Tempted by Torque 3D, but don't want to be burned again.

#21

Quote:
As it stands the information on the site gives the impression it's $505 right now for TGEA owners and that's pretty much it - there's no mention of additional cost for genre kits, platform kits, updates and so on.

I think the genre kits part should be a no-brainer. For $505 you get a game engine, the genre kits are primarily being made by third parties, and they're not going to hand them out for free. You don't get those things for free with any of the previous versions of Torque either.

They're still formulating their plan for updates and such, so there's not really any more information they can give you on that yet. They've been interacting a lot with the community, especially through the blogs that Brett has been posting. They took a lot of community feedback when coming up with the licensing model, and they're probably going to continue to do the same for deciding on an appropriate update cycle.

All of that information should be available by the time of the final release, but if you want the pre-order discount you'd have to jump in with incomplete details. Or wait until the final release and just pay the extra $200 once you have all of the details.

Though some of the information you're looking for will probably be decided on and released before the pre-order expires, so just keep an eye on Brett's blogs and such. And be sure to browse through the comments, because a lot of good stuff is talked about in the comments that doesn't necessarily make it into the meat of the blog posts.

(Some of them can get pretty far off-topic, so you may want to just look for posts from GG employees and skip over the rest of us rambling about irrelevencies :P )

#22 To echo the words of the only other Torque 3D Owner that's posted on this thread:
"Im finding myself enjoying T3D the more time i spend with it. "

I for one have never felt burned by any GarageGames product, even though there are a few questionable 3rd party products for sale here. I played around with TGE and other engines for a few years before finally settling on Torque. It was a close call between TGE or TGEa (then TSE) as to which engine I would settle on, but unfortunately I let community sentiment sway me away from TGEa. After reading about all of the complaints and the lack of (what was truthfully the communities "wishlist" and not GarageGames' promises) fulfilled promises I settled on TGE and decided to wait on TGEa to mature. Eight months later after adding shaders and piecing together the remnants of the Terrain Manager thread(s) I decided to toss all of that out and use TGEa with the Atlas terrains instead. That was eight months I could have spent learning TGEa explicitly -- but hey I'm not afraid of learning new things.

I do have to admit that the changes between 1.7 and 1.8 were a bit unsettling and confusing but nothing that couldn't be dealt with. After some appropriate research and gaining a little more knowledge quite a few of those changes certainly do make sense. The only thing I regret is letting other peoples' negative opinion and feelings keep me from using TGEa in the first place. Ultimately we can do anything with Torque that we wont to, if we have the drive and the skill to do so -- nothing prevents that and never has.

But on to Torque 3D. Oh, I was more than tempted after seeing and hearing about a few of the early features and the direction it was headed in. When I was asked if I was interested in helping with the FPS kit you better believe I jumped on that real quick. I've personally see a lot of talent and hard work poured into it, with even some more yet to come. There is already more than what is seen in the videos and even those who have the Beta still haven't noticed all of the new additions -- I'm still finding new things 3 months later and work on it still hasn't stopped.

Of course I'm not here to convince anyone that they need Torque 3D, I just think this thread needed a little more positive attitude thrown into the mix. We each have to examine our needs and resources and decide what best works for each of us. A lot of the talk I see here is nothing but repeated variations of questions or complaints already answered....

Oh, and this caught my eye:

Quote:
Quote:I don't think there is much of tge left aside from torque script.

What? Use a diff tool and see for yourself if you're going to say things like this. I don't mean to offend, but that's just way off. Many source files are untouched (and for good reason! some things don't have to change).

I just did that very thing between TGEa1.8.1 & Torque3D, and WinMerge reports that there are:
- 1076 files that are different
- 217 files that are identical

- 4 directories with 35 files that only exist in TGEa1.8.1
- 14 directories with 140 files that only exist in Torque3D

#23 I've just started using the Torque 3D beta, and I think it's at least a lot more robust and faster-development-time than writing your own engine from DirectX/OpenGL or even OGRE.

