What developers think of the Torque engine?

#1 Although I am not developing a game at the moment with it and am just interested in looking at the software engineering in general (and releasing interesting objects), I find it an invaluable insight into this class of engine.

The ability to look at how something as complex as this is strung together rather than simply reading algorithms in isolation from books like Graphic Gems and Game Programming Gems etc is wonderful.

Features that are 'missing' would be bump-mapping, shader support etc but these things were not around when the engine was originally devised. I think it's safe to say that in general, shader support is still on unstable ground at the moment but getting better.

Other features that are not completed yet is the documentation. That said, many people are currently working hard on this and pretty comprehensive documents are coming out. This is only going to get better in the near future. On the script side of things, there is already a huge volume of tutorials/references from the Tribes2 sites out there.

The engine certainly does not lack features when it comes to developing actual games themselves (which is what matters).

There is an awful lot of capability in the engine, particularly from the powerful scripting engine and the ability to link C++ seemlessly into scripts and vice-versa.

All in all, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for indie developers (or small software companies) to get down and dirty with the best of them.

9 out of 10.

- Melv.

#2 Technology wise I'd give it a 7 out of 10 because to me it has some things I think need fixing.

As far as what you get for the price, engine + community here I'd probably give it a 10 out of 10. If the technology doesn't bother you then you can't really beat torque.

-Tim aka Spock

#3 After having just reviewed roughly 15 different game engines I'd have to say the torque as a framework ranks right at the top. However it does have some code rot(probably left over from pulling the t2 code out) so there are classes and methods that actually dont do anything, but its not that bad just here and there.

However from a graphics standpoint it falls way short.
Not only could it benefit from a shader system(a real shader that utilizes new hardware) but it could really use a blender system(more like the quake3 "shader" system(not really a shader more like a blending system.

It could use some decent effects like specular highlights, reflections, projection textures(like in unreal) etc. This would help get rid of that colored pencil look and have things like metal look like metal and glass look like glass.

However, the network code is top notch, the in game editor is a excellent starting block for building an extremely powerful world building tool.

The code is easy to read, easy to understand and even easier to change.

I think the engine could benefit from some fundamental graphics improvements(better particle system, spec highlights etc) however it still appears to be one of the best all around engines to use.

documentation is lean but the code is very readable.

and geez after all the price is right too :)

#4 With the inabilities the engines has, do you think this would affect its competition of a game in the commercial market?

#5 Well I think the code is very well thought in many parts, and it's easy to add new features, but it lacks good comments on some parts of it, but since it wasn't meant to be read by lots of people it wasn't commented, a lot of work was put in adding comments but it still has some time to go, other than that the existing documentation is good, I won't say very good because many things aren't documented yet.
Technology wise there are some things that are kinda messy, for example the .dts format is pretty much a mess, also there are many things broken from the tribes2 to torque conversion, but, with the time, they should get all fixed, some of them have been fixed already.
Other than that it's a great quality engine, with nice image quality and nice environments, you can make very big places to play around. It's networking system is one of the best around.
The script engine isn't very nice sometimes but it's fair considering what you can ask to a scripting engine.
But the best part of it is the Community... this community is among the greatest communities for game development on the internet, it's easy to get started since you get fast and accurate answers in the forums, most of the time, so i'm very happy with it.

The engine itself needs work to compete on the new market, like adding shaders, bump mapping, a better lightning/shadowing system, etc... but it's in it's way to it :)