What about LawMaker Game Engine?
by Berserk · in Torque Game Engine · 11/13/2006 (12:40 am) · 10 replies
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About the author
#2
I have been using Torque for a few years now and I haven't had many complaints except for the *work* required to get art assets into the engine.
Two weeks ago I was looking at the LawMaker Engine. I even got the evaluation version. I can't tell you what I think and what all I was able to do with the eval cause they made me sign a NDA to even get it.
My main turn off from LawMaker was the price. To be able to release a commercial game you have to pay $1499 for the lowest commercial license. For me I felt that was just a tad bit to much to pay for LawMaker(or any engine at this point - I'm not making the next Doom 3 ) Yet!! :)
Then 1.5 came out 3 days after I got the eval. So I upgraded and haven't looked back.
If you really want to try out LawMaker then email them about the eval version.
11/13/2006 (2:38 am)
This is kinda funny that someone has posted this question.I have been using Torque for a few years now and I haven't had many complaints except for the *work* required to get art assets into the engine.
Two weeks ago I was looking at the LawMaker Engine. I even got the evaluation version. I can't tell you what I think and what all I was able to do with the eval cause they made me sign a NDA to even get it.
My main turn off from LawMaker was the price. To be able to release a commercial game you have to pay $1499 for the lowest commercial license. For me I felt that was just a tad bit to much to pay for LawMaker(or any engine at this point - I'm not making the next Doom 3 ) Yet!! :)
Then 1.5 came out 3 days after I got the eval. So I upgraded and haven't looked back.
If you really want to try out LawMaker then email them about the eval version.
#3
11/13/2006 (3:20 am)
Maybe I missed it, but do they even have a demo you can download? I like TGE/TGA because if the full engine source code, many content import paths (blender, 3dsmax, etc.), multi-platform support, and incredible community. Just my opinion, but LawMake has a ways to go before competing with GG... 
#4
I all depends what kind of project,target,budget and time you have. The personal assistance/backup you get from the LawMaker developers are amazing. The GG staff and forums are great. Its no reason why should have choose one or the other get both :) . Get a evaluation copy and see whats best for the project.
11/13/2006 (4:07 am)
I have a comercial license for LawMaker and TGE,TGEA,TGB And i am totally satisfied with that engine suit!I all depends what kind of project,target,budget and time you have. The personal assistance/backup you get from the LawMaker developers are amazing. The GG staff and forums are great. Its no reason why should have choose one or the other get both :) . Get a evaluation copy and see whats best for the project.
#5
I am agree with you. The engine should be suitable for the certain project, and when you plan your game, you should choose which engine is the best for it.
11/13/2006 (4:43 am)
AlienforceI am agree with you. The engine should be suitable for the certain project, and when you plan your game, you should choose which engine is the best for it.
#7
A couple of notes about Lawmaker (as of today) in comparison to TSE. I am assuming familiarity with TSE since this is GG's site and will talk a bit about the differences between the engines and the points of divergence between them.
The ODE implementation may be "full", but it has not been fully exposed to developers. The last couple of builds have exposed more, but ragdoll functionality and a number of other physics implementations are not exposed. This means that while they exist, they are not accessible to you, the developer. I think that it has much to do with the work that they have been doing on the networking front at the same time as the physics front, as they two cause a number of significant hurdles for each other. And since they were being worked on in conjunction, I think that they had to pick and choose among the supported features within ODE. The newest physics build is rather fun to play with, though. But they have to support the engine, most likely with people who want full joint-ragdoll physics perfectly ghosted poly-by-poly, pixel-by-pixel to 3000 clients.
The terrain management is significantly limited in scope in comparison to TSE. It does have an engine editor for terrain (which reminds me a lot of TGE's and a number of other terrain tools out there). It gets the job done, but still has a way to go before it reaches the massive chunked high-resolution terrain algorithms in TSE. But then, it was not originally designed with that in mind. It needed to support exteriors, but not necessarily massive exteriors. You can manage and paint terrain in an extremely intuitive fashion, but it is a bit more comparable to an advanced TGE terrain system than TSE's. At least from my (limited) experience. But then, I rarely care about terrain systems in most of the stuff I've prototyped/designed in the last several years.
The art pipeline is great if you use Max for your meshes (detail brushes ala UnrealEd) and animated meshes. Blender and Milkshape can use the Cal3D tools to get content into the engine. This means, for me as a Lightwave user, that I have to create my meshes and then rig them in another application. Which would be fine if I didn't have a significant amount of content that I've already worked on and would have to rework. I, however, asked a number of questions about the pipeline while evaluating so I knew what I was getting into. Always ask questions. They are more than happy to answer them!