I picked Torque 3D after comparing it to alternatives like (C4, Unity, Unigine, etc), but that's more based on reading a lot and trying some demos/trials than on actual long-term experience. However, I am definitely not disappointed so far :-).

And I am looking forward to the Torque 3D beta 2 release; I hope it's easy to merge with the small code changes I did starting on our game project!

http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/17191

#24 I caved and decided to go for it, damn you GG ;)

Had a quick look before bed last night, it's definitely a step up from the older projects - I was impressed by the documentation that makes a big difference over the older engines.

I've not done anything other than look at the docs and play with the demo projects so far so can't comment on the rest but do like what I see.

Well done on what I've seen so far GG, perhaps you may yet win my confidence back after all! Hopefully the update costs aren't too painful and the genre kits etc. are reasonable.

#25 @Ian: No. You win =) Torque 3D is going to be the best money you ever spent. Literally every day I walk into the office I'm psyched by the new stuff I'm seeing, and of course thrilled with the way it's all coming together. And the docs...those are just a start!

#26 I am wishing the docs once completed will cover some of the more technical aspects of T3D. I personally do not need documentation to teach me things i am able to learn by experiment. I find most Torque books to be the same.

This is not to say I have not enjoyed the ability to learn the simple things in matter of minutes rather then hours of experimenting on my own.

#27 Wow, a thread that asks all the questions I was about to post.
I too am keeping an eye on Torque 3D. I have not been playing with TGE/TGEA for long, but have enjoyed what I have done with them so far.

Im keeping an eye on the GBP/USD rate and hoping it keeps going up, but am wondering how much notice we will get before the $200 early adopter discount dissapears.

Are we likely to get a "This will be the last Beta" or other notice before the discount dissapears.

Matt

#28
I myself had been burned before, bought TGB and TXB PSK. PSK never worked properly on my laptop due to graphic issues. I am downloading the new version now, to check whether the issues have been solved or not.

But simply speaking without much knowledge of programming even the kits seem useless.

So thinking of Torque 3d version or iTorque or Twii is out of question.

Anyhow I am writing a beginner's guide on Game industry and would like to know how good or bad torque engines are for developers? If any one would like to share their point of view, reviews of torque including some reviews from the Torques developers, do contact me.

www.wickedsunny.com

#29 I think 'developers' is too broad a category to give an answer for. Buying a Torque engine is really buying the source code, and a license to use that source code in your own projects. You are going to have to change the source (as you have to with any game engine, if you want to do anything other than produce a mod).

For most software engineers (especially professionals, who are used to taking on other peoples code all the time), starting with a proven, working engine with a large community, is going to be far easier than starting from scratch. However there will always be projects where torque is not a good fit.

More often though, I think a lot of the complaints seem to come from people who underestimate what is involved in writing a game (or really just want to produce mods for an FPS engine). To them it seems over complicated.

To me, playing with the Torque engines is an enjoyable hobby, I like tinkering around with the engine source to see what I can make it do, and working out how to do new and interesting things with it. I chose torque because it is a source code product, and I want to write games, not mods.

Matt

#30 Thank You Matt for the reply. I can understand your point of view.

#31 My opinion is that there needs to be a more stringent approval process before kits are sold on this site.

#32 From a business standpoint, pre-ordering any product, T3D I’m sure is no exception, is a method of producing development capital for the initial product.

It is always best to subscribe to any pre-orders with skepticism. You are not paying for a product but rather making a personal investment to insure development continues on the producers end.

If pre-order sales are low it is very possible that continued development will slow, vice versa if substantial pre-orders are made by the community then development of the product will speed up as more funding is available.

It is always best to approach any pre-order with skepticism, too many questions arise with upgrading a game engine let alone taking a gamble on spending money on a product that is not even released yet.

Spend only what you are willing to loose. If you can not afford to lose money on a pre-order that might end up being a worthless code, worthless in your needs, then wait until the final product is out and the reviews are in.

Just a little business advice, take it with a grain of salt if you like.

#33 @Datamancer: That's why you get a discount and early access to the product you ordered.

Quote:Spend only what you are willing to loose [sic].

