Torque3D and Unity's New Pricing

#81 @Steve - Epic has released the Unreal Development Kit. It basically allows you to start developing a game for free. As long as you don't make any money of $5000, you don't owe them anything. What you make over that you owe them 25%. I think this is a slam dunk for many indie devs and even hobbyists. Sure you owe them 25% from royalties, but you get one of THE if not THE best tool pipe available to professional studios. You get AI, networking, *SPEEDTREE*, Navmeshes, etc that Unreal offers. So long indie engines I'm gone.

#82 Yes, this is beyond all belief to me. The world is changing.

#83 Wow,

UDK going free now, this is awesome, it sure the world is changing,

first Unity, now UDK, I ll bet you on 2010 will be the year of major 3d gaming dev tech secrets revealed or source open up to the public
ie: mmorpg technology releases.

I mean, like mmo games is been up until today an unknown area for most of game devs, offcourse that is if you are not a hardcore programmer guru or a team of programmers to create your own server side technology by yourself.
but other than that, is pretty much not an indie option.
So Ill bet you next year a lot of new interesting stuff will pop up even mmo tech releases source codes to be freely used by the public to game dev creaton.

you just never know whats gonna happen, hope is all good.

#84 @pilotcap232: I'm *sure* someone has mentioned this in this thread or another like it recently, but the UDK has been available for $60 as UT's Modding tool for a good 5 years or so. There's no new technology for devs on a budget to check out that hasn't been there before. What's new is that, for the first time every, Epic is building a license for redistributing content made with their mod tools (now UDK). That is cool and for some people, 25% royalties is probably ok as they're unlikely to every ship a game, but for those people, picking up a copy of Unreal Tournament for $60 last week (or last year) would have accomplished the same thing. All the secrets are definitely still behind closed doors as the UE3 source is still safely behind a 7 figure license.

#85 Well, I think that is the key, isn't it? How likely are you to release a game? And if you do release, how likely is it to sell any significant dollar figure? If you get past those 2 hurdles, then yes, T3D is a better option, dollarwise, by a wide margin. But on the flip side, what if you don't have $1000 for T3d, and $40 for Torsion, and $200 for AfX and $??for the Forest Kit, and $100 for FMod, etc, etc, etc, also what if you have a decent team and you need 4 licenses? Then, 25% of your profits doesn't seem so bad because 75% of something is a lot better than 100% of nothing.

#86 75% of something is fine as long as your game makes less than $10K. Yes many will never release a game but for those who do it is probably better to learn on UTK (if they are lacking the money) and then buy T3D plus the addons for probably less than $2,500 rather than give UTK far more than that.

$2,500 isn't that much money if you have something you are certain will make good money and once you have the basic implementation on UTK, porting it to T3D would not be that bad.

#87 The important thing to note about the 25% is that it is a technology licensing fee. It has nothing to do with the cut that publishers and distributors will take for distributing your game. It is still better than what mod teams had available for years, but it is not the best option for all teams.

#88 @Drethon -- Yes, I agree $2500 is not much money if you are sure you are going to release a game and make money with it. If you have a team, maybe its more like 5 or 6 thousand, however. For many people, especially young college age people, this is A LOT of money. But still, in the right circumstances, T3D is a better deal.

All I am saying is that there is a huge number of people who cannot afford, or will decide they are better off not paying this money up front. There are now, (as opposed to a week ago!!) other viable alternatives for them. Thus Torque's potential market share for PC games, imo, just got a lot smaller.

What will T3D do in response to UDK? Nothing? Doesn't strike me as a very effective strategy. I think that T3D has to do things to make that initial price barrier seem even yet more unimportant in relation to what you get. That can no longer be done simply by comparing feature by feature to UDK!

Low learning curves, great customer support, FULL documentation, NO bugs, easy adaptability to other genres like RPGs or MMOs (ie huge paged streaming terrains) etc. Give me those things, I will gladly pay for them. Right now, in my opinion, T3D doesn't have these things. A week ago it was okay, because, after all, where else were you going to go? Now, I think that whichever Game Engine company is smart enough to bring to the market all these "value added" things will be the one to differentiate their Engine from all the rest.

#89 Black Tengu said it very well;
"Sure you owe them 25% from royalties, but you get one of THE if not THE best tool pipe available to professional studios. You get AI, networking, *SPEEDTREE*, Navmeshes, etc that Unreal offers."
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And I must Say, Steve Damsky laid it all out & better than I ever could have done. - The bar has been risen beyond a reasonably attainable height. Face it sooner than later..it's better for your psyche in the long run. (both of Steve's posts on this page were great)

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For now, I will contemplate buying the packs that fixup T3D OR just simply leaving this community. ..looks like I have plenty to ponder.
- I could ignore the 1k I spent here and get UDK-Binary that is worth 200k to me or I could stay here and spend more money on packages that help fix things up/improve things.

Hmmm.

#90 I still dont get how is $2500 or 25% royalties a lot of money if you ever release a game and make more then 5k of profit with it.
25% of 5000 = 1250 for epic games, you keep 3750 for your pocket. but if you dont release a commercial game, then you don thave to pay anything with UDK.

This is plain simple, we are talking if you ever release or publish a game, how many of us here have release a commercial game outhere to the market and made more then 5k profit?
believe it or not, not even 1 out of 100 indie devs release a commercial game, and not only using T3D , but the over all engines outhere. and I think the 1% is way to high of a number.


So it all comes down to: would'nt it be so cool to have your best game engine toolset for free to use for a non commercial, and have a great afordable royalty plan like UDK if you ever release a commercial game?

