What are the best engines for a 2D indie game?

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What are the best engines for a 2D indie game?

Just like i asked in the title? What are the best engines for a (small) indie game? I am interested in infos about how much does it take to familiarize with the engine, special functions et cetera.

In addition, I would like to know what physics engine I should use for this type of game.

Thanks in advance:D

This depends a lot on what you want to do (i.e. genre of game and features). I suggest you check out the canonical http://www.gamedev.net/ which has covered this topic several times (both in articles and forums).

Grant Peters 2010-08-24 04:55:46

Actually, better yet www.gamedev.stackexchange.com. ;)

thyrgle 2010-08-24 05:05:22

@thyrgle: Good point, I keep forgetting that's up now, though the address doesn't have "www." at the start, i.e. http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/

Grant Peters 2010-08-24 06:35:49

@Grant Peters: Even better point. :)

thyrgle 2010-08-24 16:37:05

Even though I don't know if its the "best" for what your doing but, SDL is pretty good. You can write in C++ with it. It's 2D and good for indies. Plus, its cross platform so its not just limited to PC. Also there's Box2d which is a 2D physics engine in C++.

Just taking a stab. But, you should really clarify exactly what you want to do.

thyrgle 2010-08-24 04:58:06

sCelerated 2010-08-24 16:35:28

Now, what i know i wanna da:-A 2D Indie Game (I am new in this industry, so a more advanced 3D game would be a lot difficult to do);-I wanna use C/C++ or JavaScript for this project;-I need to use only freeware/open source software to develop my game;-For graphics I'll use Photoshop for editing, Illustrator for graphic creations (I am not decided between Iluustrator and Corel).I may be decided upon more things in my project, but I don't remember them right now. If I sayd something wrong, don't throw stones, I am still learning.

sCelerated 2010-08-24 16:36:05

@sCelerated: Well, the "game industry" is kind of broad. You may want to consider what your trying to do a little further. If your going to become part of the big desktop computer industry with a team later on I would recommend making something very simple like Pong with OpenGL and/or DirectX (even though these are not indie friendly). If your planning on doing indie forever you may want to consider making games for platforms that typically use 2D stuff. iPhone, Android and other mobile platforms are good choices but, not many of those are C/C++ (Android is Java, iPhone is Objective-C).

thyrgle 2010-08-24 18:14:46

@sCelerated: Finally, there is the option of online games, I do not know much about those, but, you can use Flash, Javascript, Pygame (I think you can put that online) or something like that.

thyrgle 2010-08-24 18:16:30

No, I see this project more like a hobby than a "tool" to enter the game industry. And from this hobby I wanna also to learn. I don't wanna think about what "great benefits and/or fame" this project will bring me, because this is the main cause of failing in this case. If this will bring me benefits (I especially think about experience, not about profits), i will take them as a bonus. But I am disgressing from the original question.

sCelerated 2010-08-24 20:42:34

About the platform for mz game, I definitely need to make it for PC (unfortunately, I don't have an iPhone or a console for developing/testing, i just have an Wii - and I really don't see miself making games for Wii). I have been reading lots of articles about gamedev in the last few days, so I made myself an overall idea about how the things work in what I am intending to do. Lets take the example of World of Goo: this game was made with less than 10.000$ (money that I don't have, it's just an example), by 2 guys, in a very short time. They used SDL, Open Dynamics Engine, TynyXML, Mantis...

sCelerated 2010-08-24 20:50:52

...and stuff like these. Most of them are freeware, but in some particular cases there are free alternatives for the other that are not. What I am trying to say is that (and this may sound utopian) you need just passion and lots of hours invested in your project. Because if your name it's not Thim Schafer or Will Wright, no one will listen to your idea (unless you're very, very lucky - see pitches.techcrunch.com).

sCelerated 2010-08-24 20:58:06

@sCelerated: The pong game I suggested is not a "tool to enter the game industry" its just a good warm-up. Just reading articles isn't going to show you what its really like to make a game. You need practice. Pong is a good place to start. There are some other simple games to you can try to recreate but, I wouldn't dive head on to a physics engine and stuff like that. Keep it simple.

thyrgle 2010-08-24 22:02:14

@sCelerated: thyrgle is 100% correct in saying that pong is a good starting point, it gives you a good idea on how everything works and what it actually takes to write a game (even a very basic one). It may seem easy, but for a beginner there is a lot to learn and this gives a good peek into what actually goes into a game.

Grant Peters 2010-08-25 02:09:03

Grant Peters 2010-08-25 02:15:41

Ok, so I should start with creating very simple games. Let's take - like you said - Pong. What tools and what exactly should I use to make this (or a similar) game? L.E.: I know reading won't do much help whenyou don't know what to do. I was just trying to inform miself (I don't think that learning is such a bad idea to start; at least I'm not like these 10-years kids (despite I'm a beginner too) that came up on forums and say "I wanna make a game", thinking it's THAT simple).L.L.E.: I really appreciate your help until now:D

sCelerated 2010-08-25 08:03:44

@sCelerated: You can make it with whatever you want. You need to pick what you want to work with. You can pretty much make Pong with any language that has graphic capabilities (or a library that will let you do so). So if you want to do it C++ you can do OpenGL, DirectX, SDL, Ogre2D, and there's probably some other stuff. And there's Javascript (which is another language you say your interested in) which I think already has some graphic capabilities.

thyrgle 2010-08-25 22:03:51

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What are the best engines for a 2D indie game?

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