From the viewpoint of a professional programmer, which I am as I earn my money with programming, Gamestudios main advantage is the engine API and lite-C script. I have found in no other engine this possibility to write some little 3D app that almost instantly works, in a couple of minutes. Especially with A7. A7 was a big step from A6. Also shader programming is very powerful, much faster than with any other engine that I tried, because of the shader building blocks that you have and the fact you instantly see the effect of your code on the screen while you type.

For quick solutions that do not require lenghty level design Gamestudio is unmatched IMHO. Another advantage is that the engine improves permanently, updates are more often than with most other engines, a couple of times I found that I requested a feature and it was there two weeks later.

As a professional programmer you have to deliver solutions fast, time is money, thats why Gamestudio is my favorite tool for 3D apps until another engine comes out that offers the same fast and easy programming, but I have not seen any yet. When you compare it with vehicles, Gamestudio is a fast motorcycle and Torque3D is a heavy bus. Sometimes you need the motorcycle and sometimes the bus but when I had to choose only one I would take the motorcycle.

That said, there is one big disadvantage of gamestudio and that is that its not a studio. The name is misleading. Its not good for click-together kids and not good for only-artists. The editors are merely converters and the templates are not good. In fact the templates are awful. You can not really do something useful without some programming. This is a big marketing fault and I think its the main reason of complains of disgruntled kids in threads like this. They have no clue and just bought the wrong product. Gamestudio is ok for kids when they have some understanding of 3D engines and are willing to enter programming. If Gamestudio wants to become much more popular they should not put more features into the engine, but at first make better templates for many sorts of games.

Just my 2c.

I agree to both of you. So in the end GS (actually Lite-C) is a good multimedia-programming language. You can learn a lot on different levels (from easy coding up to shader coding). This can be good for prototyping as well.

But all this becomes another story if you want to finish something. Engines like C4 don't let you program shaders for good reasons. C4 delivers a graphical shader editor with nodes. The reason is simple: If you use this tool then all shaders are cross-platform and work with shadows, all lights, fog, post-processing and whatever feature else appears. Hand made shaders in a language like HLSL easily explode in their variations and numbers to support all this. And this is not a task for a game developer, it is a task for a specialist.

This is only one example and the same counts for the tools, real-time editing, shading, physics and scene-management.
It is a great relief to have such tools at your side.

I also agree that it might be easier to start with Lite-C than with C++. But in the end you lose time when you have to write shaders and when you write a lot of procedural code without classes, without inheritance. If you reach a certain point of complexity then the final game code becomes difficult to read in a C language. That is the reason why they invented the object oriented approach and why every modern language uses it.

So what is left is a nice multimedia language in C-syntax with a few old-school tools. Not bad for this low price. And even better for free (the free Lite-C edition). It will help many people to learn and to jump later to some other tools, to switch later to advanced programming languages and to get into 3d applications. It is a nice transition stage and you can finish some small games.

But to come back to the original topic: T3D is clearly directed to the professional developers. They try a lot to optimize the engine. They include ready working shaders, shadows, post-processing, scene-management and other needed functionality. And - this is very important - they make games themselves with this technology. They find the weak spots early and can do something to improve this.

The same counts for Unity.

I think you did not fully understand the thing with the shaders. One of the advantages of gamestudio shader method is that they dont explode in variations. You use shader functions like light sampling or ambient calculation from a library, and when something is changed with overall lighting, the functions change but your shader does not change. The same shader works for models or level blocks with or without lightmaps and so on. So you only have one shader for one effect. When I write something like lets say a surface wobbling effect, I knowthat the shader works everywhere and with dynamic light or sun light as well, I do not need to write 10 shader variants. The shader is very short because it mostly only contains my code, the rest is from the library. This is much better than a graphical shader editor that does not allow you to write own shader effects.

@WhyDoIDie:
I agree in lot of points and Frank_G Have well resumed the situation.

In fact there are some people that want to work only on 3D art and game logic.
And that don't want to learn or spend time learning/writing standard today shaders, and that don't want to spend time coding other things than game logic.

