Why is Torque so underrated?

#1 I really think that people tend to put their money on overpriced engines with over priced support.

Torque is a really good engine. I think that we just need to break the mold of open source means crap/mediocre.

Another thing is Reviews at least for game engines are broken. Game engines unlike games are meant to be added on to for a very long period of time.

#2 That is a question which pops up every few months on here. It is extremely hard not to sound biased when discussing this however.

I think it really depends on your point of view and your history.

I would argue that Unity and UDK sound sexy if you are new to the field, if you are afraid to get your hands dirty or if you choose game engines based on bullet point feature lists.

They both promise great editors, multi-platform support, amazing visuals and so on. And it's as simple to install and get started with as any other software.

Once you pick up some steam and move ahead with your development, the choice you had made at the outset will start to weigh on you one way or another. Royalty fees in the case of UDK, missing features in the case of Unity which force you to upgrade to Unity Pro.

Quote:Please also be aware that the feature set of the free version is not intended for the production of professional games and interactive content.

That's taken straight from their [url=unity3d.com/unity/faq]official licensing FAQ[/url]

I almost switched to Unity when they announced the Mecanim feature (a state machine for animation) for Unity 4. Once I got my hands on Unity 4 however, it became obvious that the free version lets you toy around with the system, but to actually be able to use it in your game, you need the Pro version. That, my friend, is exactly how you make sure that I never touch your game engine ever again.

With Torque, you know what you're getting. Don't like something? Change it. Don't understand something? The source code is right there for you + the forums are filled to the brim with the most helpful people on the planet. Not saying it's easy, but things that are worth it seldom are.

I think Torque offers the most honest approach to game development.

I would also say that Torque is the most educational option; My coding skills are 100% based on Torque Game Engine. Whenever I got into discussions with other hobbyist developers and even AAA game development staff, I found that my understanding of game engines was lightyears beyond their comprehension. All thanks to Torque.

Still, others will prefer Unity and UDK; more power to them!

In my crazy little world, however, since the MIT version was released there's simply no excuse. Torque all the way.

#3 Somehow I never heard of Torque before, I thought there is only quake/halflife engine, unreal/udk and cryengine.
I just accidentally came across it about half a year ago, while searching for open source engines.
I think that is only a question of marketing and money, if you got more money you can do more marketing, that's it.

#4 A note: I am not one of "the most helpful people on the planet." But if your question interests me I'll try to answer it. Guys like Simon Love, Steve Acaster, Daniel Buckmaster and many many other community members along with the GarageGames staff really make this place the most valuable resource for Torque users ever. If I were friendlier I might be able to rank myself up there with these guys....

That aside, Torque has never spent the advertising money on the engines that Unity has and the Tribes games weren't as popular as the Unreal games. I think these two factors sort of hobbled them from the start even though TGE was awesome (especially for $100 - for a commercially tested full source game engine!).

It's just that most people who want to make a game are new to the idea and it is a huge undertaking. And there is all of that "programming" that the artists have to learn and all of that "art" that the programmers have to learn, and getting these to work correctly is complicated, and so many other things. It all adds up to a large body of knowledge to absorb.

If the art pipeline was a bit cleaner, particularly for characters, I think it would really help T3D. As it stands, getting a replacement for the soldier into the game is complex and frustrating.

Once you get a character in, making it do something besides stand there breathing is difficult and frustrating. There are vast libraries of information on AI, but almost nothing that explains how T3D does it (or the fact that there is very little engine-side support for it) so come ready to work.

Torque rocks, but some of those rocks you have to lift, push or climb over. After all is said and done you will know what your game does and how it does it.

So, lack of advertising and expecting people to know that accomplishing a non-trivial task requires non-trivial work are in my opinion the factors most responsible for the vast popularity gap.

#5 @Ozi, actually majority of the people share the exact opposite feeling of what you said, they find Unity more easier to catchup with.
Its true for me too, maybe because i started learning Unity before torque, Torque was not open-source when i started Unity.
I'm not defending Unity though.

