Using Instant Action to Develop Games

Donald, from Instant Action, talks about using their middleware to accelerate your game development

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/cc-instant-action.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]yV7yRjgUGqk[/wp_youtube]

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at Casual Connect, and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Donald: Hi, there. I’m Donald Harris from Instant Action, and one of the sales reps at Instant Action and their social media marketing manager.

Interviewer: And what’s Instant Action about?

Donald: Instant Action is a game company that develops middleware engine technology. So, we develop the tools that help developers create their games in a quicker and more efficient fashion.

Interviewer: And so, one of those tools would be…

Donald: Some of our tools or more notable tools are Torque 3D which is a 3D platform for the PC and the Mac. We also have our Torque X which is our XNA solution for helping deliver content to the Xbox 360.

Of course, we support Xbox 360 as a disk-based solution to the Wii and obviously, the iPad and iPod.

Interviewer: Now, all of those different platforms, do they require different engines, or you just develop it once and it deploys anywhere?

Donald: Right now, there are separate engines for each of those platforms. Our director of the tools department, she did mention in a blog earlier this year that we are doing a type of convergence. There will be more of that to come down the road. But, as far right now, we have the platform as one engine.

Interviewer: You know, there’s been talk last year using Unity versus Torque. What would you say are the benefits of Torque, and can you talk about the enhancements and improvements you guys have done to your mobile platform?

Donald: So, one of the main benefits that we have over any of our competitors is our available source. With all of our products you have the option of buying source with it, and where that helps any level of a studio is that if you ever find a bug or you have an issue that’s holding you back, you have the source code available to you to fix it.

That’s not to say that that gives us the ability to deliver a buggy engine to our consumers. So, that’s one of the big deals. Another big thing that we have is our community. So, we’re over 150,000 registered users, and these guys are very adamant and very active. So, you can get a lot of support and a lot of help through our forums and things of that nature. That’s one of our biggest things that are special.

Interviewer: Can you talk about the pricing structure? How much does it cost if you want to use the tool to develop for iPhone or iPad, using the Torque Engine?

Donald: So, our pricing is actually very, very competitive in the market. I think actually we’re probably one of the lowest cost engines on the market today. And I say I haven’t had the price memorized just because we have all of our pricing on the web.

There are very simple terms. There’s no royalties. That’s one of the key things that most people ask up front. It’s a single payment up front. I know that our Torque 3D is $1,000 so you can go ahead and download it from the web.

Interviewer: What about Windows Phone 7 support? Can you talk about and tools or what’s you guys offer so people can develop for them?

Donald: So, definitely. Actually, if you guys are out were at Casual Connect, you will see that we are showing off one of the games that was shown at Mix. It was done by Gravity Bear, and they used our technology for Windows Phone 7. That’s one of our next big pushes for support on that platform.

We’re going to roll something out later on this year, and it will be a full tool set for Windows Phone 7.

Interviewer: Anything else then that you would like developers to know about your tools that can help them make their games faster?

Donald: That’s a good question. So, there’s tons of things that I can talk to you about our tool set and keep going on. What I will say it’s an easy community to get into. It’s an easy tool set to learn. We have many different resources now, especially with our documentation being beefed up by Mitch Harey. And our team’s very dedicated to our community. So, that’s my main focus…

Interviewer: Where’s the website where people can visit to find out more information?

Donald: They can find out more information about us at TorquePowered.com, and they can follow us on Twitter at TorquePowered. That’s actually me, that particular Twitter account.

Interviewer: TorquePowered.com, that’s T-O-R-Q-U-E-P-O-W-E-R-E-D. com.

Donald: Yes, Torque Powered.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.