A newbie purchaser with (hopefully) a non-FAQ

#1 The quick answer - you get the sources to the engine for $100 with almost unlimited possibilities (FYI: what you call library is called an engine), so you can basically implement your game in either code (C++ in this case) by modifying the engine, implement it as scripts or most likely both.

The engine is provided as is, and could be used for a commercial game, but most likely you will want to tweak a little here and there.

Be advised that it is a complicated product and process to create a commercial quality game.

#2 When you distribute your game, if you have scripts that you don't want the end user to edit, you can include only the compiled version of the script (the .dso) and not distibute the .cs file that that was used to create it.

#3 Thanks Joe and Thomas!

That's making a bit more sense to me!

I'll have to check it out some more, but I was also wondering how many of the products 4 sale here at GarageGames use the Torque engine..

Anyways, I'll continue through the engine and see how hard it would be to work it into my game (or vice-versa) *grin*

#4 All of the games for sale here are made with Torque.

#5 Not all of the games for sale here are TGE. Chain Reaction uses the reaction engine. ThinkTanks, Marble Balst and Orbz all use the TGE.

#6 Erik - I'm very sure you cant put TGE into your game. Its the other way around.

The engine runs your game and afaik you cannot use "just" e.g. the network code without major recoding in your own engine.

But TGE is a AAA engine, and even if its a bit dated it will be way way more advanced than anything you can produce on your own (without a major effort at least and big funding).

$100 for this engine is a total joke (= its _cheap!_), so buy it and it will give you a big smile on the face :-)

#7 Thanks Thomas.

Yeah I realize it's the other way around..I guess it's just a matter of finding some information on how to get a project started with the engine. I can find TONS of documentation on how to do certain effects, or handle networking events, etc..but a simple "HowTo" start a project is what I'm looking for at the mo.
(from TOTAL and COMPLETE scratch!)

Although it's a sexy engine, I *do* need some hand-holding at the start to get going..;)

Whatever I do figure out, rest assured I'll create some documentation to submit to this site, to help other familier-with-engines-but-new-to-Torque people..

thanks!

#8 There is no total and complete scratch to start from, because there is no strong dividing line between your game and Torque. :) You can start deleting stuff, and then rebuilding it, but the question is not "when have I gotten to the bare bones?", but rather "How much work do I want to do?"

You want to start from the example game and go from there. It may be labelled as an "example", but it has such useful things in it as cameras, vehicles, triggers, movement and control code, datablocks, a significant fraction of the networking code, items, static shapes, projectiles, the particle engine, and so forth.

Same goes for the scripting code; most of the stuff in there, especially in common, is generic functionality for any game, not just "the example" one.

You can get just about anything you want by extending the engine in new directions (and possibly trimming unnecessary stuff from the final product :).

#9 I'm still in "learning mode" myself. I've spent time 6 month ago writing a master server and accoutn management server for Torque. That gave me a lot of knowledge about the networking side, but not the game engine.

A few month ago I sat down and wanted to learn more about the engine and producing the games (I'm part of a game dev project, but taking care of the backend mostly).

What I started off with was to grab 3d studio and run through a few mdoelling tutorials, then export them to DTS and get them into the game. First as a simple static shape, then as a hover vehicle. I still want to do a player, but thats a bit over my 3ds skills just yet.

The entire process has taught me a lot, and it was very very satisfying personally. So I would suggest doing the same.

And if you dont have any 3d skills (or dont have 3d studio), then grab some dts from the examples and play with that instead.

Move onward from there saying "OK - I want a flag that I can pick up", then play with collision scripts etc.

As Ben says - most code you will ever need for a complete game is already in the examples. Once you ran through a few small tests, you know where to look and what to look for.

TGE is _huge_ and very hard to get started on because of the amount of information. But small trial and error tests slowly get you into the engine. I'm far from done yet, but already now pretty confident that I can help the scripters for our own game.

#10 Thanks guys...it does give me confidence that it might be worth the time and effort to invest in this engine, if it'll help me and my company actually produce commercially viable products.

I guess for starters I just need to figure out how to actually get something compiled under VS6.0. I can compile the Torque engine just fine, but as you both have said, it's a good idea to just start experimenting.

I'd like to do that in my own project space though, rather than having to load up the Torque Example one (and modify that) everytime..

(That's what I meant by not being sure of how to start a project from scratch)..

Luckily, I already have an artist, so it's just a matter of getting things up and running with the engine and our game idea..:)

Good luck all, and I hope to add valuable resources to the community!