Any recommendations for alternatives to TGE/TGEA

#1 Just a quick comment:

Nothing in the new EULA prohibits making the types of projects you are speaking about--it simply says that you will need a different license, and that you should contact us to determine what license. The EULA change is to protect us from past scenarios where a single license was propagated into huge distribution of what could easily be seen as competing products, out of balance license cost versus profit potential, and other scenarios.

We are very flexible, and the EULA change is not intended to be prohibitively restrictive towards Indies or Hobbyists--it's intended to give us a more level position for several loopholes that our previous style of EULA allowed, and to be clear about it up front.

I'd suggest that you simply send an email describing your general project intent(s), and see what's on the table regarding a licensing agreement.

#2 I didn't start this thread to discuss the EULA issue, I was just giving background as to why I might be looking for something else. My problem is not with the Indie license nor does it have any thing to do with hobbyists. I was talking about the commercial license. I will do what you say and email you guys to see what licenses you may be able to offer.

Now, does anyone have any suggestions in relation to my original question?

Thanks.

#3 Personally, my current project is using Ogre for graphics, Bullet for physics, RakNet for networking. Bunch of other bits & pieces that I can expand on if you like, but those are the core three chunks.
I guess in theory it might be more to learn to build a game, but each on its own has so far been pretty easy pickings for me.

FWIW regarding your reasoning, I find GG's licenses [and historically the way that GG have actually behaved with them] to be surprisingly friendly; a much bigger reason for an indie to move on is, IMHO, their cross-platformness [or lack thereof].

Gary (-;

#4 Id Tech 3 is an excellent engine for an indie game. The path finding system is awesome, the multipass shader system can give very good results on a wide range of hardware, GTKRadiant is a very good editor, etc

ioquake3 is probably the best option when using the tech for free under the GPL. They've done an excellent job on the cross platform by using SDL for Windows/OSX/Linux. The code is remarkably clean, tight, and well... yeah.

If you can't live with the GPL or need to combine your work with something proprietary, there's a $10k license available from id Software which is per title. I think operating under the GPL is a better bet, but hey... not everyone agrees.

I think id Tech 3 is the most overlooked of the indie friendly game engines around... id Software is currently using it for the browser based game Quake Zero and it was used in AAA titles within the last few years.

Anyone who tells you it isn't relevant because modern GPU don't want their data like this... probably isn't making their living running an indie game development shop.

#5 Id Tech 3 isn't relevant because modern GPUs don't want their data like that! Modern GPUs need shaders! Your game will never succeed without shaders!

All joking aside, id Tech 3 (aka the Quake 3 engine) is a solid engine at a price that can't be beat.

I've heard good things about Irrlicht but haven't used it myself.

As for Unity, borrow a friend's mac and try it for yourself (huzzah 30 day trial). You may find it good enough to justify purchasing a mac. For making a game it's a great engine, and I've seen some games go from concept to published in about five months with it. Just be forewarned that while it can support low end systems it isn't going to be able to drop as low as TGE or id Tech 3.

#6 What would really perk my nipples up would be TGE under an OSI approved, GPL compatible license. Obviously, if GG is still turning significant bucks with it that is one thing. If it is simply a lack of resources, I would gladly throw whatever talents I have at it... just email me.

It hasn't been updated since October 2006, so maybe some day :/

#7 Huh? The last TGE update, that I'm aware of, was last May.

#8 I was going off the product page, 1.5 was October 2006

You're right the 1.5.2 point release was May of last year.

#9 BTW, I am not in any way trying to imply that TGE is or has become outdated for development purposes. For our business, I think it is perhaps the most relevant of GG's technology offerings.

I've worked with TGE for a number of years now... shared a fair amount of that work... and have a pretty good grasp of it and Open Source development methods. I don't have any insight into GG's plans for the Torque Game Engine. Though, I don't think there are currently any resources on it... or if there are no one has said anything.

I just wanted to impart, that if there is a desire and just a lack of resources, I would be willing to do the grunt work and help maintain it. I would also be willing to branch it and make sure some of our more interesting work is made available.

If applying an Open Source license to TGE doesn't make any sense to GG, that's fine. I've been asking about this for years now and wouldn't be surprised. :)

#10 Thanks for the ideas. I'm not necessarily looking for free engines. It's not the cost of Torque that bothers me, it's the license.

#11 What about DarkBasic Pro?