@Simon, i believe, its something all developers follow by themselves (even if Unity removes that "not for Professional works" requirement) if they're working as a company.
I surely wouldnot want to show a full screen 3 seconds POWERED BY UNITY splash screen if i were some Professional Game Company.
It doesnt make any impact to a dedicated Unity Indie but it does play a big role in making noob pirates make "My friend is thinking about using Unity Pro pirated for .." threads in Unity forum every month.

#6 @Akash
True. I might just be that I started Torque on V3.0 so it is a lot simpler than past versions. They've come a far away, but I thought that the MIT license would be the cherry on top for better advertisement and a larger fan base.

Though, it seems like Unity has won the hearts of many.
Nothing against Unity, just don't see how it is SO much better than Torque.

@Richard
The art pipeline was a huge turnoff for me, it takes me about 20 minutes to import a model into Torque and out of three times I have only done it once successfully. Unity it was much simpler since it supported .obj

Although this is true I do have to agree with Benjamin. People think that if you pay for something, it will automatically give you an advantage and a better service than something that is free. This may be true, but it is a common misconception.

Support on Unity is also pretty bad, or atleast it was for me. I didn't use the trial, but the Indie Free Limited Version and I felt ignored. The staff seems to favor those with the Pro version. The users on the forum were extremely helpful though.

I guess I am a bit biased, but I have had bad experiences with Unity the last year.

#7 Also worth noting, Torque3D had some tough years. I had a break from Torque around 2007->2011 and from what I've heard, InstantAction really messed things up edit somewhere in that period. With bad support and a rude company. All that changed when Torque3D was sold 'back' to GarageGames but it severely hurt T3D's reputation.

#8 @Ozi, you're right, the staff severely favor the Pro and try to sort of "dominate" Indies. Its something i've experienced too and its something there has been lots of threads about in different forums.

I asked a simple question, just once, a moderator answered it and the way he answered it made me feel pissed off, i started learning it on my own and have not asked in anything there since then.

i didnt mean its better than T3d though, its severely feature limited, the only thing i like about it is it exports to Chrome, web (like its streaming feature) and supports .psd files too, imprting asset isnt a problem.

#9 The number one thing that the Torque community has going for it is that we don't care which game engine you use. If you need an engine for a specific task go for it. If you want to compare feature sets and talk about pros and cons, great! All the time I spent here (I bypassed the instant action days) it has always been like this for me. If people start being jerks to one another the moderators (GG) shut it down quick. Usually a gentle "come on now".

I get the general feeling of what makes Torque awesome is that it is a professional tool. It is not some toy that fan boys flock to. It is like the early Apple IIs. You could learn, and do as much as your perseverance would take you. Nothing was barred.

#10 @Demolishun,
May i ask you something?

(dont want to create new thread for this)

Why is it that the main.cs is not compiled to .dso like other script files?

Are assets in dts not prone to being stolen?I mean any other person could copy your .dts and use it in their game. I had searched for it in forum and it seems .dso is prone to decompilation (provided he has skills to)?
while its true that copyright/IP issue comes forward but still, i wonder about these things.
But you know, Pirates dont care about (c) info.

But i'm not praising Unity here with these questions, unity web files(.unity3d) are fairly easily decompilable (theres software for it). I have read that some assets from a .unity3d web game file were hacked out, modified and sold.

#11 I was thinking the same thing when I was reading the basics of TorqueScript actually.

@Demolishun
I agree. I've been welcomed here nicely and the users here have gone out of their way to help me with my issues. The devs are easy going and are quick to respond.

Again, not bashing unity but I am using this through experience.

It usually takes 14 hours for someone to reply to a thread and when it is a dev, their answer usually traces back to Unity Pro.

If I did have a Unity based question, I would ask on a forum such as RageZone just to avoid annoying devs lol.

#12 For years Torque's docs were a couple of books referencing TGE, an obsolete version of the engine from a decade prior, and what could be gleaned from the forums.

Michael's herculean efforts put into getting real documentation together and the superfragilisticexpialidocious chm files he came up with for T3D 1.0 have made all the difference in the world since for me.

#13 I've had a good go with Torque and as good as it is the old school C++ style of development is a massive pain the arse. I think this above all else is the key. Pipelines, bugs, documentation are minor in comparison.

