I've often been lambasted on these boards as being too much of a 3DGS fan boy when Torque comes up. But the fact is that 3DGS has certain inherent advantages over other engines that can't be denied: they've been around for over a decade, they started from a game engine and not from a game that was then turned to an engine (tribes = torque), and their licensing agreement has been the same for as long as I can remember.

A few personal anecdotes of my troubles with Torque:
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1) 5 years ago, their EULA forced you to publish through them... that was relaxed the next year but then all these different versions came up... and then TNL came out and it wasn't clear if it was included with Torque or separate... and now the EULA has changed again so tht if you game isn't entertaining (ie: if you game is boring?), you can't make it with Torque. It seems that every year they have a new EULA which would drive me NUTS as my project is multi-year and I would have be checking every day to make sure I'm using the software legally.

2) The torque staff has always rubbed me the wrong way. Davey is a fine enough guy, but at conferences he is like a fanboy on crack... always there, always butting in, always extolling the virtues of torque. No biggie really. But Jay. Oh Jay is another story. He has an air of, how shall I say, condecention about him that I can't shake. At one conference, we were all in the same room, eating drinking talking. I was at a table with Kelly Reud who is creating a Sex Ed game... pay attention, sex ed, teaching about responsible sex, no "leisure suit larry", not "Hot Coffee: the game", education. As we are talking about her project (she uses/used 3DGS for it), Jay came over to the table. The subject came and Kelly struck up the topic of Sex Ed game with Jay. I'll never forget the look of derision he game her as he told her, boldly and unrepentant, that Torque's EULA would NEVER allow such a game to be created and then walked off just like that. Uuuuuu... that really hit home as to the mentality of the people running it.

3) They have massive educational infiltration yet it's pretty much like throwing a baby into a pool, turning a way, and expecting them to do the butterfly stroke on their own! At a recent class that I taught, neither I nor the students could get the games they made into an EXE... spent SO much time trying to get it to work only to come to the conclusion that the version the school was using apperently wouldn't allow it! So while the Course Objective asked for an EXE and I know Torque was involved in the creation of the class (it's for a huge school after all), I guess they either sold them the wrong license, misled them, or the production path to a simple EXE is so tough that it will take you more than 8 weeks to figure out.

4) Don't even get me started on the pricing scheme. 5 Years ago there was 1 version... two years after 3... now everything is broken up and you have to pay for it separately. I belive the calculation was made that to get the same functionality as 900 USD 3DGS, you would have to pay 1200 USD for all the torque componenets. Don't know if that is still true but I still don't like having to "piece together" my game engine and then, down the line, like the EULA, have these version shift, mutate, and divide so that, again like the EULA, I never know WHAT the heck I have or can do!
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I've never looked back since I chose 3DGS over Torque. People mention time and time again how much more professional Torque and yet there are no more games that have come out of Torque than have come out of 3DGS (I mean c'mon: marble blast, think tanks, orbz... these games have been around for at least 5 years and yet they claim to be more successful than other engines? )

JustOneOldMan: 3DGS has it's limits, no one will deny that. But the one limit that it doesn't have is that in the hands of a capable developer, you can prototype a game in no time flat. In the hands of an experienced developer, there is nothing preventing you from making ANY single player game out there. Multi Player (my specialty) IS lacking and it is my personal opinion that they focus too much on the flashy, shadery, good looking side of things instead of the more technically relevant aspects of programming a game, but that doesn't stop me from using it or from creating my game.

And just so you know, on the MMP tip, I've spent 4 years with 3DGS, 2 years developing our current system, and we have a working (albeit unstable) MMOG system. Our holy grail is to stabalize it enough that a) we can publish it without any problems (annoying that what happens in the development version doesn't happen in the published version) and b) that the server can stay up for longer than a few days. But the point I'm trying to make is that even something as tough as a MMP game can be done with 3DGS, with --just like any other engine-- a lot of blood, sweat and tears!