, far from it... I've been cranking away on the next TGB release in fact, fixing some big issues with 1.5.1.
Adobe - $649
That seems an odd comparison.. Adobe makes alot of products,and I'm not sure where you get those figures. Care to elaborate?
lol ooops, wow, I must've been out of it for that one... I meant Photoshop. Both Flash and Photoshop are Adobe products.
BTW Don't get the wrong idea, I'm an upper middle class American with a career. I am interested in your product. 250$ isn't huge to me. But I'm in the same boat as Xeno, just a hobbyist. Perhaps that isn't your target audience which one might think it should be hence "garage games" giving the impression of a motley, novice, garage band trying to write music.
Well said... then again hobbyists can be ones who invest a lot of money in their hobby. I would agree that they are very particular about investing their money... many hobbyist photographers will spend a good $300-1000 on a good camera and $649 on Photoshop, while others will use Gimp and a $100 camera. It's a very big market... we do target it to some degree though... you did pick it up correctly in "GarageGames". We are one of the older and more avid supporters of the Indie Game development movement and were one of the first (if not the first) to provide a solid game engine with commercial capabilities in the range of $100 (about 7-8) years ago. We definitely don't want to lose that appeal. Though you would be correct if you think we may not be competing against GameMaker in every market it is in.
Also, GM did cost me more than twenty dollars because I ordered a learning manual "GameMaker Apprentice" from Amazon.com. WHich I highly reccomend btw. I don't recall the price offhand bacuse I bundled the order with other books.
Oh and Mark Overmars,GM inventor, is a professor from the netherlands. How cool is that?
Very true... I picked up on GameMaker about 3-4 years ago... I definitely am not trying to slam it, I really don't think I said anything along those lines. I just felt people might appreciate some of the things mentioned from the perspective of someone at GarageGames. I also think xenoclone brings a great perspective, one that I am very intrigued about. If anything xeno's comments only help me understand a perspective on TGB and ways it could be improved.
I personally think GameMaker is good, a great value, and does what it does well. I used to participate in their forums a bit in fact. Many people welcomed me, even though I am an employee and dev on TGB. They both have t heir strengths and weaknesses and I'll be the first to admit those of TGB.
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Matt Langley
Lead Tool Development Engineer
GarageGames
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