Moving On

#1 Holy Crap!!!!!!

Man that is awesome thanks for posting that. I think I will be buying that very soon.

Well there you have it folks.

GG if you raise prices more than $200 you are idiots.

You are not the only game in town. don't let that Frontline award go to you head. The community got you that award and we can just as easily give it to someone else next year.

#2 Have a look at Panda3D, too. I like what I've learned over the last couple of months, and I like it more and more every day I work with it.

http://www.panda3d.org/

#3 I wouldn't be so quick to start searching for a new engine. I think alot of people will be very disappointed if they jump ship right now.

#4 Just so you guys know there is quite a big difference between a 3D engine and a GAME engine.

#5

Quote:Just so you guys know there is quite a big difference between a 3D engine and a GAME engine.

Well said, Matt.

There's also a huge difference between a game engine that exposes a well defined API (like yours) vs one like Torque where you have to dive into unknown code with high entropy and risk breaking things because you're in unfamiliar territory.

Had your game engine met my requirements a couple of years ago, I would be using it today. I haven't checked it out recently and I'm sure it has improved, but I'm liking the engine I'm using now so I probably won't be switching.... but I do send people your way from time to time when I meet someone that is asking for a recommendation and your engine suits them.

#6 @Matt: You are 100% correct. Several months ago I decided to start looking for a better engine for my projects because I just could not get TGE to do what I wanted without hitting yet another obstacle. Whether it was the frustrating content pipeline, or the poly & vertex limits of .dts, or the internal architecture of the engine discouraging a hierarchy of parented moving objects, or trying to subvert the network ghosting mechanism that others think so highly of, or rigid bodies falling through the terrain, or rigid body collisions wrapping the engine into a tight loop, or... anyways.

I evaluated several engines based on attributes most important to me: workflow & ease of use, cross-platform development & deployment, license terms, extensibility, a true scenegraph, OpenGL w/ both fixed-function and shader support, collisions & hooks for ODE, audio, particles, active community, etc.

"Price" was fairly far down on the list for me. Publishing to Flash, or an Xbox, or a browser plugin weren't anywhere on my list.

Panda3D came out on top for me. It's got it's own issues, of course -- nothing's perfect. My one regret: not standing up and taking a looking around at other engines months earlier.

#7

Quote:The first being a promise made that Torque Shader Engine would be the future of Torque. Well, it ended up not being anything more than a transition product.

Excuse me if I got it wrong but Torque3d is just the next evolution of TGEA, sure the name is changing and sure it's going to cost but how is that any different from say Windows XP to Windows Vista, with some free service pack in between?

Or any other piece of software? Whether it be called TGEA 2.0, Torque 3d or any other name it's just a major new version of the software.

#8 they don't realize that with leadwerks engine that if you buy it that just means you buy it in order to sell games with that engine you have to buy another license and they have no clue what it cost. i played around with the demo engine you guys can have that engine all you want but there are lots and lots of bugs. its not even a good engine ya it might look good as your looking at graphics remember you have to make those graphics they made those graphics just so you can see it and buy it. you cant use any object that the engine has if you have to make your own so all your getting is a bad engine over all. i read its END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
and i advise you all do the same.

as for the panda3d engine its not a complete engine or anything really you cant do much with it. well you can if your a c++ coder but then your basically making your own engine as there's nothing in this 3d program. i looked at 100s of engines and i looking to buy tgea i don't know why you think GG is going to suck with this new company its going to be just the same its just a new owner who will be getting your money when you guy the engine nothing more. they are keeping all same employees so i don't know why you think its going to be bad. if you don't have money to upgrade the engine when why you even messing with a engine in the first place. if its just for fun then just have fun with with you buy.

#9 @Brandon Baker:

Quote:as for the panda3d engine its not a complete engine or anything really you cant do much with it. well you can if your a c++ coder but then your basically making your own engine as there's nothing in this 3d program.

I know from 1st-hand experience your statement is false. It's at least as complete an engine as TGE/TGEA/TGB, perhaps more. You do have to know Python (I do).

And yes, you *can* do big things with it: Disney's Toontown, Disney's Pirate's of the Carribbean... [screenshots]

Anyways, if T3D offers better value and ease of use for the price, and does what I need it to do with less trouble, I'll take a look at it.

#10 @Brandon - Your comments regarding Leadwerks are also incorrect.

#11 @Brandon - I'm assuming you are talking about this section:

"You may use the SOFTWARE PRODUCT to create computer game software and 3D modeling software for personal or commercial use. You may not create any programmable, scripted, or GUI-driven game engine or game creation system."

This is pretty standard. Of course you can't create an engine from theirs and sell it. This is pretty standard stuff.

#12 While I am disappointed with the path that GG appears to be taking, in the end all I really care about is having a good engine to develop my games with. Right now TGEA is the best low cost engine on the market, so that's what I'll use. If Torque3D's feature set is worth the price hike, then that's what I'll use. If some other engine comes out and knocks them off that mark, then I'd switch.

There are several good engines out there that are competition. But I think all around, TGEA is still the best available at the moment.

#13 Unlike a lot of engines out there, I have not purchased a Leadwerks license simply because it falls outside of the hardware market that I would want to target. Josh definitely deserves kudos for developing a very strong, high-end engine that pushes high-end current-gen and next-gen cards. He had to look at what he wanted to support and the visual quality that he wanted and went for it. The people that I would target are not in the Crysis-pushing market, though, so I haven't picked up a license. I know a lot of people that are targeting that hardware market, though.

Plus the Leadwerks community is a nice tight little group. I've had good experiences there with 3D World Studio and helped out a bit with people exporting with map2dif from it.

Strangely, your blog almost reads as an ad campaign for the LW engine. Or perhaps an attempt to provoke a mass exodus to LW. Or both. Which is kind of strange to read.

I have quite a lot to say on a lot of fronts and as I was typing it all up, I realized it should be its own blog since it only tangentially fits as a reply. I don't want to muddle the message that you have with the blog. I've been answering a ton of support e-mails so I haven't had a chance to be more active on the forums or blogs as I have in the past.

I'm sorry that you seem to feel that the indie spirit seems to have given up the ghost here. That's far from the truth, but I can see through your different posts that you feel slighted in some way. LW or Unity or NeoAxis will not solve all your problems with community or engine tech, though they may fit your development style and community expectations in ways that you feel we are not. Good luck on your project.

#14
Aside from having very steep hardware requirements (as David just mentioned), Leadwerks is OpenGL-only (as is C4 BTW). Completely rules it out for me.