Tempted by Torque 3D, but don't want to be burned again.

#1 You echo my thoughts exactly.

However, I don't mind waiting (and buying T3D for $800, instead of $500) if I know for sure what I'm getting. I don't know why you think something prevents you from scaling TGE/TGEA to many players, though.

#2 I can probably answer a few of your questions.

Quote:As an example, the text mentions a range of hardware and operating systems are supported, but do we not have a fuller list than that? Xbox 360? Linux?

Mac support but no Linux, there will be Wii and iPhone support, and I'm pretty sure 360 support (though don't take that as guaranteed). The iPhone and consoles will, of course, involve separate licenses. Mac support will be part of the core.

Quote:
Are the genre kits free?

No.

Quote:
Does the content in the videos for example the pacific island content come with the engine or anything like that?

No.

Quote:
What is the server-side architecture like, can it easily be distributed for many players?

The networking is the same as TGEA.

Quote:
Is all rendering performed in OpenGL? Does it provide an OpenGL and DirectX implementation of the graphics layer by default?

DirectX on Windows, OpenGL on Mac.

#3

Quote:The engine looks excellent, the videos are really nice, but $505 is still a lot of cash to blow (particularly with the weakness of sterling right now - I'm from the UK)

Hopefully the exchange rate will keep going the way it's going and I'll snap up the EA at the optimum time. You'd save £30 if you buy T3D today compared to the exchange rate on the first day it went on sale... got myself a real time monitor set up showing the up to the minute cost of T3D in Sterling.

Update: Eugh... it just went up £3.

Yea, I'm a genuine Yorkshireman, we're as tight fisted as they say. heh

#4 Well said Ian.

I would rather spend the extra $200 and know what I am getting into than jump into something that is not currently at beta while hoping features can be completed as planned. Curse the TGEA fiascoes of years past and I hope no one experiences employees of GG ranting at customers who merely ask where listed features are. *AHEM*

I'll look at T3D when it reaches full feature maturity in, what I guess will be, 9-12 months.

#5 I'm in the same boat and after very tough decision making I opted to go with C4. I have spent alot of money on gg products and been with them for 5 years but feel enough was enough. I have used C4 and find it to be much more flexable and easier to understand the underlying codding. Yes, it has some current short comings (as do all the engines) but after spending about 3 months looking at most of the affordable ones I made the jump. I still come thru these forums because old habits die hard. :)

#6 That actually brings me to another question I meant to ask Dean- is Torque 3D a complete re-write or does it still have elements from TGE?

I ask because that seemed to be part the issued with TGEA, it was based on much of the TGE codebase which must go back over 10 years now and much of the engine really needed a re-write, especially in light of the fact documentation was weak.

So is the Torque 3D codebase a marked improvement in terms of cleanliness of architecture and loss of some of the weaker legacy elements of TGE such as the early physics engine?

Cheers for the replies so far though Gerald, I find the comments regarding the supported platforms a little disheartening though and the fact it doesn't appear to come with any starter kits as the genre kits are now charged for as well as possibly support for any platform other than Windows and Mac etc. leaves me wondering what the real TCO of this engine might be to get started with it quickly and easily with even a bit of placeholder content.

#7 Ian, you haven't looked at tgea 1.8.1.
Tgea has come a long way. I don't think there is much of tge left aside from torque script. I've been porting resources over to tgea and I'll tell you, it's a total pita due to all the changes.
Torque 3D, for the most part, is a rewrite. It uses tgea as a base, but most of the parts have been rewritten from scratch. (or fixed)
Adding Fmod, or PhysX for instance is much easier now.
I think Torque 3D is going to be the best engine GG has ever sold.
Time will tell tho.

#8 Ian,

I should clarify that T3D will come with a basic FPS Genre kit, the advanced FPS genre kit and the other kits will be extra. So pretty much what you're used to with TGE/A.

For your other questions, T3D is not a re-write, it is essentially TGEA 2.0. They put a lot of manpower into re-factoring and modernizing the rendering pipeline, performance improvements, fixing a lot of bugs and adding some new features, but the underlying engine design is the same. According to some comments that Matt Fairfax and others have made, there is a componentized rewrite of the engine in the works, but it's a longer term project that is down the road.

The documentation has improved a lot though. They hired a dedicated documentation writer to improve things on that end, and it has made a world of difference. He still has his work cut out for him, but he has done a superb job so far. If you haven't done so recently, check out the new official documentation for TGEA, to see the type of docs you can expect.

For physics there is now a set of hooks that allows you to more easily integrate third party physics libraries, and a somewhat rudimentary PhysX reference implementation, but it's not networked at this time, so single-player only on the Physics. The networked physics is pretty much the same as previous versions. I've heard that they're working on a networked ODE implementation, but not sure what the status is of that.

