Odds and Ends | Make It Big In Games

Before getting down to business here in 2009, I have a few small items to catch up on.

Congratulations to GarageGames’ Torque Game Engine Advanced for winning the 2008 Game Developer Magazine Frontline Award for Best Engine. Matt, JoshE, Ken, Deborah, et.al. in the TnT group have been working their butts off bringing Torque to a new level of professionalism, and it is great to see their efforts recognized.

Ryan Wiancko over at Industry Broadcast has been taking blog post from developers like myself, Dan Cook, and Troy Gilbert and turning them into podcasts. So, load up your iPod for your next road trip and catch up on your neglected reading. Maybe now that I have mentioned Ryan, he will spell my name right on my articles.

Jeremy Alessi, of Alessi Games, just put up a nice article on Gamasutra about his experiences creating a game for the iPhone. I have worked with Jeremy since the early days of GarageGames where I encouraged him to finish Aerial Antics so we could publish it. Nobody works harder at game development, and it is nice to see him getting some recognition and success.

-Jeff Tunnell, Game Maker
Make It Big In Games

http://coderhump.com Ben Garney

Don't tell anyone, but I'm pretty sure it's Deborah…

Jeremy's article is a great read. Thanks for linking that.
- http://www.makeitbigingames.com Jeff Tunnell
  
  Doh! I didn't think that looked right.
http://www.redthumbgames.com joshuadallman

Thanks for linking to Jeremy's article which I may otherwise have missed. The tech notes on the differences between iPod versions, especially with regard to sound, were particularly interesting. I'm glad to see options other than Torque being aired as game engine possibilities for iPod too, since I'm not happy with a per-title licensing fee either (paying to release freeware games on a per title basis? That doesn't help developers). New developers should also be aware what those of us following the iPod saga already know: that it's not a holy grail of quick cash as the early news reports hyped. Great article Jeremy.

TGEA winning the Frontline award is a huge, huge, huge honor, especially to beat out half million dollar engines. Everyone who's worked on TGEA including present employees, contributing community members, and the company founders (who had the vision to make an advanced engine for $150 bucks in the first place) should all be proud. One thing I'm not happy about is the pushing of TGEA over TGE, supposedly superior in every way including backwards compatibility. Well TGEA is great for people in industrialized countries who can afford a new computer every 1-2 years, but for the rest of the world with more dated computers, TGEA won't be as compatible as TGE, despite claims to the contrary. It won't even run on my brand new Toshiba laptop which is only a year old. Regardless, a well deserved award that all in the Torque community can be proud of.

The podcasting of game articles is wickedly cool — look for some of my articles to appear in coming weeks as well

By the way, happy 2009!

Josh
- http://www.makeitbigingames.com Jeff Tunnell
  
  I agree with your take on pricing for the iPhone version of Torque. $100 per title for a platform that has little chance to make back the money is not in the original vision of how Torque works. Had we taken that stance when first launching GG, TGEA would have never happened, and it would have never had a chance to win the Frontline award.
http://www.garagegames.com Deborah Marshall

Thanks for the mention, Jeff and Ben, but rest assured, my job is supplemental to the hard work of the entire Tech and Tools team. We're super stoked about the Front Line Award, and we're pushing hard to live up to the challenge of continual improvements to keep Torque in the spotlight.
http://www.subreal.net timaste

The future of iphone (and “mobile games” in general) is very exciting.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1545255148 Josh Engebretson

Woohoo! Indeed, we're all kinds of excited about the Frontline Award for Best Engine winning TGEA. There is definitely a straight line from the “four guys in a garage” to employees past and present to this award and many other accomplishments

On a related note, someone should make a OnePress Community Plugin for this: http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/83134/15934
http://www.industrybroadcast.com Ryan Wiancko

Ha! Oh how embarassed am I, you should have told me right away I as spelling your name wrong My hands sometimes do their own things without my eyes knowing, sneaky buggers.. I've hastily gone through all mention of your name on Industrybroadcast.com and fixed this little oversight.
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iPhone game developers will have a field day once iPhone pricing becomes main stream.
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