Level construction is quick and intuitive if you have used UnrealEd, Quark, Radiant or other CSG toolsets. Going through their video tutorials (eval and licensee) and wiki (available to licensees) will get you up and running quickly. If you want to use Max to create your levels, you will be in the same boat as you are with Torque. The scene management and occlusion is done through zoning CSG spaces. This seems to be a major complaint among artists, though it makes sense from a development standpoint. CSG is cheap and easy and foremost fast. If you are looking for a pipeline that lets you do whatever you want with your polysoup maps, then Torque and Lawmaker are not for you. BeyondVirtual and Unity may be, though you will have to make some concessions along the way to optimize your levels effectively.
Source is often at issue with game technology, and the short, blunt two-person human pyramid of comparison between Lawmaker and Torque is no different. Torque provides the source-code. Lawmaker does not. Whether or not this is a good thing or a bad depends on the developer. When GG was starting out, the idea of providing the source code to a AAA engine was unheard of without massive NDA agreements and facility lock-down procedures...and a lot of cash. With the explosion of open-source engines and once-commercial engines such as Quake/2/3 being released into the wild, the idea of "having the source" has been all the rage even if you never touch it. Mainly "because you can" should you need to. One of the early complaints (which I believe is still in the FAQ) of BeyondVirtual is that it does not provide the source. However, the developers originally provided the source before it was BV and realized that next to no one did anything with it. So they closed the source and developed the workflow. Lawmaker falls into a similar category. The engine is in C++ and the developers expose portions of it to the LUA scripting engine. It is much the same as using Torque's binary with TorqueScript works, except what is exposed is different (of course).
I strongly prefer LUA to TorqueScript, but that is because I have used LUA as a glue language for a long time now. Right now you should use a third-party LUA editor for writing your scripts (or something like Crimson Edit), but a fully integrated editor is on its way since LUA is integral to the Lawmaker development environment.
I started evaluating LM for the simple AI and cinematic features of the engine, and the workflow is rather nice in that regard. My main thought was "would the investment for a single title ($1500) be worth saving the time that I would spend integrating and tweaking existing AI resources in TGE?" My AI thoughts are far from complex. I am not interested in developing accurate AI for a fast-action military simulation. My needs are a bit closer to Echo Night's "see you, follow you, don't get stuck in the wall" hostile ghost AI. I am talking the extreme basics of AI. So the complexity of LM's AI is pretty much wasted on my experience since I did not need much in the way of complexity. I would love to see teams with more exciting needs doing stuff with LM's AI, though.
I've written way too long on this and kept things necessarily vague, but I hope it helps to differentiate the engines. TSE and LM are good engines, and I am excited to see what people do with them. If you have any questions about the particulars of LM, it would be a good idea to post on the LM forums. They move pretty slowly, but the developers are extremely helpful. You should also look at evaluating it if you are serious about the engine. And I also cannot say enough good things about their support.
11/13/2006 (9:01 am)
Lawmaker is a nice engine and their support staff is top-notch. I have no complaints whatsoever on that front. Of course, I'm also rather low-maintenance. I don't have any complaints about GG's support either, though I know a number of people who have. I do find it rather problematic to say that it supports all of TSE's features, however (or that TSE supports all of Lawmaker's features for that matter). As I am under NDA, I will not discuss the particulars of Lawmaker, but generalities that you will find on their site and their forums as well as other dev sites with Lawmaker developers. You would do yourself a favor to check the blogosphere and forums to see other opinions. Or better yet, get an eval and form your own.A couple of notes about Lawmaker (as of today) in comparison to TSE. I am assuming familiarity with TSE since this is GG's site and will talk a bit about the differences between the engines and the points of divergence between them.
The ODE implementation may be "full", but it has not been fully exposed to developers. The last couple of builds have exposed more, but ragdoll functionality and a number of other physics implementations are not exposed. This means that while they exist, they are not accessible to you, the developer. I think that it has much to do with the work that they have been doing on the networking front at the same time as the physics front, as they two cause a number of significant hurdles for each other. And since they were being worked on in conjunction, I think that they had to pick and choose among the supported features within ODE. The newest physics build is rather fun to play with, though. But they have to support the engine, most likely with people who want full joint-ragdoll physics perfectly ghosted poly-by-poly, pixel-by-pixel to 3000 clients.