That's a pretty irrational outlook. It would make sense only if you got absolutely nothing for the pre-order, but as of May 1st, you get a very useful beta product. People are already producing games in pretty large numbers with Torque 3D. It's already more proven than a host of other engines out there, especially those for sub-AAA budgets. We (GG) had already invested thousands of man-hours into Torque 3D before offering any pre-order. The hours invested between that and the actually release are sort of insignificant by comparison, so the idea that we'd speed up or slow down based on pre-order numbers is kind of silly. In any case, the numbers have been good, much better than I'd expected.

#34 Glad to see a reply so fast here.

The idea that pre order sales will effect continued development is always easy to dismiss from development and general staff, after all it is part of each employees job to promote continued sales and support of products, or am I making an absurd assumption here?

My understanding and interpretation of the original poster’s message was that they are concerned that the final product might not deliver on proposed final features, and that the cost of buying a pre order does not justify a gamble to that fact based on past performances.

My reply to that concern is that pre order sales do in fact generate additional capital for development. That fact in it’s self is a red flag and reason enough to be skeptical from a consumer’s point of view. Lack of capital directly effects continued development of any product from any company, and assuming that capital is a drift means that cut backs will occur, meaning that some elements in the final product will be cut. So, again, by offering a pre order sale on a game engine truly gives legitimate concern to consumers.

To address the second quark in this post, if Garage Games can not, for what ever reason, meet or fully implement stated features in the final product then people that have spent money on the pre order find them self in a situation where they indeed took a gamble and lost the personal investment.

Development on any product or software is directly associated with funding. The fact is that if a company can’t pay development staff then production on the product stops or slows down by means of staff cut backs or cuts in allotted time for task completion. A company offering pre order sales makes the worst assumption for me…

My answers to anyone that asks, wait until the final product hits the market, don’t pay for development unless you have stake in the company. A company asking for money on an unfinished product is showing indication of potential capital issues and concerns.



Want to bet I’m banned for this post, or that this will get deleted?

I am a customer of Garage Games.

#35 Here is what is a big concern to me:

T3D does not currently have a 100% reliably working version of polysoup and TGEA1.8.1 also does not have this.
It is possible that it may never happen...and it is possible it will be fixed or replaced.

- I am not willing to accept that "chance" for $705. I hope someone can sort that out and fix it or replace it, before version1.0 release.

I simply won't buy T3D if polysoup is not fixed or replaced...with a 100% or 99.9% reliability factor.

Just my 2 cents. ;)

#36 eb you dont need to use polysoup for object collision. Torque has an existing system for object collision in place for tsstatics long before polysoup was introduced into torque. if it's giving you problems, you can always use the old collision mesh route(unless this has been removed from T3d).

#37 Sean H...
I am well aware of that collision system and it's limitations, downfalls and it's age. It was and *is a great system for certain game genres. So don't think that I am trashing it completely.

let's take Logan's undercity demo mission for example....if he had to remake the entire mission with collision volumes. He would need more time to do that than he spent making the entire setup. Not to mention, the system would probably be crushed under it's own weight for such an example. If he had to make it in Dif in TGEA, the lighting load times would just drive people away. Essentially, an artist make a level in polysoup in 1/8 or less time than they can doing the same level in dts with col volumes.

The point here is that polysoup is to replace dif(or should), which is old and *cough* older than anyone using T3D should expect. DTS with col volumes is not a viable replacement for dif.

If I were to follow your suggestion, I would be left with a game that basically consists of terrain, water, sky and 1 hut. ..and that is simply not ideal for 90% of us using TGEA or those using T3D.

I don't mean to sound angry or upset. I am writing this quickly as I am in the middle of a few things. I get your point but plz look at mine. They are making T3D to try and be close to the cutting edge. However, how can you get 'close to the cutting edge' while using 'dif' and 'dts with col-volumes' as the entire model pipeline ?

Almost like Brett told me one day(close to it anyway): it is like putting lipstick on an old car. [I'll add: and that only gets you so far]


P.S. I feel like I just explained alot, yet nothing at the same time. :)