Torque 3D Game Engine Going Open-Source

[log0]

I'm sorry if I sound like a dick, but if THAT is their tech demo... it's lightyears behind any of those engines. At least graphically speaking.

Graphically I wouldn't compare it to CryEngine an Co. Although all the fancy stuff can by added if the base code is flexible enough. And I think the have got a deferred renderer already? More exciting is that this is going be the first complete(gui, network, scripting, world editor) open source game engine.

[Setlec]

I'm sorry if I sound like a dick, but if THAT is their tech demo... it's lightyears behind any of those engines. At least graphically speaking.

yeah true but you will be able to use it without having to worry about licensing, royalties... and it's way better than the common quake3 based engines.

[BoTuLoX]

meh, you'll have free access to the source; you can make Torque 3D do whatever the hell you want it to without paying royalties on profit over $50,000 for the UDK, $30,000 for a license of Unigen, or $1.2 million for a license of CryEngine 3.

Well, first of all, the CryEngine 3 SDK license costs that for full source code access, you can make games with the SDK and what they ask for is 20% of all profit (which, alright, is not small change).
Second, these other engines provide many more tools which make the process of making the game easier, and that's the whole purpose of it. Big companies license engines because it makes their life easier, they can concentrate on doing the game instead of doing all the work on the engine.
What Torque is doing is great, but if you want to achieve the same results you'd get on these other engines, it'd require an overhaul, AKA, too much time spent on it.
Hopefully though, the community will improve the engine.

Graphically I wouldn't compare it to CryEngine an Co. Although all the fancy stuff can by added if the base code is flexible enough. And I think the have got a deferred renderer already? More exciting is that this is going be the first complete(gui, network, scripting, world editor) open source game engine.

Again, it's a great thing to have such an engine going open-source, but getting all the "fancy stuff" in, is quite a lot of work. And by quite, I mean don't even think about it.

yeah true but you will be able to use it without having to worry about licensing, royalties... and it's way better than the common quake3 based engines.

Well, that's something I fully agree with.

[log0]

Again, it's a great thing to have such an engine going open-source, but getting all the "fancy stuff" in, is quite a lot of work. And by quite, I mean don't even think about it.

And what makes you think so? I am not sure what effect(fancy stuff) could be so complex/difficult that one shouldn't even think about it.

[yogi_berra]

What Torque is doing is great, but if you want to achieve the same results you'd get on these other engines, it'd require an overhaul, AKA, too much time spent on it.

To quote Tim Cain in a recent Codex interview:

I care more about a game being fun than being beautiful, because no matter how good you look, people will move on to the next pretty thing and forget about you. If you make a fun game, people will remember that.

[curaga]

The press release + linked blog post are not clear. Does the drop include the editor and other pipeline tools, or not?

[log0]

The press release + linked blog post are not clear. Does the drop include the editor and other pipeline tools, or not?

From their blog:

Employee David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake
#95
09/11/2012 (9:56 am)
Not really. You get the full engine and source code. The Toolbox still has some proprietary QT code in it so we cannot currently release its source, but we are hoping to get it updated with the open source version of QT after the release so that everyone has access to those internals as well.

[BoTuLoX]

And what makes you think so? I am not sure what effect(fancy stuff) could be so complex/difficult that one shouldn't even think about it.

It's not AN effect. It's a bunch of them. SSDO (that'd be the succesor to SSAO), CE3's water quality, the way CE3 handles particles (shadows, reflections, how a lot of them don't affect FPS as bad as other engines), a scripting system you can use in 3 different ways (FlowGraph, LUA and C++)... I'm not quoting more because I am not fully aware of what Torque can do (can't bother to watch the demo again and analyze it), but I bet my behind there are a lot more things to quote.

To quote Tim Cain in a recent Codex interview:

We are not talking about games, but game engines. If a game engine allows the developer to make their game much better, it is superior, wether or not devs actually make good games. Also, there are genres where superior graphics make for a better gameplay, rather than a better view. There are also times where that works the opposite way.
Examples: Fallout 3/NV. Are those games good? Heck yeah! Would better graphics improve on the roleplay experience? Most probably!.
Fallout 1/2 (just to mention a saga where their games are vastly different). Are those games good? Of course! (I do not personally "love it", but I can easily see why many people do) Would they benefit from better graphics? Mmmmh, not much. They rely more on text than on visuals to tell a story.
Team Fortress 2: Is that game good? Holy shit yes! Would it be better with more realistic visuals? Uhhhh, no. It's artstyle doesn't work that way.

[TobiSGD]

To quote Tim Cain in a recent Codex interview:

I still wonder why so many people think that fun games and good graphics are mutually exclusive.

[yogi_berra]

I still wonder why so many people think that fun games and good graphics are mutually exclusive.

Graphics are the least important part of a good game. Without the mechanics behind the graphics, all the pretty bloom, DoF, motion blur, etc. amount to a hill of beans.

Unless you are willing to argue that people are playing Angry Birds for the graphics, of course.