2D Game Development Survey

[bamfina]

Have you ever created a 2D game before?  Do you have an opinion about the development tools you used?  If so, GarageGames wants your input. GarageGames is conducting a survey of game developers who have used game development products such as Torque Game Builder, Game Maker, and Flash to rate their experiences in creating 2D games. Think of this as your opportunity to say anything you want about the 2D tools available to you.

Click the link below to take the survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=131382314512

[Margalis]

Are, C, Java and MS Paint development tools?

[WindupAtheist]

I used to make little ASCII games on my Commodore 64 when I was a kid.  Can I be a redname?

[bamfina]

There is a section in the survey to rate "other game engines," and if you would like, you can use that space to talk about programming languages and other development tools. 

[Hoax]

I'm looking forward to Stephen finding this thread, please dont den it before that happens o magnificent overlords.

[Yegolev]

If WUA gets a red name, so do I.  I rewrote Dark Sun into something interesting.  That should count for lots of things.

[schild]

I'm looking forward to Stephen finding this thread, please dont den it before that happens o magnificent overlords.

But, uhmmmm. Durrrrrr.

He.

Probably.

Helped.

Make.

The.

Survey.

[Samwise]

I assumed bamfina WAS Stephen and that he'd forgotten his password or something.

[schild]

Lawl.

[StGabe]

I don't see a whole lot of people needing this.  For those more art/animation driven there is Flash.  For those who are decent programmers there is DirectX, SDL or the PopCap framework.  If you're already a decent programmer it's not that hard to write your own particle systems (and you're likely to want to do this anyway just to tailor it to your specific needs).  Something I haven't seen and I think would be valuable is a good solutions for networked games and maintaining dynamic data on a server like high score lists, etc.

[Samwise]

Funnily enough, I've been shopping around for a 2D game framework/engine to use for a little project I might be working on.  I hear Popcap's is quite nice, but unfortunately they don't publish their web (ActiveX) version, and it'd be nice to be able to put my game right on a web page instead of making people download it.  Also considering Flash and Java, since that'd obviously make the web thing doable.

[Soln]

Gabe has a point.  There are some impressive examples out there with Flash: lookey

Didn't know about PopCap, will check it out, thx.

[Samwise]

Gabe has a point.  There are some impressive examples out there with Flash: lookey

The thing that makes me hesitant to use Flash is that a lot of the niftier games on that site (and others) don't use it.  Makes me think that it might have inherent limitations that make it unsuitable for projects past a certain complexity.  Also, the Flash authoring tools are insanely expensive.

[Margalis]

The GarageGames engine handles a lot of networking stuff, has a full scripting engine, etc.

The problem with Flash is that Flash sucks ass and you will hit the wall hard if you are doing anything other than making the 10000th variant on Snake or "line up some bricks" or some shit like that.

I've never seen a real game (as opposed to a toy game) written in Flash.

[schild]

Dofus is written in flash.

[Samwise]

The problem with Flash is that Flash sucks ass and you will hit the wall hard if you are doing anything other than making the 10000th variant on Snake or "line up some bricks" or some shit like that.

'K, so my question: what exactly is the wall with Flash?  Assume I don't care anything about networking/multiplayer/etc - I just need a reasonably functional programming language so I can do some basic simulation stuff, and a framework that will let me easily represent that with graphics on the screen.  Is Flash's scripting language fundamentally crippled because it doesn't allow arrays or OOP or conditionals or something like that?  Does Flash have too much processor overhead to do anything complex?  What?

[Margalis]

Dofus is written in Flash.

Is that a point or a counter-point?

'K, so my question: what exactly is the wall with Flash?  Assume I don't care anything about networking/multiplayer/etc - I just need a reasonably functional programming language so I can do some basic simulation stuff, and a framework that will let me easily represent that with graphics on the screen.  Is Flash's scripting language fundamentally crippled because it doesn't allow arrays or OOP or conditionals or something like that?  Does Flash have too much processor overhead to do anything complex?  What?

