T3D 1.0 Artists/demo

#21 I started by making maps using free editors. Worldcraft, Hammer, etc... making Quake 2, Half-Life, Quake III and Counter-Strike maps and eventually making my own mods for Half-Life and Quake III. Hell if they didn't release the editors for these games Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Day of Defeat, TF2, and DOD2, and many many other games wouldn't have existed.

My es_donkeykong map wouldn't have existed! What the world do without es_donkeykong? But seriously .. make the editor free and allow it to be distributed. Not the source but the binary.. just like worldcraft & Hammer so people can create levels of there own and make a stronger community.

#22

Quote:Still say it is retarded Just about every other engine gives the tools for free. the new license system is just a money grab IMHO.

That's not really a valid comparison. If you point to Unreal or Source well then I highly doubt you want us to pick up there strategy of charging 6-7 digits and then we don't have to worry about individual artists licensing. While Unity on the other hand sells it's tools (only tools and script really, but the point being artists have to license the ability to use the tools).

A great deal of development time in Torque 3D was spent on tools, why should we not get a return on the tools? Quite a few products out there are only tools. We have put a heavy focus on tools and plan to, to support such resources it makes sense to sell such.

I understand the desire to want a free option for artist tools (who doesn't want a free option of anything right), but also understand it from our perspective, especially since we have spent quite a bit of tool development resources into Torque 3D (which has made it a much stronger product overall of course).

#23 The payoff is going to be more projects being created in the torque engine, or less projects. The artists aren't going to buy the tools just to work in Torque engine when they can get free tools to work in Unreal or Source. I know I wouldn't.

You guys want people to make games or not? My garage doesn't have all that cash to buy my neighbors tools as well as mine.

#24 While I agree that the paid seat for artists and scripters is a strong change of direction, I see the point of why charging for the toolset.

Probably a binary distribution for artists and scripters would do, no source, but complete toolset and script access.

Yes, if still open, I would add my vote to "Yes" in the relase blog post.

#25 Being an artist more than anything else, I'm not sure where I fall on this discussion. I have found myself liking the idea of a floating artist seat attached to T3D. I also liked the idea of the $500.00 artist version idea.

But the most important thing for the success of the communities work would be somehow, someway making it possible for games made with T3D to be moddable. Release a game thats decent, and you will make sales over a period of time, then it will pretty much fall away. Release a game that's decent and allows a community to build around it through ever changing addon's and community generated content.. your talking potentially years of growth. This isn't subjective, it's fact. The larger the modding community.. the more exposure GG gets, and the more money the dev's get.

I don't know what this would entail, and I'm in no position to dictate to GG what they should be doing. All I'm saying is from my point of view, and I think many others, this would be issue #1 after the stability of T3D itself.

My 2 cents..

LK

#26 You can release an engine that allows a user to create TorqueScript modifications to your game (as far as I know). From within TS they can do just about anything, short of creating a MIS.

Though it's also my understanding that if you wrote a tool to create a MIS, without using GG code, they can't stop you. Such as the dungeon generator that creates the 3D random dungeons.

#27 Can somebody point me to a thread/post where this topic of the editors not beeing distributable had been treated?

I'm feeling like reading a book from the end on that topic.

#28 A simple editors-only edition would be nice. Maybe some restructuring of the way Torque 3D is initialised would be required, but a build option that creates a tool that ONLY launches into editors could work. Artists could buy that (binary only, impossible to run an actual game because it only starts in editors), and programmers with the pricier option could build variants with tweaks they might add.

(It's 5:34 in the morning. I have a feeling this post is only half coherent.)

#29 I think the discussion originally was covered in one of the earlier developer blogs comments. Perhaps the one where the editor was first introduced?

I think this may be one of the first mentions that I can think of

www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/16727/1#comment-115957

any pre-compiled binary solution would have to have a way to be real customizable though wether that is a API for making plugins or something.