Unreal Dev Kit free for non-commercial use.

#61 Other things to consider is how well they are going to back this. Are there going to be constant updates to it keeping it inline with their 5-6 figure engine? Right now from the best of my understandings it is current with their pay a lot to play offering. It will be an interesting to watch over the next 3-6 months to see what kind of updates happen, what actual support or resources they throw on the project that isn't done by the community, and if they progress towards making a console option or not. It is easier to deal with 100 high paying customers who are mostly professional and have some basic understandings on how to do their job than 1000s (and probably more right now during the big rush) that are having problems installing or don't understand much of anything.

Failures will probably not reflect very well on them if this thing turns into a giant hailstorm of people very angry about certain things. Probably why a lot of these companies didn't want to make this jump. They might get 0.01% of all those who download to get to the point where they are going to be paying back. Anyway, time will tell. I still think regardless it is a bold move mostly to get the EDU sector so those coming up are using their engine instead of the compitition. Going to be really hard to shake them out of that sector.

#62 @john -

Quote:
The two best things about T3D are
Web Deployment
Mac support

some other things which set Torque Tech apart from the pack are:
twitch-MMO-ready game networking (but lord, integrate curl, gg!)
community
linux-based server

#63 I agree completely with you eb, I bought the t3d with a high risk of fail, i'm feeling exactly this, if t3d start to be a lot more user friendly (include a lot of simple examples, complete the documentation, prepare a smart resource system and...) then t3d would be something to think of, at the moment for those that have a high risk to fail, should be using UDK or even, unity 3d free.

T3D looks like a user friendly engine that tease you to buy it (marketing), but when you buy it and see the private forum , documentation and etc, you see the reality, is a lot more difficult, but ok. The t3d engine has a lot of good features, needs only simple things to catch the love of the hobbysts even with this $1000 fee.

I know the guys from garagegames are probably doing their job, and defending themself, but if ignore such thing like "eb" said wont be nice.

You guys are including the 25% fee as something eternal, if you win a good start amount of money with a game, you will probably start to do plans for bigger things, this 25% is just a step (and small step, if you succed in this market).

#64 Wow - this thread has grown!

Anyhow, I orginally posted this because I didn't see UDK competing with T3D - firstly, because the licensing appeals to different groups (UDK for hobbiests and T3D for indies, but their is some crossover). The no-source/deathmatch focus of UDK is very limiting if you aren't aiming for an Unreal mod. The art pipeline requirements are a little scary too.

As far as documentation for UDK goes, there's two very good books on level design and an upcoming one on scripting.

The one thing that GG can take from the UDK offering is the samples. The level samples (that are way beyond my ability) are amazing and are a good indication of what the engine is capable of. The samples that come with T3D are, to put it bluntly, dull and uninspiring. The problem I have with this is that I know T3D is capable of much the same as UDK but it isn't obvious. The first thing I look at when considering an engine is the included samples. I guess I'm just saying that T3D is an amazing engine, but you really need a demo that shows that it's up there.

#65 lol eb, completely agree as a customer my route into game dev went from a game maker (pah can't code much), Darkbasic (hated it) to Torque (oooOo a low cost engine with full C++ source it's a no risk gamble) and I've stayed ever since.

With any tech where you want to bring people in and offer routes to build on their passion I think it's important to have a free/low cost option, that might be Torque 2D in future or open sourced TGE or some other cunning plan the smart cookies at TP (GG) have up their sleeves.

#66 The reality is, kind of like one of my original posts speculated, I think they just gave more 'credit' to Torque, unity etc.
GG should recommend everyone go give the UDK a 'test spin'
With all the hub-bub, more people would have downloaded their UDK (me included), taken it for a test spin, and found that:
- Looks pretty, demo's etc
- Runs like crap on hardware that Torque runs well on, unless you tweak the 'pretty' right out of it
- Editor is a pain
- Importing anything is a workload itself
- What it does, it does well, what it doesn't, simply isn't there, even if needed, without source : )
- Windows only, not so bad, but requires many pre-req's to get going even on Windows.

Overall, makes me happy about my Torque investment.
Now if only that investment auto-made me a AAA game all by itself...

#67 Like it or not, UDK opens up some pretty big doors for people; relegated to modders it will not be. Unreal allows for high tech zero loss endeavors for many individuals and more importantly, teams. It is limited in some ways, but then so are Unity and Torque products. I do not feel this is something that's going to make a big splash then ebb away. And while we can say each engine is geared to a different segment of the market, they tend to overlap quite a bit imo.

I've been around Torque since 06 and with few exceptions, have grown to like and respect most of the employees and community members. I think T3D is an awesome product, and that GG err.. TorquePowered have made great decisions so far. I hope Torque, as I have no doubt, will rise to the occasion and continue to move forward. As it's been said before.. it's a great time to be an indie.

My only advise (unrequested).. be careful of nickeling and diming.

#68 @Dee - I agree with most of your points, except for one.

Quote:
Runs like crap on hardware that Torque runs well on, unless you tweak the 'pretty' right out of it

I didn't find this to be the case at all. Indeed, loading up the sample UDK game, I was able to fluidly play some very complicated stuff on my 8600GT (mobile). This seemed faster on this machine than the T3D demos are.
Of course, I think there is a price to pay for this - enormous amounts of time creating and "baking" the levels. Still, I wish T3D got this level of performance.
Overall, I found the UDK significantly harder to use to create something. It didn't feel intuitive at all.

