Which engine to get?

#1 For general game play, GUI Editing, World Editing, and simple features, the TGE documentation and tutorials will work pretty well for TGEA.

For anything related to rendering or terrain generation (resources, tutorials, documentation), you will find more for TGE.

For TGE you won't have to worry about creating materials and shaders for everything you want to display in 3D, which is what you will have to do for TGEA after reading the documentation.

As for terrain, while Atlas terrain can be huge, detailed, and pretty, getting it into TGEA is a multi-step process requiring multiple tools and days of research. There is documentation out there for both processes, but as far as I've heard, they are still sparse and not meant for newcomers to Torque Technology.

One current limitation of owning one engine license, is you do not have access to forums, resources, and TDN docs directly related to the other engines. That's to say, if you have a TGE license, you cannot access anything TGEA related. If you own TGEA, you cannot access anything related to TGE code.

#2 I'm in the same dilemma as Alex here. I can't find any convincing place which says TGEA is the best, or TGE is the best. Why is there such a seperation of the two versions when both come from the same company?

I would like to buy an engine which has it all, all the support, all the free user mods, all the docs, all the community, all the features.

Is there some special discount if I buy both TGE and TGEA? And why is TGE 1.4 still for sale, do I need to buy that too?

#3 That's because there is no simple "get this, it's better for your project" answer unless you know what your project is, what it targets, and who it targets. There's no real sweet spot solution to such questions.

TGEA is the best if you have a solid team with large-project, large-source-base C++ experience, and are looking to target the latest tech. If you want to target previous generations of gaming hardware, then TGE is much better.

You do not purchase support outside of the forums and community support (unless you purchase support tickets as a commercial version developer). Support is free-riding, which means that you cannot call them at 3 in the morning before you ship and scream their ear off. Well, you can, but there's no saying that they won't hang up on your tirade.

There are a number of free user mods for TGE and TGEA. There are more for TGE because it has been around MUCH longer. The docs for TGE are more complete for the same reason. You will get a large chunk of the community regardless on the private forums. When it comes to features, you will have to be more specific about what you NEED, what you WANT, and what you do not need. If you are targeting DirectX 9c features with an eye for x10 and NOTHING before, killing the casual and oft-targeted indie target, then you could limit TGEA further to give you exactly the card subset you want to support. If you are looking to support Mac users and perhaps an odd Linux user, then TGE's your engine until an OpenGL layer is added.

TGE 1.4 is still for sale because it was a major splinter for the products. The lighting kit and content was integrated into 1.5, leaving 1.4 as the last major upgrade available without pay for those who purchased it before 1.5's release. The codeshift to 1.5, with is many upgrades, also made adding some resources difficult to implement at the time. Some have been ironed out for 1.5 but some are still finicky.

If you buy 1.5, you do not need to buy 1.4.

#4 I have the same problem, but not the same reasoning. The only thing in the way of my decision, is what kind of system requirements would a customers computer need to run TGEA? I cant find the system requirements, so If someone knows or can give me a link to them, itd be much appreciated!

#5 Now the roads seem to seperate, what I want is a OpenGL capable engine, which works on Linux, Mac, Windows. I don't give much about DirectX as it's Windows only. OpenGL should be capable of doing much more advanced things than DirectX 10, since it's fully programmable, while DirectX 10 has only some hardcoded special effects as far I understood it.

Anyway, the Cross-Platform question is very important for me, so my most weighting decision points are: OpenGL, Cross-Platform, dynamic lights (more than hardware can support), networkcable physics (seems to be only in Torque), and all other AAA graphics quality features (but they should be also scalable down if the user's hardware doesn't support them).

Quote:then TGE's your engine until an OpenGL layer is added.

How long might it still take before OpenGL support is added to TGEA, and will I get the OpenGL upgrade for free for TGEA if I buy TGEA now? I'm OK with starting development now for DX9c and Windows XP only, since the final Slackware Linux migration will still take about a year or two, and by then either ATI has fixed their OpenGL lacks or everyone has bought an NVidia 8800, or Windows Vista runs faster than XP.

It seems that TGEA is the right choice for me then, if it's lightning and shaders are far better than TGE's.

#6 @Ben
tgea/requirements

#7 @Ben & @mb, I've ran the TGEA demo on my work laptop too which has a crappy ATI Mobility Radeon, can't find any new drivers since 2004 for it either, but the demo ran fine!

The hardware requirements for TGEA are amazingly low, I don't see any reason for TGE in that sense. I have also Visual Studio 2005 C++ Pro, and I love to work with it, and I have about 25 years of programming experience, so that shouldn't be a problem either.

#8 Wow, awsome, think I know what Ill be going for. Dont mind the extra work, though Ill have to learn to make shaders and all that. And I dont know if this is considered hijacking the thread, but does TGEA support cloth physics, or would I need to program that in? Thanks!

#9 You would have to program cloth physics into the engine yourself. In fact, if you want realistic physics, you will need to work in a third-party product (Ageia, Tokomak, ODE, etc) and then scale them according to the network functionality you need.

There is no timeline right now on an OpenGL layer for TGEA.

Quote:Anyway, the Cross-Platform question is very important for me, so my most weighting decision points are: OpenGL, Cross-Platform, dynamic lights (more than hardware can support), networkcable physics (seems to be only in Torque), and all other AAA graphics quality features (but they should be also scalable down if the user's hardware doesn't support them).

OpenGL layer - none. It should be coming, but there is no guarantee when. Cross-platform. Right now it is Windows only because the graphics layer if DirectX. The engine itself is not tied to Windows, but the current renderer is. The best lighting situation is using static lightmaps, hardware and software generated lights. Networkable physics that are included are simple, and for many games definitely sufficient. But it is not a cross-product of Havok and Source ala Half-Life 2's physics by any stretch of the imagination. If you want the neatest support on new hardware, then TGEA is where you should go. But if they do not have a pixel shader 1.0 card, you game will be unplayable. It just depends on your target audience.

You should also know that there is no official Linux support. You are welcome to port the engine to Linux, and much of the underlying engine will work fine, albeit with some common portability changes. There are teams using TGE on Linux, and I am sure that when an OpenGL layer is implemented will be using TGEA. But there is no out of the box solution.

#10 David, thanks a lot for your patience and very helpful answers. I think your last answer just dinged me into TGEA, and if someone doesn't have Pixel Shader 1.0 yet, oh my, they're probably just playing text based games.

Yes, I want to show off the best of the best graphics now, and it's simply not possible with OpenGL because of ATI at the moment, and with the future Linux and OpenGL implementation I can wait with a peaceful mind, knowing that the day will come, I don't care when, I just care that it will come someday.