The terrain management is significantly limited in scope in comparison to TSE. It does have an engine editor for terrain (which reminds me a lot of TGE's and a number of other terrain tools out there). It gets the job done, but still has a way to go before it reaches the massive chunked high-resolution terrain algorithms in TSE. But then, it was not originally designed with that in mind. It needed to support exteriors, but not necessarily massive exteriors. You can manage and paint terrain in an extremely intuitive fashion, but it is a bit more comparable to an advanced TGE terrain system than TSE's. At least from my (limited) experience. But then, I rarely care about terrain systems in most of the stuff I've prototyped/designed in the last several years.
The art pipeline is great if you use Max for your meshes (detail brushes ala UnrealEd) and animated meshes. Blender and Milkshape can use the Cal3D tools to get content into the engine. This means, for me as a Lightwave user, that I have to create my meshes and then rig them in another application. Which would be fine if I didn't have a significant amount of content that I've already worked on and would have to rework. I, however, asked a number of questions about the pipeline while evaluating so I knew what I was getting into. Always ask questions. They are more than happy to answer them!
Level construction is quick and intuitive if you have used UnrealEd, Quark, Radiant or other CSG toolsets. Going through their video tutorials (eval and licensee) and wiki (available to licensees) will get you up and running quickly. If you want to use Max to create your levels, you will be in the same boat as you are with Torque. The scene management and occlusion is done through zoning CSG spaces. This seems to be a major complaint among artists, though it makes sense from a development standpoint. CSG is cheap and easy and foremost fast. If you are looking for a pipeline that lets you do whatever you want with your polysoup maps, then Torque and Lawmaker are not for you. BeyondVirtual and Unity may be, though you will have to make some concessions along the way to optimize your levels effectively.
Source is often at issue with game technology, and the short, blunt two-person human pyramid of comparison between Lawmaker and Torque is no different. Torque provides the source-code. Lawmaker does not. Whether or not this is a good thing or a bad depends on the developer. When GG was starting out, the idea of providing the source code to a AAA engine was unheard of without massive NDA agreements and facility lock-down procedures...and a lot of cash. With the explosion of open-source engines and once-commercial engines such as Quake/2/3 being released into the wild, the idea of "having the source" has been all the rage even if you never touch it. Mainly "because you can" should you need to. One of the early complaints (which I believe is still in the FAQ) of BeyondVirtual is that it does not provide the source. However, the developers originally provided the source before it was BV and realized that next to no one did anything with it. So they closed the source and developed the workflow. Lawmaker falls into a similar category. The engine is in C++ and the developers expose portions of it to the LUA scripting engine. It is much the same as using Torque's binary with TorqueScript works, except what is exposed is different (of course).
I strongly prefer LUA to TorqueScript, but that is because I have used LUA as a glue language for a long time now. Right now you should use a third-party LUA editor for writing your scripts (or something like Crimson Edit), but a fully integrated editor is on its way since LUA is integral to the Lawmaker development environment.
I started evaluating LM for the simple AI and cinematic features of the engine, and the workflow is rather nice in that regard. My main thought was "would the investment for a single title ($1500) be worth saving the time that I would spend integrating and tweaking existing AI resources in TGE?" My AI thoughts are far from complex. I am not interested in developing accurate AI for a fast-action military simulation. My needs are a bit closer to Echo Night's "see you, follow you, don't get stuck in the wall" hostile ghost AI. I am talking the extreme basics of AI. So the complexity of LM's AI is pretty much wasted on my experience since I did not need much in the way of complexity. I would love to see teams with more exciting needs doing stuff with LM's AI, though.
I've written way too long on this and kept things necessarily vague, but I hope it helps to differentiate the engines. TSE and LM are good engines, and I am excited to see what people do with them. If you have any questions about the particulars of LM, it would be a good idea to post on the LM forums. They move pretty slowly, but the developers are extremely helpful. You should also look at evaluating it if you are serious about the engine. And I also cannot say enough good things about their support.
#9
I simply gave a 50,000 foot view about the products. Strangely, my purposes with the engines use an extremely basic subset of features. There are a lot of people on the TSE forums and on the Lawmaker forums who could probably help you out with information regarding the type of game you are attempting to make.
11/13/2006 (12:38 pm)
I can't discuss much about my experiences with LUA and Lawmaker since that gets into the particulars of engine and game scripting. You will find a lot of the particulars out when you do the evaluation, though. But, as per the NDA, I am not able to discuss such particulars.I simply gave a 50,000 foot view about the products. Strangely, my purposes with the engines use an extremely basic subset of features. There are a lot of people on the TSE forums and on the Lawmaker forums who could probably help you out with information regarding the type of game you are attempting to make.
Torque Owner Kostiantyn Teterin