#69 //post changed

Dee claims to be able to make a solid judgement of the UDKvsTorque with less than a few days of using the UDK. Laughable.

..I could go on for days how ridiculous and fanboi-like those points are, but I'll stop, simply with that.
Appearing frustrated from reading ignorant posts does not help anything...I know this. However, posting fanboi comments with simple "perceptions", actually harms the situation. I expected more from someone like Dee.

#70 I played around with UDK over the weekend and I really like what I see. Granted, it's not as easy to use as T3D (but I'm not talking from the same levels of familiarity) but the quality of the samples and published games will keep me pushing on. That said though, I downloaded a few other games made with UDK and a lack of good quality assets can make anything look crap, even with the Unreal Engine.

I really feel that GG needs to release a sample of the same quality as the UDK ones.

#71 As an UE3 Engine licensee I can tell you that there is a huge difference between the UDK and a full license. I can tell you our specific terms, but it's not cheap. The development difference is similar to comparing T3D and Unity. Both have strengths and weaknesses but, if you need access to source it's going to cost you at some point. The biggest advantage to UDK is the fantastic toolset. Then again it's had millions of dollars and problem hundreds of thousands of man hours put into it and has been an iterative process as the form and function has just been expanded over the years. T3D has started from a blank slate, so give them some time to mature the tools and I am sure they'll be pretty solid. All that said, more solid options for developing cool games is never a bad thing.

#72 @eb
Yes, took it for a spin quickly.
2 Days is more than enough for CURSORY comparisons, if that's part of what you do professionally, anyway.
Did some basic comparisons, based on features stated, and tools provided.
Doesn't take much time to grab some existing models, canned ideas, convert, script and start walking through the processes.
Used the same rough/quick eval process for Torque, way back.
It is what it is...a quick personal eval.
Could be that a change of workflow is required to make a real judgement, but based on other engine comparisions using the same methods, that's my personal initial feelings on the free UDK.
The tools are the thing that impressed me most, but a person would need some 'real' time to use them efficiently.
I'm not addicted to Torque, but it sits well against most in it's class, in my opinion.

@Jaimi
For my tests, I simply tried running even the editor (which is supposed to be reasonably compatible, per their docs) on 2 varied laptops and 3 varied desktops. It only launched on 2 of the desktops without error.
Same hardware ran Torque out of the box, albeit slowly.

#73 After using UDK I have to say the art pipeline from blender to T3D is way better than blender to UDK. You pretty much have to have maya.

#74 @John -- well that makes sense. I doubt there is one big game studio that uses Blender, so it wouldn't make sense for Epic to worry about making importing Blender assets easy.

#75 @John, I spent most of the weekend playing with UDK and couldn't find any useful art pipeline from Blender into UDK.

I was able to get some basic static meshes to import using Collada and .ase but without materials and certainly no animation support.

Do you have a better solution?

#76 Unfortunately I don't have a better solution. Just google it and you can find some very sparse tutorials. I haven't got anything to work really well yet though.

#77 Let me start out by saying I love GG and I have supported their cause and products for many years. I started with TGE and then TGEA, initially as a beginner Torque met all my needs however, as I progressed I noticed many documentation issues, because of this I have made the switch to Unreal 3, as the documentation is solid, plus it looks good on the resume. As for performance, it runs like a dream and is far more stable, I also love the level editor. Torque is an awesome product and I will continue to use it for some projects, I just cannot deny Unreal is the better engine hands down.

#78 @Cappaucino: I think it really depends on what your trying to do. I'd take Torque 3D over Unreal if your doing large outdoor scenes. If your doing primarily indoor, or small outdoor scenes, I'd take Unreal. However, I would much rather pay the licensing fee for Torque 3D than to ship a game with the UDK and pay the big royalties cost. All around, I think Unreal is a better engine, but Torque is better for certain scenarios, and is certainly more cost efficient if you ship a game.

#79 I've been playing with the Unreal Engine a lot lately and the biggest plus is the documentation (and the engine and tools are very good). 3D Buzz has released about 20hrs of very good video tutorials and there are some good books covering the engine. This can all be done for T3D (and I hope it happens soon) but it really does make the UDK more appealing to me (I'm not trying to release a commercial game).

#80 To me it seems that the new Unity free and UDK are filling a void left by GGs decision to pretty much drop TGE/TGEA. I think much unrest on the GG side of things could be addressed by re-releasing TGEA as a Hobbyist engine with source and the demo/binary version free. That IMO would seen to address the 'competitive' aspects of the free engines issue.

Seems to me that in real terms, the pro developers, and i'm including indie developers who fully intend to make real honest to goodness commercially released games do have a much smaller choice on what to use, and a team with top buget of 10k to spend on engine technology would be hard pressed to find better than T3D imo.

However at the risk of beating the dead horse and repeating myself, unity/UDK do have something that GG doesnt, a 'free' starter platform for 3D gaming, i know that i probably wouldnt be a torque customer if i was starting out now. As a Torque owner i can see value in what i have and use, still some issues and problems but thats a different thread, however i fear that new people and budding want to be devs are realy missing out on all things torque, and i honestly believe that the community will be badly diluted if GG doesnt re-introduce a free/cheap/limited hobbyist/entry level technology.