Pandora Torque Game Engine On Pandora


habib15

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Hey, I was looking into developing for the Pandora, and was wondering if the Torque Game Engine would work on the platform? When you purchase the license they give you the code (to recompile into ARM), and there is a version for Linux so I'm assuming that it uses the OpenGl api.

Anyone think there would be a problem?

I just think if I was to put in time into a development that I would like it to be played on more than one platform.

Thanks

Kevin
 
Kevin_H said:
Hey, I was looking into developing for the Pandora, and was wondering if the Torque Game Engine would work on the platform? When you purchase the license they give you the code (to recompile into ARM), and there is a version for Linux so I'm assuming that it uses the OpenGl api.

Anyone think there would be a problem?
Considering that there's enough of a delta between OpenGL and OpenGL ES that Torque would need some re-working before you could use it (not even getting into sound, etc...)- there might be enough of a dealbreaker there unless you were willing to make it move over. If you're willing to make that happen, I'd go with the Indie Licensing first. :D

QUOTE

I just think if I was to put in time into a development that I would like it to be played on more than one platform.



Heh... There's other engines that will go that way that're either in progress or are about to be in progress for moving over to what's needed for targeting the Pandora. They're all cross-platform and target a lot of platforms. If you're not really decided, perhaps you ought to hang loose a little bit to see if OGRE or IrrLicht (plus the other pieces) end up showing up as contenders in that space.
 
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I doubt Torque will get ported.

I was torque user/developer - they sucked me in on the fact that "soon after v1" TSE/TGEA would have an OpenGL backend - seems like they forgot about this once a have buggy version 1 came out and they started working on the XBox version of TGE.

They have all but dropped Linux support from everything but their misleading ads which include "Windows/Mac/Linux" - The engine is even too painful to develop on Vista.

Unfortunately "recompile to ARM" is not just a matter of flicking a switch and hitting "build" - there are a lot of Window's based API calls and a lot of assumptions that you are using 32bit Intel to run the engine (windows libraries etc) (let alone the DirectX only stuff).


I personally wonder if Irrlicht might be worth trying to port - it has a software renderer to fallback on (unsure if it is Intel dependent or not) and it works quite well under Linux. It also has the (dis)advantage that it doesn't rely on a lot of external libraries - this is good if it is standard C inside, bad if it makes assumptions about datatypes etc.
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/


Of course Q3 is a pretty cool engine to port too ;)
 
Dingo_aus said:
I was torque user/developer - they sucked me in on the fact that "soon after v1" TSE/TGEA would have an OpenGL backend - seems like they forgot about this once a have buggy version 1 came out and they started working on the XBox version of TGE.

They have all but dropped Linux support from everything but their misleading ads which include "Windows/Mac/Linux" - The engine is even too painful to develop on Vista.
Heh... And another one bites the dust. Nice engine, but it seems they lost their way- that engine being easily portable (Which the previous iteration supposedly was...) was one of the key selling points for it. Being painful for Vista... I wouldn't consider that a litmus test (everything's painful on Fis...er...Vista... ;) ) However, if it's that painful on Vista, it's probably the same way for XP and X-Box. Heh... What were they thinking? Especially with indies using OGRE and publishing that way- and other engines in the wings to take their place... Oh, well, their loss, I guess.
 
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The Torque 2D (Torque Game Builder) engine could possibly be ported, but you would have to get the blessing of Garage Games if you ever intended to release any games that used it---this is directly from their TGB Pro EULA:

(h) Licensee may not release Games intended for operation on Game Console Systems including the Microsoft XBox, Microsoft Xbox360, Sony Playstation 2, Sony Playstation 3, Sony PSP, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii or any successors or future console platforms without first obtaining a separate Torque Game Builder Console License from GarageGames.

Also, the only Linux-based version of TGB is version 1.1.1, which was a decent version, but it's missing a lot of the really nice things from v1.7( behaviors, tick-based physics, etc) . I do have a source code license for TGB, and I have access to the Linux source. However, I really don't like the sound of the separate "Console License"---that sounds expensive, even if Garage Games had no intent of ever making the port in the first place. I would be willing to play around with it, but it's also a seriously complicated piece of code.

Performance would also be interesting. If the OpenGL ES chipset really works well, and if it actually has decent drivers, you could use the engine for some decent little games. Memory overhead is a bit high in the Windows version, so you would have to carefully size all of your graphics and animations. Low-end OpenGl chipsets tend to have some performance issues with a lot of transparencies on screen, and TGB is basically designed to have tons of transparent and alpha-blended textures flying around. So, that could be interesting.

The good news is that there is very little X86 ASM code in the source, and all source files that have X86 specific code have X86 tacked onto the name.
 
You may think you want torque, but in fact you want either Delta3D, NeoEngine or Cube (quick google) or even better a graphics-only engine like OGRE or Irrlicht :D
 
sindbad said:
You may think you want torque, but in fact you want either Delta3D, NeoEngine or Cube (quick google) or even better a graphics-only engine like OGRE or Irrlicht :D
I'd have to concur. Torque SEEMS appealing, but with the open source competitors that're coming over that are easier to use, better capable, etc. Why would you do that to yourself? :D

Like I said earlier in this thread- seems that they've lost their way in a serious manner.
 
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Tinnus said:
I want OGRE :p
Me too, but the last reply I got from one of the OGRE developers was that he would make the OpenGL ES 2.0 port when he gets a OpenGL ES 2.0 hardware accelerated portable device. Maybe if many people ask for that port in their forums...
 
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David Gutiérrez Palma said:
Me too, but the last reply I got from one of the OGRE developers was that he would make the OpenGL ES 2.0 port when he gets a OpenGL ES 2.0 hardware accelerated portable device. Maybe if many people ask for that port in their forums...
Perhaps we ought to pass 'round the hat to see to it that they get a MK0 unit? ;)
 
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