If you want to do basic stuff that's fine. It's hard to exactly describe what the problem with Flash is, other than that it's a vector-graphics animation program with a whole bunch of other crap tacked on to make it interactive. The sweet spot for flash is animation with a couple of mouse clicks.

Flash actionscript is all interpreted. For some games that doesn't matter. For high performance games it does. In addition, actionscript (which is essentially javascript or ECMAscript) is just that - a scripting language. Its really hard to make entirely scripted applications past a certain level of complexity.

Scripting languages are great in moderation - they are quick and easy to get going with. A lot of games use scripting languages for the parts that are more designer-centric. But creating an entire game in all in a scripting language is difficult.

Script is not compiled and not typed, so it is easy to make mistakes. Script is hard to organize. Really complex script applications are difficult to debug, difficult to maintain and generally collapse under their own weight after a while. Multiple people working on a large complex scripting poject is extremely error-prone.

And then if at some point you want to do more - real 3D graphics, better control over input devices, decent networking, etc, you are pretty much screwed.

It really does depend on the game. Its quite possible to create games in Flash, some very fun ones. But it's very difficult to create large, very polished and relatively bug-free games in Flash.

[schild]

Dofus is a full fledged game in flash. MMOG as a matter of fact. So, uh, point?

[Samwise]

Hrnm.  If the Flash developer kit didn't cost $600 I'd at least be able to try it out.  Maybe I'm better off with (shudder) Java.

[Margalis]

What is it that you are trying to accomplish?

Java is fine for a lot of things. If you get JOGL you can do full 3D graphics with good performance. Java is a lot closer to what real games are written in than Flash.

The main nice thing about Flash is that it has nice graphics and animation stuff built in. (Engine and tooling)

[Samwise]

What is it that you are trying to accomplish?

A 2D Asteroids-type game with a bit of The Incredible Machine on the side.  So the app needs to be able to model reasonably complex interactions on the one hand, and do decent realtime shooty stuff on the other (but not at the same time).

[Margalis]

Flash should be fine for that.

[StGabe]

Flash:
Has the best market penetration for web games.  Can certainly do "real" games -- see jayisgames for plenty of examples.  However if there is a lot of movement on the screen you will run into some performance issues.  In the most general sense, this is because you have no control over how things are redrawn.  You can't implement your own smart "dirty rectangles", etc., that are aware of your games properties and you have to rely on the relatively inefficient and over-generalized Flash runtime.  IMO the biggest strike against Flash is just ActionScript 2.0 which is a horribly designed language.  If you want to get going on develping Flash stuff I recommend grabbing a copy of Flash MX as later versions offer basically the same tools and you will probably want to be backwards compatible to 7.0 anyway.  And you should be able to get MX pretty cheaply.

Java:
Has the second best market penetration for web games.  It's a real language.  No tools.  But then for 2d, IMO, tools don't help that much anyway (outside of tools like PhotoShop, etc.).  It's performance is getting better with later versions.  Definitely viable.  There have been lots  of successful indie games (non-web) using Java recently.  Many with decent 3d graphics (although not incredibly impressive 3d).

ActiveX:
Never used it but I've heard mixed results.  It doesn't have nearly the market penetration of Flash or Java though.  I'd tend to go for one of those if you want something to display on the web.

SDL:
No web.  Very simple and easy to use solution that you can drop into your C or C++ code.  It will give you quick access to pushing pixels to the screen, grabbing key and mouse events, etc.  This is my favorite way to get a game quickly prototyped.  They're working on some hooks directly into OpenGL (no idea how that is going, it might be done now) but generally performance is already pretty good for most things you'll want to do.

The GarageGames engine handles a lot of networking stuff, has a full scripting engine, etc.

