#21 well look here http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarkDeLoura/20090302/581/The_Engine_Survey_General_results.php

torque is the 2nd most used in the industry, they don't write on the label: made with Torque, who care. As long at it satisfy your needs.

#22 Yea i found these charts really interesting...


Game Engine Awareness


Game Engines Used


... thats impressive company to have.

#23 funny how i dont see unity up in the top 5 :)

#24 Hey, stash that coal away for now, Edward :P

#25

Quote:I personally know a professional programmer who has worked for many of those companies you named here and has used/evaluated torque in the past and has bluntly stated that it's not worth anything other than for learning for amateurs.

True Lies (the movie) was on TV, today. This statement made me think of Bill Paxton's character (the guy that's a wanna-be spy), and that some how game developers that work for AAA companies are like elite CIA agents.

It also makes me wonder what you're doing on these forums if it is your acquaintance, and not you, that is in the game industry. If in fact, you are in the game industry, or have interest in being in the industry, it would be advisable to form your opinions based on your own evaluations of things, rather than make statements about products your are not personally experienced with.

Quote:Their support could not even answer many of his questions when he asked making them seem like amateurs themselves to him.

Would this be why he's "worked for many of those [AAA] companies" and couldn't hold a regular position with just one or two of them? If he does contract work I can sort of understand.

Also, why would he be contacting support? From what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong), personal support by GarageGames for a specific project comes with a fee, like any of the other engines mentioned here. Unless it's billing or general inquiry, "support" is through documentation and the GG community. Technical support about engine specific issues comes with a cost if you want direct support by anyone.

Quote:Another good reason is the scripting language. It would take too long for a company to train about 200 people to learn an entire scripting language. The programmers will know everything about the scripting language if they build it themselves, which is MANY less people to train. It is also good for these handful of programmers to know how the entire engine works, because then they can fix anything that isn't working.

Please tell me one game engine that does not use a scripting language. Scripting is for game code - that is code for a specific game, and is necessary in that it allows easy development. If you were to program everything as compiled code, your development time would be exponentially greater because for every little change you made to the game, you would have to recompile everything.

Going back to the topic, "big companies" often develop their own "engines" using middle-ware to short-cut the process.

For example, the Source engine was based off of the old Half-life engine, which was based off of the old Quake engine. They just did a lot of modifications to it, threw in Havok for physics and tweaked/added a few other things here and there.

Other examples:
Blizzard developed their own in-house engines for pretty much everything.
Turbine has their own engine for their MMO games (DDO, LoTRO, etc)
Linden Labs developed their own engine, with Havok for physics, for SecondLife.
Developers for EA use many in-house engines, supported by middle-ware products, for various games.

One last thing, a game engine is more than just the 3D graphics renderer. For some reason, many people think this. It is just the code that is non-game specific that the game sits on top of, as a bridge between the game, and the hardware.

As for my opinion of the Unreal engine, yes it's pretty and yes it's a great engine, but I wouldn't take Epic game's business model to be the be-all-end-all for the game industry. As mentioned in a cracked.com article, The 7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey (possibly NSFW due to language), "...guys like Epic games president Mike Capps are out there making stupid-a** statements about how they would never lower themselves to develop for the Wii because that would be 'going backward.'

This is epidemic in an industry that defines "innovation" purely by graphical horsepower and nothing else. Guys like him are utterly baffled that anyone could ever want a Wii, just because it, you know, offers a completely new playing experience."

edit: typos and copy/paste problem on my end

#26 Interesting article.... nice indeed to see Torque in that lineup!

#27 Wait a minute, didn't else anyone notice David Montgomery-Blake accusing Valve of stealing code???? Holy shit, this is a monumental accusation.

#28

Quote:I want to share my apocryphal urban legend of computer game development.

...

No, he is not.

#29 Derry, look up the meaning to "apocryphal"...
-
Daniel, what cologne are you wearing ? ..perhaps Fanboi ?

#30 <wild speculation>If the leaked Source code really were in all those engines, would Valve really be the ones that "stole code?"</wild speculation>

#31 @David - rofl

@Daniel -

Quote:It's used by amateurs and hobbyists who are not experienced enough to understand exactly why it isn't a professional grade development solution.

I am certainly not an amateur and I take personal offense at your remarks.

Quote:I personally know a professional programmer who has worked for many of those companies you named here and has used/evaluated torque in the past and has bluntly stated that it's not worth anything other than for learning for amateurs. Their support could not even answer many of his questions when he asked making them seem like amateurs themselves to him.

If you're not a programmer, you have absolutely no right to pretend like you know what you're talking about. Don't be a parrot.

I am a top tier professional programmer and I've had the opportunity to work with nearly every version of Torque.

I'm also not a fanboi. I've proven this many times because I too have said "Torque sucks" but my statements were qualified and directed at a subset of Torque that irritated me at one time or another.

Code reviews are essentially WTF's per second:


Notice how even in good code you still get a few WTF's?

Your friend knows this if he's a professional programmer too. What you missed (since you're probably not even an amateur programmer, much less a professional one) is that he got some WTF responses during his review of the Torque code.

But if he stated that only amateurs or hobbyists use it then he's dead wrong and you're just being a parrot by repeating him. There are a lot of amateurs and hobbyists that use Torque, but there are also a significant number of professionals that are part of this community and that use Torque.