I mean why would you want to pay up infront money for a game engine if you still are wayyyy to far apart of even release something that will make you profits. I mean creating even a simple game, a game that will sell commercially takes months of developement and a team of people,
which measn an up infront investment of game engine tools .

All i am saying, every game engine coompany has the right to set their own terms of license, prices etc..
But wouldnt it be cool if all game engines, will share the same license terms as UDK? it will be awesome.

#91 if all engines share the same license terms as UDK i would have to make my own engine the 25% is way to high its not even that good of a engine. only the stuff that comes with it like speed tree and stuff which was not made by unreal.

#92 @Brandon Baker - You're right, it sucks so bad. If only all the professional game studios were as smart as us indie devs who get to use incomplete tools.

#93 Brandon, the UDK is basically Unreal Engine 3 without source. UE3 has been used to develop numerous commercial games and is arguably one of the best engines out there. What do you think is wrong with it?

#94 And yet again, only if it was that simple to make your own game engine.

Now, there are so many factors we all need to think about, first, pretty much 80% or more of us here or in any other game engine community forums are indie devs, so therfore is a little hard to have to tools, $$$ resources or knowloadge or team or even time to make our own technology, therefore we look for something already built like T3D, Unity, C4 UDK etc...
So among the existing technologies or tools available outhere, we chose the one we are most confortable with within our budget and or needs.

25% is not that high considering is the work of many years of development and refine for such of technology. which is among of one of the best outhere used by large studio professional game development teams.

but 25% is only if you release a commercial game and if it makes more then 5k of revenue. if you dont fall into there 2 categories, then you pretty much dont pay anything for it.


So the questions that we may ask ourselves are:

- Do we have the money and time to create our own game engine technology?

- how many times have I release a commercial game and made above 5k revenue?

- do I have the initial investment to purchae a 1k or 1500 to start developing my own game for future commercial release? and how long shall I have it ready for before I start making any money out of it?


I mean all these questions I ask myself day after day, being a single person indie dev, thats why I still dont quit my day time job, since I dont depend completely economicly speaking on a commercial game yet release by me, yeah, I have made several small games as a hobby and still making more and learning but making money out of them yet, no, not really, I wish I could be tho. but sooner or later I will.

#95 25% is NOT too much! You have to put this in perspective. As PilotCap said, the odds are way stacked against indies putting out games that make alot of money. But wait! Let's say you buck the odds, you make a game with UDk and it sells like wild, you rake in 1 million dollars in sales.

Do you realize that you will only pay Udk 250,000 dollars? I think that is cheaper than the regular license used to be! (but I am not sure. I never bothered finding out how much that license cost) And I don't care if you pay an additional 250,000 in salaries and marketing. It is still a lot of money to make with no up front investment in the engine. Other companies licensed Unreal for more than 250,000 before last week didn't they? And paid up front. And yes, they got the source. In all likelihood, even if you create a monster hit, you will be paying less for using UDK than those companies.

#96

Quote:For now, I will contemplate buying the packs that fixup T3D OR just simply leaving this community. ..looks like I have plenty to ponder.

I could ignore the money spent on T3D as well if need be I suppose. The thing is.. I wonder if buying T3D, then asking people to buy other items to increase functionality is a viable option at this point. The playing field for many has just changed, and that effects more than just Torque. We will see how things play out I guess.

#97 25% is not that much!? Lets be clear here, if you self-publish and self-shelf your product, then you will recieve 75% of the total revenue. If you distribute through a portal, there goes 25-50%. If you go through a publisher, there goes another significant chunk of your work. 25% *is* a lot, it really really is.

If your game earns more than $4,000 in gross sales (assuming that you actually get 75% of the gross) then you are better off using Torque 3D (income wise). Period.

Hell, its not even that for most developers around here since they can pick T3D up for $700 (with the TGEA discount). This means that as soon as you earn over $2,800 it is better to go with T3D.

25% *is* huge. Really huge. Really REALLY huge.

Edit: Yes I'm aware of the $5,000 min, the math was just an example to show you how little an upfront investment of $1000 is in comparision.

#98 @philip -- I never said, nor do I say now, that it is better to pay 25% of your sales than a flat rate. I do understand the mathematics, but the hidden implication in your math is that you can do everything with T3D that you can do with the UDK, and I am not at all certain that is true.

If there are things you can do faster or better with UDK or things you can do with UDK that you cannot do at all with T3D, then you can't just say..oh T3D is a better value. Of course no one wants to give a % of their sales if they could just give a low up front cost, but each developer will have the weigh the pros and cons of all available engines, not just T3D and UDK.

Also, I strongly disagree that for $700 you are off and running with T3D. What about Torsion and Verve and AFX and GMK and the Forest Kit and Pure Light and and and? Realistically, you are talking a couple thousand for a one man band. No, you don't *need* them, but they do add a helluva lot of functionality.

IF you can afford that 700 to a few thousand initial investment and IF you can make the same quality game in a similar time frame with T3D that you could make with the UDK, then I agree, hands down, T3D is the big winner.

Lastly, I still disagree that 25% is huge. Do I want to pay it? No. Is it the most horrible deal of all time? No. Does it hands down make T3D viable and UDK un-viable? No.

I can only hope that I make a game that has a million dollars in sales, pay Unreal their 250,000 , pay the publishers, etc. I would be very happy to be in this scenario.

#99 Say you had a team of even 10 people.

Torque Upfront Cost:

10 x $1000 (license) = $10,000
10 x $500 (pureLight) = $5,000
10 x $500 (forestkit) = $5,000 (don't know the actual price yet)
Plus many more features needed

Atleast $20,000

Unreal Upfront Cost:

$0, risk time only

#100 @Black Tengu: I am beginning to think some of these people are not on planet Earth.