Hi I am looking to develop a number of games for iphone/ipod touch but would rather use a graphical program to develop the games, unity seems to be the most common but are there any other programs I can use? the only other one i can find is torque. if i use unity can i develop any game genre at all? is it easy to use or do you need a degree in design and computer physics? (because thats what a lot of game programs seem to require.) i have looked on youtube and cant find any videos on iphone-unity to see how it works. Thanks
We use Unity. My husband does have a degree in game design and development. I don't know that you need a degree, but I know you need at least some programming knowledge. There are some things you can modify with the gui while developing, but you still need the programming skills.
Shiva and Torque, although I'm not sure if Torque for the iPhone is actually done yet, or at least there have been no iPhone apps developed with it that I know of. There's one game done with Shiva (iBall3D), but Shiva only runs on Windows and therefore has a somewhat poor workflow, since you still need a Mac for XCode and can't just do everything on one OS. Yes, although it's intended for 3D games; if your game ideas are 2D, you might be better off with something else. You can still do 2D, but doing 2D in a 3D environment is somewhat more complicated than "real" 2D and has more overhead. It's easy to use, but keep in mind that "easy" is relative. It's a lot easier than learning Objective-C and 3D programming from scratch, but you still need a decent grasp of programming, design theory, and knowledge of the device to get something good out of it. It's also still relatively early days for Unity iPhone, and there are some issues that you may need to work around while waiting for it to mature. --Eric
Also just to add Unity supports javascript and some other code as well as normal objective-C so if you know one of these you have a head start.
Unity doesn't really use Objective-C at all. You can use Javascript or C#, although Unity's Javascript is only superficially like "normal" Javascript and is almost another language (I'd say a better language...it's called Unityscript internally and IMO that would be a better name, in order to cut down on confusion). However, the important thing is knowing how to program. If you understand the concepts of programming well, then the language doesn't matter that much, as you can pick up a new one in short order. --Eric
FYI, there are a number of games that were made with Torque, including: Deltoid Sushi to go Kaboom I've been playing around with TGB the last couple of days, and it's pretty darned neat. I'm thinking of purchasing a license for it and seeing what I might be able to do with it. One thing that concerns me is that iTGB is a separate license and carries a per title fee of 500 dollars. I had figured that if I was going to try my hand at this, it might be with some really simple apps (read: inexpensive) and a per title fee isn't really conducive to doing that.
You don't EXACTLY need a degree either, if you're motivated you can learn programming through random internet tutorials and dedication. It'll take a year or two tho
The per title license for iTGB is $100 however GG has said that are going to remove that restriction so there is no license fee at all per title. I have licenses to iTGB and Unity and can tell you truthfully that iTGB is not ready and may never be. In the time it has taken people to get 3 iTGB games out, the app store is overflowing with better games written in Unity. Honestly, if someone gave you a license to iTGB for free, I wouldn't bother with it. You'll just waste time until you realize you have to find something else. BTW, I love TGB for the PC/MAC. iTGB just ain't there.
Apologies, I saw the 100 dollar figure in a Gamasutra article, and a Brett Syler Blog post from last August says 100, but the EULA reads like it is 500. Can you direct me toward where they have indicated they plan to remove the restriction? Even if they don't, 100 dollars isn't much to overcome. As far as Unity goes--I guess I'm intimidated by the 3d stuff. I really like what I've seen of TGB so far, but then I'm just mucking around with tutorials. What I may end up doing is picking up a TGB license and trying to put something together with it. This is new territory for me, I've never pursued a video game project before, so I have no idea how things might turn out, or if I'll see it through, honestly. From that pov, I'd like to keep the monetary investment minimal initially.
I wrote the Gamasutra article and I prototyped Debris with each engine before finally settling on Unity. Don't be intimidated by 3D. When it comes right down to it 3D is more natural and doing 2D gameplay with 3D graphics is easy enough. Just approach it as if you're setting up the game in your backyard. It's a higher level of abstraction which actually gives it a more "hands on" quality.