Torque's trump card is source code access, but that just isn't important to the masses who don't want it anyway. I seem to have got much further with Unity in just a few weeks than I have months with T3D. That's just the reality of the situation.

#14

Quote:
For years Torque's docs were a couple of books referencing TGE, an obsolete version of the engine from a decade prior, and what could be gleaned from the forums.

Don't forget the source code! The source is my first line reference....

@Daz - if you're referring to the older programming paradigms used all through the core code then I'm with you. Many of the systems could benefit from a refactor using more modern design and with an eye toward taking advantage of some of the newer language features. If you're referring to programming in C++ in and of itself then I disagree: "with great power comes great responsibility" - and great power! On this one I quote myself: "accomplishing a non-trivial task requires non-trivial work."

#15 All the old books on Torque is still very useful for scripting so the so called "old doc" is not really "old". I have used the AI chapters in the "Advanced 3D Game Programming All In One" with great joy for my game. It is all about getting the ideas behind the scripts.

In fact TorqueScript does not seems to have changed much from the "old days" and now when I read the new and old stuff. Just some minor things about singleton and datablocks. As well as staticTSobjectType has been replaced with staticObjectType when doing ray casting, which I saw in one of Steve's tutorials.

Torque 3D is not underrated, it is simply just not understood well enough by its critics.

#16 One of the biggest issues we have had is getting art assets into Torque. Other little issues like mousepick, doors, moving platforms are missing and quirky sky and fog issues.
Many of my students switched to Unity mostly due to the dropin production pipeline for the artists. Also Unity is more like Maya and UDK when it comes to the editor. And I have no Idea why they like Javascript but they think it is easy to deal with.
Aside from the asset pipeline issues, missing parts and a few other basic graphic quirks, Torque delivers a good basic drag and drop environment for fast development. I use it in my GUI design classes because it offers a complete GUI system that is easy (for the artists) to deal with. Having the Torque engine code helps alot as well, at least I can dig into the code and make the changes I need. I have used Unity and UDK but I find Torque still much easier to deal with.

#17 Thats the first time ever that I've heard that the GUI system in T3D is easy to deal with lol! Guess there is a first time for everything.

Gotta agree tho, that the asset pipeline could be a little better. It's vastly improved in the later versions, but still it can really be frustrating for artists and programmers alike that stuff like loading an object into the scene is cause for so much frustration when you'd rather use your time on writing some code or designing a level etc.

#18

Quote:I was just looking at the reviews and people were like "ENGINE IS CRUD, UNITY IS BETTER" and I sorta beg to differ.

Nearly nine times out of ten, you see this post from people who haven't touched the tech in many years. Some as long as five, which was before all the new technology was released. A lot of them haven't bothered to pick up the new tech to provide a new review, not that they are expected to.

I'd rather see something like "When I used it several years ago, it was crud and Unity was better. I don't know about now, though." Anyone who takes the time to go through our blogs in the past year would be able to a massive difference between the way Torque is managed and updated, compared to the IA and pre-IA days.

It's essentially up to all of us to provide more current reviews or rebut the "Engine is crud" posts.

#19 @Akash,

Quote:Why is it that the main.cs is not compiled to .dso like other script files?

I don't know, but if you need it to then rename main.cs to something else like core.cs. Then exec the core.cs from the new main.cs file. See if that creates a core.dso. There may also be a flag in script to tell it to do this. Like I said, I don't know the reason.

@All,
Over time I have come to realize that bashing anything (Even though I have done it, I am human after all.) is not profitable (socially, economically, spiritually). I equate bashing to gossip. It does not include the 3rd party to solve the perceived problem and just hurts people.

Now listing issues and possible working solutions is a good thing. This is a strength of this community.

Oh, and Windows 8 sucks. ;)

#20 Howard: compared to TorqueScript, JavaScript is like God.

Demolishun et al: I'm pretty sure the engine startup sequence prevents main.cs from compiling. I don't remember the reason, but there was an old resource that deal with it somehow. I don't have time to look for it, though - Google searching this site also seems to give the most unhelpful results first :P.

Daz: I agree, I think for the massive segment of developers they don't really want to dig around in source code (especially for documentation), and Unity offers that they don't need to for lots of stuff.