Following the premiere of Torque X for Xbox 360 at GameFest, Gamasutra sat down with GarageGames' president, Mark Frohnmayer, to discuss the future possibilities for Torque, independent developers, and the possibility of a 2D Xbox 360 renaissance.
When discussing the possibility of a '2D renaissance' using Torque's 2D-related tools on Xbox 360, Frohnmayer commented:
"I think so, and the reason I think so is that we departed from the world of 2D game mechanics world happened, in my mind, because of the hardware. For instance, we had platformer 1 and platformer 2 that were 2D games, but now that we have 3D cards we'll do platformer 3 in the full 3D experience. In many cases I think that was a detriment to the overall play experience of the game. There are games that are very well expressed in 2D that lose something in the translation to 3D.
I think that as people start looking at what you can do with 3D hardware in the building of 2D games, such as taking advantage of shader effects, whether it's displacement mapping, bump mapping or whatever, you can make games that look completely different than any other 2D game you've ever seen before. People are going to have a lot of fun exploring in those directions, but aren't going to have to take the substantial hit that it takes to develop all the content for a 3D game and yet they can make game experiences that look completely new.
They can also go down paths like “What is Super Mario Brothers like in a network world?” That sort of thing. Just in terms of games I'm noticing myself playing, coming from a pretty hardcore Quake and Tribes gameplay background, I'm now gravitating towards experiences that are quite a bit simpler in terms of interface and those are often more naturally expressed in 2D."
You can now
read the full Gamasutra feature on the topic, including plenty more on Torque X's plans for Xbox 360 (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).