But from what I understand I have to use their full engine to get the networking stuff.  Which is just a big pain in the ass.  I don't really need or want anything else that their engine is offering (and honestly I haven't seen many impressive games coming out with their technology -- mostly it just seems like a toy for people who think they maybe want to make a game someday).  What I think would be useful is an effective, drop-in solution for doing networking that would work for my C or Java code and includes the server-side stuff.

[Margalis]

Well GG does come with the full source so you can always take out the networking part yourself. Tribes2 was basically written with the GG engine. There are no AAA titles for it but then again it's for indie game devs. A game like ThinkTanks is pretty good by that regard, certainly one of the best indie games I've seen.

I don't think it's fair to judge an engine by the games made from it when the games are being made by unpaid indie crews.


Also Java3d (with JOGL) is far superior to Java2d. This may not be true for J2ME but is certainly true for standard Java on the destkop. JOGL is a thin layer around OpenGL.

As an example:

The project I am working on ran at 10 FPS using Java2D. When I switched to 3D it's more complicated, in 3D, and runs at 30+.

[StGabe]

Well GG does come with the full source so you can always take out the networking part yourself. Tribes2 was basically written with the GG engine.

I think that this stuff makes a little more sense for more complicated 3d projects.

Partially I'm just biased.  Mostly I just feel that game development tends to require more control.  I want APIs and libraries to do heavy lifting for me.  Not scripting languages and particle effect generators.   Most 2d game developers I know seem to feel the same as they tend to use PopCap, SDL, ptk, Java or a completely proprietary engine.  I see significant downsides to using GG's stuff (loss of control and cost primarily) and not a whole lot of gain.

Also Java3d (with JOGL) is far superior to Java2d. This may not be true for J2ME but is certainly true for standard Java on the destkop. JOGL is a thin layer around OpenGL.

Yep.  This is the same idea as what can be done with SDL (drawing onto a plane projected in 3d to be parallel to the viewscreen) in order to get OpenGL optimization. 

[Alkiera]

Also Java3d (with JOGL) is far superior to Java2d. This may not be true for J2ME but is certainly true for standard Java on the destkop. JOGL is a thin layer around OpenGL.

Yep.  This is the same idea as what can be done with SDL (drawing onto a plane projected in 3d to be parallel to the viewscreen) in order to get OpenGL optimization. 

I do this with freeglut as well, for 2d(with an ortho camera).  Beats the heck out of managing Z-distance and alphablending and basically reinventing the wheel, yourself.

--
Alkiera

[Margalis]

Ha ha, welcome to 10 years ago.

In all seriousness, all 2D graphics these days (except on specialized hardware like the GBA) are done with 3D and orthographic projections, and have been for years. MS never even bothered filling in DirectDraw with basic things like alpha values, scaling and proper transparent color-keying.

Once 3D graphics cards took off there was no point in doing things in 2D any more. So most 2D engines are just 3D engines wrapped up to made like 2D to the end programmer.

[geldonyetich]

There's something to be said for handdrawn artistry.  In fact, there's two things to be said:

1) It's much prettier and stylized for 2D games than Orthographic Projections (I learned a new word today) of 3D objects.

2) It takes much longer and more talent to get to look good since you now need to make individual drawings for each frame.

[Margalis]

You don't get it.

You can use hand-drawn sprites with a 3D projection. Those sprites are textures mapped to a flat polygon. Most of the dreamcast fighting games use this technique, as do games like Guilty Gear which is all hand-drawn. The drawn sprites are just mapped onto transparent flat panel that always face the camera. Orthographic just means there is built-in perspective. (Things farther back don't look smaller)

This is done because 3D cards are fast and you can get neat effects like transparency, rotation and scaling at very low cost, as well as anti-aliasing and other goodies. It doesn't mean you have to actually model anything in 3D.

As I mentioned, you can find APIs around that will present this 3D stuff as a purely 2D API. They do all the 3D setup under the covers.

[geldonyetich]

Ah, gotcha.