What is the TGE API like?

#1 well for a fully functonal game engine at $100 , dont expect it to have a 300 page hard cover book to show ya how to use it .. it requires a bit of code sniffing ...

How good is the documentation?

very basic right now ... the docs are currently created useing doxygen ( a good program acctully ) this uses a combanation of comments in the code and it's own c/c++ decoder to make cross referances and class listings etc.
Their is a group currently working in updateing the docs and makeing them much more readable.. as a matter of fact it's one of the longest threads in the sdk fourm.


Is Torque C or C++ or a mix?

Personaly i dont think it's possable to make a pure C++ program , their will allways be a pice of coded here or their that is C based .... the current code has some ASM parts in it currently , but for the most part it's C++ .. you have to keep in mind that this is code that woked great , then all the copyright stuff was ripped out of it .. then the GG staff had to patch toghter what was left and get around the missing code ( sound is now based on openAL ) , so on occasion you will find a chunk of code that was "missed" on removal ( and has cauzed bugs in the past ) or that is commented out because it is currently being worked on.

If it is C++ or a mix, how Object Oriented is it?

Very ... it's basicly 1 object for each area of the game, with several branches of children ( 1 for network , 1 for graphics , etc. ) and each of those children have their own sub classes .... their are exceptions to this but for the most part it's OOP

What is the prefered IDE and which version?

Their are sb dir's and makefiles/project files for Visual C , GCC and MAC platforms .. odds are if you have a popular IDE , their is a dir included that will tell it what to link/compile ... i have compiled the system on both my XP machine with VC6 and my linux machine .. the only thing i had to do with the linux was run a quick program to remove the dos type line feeds off the source ( included in must linux vers by default is a program called dos2unix )... their is a hole class/section called platform that sets up all the strings/variables etc for each platform/ide.

Is there any public API documentation ( similar to say JavaDocs ) that one could review to see what the interfaces / API look like?

i'm not 100% shore what you are asking here so i'm gona leave this open

How much example code comes with the source?

umm ... realm wars is just one example ( you can d/l it before buying the game ) ... and their is a COMPLEATE demo game also included with full source ( you could run the demo game and have a death match with friends online and never make a single change to the code ) ... i belive their is 1 or 2 other projects that are included that are basicly "works in progress" .... and of course a in game GUI editor , a Terrian editor , you can even edit item's properties while in the game ( walk up to a ammo clip and change it's properties ) ... also their are TONS of resources with stuff that pepole are doing every day and posting their code , from simple things like dynamicly changing your GUI colors based on where in a map your char may do to more complex things like a full inventory system re-write.

ALSO somthing of note .. the pepole here are extreemly hlpfull ... more than once i have seen posts asking how a bit of code works or how to make some change and the replys are allways quick and helpfull .. if you ever have a question just post it and someone ( normly quite quickly ) will either give a soultion/suggestion or a link to another place where someone is oing the same or a resource that has allredy worked out the same problem.

#2 thanks for the reply. I don't consider price a deciding factor in quality, but I also don't expect any source code to be documented perfectly.

Also it sounds like the doxygen creates something close to what javadoc does ( sounds like a clone ) which is invaluable form of documentation.