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#1 I haven't played with 3DGS since A5. I owned a commercial license for it back then though. For ease of use it is great, it doesn't have as much power as Torque, but is easier to use.

#2 The starter kits / templates in Torque are a lot better than the templates in 3DGS, and you have a whole lot more choices of addons, provided you're a good C++ coder and you know Torque Script.

One of the reasons I'm really becoming disenchanted with Torque (yes, flame away... I'm no longer a fan boi after nearly seven years of being a Torque advocate) is GG's approach to IP. If you make code that links to Torque, it's basically LGPL only worse... you can provide it to others provided you make a free resource on their website, but don't dare to publish anything outside of their website.

Look at Dream Games... they were forced to stop selling their MMO Kit (although it was mostly script and artwork) and Josh Ritter wasn't allowed to release his MMO Kit other than as open source... and even some of GG's own employees' creativity have been squashed.

Now, this is only a rumor, but to me it seems that their internal dealings with SpeedTree, BioWare, Sun, Microsoft, etc is to blame.

The only way I'm going to be happy with Torque (2 or 3?!?) is if it includes some of the features originally planned for TSE and it's made free for all of the TSE EA's. Hey, if you purchased TGEA after 1.0, you knew what it included, but if you were an EA, you only knew what was promised to be included and you made your purchase based on that. Include OpenGL support, create a plugin system that allows you to load your own modules, and don't make me basically re-write the whole friggin thing just to make the game I want to make.... if I was going to do that then I'd re-write the whole thing myself and open-source it.... oh wait, I'm already doing that :P

I've dumped a whole lot of time and money into Torque and related art assets and I have several fairly nice game prototypes, but I'm not about to dump more IP into it if I can't resell it later and I don't see any reason to dump more money into it until I get what I was originally promised.

3DGS has the same issues, though... if you make a game with 3DGS, it's pretty much only going to work on that platform. Unless you spend nearly a grand, you're not going to be happy when it comes time to re-distribute it either.

The only way I'll be happy with a game engine is if the creators adopt an Eclipse style business model. Open-source the framework and create a base game engine that's fairly flexible but allow the plugins, game engines and games to be closed source and available for license / sale.... oh, and make a game development framework / IDE while you're at it.

Like I've said before, if GG doesn't do it, I will... and I've already got nearly a year headstart on them.

I'm still waiting on the promised "transparency." 3 weeks, guys... that's the magic number. Never plan an iteration that will take longer than three weeks. Even if you miss your deadlines, make a new plan after the end of the third week. Agile Project Management chapter... Oh wait... you only read the first chapter so you never got there.

@Travis - Sorry for stealing your .plan but you asked, right? :D

#3 @Tony

Hay it's cool and I did ask. I enjoyed reading your comment its very insightful and you speak your mind, thats what makes the world intresting.

#4

Quote:Josh Ritter wasn't allowed to release his MMO Kit other than as open source.

This isn't true. It was entirely Prairie Games choice and GarageGames was totally cool with it.

#5 @Travis - Thanks

@Josh - Yes, but had you made a different decision, would GG have been as supportive? I'm not faulting Prairie Games for open sourcing your hard work, but if you would've tried to sell it I seriously doubt GG would've allowed it.

If I am wrong then I stand corrected... I'm not out to flame GG or their affiliates. I just want the truth... is Garage Games the Indie Champion, or have they sold out? Does Garage Games truly want to see a lot of successful indie game developers, or are they out to make a buck at our expense?

Screw "casual" games... that's not what we want to create no matter how lucrative it might be. We want to create core games that are loved for the fabulous, innovative game-play. Are you with us or against us?!?

#6 Umm... Already discussed quite frequently :)

Right on the first page in the general forum: http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=69613


If you like 3DGS and it works for you that is cool. I wont tell you it is terrible. The community is very cliquish, and my own personal experience with dealing directly with conitec was -horrible- all round. And that after we dropped the $2-3K for the commercial team licence.

As for the images you show.. The 3DGS one is really nothing special IMO. Simple HUD, simple map, simple laser beam..

I have no idea why you choose the Torque one you did.. it shows a stone standing in a field.. Cummon.. at least do apples to apples:

http://www.garagegames.com/products/111/images/?current=6
http://www.garagegames.com/products/111/images/?current=11
http://www.garagegames.com/products/111/images/?current=14

I think those are more appropriate shots of Torque in action.

I will admit Im a huge fan of Torque. Pros and cons..

Pros:
Awesome community. I have been a part of the Torque community for 3+ years now and it's been amazing, hands down awesome.

