Price is going up ????

#1 John, why did you post this in the freebies forum?

#2 Look, people need money to put food on the table for families. Not everyone can just give things away and expect to be able to pay for houses, cars, loans, etc. because some person complained that the price of the product they worked on was too high.

If you don't have a job, too bad. It's very affordable for what their asking.

#3 Lol frogger are u 35 im not saying 150 isnt a bad price i just think the upgrades should come with the engine
150 is alot lower than most engines still and is well worth its price

#4 Certain upgrades come with the engine. Some don't. Just like Photoshop or Max. Or many, many engines on the market.

#5 Oh ok so the upgrades you have to buy are like expansion packs

#6 I haven't paid for an upgrade since I bought TGE in 2001. If GG asked for money for an upgrade, I wouldn't have a problem with that either, because you have to consider what you're getting, and what goes into an upgrade, especially considering that many engines make you pay for upgrades much more often.

Honestly, I don't know how GG feeds itself without charging for some of these upgrades. Maybe they just eat code to survive... Mmmmmmmm, code...

#7 Also, TGE 1.5 now includes the Torque Lighting Kit and an enviroment pack(I don't remember which one).

EDIT:

Here is a list of all the new assets provided in TGE 1.5-

Quote:
##From the TGE Product Page##

1.5 is, by far, the largest upgrade we've ever done to TGE. In addition to our internal dev team consisting of Matt Fairfax, Chris Calef, Paul Scott, Ben Garney, and Justin DuJardin, we've also had major help from lighting guru John Kabus for many months, and have received additional contributions from Joe Maruschak, Tim Aste, Dave Wyand, Tom Bampton, and many other community members. So, we are not exaggerating when we say that this is a huge update and a true community effort. By purchasing the upgrade to TGE 1.5, you're supporting not only GarageGames, but these excellent members of our community who are helping to make Torque the best game development platform anywhere.

Integrated Torque Lighting Kit - John Kabus has rolled several years worth of research, development, and QA from the Torque Lighting Kit into TGE 1.5. John didn't just merge the TLK into TGE 1.5, he re-factored the lighting system so that it is cleaner and
easier for people to use, so that developers can easily introduce custom lighting models.


John also added new features specific to TGE 1.5; some of which include: vastly improved interior rendering performance with dynamic lights, improved dynamic light blending on terrains, and updates to the TGE waterblock system to allow for terrains with block sizes smaller than TGE used to, allowing for higher geometry and texture detail.


Huge Mac Update - Many OSX platform updates have been integrated into TGE 1.5.
The Mac platform code has been almost totally rewritten. Much of the code now uses standard POSIX interfaces where they exist. The platform attempts to maintain support for versions 10.2 - 10.4(Universal) of Mac OS X.

Event handling and windowing code is much, much cleaner.

Code that uses deprecated APIs have been removed.

Many niceties have been added to try to make Torque more Mac-like.

The Mac platform is multithreaded, to take advantage of multiple processor hardware, including multiple core intel hardware.

Debugging is easier, as many randomly placed globals have been snipped or reorganized into platState.

Wide screen displays supported, and window resizing are supported.



ShowTool Pro - TST Pro is a 3D visualization tool for the Torque Game Engine. It helps artists and programmers inspect their game art for aesthetic and technical accuracy by simulating the in-game environment, and providing easy access to behind-the-scenes structures. And now David Wyand's essential ShowTool Pro will now be included with TGE version 1.5.


Additional Art Assets - A selection of building and character models, environmental art, effects, and other content is now part of the TGE 1.5 package.

Elf Character

Redone Interactive Walkthrough Environment & Mission (Includes Skybox, terrain, etc)

Replaced Trees & Rocks with new ones (Courtesy Games Extract)

Redone buildings (Monument, Orc Tower, Hovel)

5 Starter Skyboxes (Courtesy of Red Thumb Games)

RTS Environment Pack, Winter Environment (Courtesy Todd Pickens)

Tim Aste Environment Pack #1

Tim Aste Combo Pack #2 Particle FX Sampler

Foliage Sampler from FPS Environment Pack (Courtesy Todd Pickens)

Redone GUI from Interactive Walkthrough

All this new stuff is why you now have to pay an extra $50 for TGE. I, for one, think this a VERY fair since all the art assets along would cost over $150.00 by themselves.

#8 The maintenance of the code to be cross platform with current compilers easily dwarfs the cost of the $50. I am sure there are hundreds of dollars worth of add ons I am not aware of. Think of it like a book upgrade, rev 2 or something. Like going from OpenGL 1.2 spec to OpenGL 2.0 spec. Besides, if you aren't willing to invest in tools are you really willing to make a game? This is a question I ask myself all the time when deciding to invest in technology to help me succeed.