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As far as the other platforms besides Windows and Mac, consoles are pretty heavy to get into in the first place. They wouldn't even be allowed to give you the console implementation code unless you had the relevant dev kits, which cost many thousands of dollars themselves, so it makes sense for that to be licensed separately IMO. They have TorqueX 3D which you can use to target the 360 via XNA, but that's a different beast, though a bit cheaper than T3D.

Linux is a somewhat different matter, but I don't think it's relevant enough as a gaming platform that they'll ever support it again.

Cheers

#9 "So is the Torque 3D codebase a marked improvement in terms of cleanliness of architecture and loss of some of the weaker legacy elements of TGE such as the early physics engine?"

Its a mess right now, but its also beta.

I have already found many parts of the old TGE code; what i was actually using quite a bit, completely gone with no remarks at all about what have replaced it. Its a show stopper for me, as i do not care to invest great amounts of time totally reworking my cumulative code customizations. If i wanted to rewrite and design all my functions and features i would/will switch to a different engine.

But im withholding decision until T3D grows up a bit. In the mean time im able to at very least voice my opinions a a time when T3D is still flexible with room to change. Also this is a great time for me to experiment to see what new possibility T3D have to offer in exchange for the old functions who are now missing.

Im finding myself enjoying T3D the more time i spend with it.

T3D could be the best value based game engine available in its class, as long as GG do not think tossing glitter at the consumer is going to pass for another 'great product'. The only reason i decided to get T3D was in hopes of a better clean, easy to read/use code base. TGEA code is/was a incomprehendable mess , i dont care to study the code as if it were a science project. I still enjoy working with TGEA1.8.1, just takes much more time to figure out. TGE for all its faults at least reads like a book, logical and easy to follow.

#10 Some nice informative posts here, thanks.

#11 @Caylo: TGE "reads like a book" but TGEA 1.8.1 is tough? I've always thought the opposite. The trend toward modularity is really clear and anywhere that's visible, it's definitely easier for me to understand. As for Torque 3D, again, MANY of the systems are completely rewritten (terrain, lighting, rendering, the art pipeline, sound, etc.) and come with well commented code and good documentation.

This is a good discussion, and I do understand this sentiment is out there. The team working on Torque 3D today is 3X the size and many times more organized that the team which worked on TGEA up until it was released. 2006 and 2007 were difficult years to give Torque the attention it deserved, even so, in only a year, we went from TGEA 1.0.3, an admittedly unfinished and mediocre performing engine, to TGEA 1.8.1, which I believe is on par with what people expected of TGEA from the beginning. It's fast, it's proven, it's cross-platform.

The pace this team set with TGEA is accelerating with Torque 3D. Yes, in many ways, it's the next logical version of TGEA, but there are quite a number of major improvements that no one had even contemplated at the time we were originally developing TGEA. The industry moves fast, but we're moving faster.

Next week, I expect we'll see Beta 2. We'll probably continue on a 2 week cycle until we're satisfied. That might be 2-3 more cycles. It might be more. No one here is slowing down in the least though, or moving to new projects. Torque 3D is it. You'll see enormous, continual improvement all the up to the release. After that, we'll likely take some of the team, and go back to tackling some of the bigger, tougher items we couldn't fit in this release. Things like the core rewrite for components, more new editors, scripting changes, more physics updates, etc. There's lots more left to do, this is just the beginning. I'm confident that there's no engine team out there that will match our pace, our focus, or the value we're going to deliver.

I'm not sure there's any more we can do to win back your trust except to do what we say were going to do. We're not going to promise anything we're not absolutely sure we can deliver, but I think that if you look at this team's track record over the past 18 months, you'll see we don't miss our public targets often, and we typically over-deliver on our promises. It may take some time to sink with some of you who were with us when our resources were tighter, and our focus less clear, but if you watch, you'll see this is a different GG creating a much better Torque for the future.

#12 @Brett: Dont get me wrong i enjoy working with TGEA, I have had alot of fun with it. I dont feel disappointed at all with the way GG have evolved. Im actually excited to see it moving in a much more professional direction. I also have great respect for the folk that have worked so hard on what many often called a toy, an underdog in the game industry. If anything I have more respect for GG and the Torque engine, especially now with clearly better communication coming from the Garage.

#13

Quote:I don't think there is much of tge left aside from torque script.

What? Use a diff tool and see for yourself if you're going to say things like this. I don't mean to offend, but that's just way off. Many source files are untouched (and for good reason! some things don't have to change).

Quote:
TGE "reads like a book" but TGEA 1.8.1 is tough? I've always thought the opposite. The trend toward modularity is really clear and anywhere that's visible, it's definitely easier for me to understand.