@losticmate :
And shaders, sorry , it's no simple math operation like + or - , and you must know about lightening etc ...
And 3D artists don't matter about Math Lightening , we just want the shaders.
It's like buying Windows and having an incomplete Explorer where you would need to program things like search function
Programmers like that, users not !




3D artists know how long a game can be long to do, and if you add coding lot more things , the game will never be out
We don't want to spend time on writing standard terrain tools or physics.

3DGS is good for people that like programming a lot
Each Beta of 3DG brings lot more programming things, why not bringing panels and visual settings instead ?
Lot of coders like that , 3D artists don't mind !

And a big point, we can't compare the Unity team that have some bunch of people compared to 3DGS.

There is enought lot lot of time to create models, animations, textures ,effects , game logic, or good camera.
So we want today tools , and ready to apply shaders, to GAIN LOT OF TIME and CONCENTRATE on making games NOT CODING

It's a 3D artists point of view (even if i'm a bad artists)

No, it does not. I see this often in these forums. People have problems to get shaders to work in several situations. They have to exchange uv-coord-sets and other shader code to let it work on models or on blocks.
So you might be right in a few areas.
Yes there are some functions to offer world pos matrix or lighting information. This is the same for every engine. It works exactly the same in Ogre 3d.
But it is not at all complete in 3DGS and it is not thought till to the end.
Even coders often get headaches here. Very skilled people like Fogman search for help in this area.
So it will be impossible for beginners and artists.

That is what we are talking about.

Don't you get tired of all the Torque/Unity/etc vs 3dgs threads? You always have the same arguments.

Currently i'm only a hobbyist programmer. I like to code shaders and other complex stuff and i really like Gamestudio. Its simple but has many usefull functions (yeah really), though its closed source but it is still easily extensible.
What in my opinion 3dgs really need is better template models and good looking template levels you can use in your game. Man i really don't have the skills or time to do all the crazy artist stuff, so i think conitec should provide a package with nextgen models/textures/levels.
What i want is a simple editor (simple clicking some nodes together) to build a good looking house, a street or a complete city. It needs a simple editor for building trees, humans, cars and whatever. Seriously!

Fight all you want, but i prefer the graphical building of games rather than coding because coding is boring and tedious.....Now give me drag and drop anyday and there my friends you will have a friend for life.

It's not the difference in game revenue for the licenses that's the problem. That's understandable. But most of the devs over there that actually produce games will tell you (look through the forums) that the Indie version of T3D is pretty much useless for creating a decent game. It's primary intent is for use by the content people on a team to test the pipeline while the coders use the Commercial version for the actual game creation.

Sure, you could make a simple game with the Indie version, but it's not really meant for that. And it's not just me saying that, as I said, check what all the actual game making Torque devs are saying over there. Then there are non-disclosed additional fees for making a sim, or virtual world, or porting to console or iPhone, or almost anything else.

For the people saying "Who cares about $1500 and possibly much more in non-disclosed amounts if you want to make a game?", I think you're in the wrong discussion because apparently you have so much money to spend on game engines you shouldn't even be arguing for or against GS. That's like saying "Why would anyone want to buy a moped when they could buy a Volvo?".

People are buying a $200 (or $49) engine because generally that's what they can afford to spend on an engine. Or that's what they figure their hobby is worth. Sure there are people who spend thousands on their hobby, but there are also people who can't. If you can't afford to throw a couple thousand dollars at your hobby then arguing for or against it is simply a moot point. There simply won't be a lot of hobbyists buying T3D.

Discussion about which engine is better or which one does more stuff is good, but most people are using the cheaper versions of GS because that's what they can afford for their hobby. If I'm wrong, then that means I'm in the wrong discussion here, because apparently everyone pushing the bigger money engines in this discussion are commercial game devs with commercial products already on the shelf. If that's the case, I apologize for jumping in here...

You want some facts?

1.) This is yet another Torque vs. 3DGS thread
2.) The usual suspects are posting here as much as in no other thread
3.) The impression remains that some people seem to scan this forum for any unity/C4/torque vs 3dgs stuff only and ignore most of the other parts.
4.) This is just too funny as everything always goes exactly the same way every time such a thread pops up out of nowhere...