Torque = Source code.. Any problems I have I can fix. If GG closes shop tomorrow I still own everything I need to make my projects work. Period..

Constantly improving engine and technology for the engine. The GG team have always been forwarding the Torque technology. You have to appreciate that Torque came about from the game Tribes back in what? The mid-late 90s? Since then GG has constantly improved the engine, developed the community and expanded the products for the community. Examples of that would be: TGB, TGEA, TorqueX (or whatever the Xbox flavor is now labelled).

Cons: Documentation. Yup, it sucks.. No worse than 3DGS docs though. Better actually. Most of the documentation for 3DGS is a Windows help file if I recall. At least with Torque we get TDN and the Doxy.

3DGS - Pros:
All mods are script based so no C++ skills needed

In fairness I cant think of any other pros.. You say you like it over Torque could you expand on that and tell us why? What does 3DGS give you over Torque?

3DGS Cons:
Terrible documentation..
Terrible network code (3DGS uses Direct play from microsoft as their network layer *rolls eyes*. It never worked right and Conitec STILL is incapable of showing even a 3D demo that works with more than 4 players in the game at a time. Even Microsoft admitted Direct Play was a disaster and stopped supporting it over 2 years ago.
NO SOURCE! - This is a deal breaker for me. Wether I am a coder or not, if I am developing a project that might go retail and I have to depend on some bunch of part time engine programmers to fix bugs as I send them in.. It took Conitec over 6 months at a time to roll out fixes for pages of bugs I sent in regarding the network code. After the second phase of rollouts and after recieving a bunch of verbal abuse on the forums from the owners *cough*Doug*cough* I gave up and told them to kindly drop me a line when they actually had their engine working with a multiplayer demo.


I was a member of the 3DGS community for over 12 months and worked with Conitec on trying to fix their horribly broken network layer... Both Conitec and the community were very hard to deal with.

Each of us will end up taking away something different from their experiences with a company. I don't profess 3DGS to be useless but I don't think it even comes close to holding a candle to Torque. Could you expand on exactly what abotu 3DGS makes it seem better to you?

#7 Tony I think you are grossly mistaken on a lot of points in your post. I am not a GG fanboi and will be the first to speak up about GG issues (Like the 2 year delay to Constructor*cough*) but you need to get some licensing stuff straightened out..

MydreamRPG had to stop selling their MMOkit because they were selling AND distributing Torque sourcecode without proof of ownership. The details that were worked out between MydreamRPG and GG were worked out quickly and in the end mydreamRPG were given full permission to sell their product again after they setup a way for purchases to provide proof of ownership for the Torque Source. I wont get into teh details of it all here but you are absolutely 100% wrong about GG vs Dreamer. MyRPG was not sold on the GG website because it didnt meet the quality standards of GarageGames since it didnt work out fo the box and when it initially launched was merely a compilation of resources already freely available to the community.

Making a game with Torque is NOT LGPL.. Where in the world did you ever get that? If you sell a product today that is Torque based you certainly dont have to provide open source for it.. As a matter of fact providing ANY source with it is against the EULA. You simply can NOT resell GG source. Period. If you want to write your own game engine and modify it go ahead. The Torque engine belongs to GG. It's their IP. Your compiled game however is your own to sell,distrubte under whatever license you bloody well like :) GG has no say in that at all. If you want to publish your game through GG they do have standards it must meet or they will not put it in their store.

I dont want to start a big ol shouting match but I think you are seriously messed up with the EULA on Torque. I am very familiar with it and discussed it directly with GG over the phone to make sure that I understood it correctly. Compiled = sell whatever you want.. Source = Talk to GG or you will get slapped around.

Anyways if you go out and do your engine I wish you well. Turn your frustration into somethign positive and use it to launch a whole new game engine. That should keep you busy for the next 8-9 years :) Say what you want but thats how long it will take for you to even get close to providign the features and platform testing that Torque already provides. Oh yeah how many platforms does 3DGS run on? Oh yeah thats right just windows... And when I asked Conitec about an Xbox port. I recieved a snappy responce from Doug something along the lines of "When you get a spare $100k and actually know what you are doing give us a call"

#8 LOL They really dont like me over at the 3DGS forums.. I was trying to find some of our more "animated" discussions about the difficulties of using 3DGS in an MMO and then realized that alot of my posts have gone "missing" :)

My profile shows 344 posts.. My searchable post history... 56 :)

3DGS doesnt even come close to the capabilities or stability of Torque IMO. Add in the source code of Torque, The crossplatform of Torque (Windows, 'nix, Mac, XboX), then add in an active community ( That isn't based 90% in Germany so all of the forum resources are posted in german and not English.. No offence to German speaking folks just makes it tough to figure things out for us poor English speaking gimps.)..