I'll have to agree. The plugin structure is nice, maybe except the new singleton classes, but that's another discussion and thread, and perhaps up to personal taste.

#14 This seems like a good place to join the discussion.
In terms of price, even with the discount till release, $505 in this economy for me at least is just to hard a pill to swallow.

I agree with Ian on some things.
I simply won't fork over that much money for anything I can't see , feel or touch before I buy it.

I jumped at TGE at $99 way back and then became an early adopter for TGEA at $149, I think, and have been very pleased with both until recently.

The TGEA 1.7.1 to 1.8.+ has caused me a considerable amount of headache.
Some of the changes have all but destroyed the work I had done with 1.0.3-1.7.1.

I really want my project to run on 1.8.+ because when I can actually get it to render what I want it works well on most hardware.
1.7.1 has some problems with some hardware out there.
Yes Intel I am looking at you and some of your integrated chipsets.
This is not GG's fault and for the most part works a lot better on 1.8.+
This problem is the biggest reason I have reservations about T3D.

I have no doubt that T3D will be the same headache for me.
I accept that. Engines evolve and by definition become more complex.
What I can't accept is being told this "new" engine is now 3 times the cost,for early adopters, and I can't even review a tech demo of some sort. I understand it is in beta, but your basically telling me that to get a deep discount for the final product I have to pay $505 and then and only then can I make the determination if the new version is the way I want to go. As it stands right now I am forced to use 1.7.1 because of a few issues with 1.8.+ that have become to problematic to over come.

I know GG will likely release a demo when they have a release build.
But if I wait till then I get hit with a $1000 price tag.

I might could swallow the $505 price if I could could get a demo of some sort, not the source code, just a simple T3D Barricade like Demo to evaluate.

But for me ,in this economy , I simple can't afford $1000 for a hobby.
And I certainly won't pay $505 for something I can't see, feel or touch
before I buy.

To make it clear I am on balance very pleased with GG and TGE/A and the torque community.

#15 I still certainly have some concerns, particularly about how much the genre kits are going to cost, how much platform kits and so forth might cost also.

The reason I asked about the pacific island content in the demo is that's the kind of theme I'm looking towards, although not an FPS it'd be perfect - is that content likely to be available at all as a content pack even or is it something that's private only for GG's internal projects or similar?

Do we have a rough idea on the cost of genre kits and platform kits or is that entirely undecided? Even a rough ballpark figure would be a great start!

Last time I was using Torque back towards the end of 2006 there was talk about charging for updates, as I can download TGEA 1.8 I'm assuming that never went ahead, but what's the situation for T3D? Will updates always be free? Is this part the reason for the higher initial price?

As a side note, what's the deal with Torque X 3D, if you're a creators club subscriber is it just TX2D you get for free as part of that subscription, am I correct in thinking TX3D is an separate product?

#16 The Pacific Island demo was made by Sickhead Games, and not Garage Games, so that content will most likely be up to them. I think it makes use of their Forest Kit, so at the least I'm sure you'd need to purchase that.

No info on the price of the genre kits.

From comments that Brett has made in his blogs, they're looking at some kind of annual paid update schedule, with free incremental updates in between.

Yes, TX3D is a separate product.

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@Bill Vee,

The pre-order discount is kinda for the reason that you don't get a demo. You get an additional $200 discount for being an early adopter and helping them get it ready to be release/demo-ready. Since it's still very early beta, a demo probably wouldn't be a valid evaluation tool.

But just to be clear, after the pre-order is over, since you own TGEA you will still get the full price of TGEA discounted, so it would cost you $705 instead of $1000.

#17 $705?

Think I missed a memo somewhere.

#18 The $505 pre-order price is $1000 - $295 TGEA owners discount - $200 pre-order discount. When the pre-order is over, you lose the $200 pre-order discount, but you still get the $295 TGEA owners discount.

(Even if you were an early adopter of TGEA, you still get the full $295 discount.)

#19 If annual updates are to be paid for it'd be nice to know pricing on that.

I am quite tempted still by T3D, but I'm a little worried about the various hidden costs - the last thing I want is to buy the engine and find I'm going to have to pay another $500 a year for updates.

I think GG really needs to get a decision on the plan and price of things like this, the genre kits etc. so that people can make a more informed decision. As it stands the information on the site gives the impression it's $505 right now for TGEA owners and that's pretty much it - there's no mention of additional cost for genre kits, platform kits, updates and so on.

#20 GG has been starting to fulfill all of their century old promises, and they have been doing them quite nicely. T3D is still cheaper than many other game engines of the similiar variety (Unreal, Unity, Etc.).