Torque VS. 3DState Game Engine

#1 I'd be a bit weary of something that wants to be a jack of all trades. A dedicated game engine should be better than a generic 3D render engine. At least that has been my experience.

To me at least 3Dstate looks like yet another general purpose 3D engine like Quest3D created more for 3D visualisation than gaming and I'd be inclined to stay away from it. A game engine is usualy tailored to making games and developing gameplay, whereas a 3D engine is primarily graphics oriented with some basic interactivity. Probably won't offer much scope for actual development of gameplay which at the end of the day is central to game development and core to making a game fun.

Also the screenshots on their site look TERRIBLE.... so even if your heavily into pretty graphics theirs don't impress and you can do better elsewhere.

#2 So will the full version of TGE let me tailor the engine to my specific needs using C++. I really don't like C-script even though it makes the code less.

#3 You get every single character of C++ source (and even some inline assembler!) when you purchase the SDK. You can go from there to implement anything you want/can, in source, script, or anything else you can link in.

#4 So if I ordered it today how soon should I expect to receive it, or should I continue using the book's version until I am completely done with it.

#5 It's a download. Assuming you pay by credit card, you download it in your My Garage section as soon as the purchase is approved (basically instantly).

#6 I tried that when i was searching for a good engine. I bought Torque 2 years ago and was a lil overwhelmed by everything so i whored myself around. I gave many engines a chance but felt very unsatisfied by them, they were just too limited and simplified. And now as of last month im back and loving it. These engines have no comparison to Torque and Torque 2d is great too. :)
3DState would be on the bottom of my list to use. Also many of the communities cant even compete to this one.

@Adrian Tysoe: most of the demos and screen shots on the site are from old versions, they add in much better graphics support sience then, you have to look in the whats new section. Even then no actual game has been released with this product. I would recommend to stay away from this one, there are much better free engines out there.

#7 My story is very similiar to Chris Newmans. I bought Torque early, and was overwhelmed. Literally gave up, tried something else. But the more and more I looked the more I realised I was not going to find something as good as TGE for the same price.

#8 Ok so you guys just about have me sold. Know to create models, characters and the such I would need other programs no doubt. I currently have MAYA 5.0, I have Visual Studio.net 2003, Paint Shop Pro and a host of other programs. Should I continue to follow the book's version until I become familiar with the engine. I guess I will uninstall that other program from my computer. And By the way I think this forum is sweet. Any other suggestions would be helpful. I need to get a demo game started and submitted to a gaming company.

#9 Another point to consider... 3DState is the engine formely known as Morfit. Morfit was free as well, but you were forced to allow advertisements to be automatically loaded into your game. They would keep track of your users habits, and then try to sell them things, basically an early version of Spyware. Any other considerations aside, this streaming caused horrible framerates. I can only assume their newest incarnation is of a similar model.

#10 Stay away from Morfit - the engine is probably the worst around! The rendering quality is dire, the features are laughable and the performance is just embarassing! Run while you still can!

Just my opinion.

#11 Dollar for Dollar there is NO better deal than TGE. Even the best free/opensource engines have trouble comparing, although crystal space has been making some headway lately as soon as TSE is released, all of that will fall by the wayside.

TGE is a proven gaming platform, with literally HUNDREDS of commercial and indie games completed and shipping. Considering how I myself have written 25 games which I've never released and have only owned the game for a year, there must be literally THOUSANDS of games sitting out there on peoples hard-drives never to see the light of day, just because the dev gets bored of working on it :)

The ONLY other product I have found which is nearly as good of a deal as TGE would be Conitecs A6 game engine. However with that product, you wind up with no source code, inferior/bugged multiplayer support, and a community that is to say the least... Unhelpful.
Bad docs, and a shortage of relevant tutorials are also against that product. However in exchange you DO get a very complete development platform for game prototyping under windows.

To make this short, I bought TGE after getting fed up, with several other products, then I had to leave TGE and game development alone for nearly a year so I could unlearn/forget what the other products had taught me about process flow, (It's different here trust me). But now I'm back it's a snap to use and you can literally get a prototype of a game up in hours.
A full game can be done within the space of a month assuming you have coding and modeling skills, and no really special requirements from the engine.

Enjoy! It'll be the best money you ever spend.

p.s. In case your wondering, after I bought TGE, I gave my A6 license over to the neighbor kid who mows the lawn. Managed to get nearly a months worth of grass cut for it :)