What exactly about 3DGS is better than Torque?

#9 3DGS is a game maker. Torque is a game engine.

Torque can do much more, and when people ask stuff like this its usually because they can't work with Torque right.

#10 I know exactly what the Torque EULA says... I think you misunderstood my comments. I was discussing IP and attempts at re-distributing it when it's targeting Torque.

My comments about "LGPL" licensing style of Torque wasn't meant to indicate that you must re-distribute your source when you create a game, but if you want to re-distribute your technology then your hands are tied up pretty tightly, especially if you're an Indie.

I completely understand why.... but had things been correctly split into extensible modules in Torque (as indicated with the original TSE plans) then that wouldn't have to be the case.

On top of that, if someone was free to extend 3DGS to use those same module / interfaces then you could use the technology for both game engines. I'm using 3DGS as an example... any other game engine could be applied to this scenario if the hooks were provided.

Why does someone have to a "3DGS vs Torque" question at all? Because it's pretty much an all or nothing atmosphere.

As far as a game engine taking 8 years, you're incorrect... I estimate a total of 3 years and that's including the toolchain (and I'm already 1/3 done).

If the game engine and tools companies targeting indie developers aren't working together and if their products are loosely coupled and not tightly integrated then we're all forced to choose one game engine over another.

Indie Game Development will never become a mature profession if we're all relying on a single company to produce everything, especially if we're forced to using the same basic tools that are used by the Commercial guys.

Our needs are different, our development process is different, our game engine and tools need to be different.

Sorry if I'm bashing GG.... I am a little, but overall I love Torque. I just wish we could fix it so that it'll meet all of our needs. A little bit (or maybe a lot?) of refactoring of TGEA instead of diving into Torque 2 should have been the route GG took, except if they went that route then they'd basically have to give it away for free to all current TGEA licensees.

Just call it MS5 and add plugins and MS6 and add OpenGL.

Again, I understand the reasons why this isn't possible... I've been a small business owner before as well and I understand missed milestones and overrunning budgets.

What I really want is open source frameworks for game engines and tools with a ZLib / MIT / Apache / Eclipse style license with the potential for closed source plugins and buy-in from at least three game engine companies and three tool development companies all dedicated to making the Indie Game Development Industry better than the commercial game development industry.

And drop Agile / Scrum and switch over to OpenUP :-D

#11 Sorry... after re-reading this, it sounds like I'm still off topic, but it all relates to my (typo'd) question:

Why does someone have to ask a "3DGS vs Torque" question at all?

Happy Torquing.

#12 I had been digging into old Snapshot submissions section 2 days ago...
It's proving to be useful.

All I can say, is without good art, even the best engine will look like crap.
Some of this screenshots are even more than 3 years old!

www.garagegames.com/mg/snapshot/view.php?qid=78

www.garagegames.com/mg/snapshot/view.php?qid=78

www.garagegames.com/mg/snapshot/view.php?qid=155

www.garagegames.com/mg/snapshot/gallery.php?page=1313

#13 Can I add one of mine? :-D

Fractured Universe dev snapshot

I'll stop posting off-topic stuff and I'm moving what I hope to be a great discussion over here.

Happy Torquing.

#14 @Tony: no you can't ;-)

Grrr... where is my best Darkwind: War On Weels screenshot?

#15

Quote:
My comments about "LGPL" licensing style of Torque wasn't meant to indicate that you must re-distribute your source when you create a game, but if you want to re-distribute your technology then your hands are tied up pretty tightly, especially if you're an Indie.

I agree ten thousand percent. GG has a very tight policy about selling anything even remotely related to torque which I don't like. if a company with a torque license pays a developer with a torque license $100 to make an addon for torque that would be ok, but it's not ok for that same developer to create the addon first and then sell it to the same company for $100. In the latter case, the developer could then resell it to other companies, other people, and possibly make alot of money none of which GG would get a cut of. no no, you need to talk to GG first, get their permission, hope they let you sell it, or hope they don't want too large percentage. IMO, if you paid for the engine, GG has made a profit and should be satisfied. as long as you're not giving away the engine, GG shouldn't attempt to control how you profit from it.

anyway, what don't i like about torque? I don't like how TGEA was implemented. I don't like that it uses the same lighting kit that torque uses. and I don't like the fact that even though it uses shaders, it looks almost identical to TGE. Ive been messing around with TGEA lately and it seems as if the shader interface was written to support the TLK, rather than taking advantage of the shader interface to create an all new next-gen lighting system.