When comparing Scratch vs Torque 2D MIT, the Slant community recommends Torque 2D MIT for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Torque 2D MIT is ranked 4th while Scratch is ranked 42nd. The most important reason people chose Torque 2D MIT is:
Torque 2D gives developers complete access to the source code. This removes all barriers one may hit when trying to extend and/or customize the engine they are working with.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Visual
Code is represented as visual building blocks that makes it easy to understand how a program is put together.
Pro Great starting point for kids
Scratch was developed specifically for kids ages 8 and up as an exciting way to introduce them to technology. It's designed to be easy to learn, but still provides good depth in computational thinking.
Pro Easy to learn
Scratch is designed to teach computational thinking rather than focus on specific syntax. It was designed specifically to be easy to learn for anyone over the age of 8.
Pro Highly structured
The language is highly structured. Therefore, it gives you the essentials of how to think like a programmer and teaches you good programming practices from early on, so you could write clean, working and readable code in the future.
Pro No need to be able to type
Pro Can be used to create games
Pro Extremely extendable and customizable
Torque 2D gives developers complete access to the source code. This removes all barriers one may hit when trying to extend and/or customize the engine they are working with.
Pro Cross platform
Torque 2D runs on Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, Linux, and Web.
Pro The scripting language is quite powerful
Torquescript is a fast and easy to use C++ like scripting language that ties all of the various elements of a project together. It supports a large complement of functions including math, physics, object manipulation, fileIO, and more. Torquescript features:
- Object-oriented programming
- Transparent interconnection with internal C++ objects
- Built-in fast 2D math (vectors, matrices, and quaternions with all corresponding functions)
- Well-documented standard library (hundreds of functions out-of-the box)
- Component system (aka Behaviors)
- Dynamic asset and module loading
Pro Highly performant
The engine utilizes a combination of batched rendering, asset management, and a module system that allows for high frame rates on all platforms.
Pro Box2D physics
Torque 2D MIT's utilizes Box2D for all physics calculations. Anyone with prior knowledge with Box2D by itself or through other engines can easily transfer their knowledge. Nearly all of the Box2D API is exposed to the scripting language, making it a quick process to port games to the engine without having to learn an entirely new system.
Cons
Con For kids
For kids.
Con Won't get you a job
Scratch is not a language used in the workplace. Instead it teaches computational thinking, helping to create a foundation to aid in learning other languages.
Con Does not teach you programming
Learning Scratch might help you if you have high difficulty with logical thinking. However, starting with a proper programming language, especially an easy one, will give you the benefits of starting with something like Scratch and everything else.
Con Strange OOP
Scratch has a very strange implementation of OOP that is sprite based, and will become very confusing when you move to other languages.
Con Weird
It's straight up weird.
Con Project seems to be abandoned
Seems to not be developed/supported anymore.
Con Lacking documentation
The engine documentation is incomplete. Not all of the engine API is fleshed out and the number of tutorials is pretty small. All current and future documentation effort is up to the community, via the Torque 2D MIT GitHub wiki.