Ok Torque 3D is now Open Source
Torque 3D
I'm downloading it, and give it a try.

When i see full lightmapped scenes, complete lightening workflow with shaders (bump,specular).
It seems good to be able to produce something with it.
Well i'll try to program it with their script and see what i can do with the engine without coding any C++ code ?

tutorial FPS video

It's FREE, so like Blender let's hope it will evolve in something awesome why not ?
The engine base si not that bad, and have some basic good power to handle medium scenes.
Like 3DGS, only the optimisation (LOD objects, LOD Shaders, LOD shadows etc ...) can allow you to bring complex 3D scenes.

For little games, i think it will od the job also

Great, i select terrain or empty room , than World Editor :
each time a crash

What is going on ? it seems it could be hard for Torque 3D to become popular !

you can read about the great instability of Torque on several forums. its scripting seems to be also not the best, and maybe I'm wrong, but it requires an additional tool that should be bought.
but you can fix engine bugs since it is open source

stability isnt its only issue, speed is another one. with all the settings turned down I cant play games on a geforce 6100 (fps of like 2), which isnt a great card, but with settings all on low the engine doesnt do THAT much visually soooo.

Humm ... well perhaps, but you can adjust lot of stuff like lightening, shadows etc ...
The demo i tried for Torque 3D 1.2 was not so great i recognize on frame rate, and there was bugs and i didn't liked the strong advanced lightening !

Let's see if the community will support the engine and make it grow and improve ?

Ogre3D is here from years ,with passionated programmers people and it is a strong and clean architecture of modules.
Im' not sure Torque 3D with it's old base of code will be able to follow same path ?
Well , let's wait some months ...

yeah Geforce 6200 has the same bad result here (hopefully I can upgrade my pc soon...) but I can get the same if I apply some more complex shaders in 3DGS too. so imo it requires careful programming to meet low system requirements, and usually game engine demos are rather for representing the max quality achievable currently... in contrary, by Neoaxis I could get good performance even on my old notebook when lowered some settings to a still acceptable quality (unfortunately I don't like its scripting system)

NeoAxis is based on Ogre 3D engine, so i think it's normal that this 3D engine has more power than 3DGS or Torque 3D.
Ogre 3D is really good specially when you optimise your scene (LOD etc ...)
TorchLight made with Ogre 3D , could even run on low hardware,
and this games has a good amount of entities, characters, HUD, effects running at same time

Well perhaps people interested in programming should use Ogre 3D instead of Torque 3D.
Perhaps Torque 3D remains a simple niche with it's own fans ?
Let's wait two or three months to see what will it become ? followed by some coders or let down ?

going a bit offtopic but:

as I read Neoaxis is using an optimized version of Ogre and offers more tools and code environment, including a lot of sample games, built in pathfinders (tile based and Recast too), very easy and fast simple or a bit slower pssm shadowmapping, geometry instancing. but this huge environment is a disadvantage too, you should start to build your game based on this full complex C# script package, which is a bit complicated for me (and not commented well), and I have not found good enough tutorials for this engine (only how to start, and very advanced ones). but what I found to be very effective is the usage of own game object classes, which can be programmed, and then used in the editor too...

the other engine I tested is Esenthel, which is C++ based (but contains a lot of very effective simplifications!), offers something similar as Neoaxis, but features a nice all in one editor, a good tutorial package, and a well commented header browser containing all engine classes and functions. it was enough to start with this engine with my limited C++ knowledge, and create a simple level where I can control a group of 100 soldiers using the built in Recast pathfinder. and supports DX10. and multiplatform. and you can buy professional sample game project for making MMO games. and free server support. and good model converters with good work-flow. but its performance is not the best, requires good hardware.

I do not mention Unity because of its higher price category (after I got some 3D experience with 3DGS I could do easily anything in Unity I wanted, but the free version does not offer important things like LOD). the 2 engines above can be used freely with full feature set, but with limited source code, you need a licence only when publishing commercial projects.

I think 3DGS license parameters and pricing could change in the future as there are very potent competitors for lower price, offering more features. at least its pro version price should be lowered significantly. it's easy to start with it, but later easy to change to other engine too...

Yes i agree./
And 3DGS strong points is the easy script, and all documentation and tutorials indeed

For Unity 3D, you can program your own LOD for example, and a user have made shadows for the basic edition also.
If you target mobile, the basic can do the job, specially if you make something using baked lightening on levels and simple Blob shadows (2.5 D platform games , RPG , etc ... )

Esenthel, i found it's code very complicated, i talk about the code to move the character , and it seemed complicated to use your own character ... even with their C++ editor running upon some instance of Visual Studio.

For NeoAxis, i understand, the documentation lack , but the strengh of C# that is easy language can be veru good.
What i find great is all advanced features, could it be shaders, HUD interactive in 3D world, lot of tools : complete terrain editor, vegetation editor,physoc editor etc ...

Unreal Engine for mobile seems to be great also, and for PC i found it complicated, but on the net you can find people making some RPG or 2.5D platform games for example.
And the optimization and lightening system are great, you pay royalties only when you gain a lot of money also
But that's clear it's not some easy engine for beginners, even with script !
Let's wait


In fact a good engine can been seen on how many games are published in the year with it, and how people success in making games also. In that case Unity 3D indeed is a big winner !
And it's open plugin system easy ot program ot make plugins easily , is one of the best last idea seen on indie 3D engines, caus they made it very very clear and easy to make plugins for the editor. So an endless world of customizations for anyone and lot of usefull plugins on their asset store

For now, i stick with 3DGS for PC games if one day i succed making and finishing one ? and Unity Basic for mobile games.

For Torque 3D, not sure it will become very stable, bug free enought , and fast enought or more optimized ?
Let's wait and see what will happen ?

yes Unity is a good choice for mobile games, but I'm not experienced in that area at all.. I did some tests with blob shadows and decals for outdoor environment because object shadows on terrain terrain are disabled in free, but a nice water cannot really be made in the free edition, so I decided to stop dealing with Unity for a while.

after some time Esenthel starts to be more clear, you just have to understand what feature you need and when but it needs some C++ knowledge (it inspired me to start to learn C++)
moving a character using custom animation is not so big trouble as it looks for the first sight, I could do it based on some tutorials, but the engine has also built in character skeleton animations, which can be used automatically if you prepare your character model according to the requirements. as I see it's mainly for MMORPG making. moreover, you can extend the game character class to customize your characters behaviour and control, which is very effective.
the only bad part is the management of render updates of objects, which is separated from object update "actions". if the objects are made by the world editor i.e. part of the map, it is automatic, but if created runtime the should be cycled through to set their render parameters... but selecting different rendering modes and using shadowmapping is really easy.
so in some aspects it requires more low level programming, but it also features a lot of user friendly, ready to use modules really needed by games.
on the homepage and the forum you can find a lot of nice and professional looking games made with Esenthel.

I never tested UDK because it has too high hardware requirements for me. maybe if I get a new pc...

the script structure of Neoaxis is too complex for me at the moment, because I have little C# knowledge... somehow C++ is more attracting for me

what I want to try too is Shiva, I just downloaded it, but it has also another scripting language...

so basically, I can do what I minimally want to achieve in 3DGS Commercial, later maybe more if I learn HLSL a bit... but it is possible that another engine will be more suitable if I will have different requirements or priorities in future.