Torque 3D Rep Question

#1 T3D is not easy to learn. You're expected to do a lot of work yourself. If Unity has all of the features you need and it is easier for you to learn then by all means, use it. If it's missing something that you need and you can afford to pony up the money for their source licensing and it is easier for you to do that then by all means, do that.

T3D has bugs. Show me any non-trivial program that does not. Game engines fall into the non-trivial category in my book. There are some long-standing issues that were not resolved and there has been much complaining along the way from paying customers. In my opinion, when you pay $1000 for a license that costs $250,000 or more from the competitors for a product with 90% of the same quality and feature-set you should be a little more forgiving - but that's just my opinion. The development team for Torque has never been large; to my knowledge it never had as many people working on it as any other commercial engine. Fewer hands means slower response and slower development.

Torque in general has had some interesting PR from both outside and within. I have heard stories of the original founder telling someone to take his $100 (once upon a time the source to the engine was sold for $100) and put it somewhere uncomfortable when sending a refund (I can't confirm this colorful anecdote). Many people who felt disgruntled at the lack of attention they received here took that emotion and spewed it to whomever would listen.

I personally have been short, terse, perhaps a little rude on these very forums. Sometimes I let my own frustration or irritation take the reigns and it shows - I try to be civil but I'm human (sadly). Others have done the same.

Hang around a bit and you'll find that everyone here is a little like a family - helpful, kind, and occasionally grumpy and snarky.

Welcome aboard.

#2 Basically, Torque's schtick throughout its history has been 'you have the source code, you can do what you want' or, more unfortunately, 'you have the source code, so fix it'. The smaller development team has meant that the devs can't always respond to bugs or new feature requests with the same speed that other engines can. It's also not incredibly user-friendly - both due to the 'you have the code' mentality, and because the codebase contains so many hacks and workarounds that linger from the Tribes 2 days.

IMO it's never really deserved the vitriol it seems to get from users of other engines. Sure it's nothing special, but it's adequate, and sometimes it's just what you're looking for.

#3 Learning curve. Mismanaged expectations. Grass is greener effect. Sins of the father problem. Poor marketing. Unfair judgement of stability. Most impactful reason would be when an engine was as cheap as Torque, with no alternatives, there was a huge flood of hobbyists and newcomers with zero game development knowledge. They would struggle, blame the engine, get lectured by veterans, and get pissy. Then, when more user-friendly engines came around, they flooded to that side and would bad mouth Torque until the end of time. Their opinions would remain severely out of date, but would not acknowledge the improved versions of the engines.

#4 Pre-Unity3D user here. I can only talk of why I decided to go with torque instead. What made me come over to Torque3D is probably the license. It's free now, while Unity3D is "free". With that I mean they allow you to use it commercially if you earn under $100000. Even if that never happens, it's a limitation I don't feel comfortable working under.

Also I always wanted to do horror, or something horror-ish. One thing coming first among many is lighting. Torque3D has awesome lighting system, HDR features and PostFX effects. Unity3D falls behind there too on their "free" version. It strips many of these features. No glow, but most recently shadows, no HDR support.

Anyways, besides all that, Torque3D is also open-source. You can change anything how you like and to solely comfort your workbench. That is probably a step Unity3D will never take. Not in the near future at least. But who knows when more and more engines open-source themselves? Thinking of this, Godot Engine, NeoAxis. You get my point.

I feel comfortable with Torque3D and have just settled in. I will probably stay here for a while and maybe in the future apply to contribute to this engine on GitHub.

#5

Quote:made me come over to Torque3D is probably the license. It's free now

And as a cherry on the pie... 'Dark Skin' for T3D is also totally free in contrary with Unity... Get it here!

But seriously, I think you need to make your choice not only because of the costs of using the engine it self; but also the possibility to extend it and create a fast workflow. The industry is providing a whole range of solutions for Unity, but for T3D you'll need to do most of the stuff that's out there for Unity in-house. You can do great things with T3D but you need a developer or 2 to make it all happen :)