#12 If you are building educational software, Delta3D is hard to beat, especially its licencing terms. That project got started a few years ago when the US Navy decided that they were spending way too much constantly re-licensing game engines to build training sims; so they set out to commoditize the game engine (actually quote from the site somewhere). Basically, it is an integration framework for various best of breed OSS goodies and the whole thing is under the LGPL license - so the licensing terms can't be beat. It really shines in some traditionally difficult places such as networked physics. For terrain, it uses an algorithm called SOARX, that can render the terrain all the way out to the horizon.

For games, it is less suitable for various reasons. It is good at making big sims with networked physics, but not so good at making them pretty.

#13 @Stephen

Were the changes in the commercial license now requiring the splash screen and about screen/link intended? In order to get on most portals, you can't have links to websites in your game and that was one of the main points for an Indie studio to purchase commercial licenses.

Is this change retroactive to all games released under the commercial licenses, or just specific versions of the engine

#14 The change is not retroactive for all games released under the commercial license, just for the new versions of our software, like TGB 1.7. Depending on the size and scope of your game, you can also have the splash screen removed with a custom license. Contact licensing@garagegames.com for specific details.

#15 @Deborah: I know you were responding to James, but I just want to respond. I am in the situation where I purchased the TGE Indie license before the commercial license changes with the idea that I would purchase an unrestricted commercial license before release of my first game. Now, of course, there is no unrestricted commercial license. I have contacted your licensing people and they won't give me any specifics as to licensing and cost without providing exact details of a specific project. There seems to be no unrestricted license any more where I am able to develop any program I want. Even your response (i.e. "Depending on the size and scope of your game") is indicative of GG's new focus (after IAC). GG wants to maximize profit on anything developed with any GG product, even though GG offers nothing they didn't offer before. In my opinion, GG is no longer really supporting Indie development. GG's offerings seem somewhat schizophrenic to me, on the one hand GG offers their products up for use in games cheaply, but any other use requires some other presumably more expensive license.

#16 It's always been the mission of GarageGames to help Indies make games--not use Torque to make military simulations, socialization sims, educational services, online distribution mechanisms, and many other ways that the Commercial world has used the advantages we wanted to give Indies to take advantage of some pretty incredible generosity.

The changes in the EULA are actually more in line with the mission of GarageGames than it ever has been, and has absolutely no bearing on anything required, suggested, or asked for by IAC--it's simply being less naive about people taking advantage of our generosity, and doing our best to help Indies make games while still being a profitable business.

#17 I'd hightly recommend Ogre3D. It's well designed with a bunch of powerfull addons avaliable for the base render engine that can enable competent programmers to get a engine up and running in a short time.

We've paired it up with blitzmax, and some of the cross platform addon libs and will be releasing a game dev framework with editor soon.

Ogre is free with some LGPL limitations, but now there is also a more open licence that allows you to port to other platforms, staticly link etc if thats what you need.

Being primarily an artist, I like Ogres 3dsmax art pipeline, which is by far the best I have seen anywhere, especially the commercial Ofusion exporter with integrated shaderFX bridge. This renders your scene using ogre in a 3dsmax viewport with realtime WYSIWYG output from the ShaderFX node based shader editor. (another commercial plugin for 3dsmax).

#18 Stephen,

I'd left this alone in my thread on the subject, I usually say my piece and be done with it, but had to ask a couple of questions about your post.

The way it worked before was that if you were an Indie you paid X amount, if you were commercial you paid Y amount. It always stated in your EULA that products competing against Torque in any way couldn't be made with Torque. I'm not asking for any information about how GG was taken advantage of, but I don't understand how it could be.

GG has always protected itself in the EULA against people using Torque to create anything that could be construed as a competitive product. Indies were classed as those making less than $250,000 on a product. Commercial was classed as making over that amount or wanting to leave out a splash screen of credit. Commercial basically meant commercial. $250K or $50M. Now commercial doesn't mean that, it means you pay more and then most likely will have to pay more yet, IF you're allowed to market it at all. The idea is not that GG has always been flexible so don't worry about it, because that's already changing. It's that nothing is clearly defined except that GG can change the rules anytime they like. Do they have that right? Technically yes, ethically I'm not so sure. I just don't understand based on the three items mentioned above how GG could have been "taken advantage of". GG protected itself and its IP, set one price for Indies, and another for everyone else. If I sell an item for $20 and the purchaser resells it for 10 bazillion dollars could I say "Hey, that's not fair, I want half?"