Overall, Torque is a fairly high quality piece of well written software. Is it perfect? Of course not. Is it perfect for every game? Of course not.

The first thing every good game developer does when he's about to start a new game is to go through the list of engines that could be used for the game and he figures out the best fit.

You'd be a fool if Torque wasn't on that list.

Torque might not be perfect for every single game, but it's definitely a great choice for many games.

Garage Games has one of the best communities, some of the best documentation and some top quality game development middleware.

Now stop your trolling and go somewhere else.

#32 @Tony - Awesome picture!

#33 @Tony - ROFL
That just made my Monday morning a little easier to handle. I'm reminded of an article I read many years ago about the leaked code for Windows (me? xp? nt?... don't remember exactly), in which MS employees supposedly commented some lines of code with 'wtf?', or something to that effect, for confusing illiterate code.

#34 Oops, sorry! I didn't even notice the first line of David's post.

#35 Anyone heard from Roland, they guy/gal that started this feud, lately?

#36 Couple of things here.

First, I'm a professional developer and I'm using torque. It's not perfect, sure. But it's a good engine, it works, it does what it says it does. I'm only saying this because some comments in here are clearly from people who don't understand the process.

Second, I seriously doubt that Valve "stole" code and Frankensteined it together to make Source. I'm going to go ahead and say that that information is 100% incorrect. There's been no proof offered to support it, and given that they license their engine out to other companies, someone probably would've noticed right now. Please don't spread libelous nonsense.

Also, DL, that article you linked was embarrassing. It was clearly written by someone with absolutely no understanding of the medium. Faulting Gears Of War for not knowing when "enough is enough" is like cricizing a ninja for wearing too much black or complaining that Amon Amarth spends too much time yammering about vikings. My point is that you undermine your own credibility when you link to an article that was apparently written by a dunce.

The bottom line is that Torque is a good engine, but it's not suited for every high-profile development job. If they wanted to do that, they'd have to take on companies like Epic directly, on both technology and brand recognition (not to mention the pre-trained Unreal-savvy workforce that already exists), and that's a ridiculous challenge. They're much smarter to go for the indie crowd that doesn't have half a million dollars per project to spend on licensing.

#37

Quote:Second, I seriously doubt that Valve "stole" code and Frankensteined it together to make Source. I'm going to go ahead and say that that information is 100% incorrect. There's been no proof offered to support it, and given that they license their engine out to other companies, someone probably would've noticed right now. Please don't spread libelous nonsense.

Rick, it was a joke. David was poking fun at the twits who actually believe such conspiracy-theory nonsense.

#38

Quote:
was poking fun at the twits who actually believe such conspiracy-theory nonsense.

Yeah ... that's what they want you to believe ....

#39 @Rick - The article is a joke and not meant to be taken so seriously. There is something to be said however because as a developer you should be mindful of what your audience wants. Don't be so elitist and think you know everything because you know how to make a game. Listen to your audience and realize that not everyone thinks like you do... and I do agree that better graphics does NOT equal a better game.

If you are somehow offended by the article, I apologize but you just proved the article's point when it says that game developers should listen more to who they are making the games for. How can you say "It was clearly written by someone with absolutely no understanding of the medium"? Because they don't make games means they have no right to criticize them? Give me a break here. They clearly have enough understanding of them as a game player to realize this industry has people like you that can't see passed their own little world. Would you say someone that can't sculpt or paint can't be an art critic?

I understand as well as anyone how hard it is to make a game, and even harder still to make a fun game, but by having game developer tunnel vision won't help you any.

"My point is that you undermine your own credibility when you link to an article that was apparently written by a dunce."
So be it if that's what you think. You are certainly entitled to your own opinions, but really I would suggest lightening up a little. No one ever said the article was to be taken as fact. It's just an opinion... and opinions matter. Even if you do not agree with them, you should listen to them and try to learn from it.

"Faulting Gears Of War for not knowing when "enough is enough" is like cricizing a ninja for wearing too much black". You must be a fan of the series. Also, real ninjas didn't wear black. :)

#40

David Montgomery-Blake's Assertion that Valve Stole Source Code from Other Engines.

Status: Unconfirmed, but considered false

Claim: Valve Stole Source Code from Unity, Torque, GameMaker, and DarkBasic game engines.

Example:(GarageGames, 2009)

Quote:I want to share my apocryphal urban legend of computer game development.

I have a girl that I would hit on in the laundry room who used to live in my building. He ex's best friend was a professional developer for a AAA game company. He once saw the source code for Torque, Unity, DarkBasic, and Game Maker while he was turning state's evidence in a piracy scandal for the breach at Valve that allowed the Source source to be spread on the internet. They took in all of the usual suspects that might use the Source source in their engines and had him on retainer because he had once downloaded Game Maker and used to type in programs from Compute! in BASIC. He looked at the source and realized that Valve had stolen the source code from every one of these engines! They all had a piece of the Source. Valve had only been making AAA money because no one had seen the source or were under NDA if they had. He wrote down his findings and the case was settled out of court (like all of the big-time heavies). So no one knows the truth except for a select few who knew laundry girls who used to play Halo tournaments in the coffee shop down the street. I heard he works at Tastee Bite now. His ex has a restraining order on me that's about to expire (YES!YES!YES!), but at least I know the truth about AAA source code from a professional developer.