And the term "incredible generosity" bothered me somewhat (probably the most). The comparisons against the $100K engines are always out there. The fact is that TGE would never sell for $100K, or $10K. Good as it is, neither would TGB. There are literally dozens of great products out there under $500, some way under, and a large number for free. Yes, I know, the common mantra is "Then go use one and leave us alone", but having paid our money here we're of course curious about this whole thing.

If you leased a vehicle for 3 years with 36,000 allowable miles and 6 months down the road they call and say "By the way, that vehicle has an issue with the engine. We'll fix it for you but the lease terms will be changing to a max of 2,000 miles and you'll have to ask special permission to turn left.", you would be asking questions. Wouldn't happen, of course, but you get the point.

I know griping won't change anything, and eventually all the chatter about it will die out, but I really believe that decision will affect GG down the road. I also realize that GG now has bigger fish to fry than we Indies. Anyway, like I said, I was done till I came across the post about the "incredible generosity" thing. Promise I won't bring it up again. I should reiterate here that I like GG, the engines, and the community, it's just these periodic "out of left field" policy changes...

#19 First - GGs license terms (even the new ones) are super duper nice to you as a developer. Almost nothing else out there can beat what you get for the price you get it at.

With that said, I myself am currently test driving Unity3D (even bought a Mac to run it - well would have gotten one anyways its so nice) to see what all the buzz is about.

And from having NO Unity3D experience to a working prototype game took a few evenings of reading the excellent help and tutorial pages and "just do it".

The component system is amazing, and shows that GG is on the right path with Torque 2 on this (should have done it years ago but thats a different story).

Physics (Ageia) just works out of the box, and is really fun to use.

The 2 things that annoy me are their GUI system (has to be coded - no editor support) and the metadata system that restricts you from using SVN (or similar standard SCM systems). You are forced to use their asset server solution instead.

Besides that its _excellent_, and I will for sure do more work with it especially for prototyping. Lack of source has (until now) not been a problem at all.

So find a spare harddrive on your PC, install Hackintosh and try it!

I've also recently made some game dev in Flash and Java - which is also a great combo for a lot of the flash portals out there with ad support.

Torque is still viable though, and as usual with the sources at hand you can do whatever you need for your game.

#20 Derry, you'll want to notice that the clause of the EULA you are concerned about specifically refers to "non-Game" applications. To quote:

"(e) This license does not permit the use of the Engine for non-Game application such as simulations, training, modeling, virtual worlds, or other non-Game products. Use of the Engine for these applications requires a separate license. Contact licensing@garagegames.com for these applications of the Engine."

If it's a game, it is OK. Making an MMORPG with Josh's MMOWorkshop kit, for instance, is still perfectly within the EULA; although we players and developers like to think of the deeper worlds as 'virtual worlds', they are first and foremost games, and are therefore allowed under a strict reading of the EULA. Educational GAMES are by definition allowed. You could create a game for young kids to play to teach them reading, for instance; you could not create an interactive surgery simulator to train doctors in surgery without a special license. Likewise, an F-21 flight sim could be a game or could be a simulator - largely, it depends on detail and intent. If your intent is to sell it to the general public to have fun with, then it's a game. If your intent is to develop it for the Air Force to train their pilots, then it is a simulation or training program, and would fall outside the EULA.

Technically, making an IRC client with the engine would fall outside the EULA. It's not a game. But anything which is a game:

(webster)
1 a (1): activity engaged in for diversion or amusement : play (2): the equipment for a game b: often derisive or mocking jesting : fun sport 2 a: a procedure or strategy for gaining an end : tactic b: an illegal or shady scheme or maneuver : racket3 a (1): a physical or mental competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other (2): a division of a larger contest (3): the number of points necessary to win (4): points scored in certain card games (as in all fours) by a player whose cards count up the highest (5): the manner of playing in a contest (6): the set of rules governing a game (7): a particular aspect or phase of play in a game or sport bplural : organized athletics c (1): a field of gainful activity : line (2): any activity undertaken or regarded as a contest involving rivalry, strategy, or struggle ; also : the course or period of such an activity (3): area of expertise : specialty 3

whose primary purpose is entertainment (see earlier in the EULA) WOULD constitute legal use under their EULA. Don't believe me? ;) I don't blame you. Grab a copy of the EULA and bring it to your lawyer.