
Torque3D is now on GitHub, MIT licensed - eugeniodepalo
https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D
======
nextparadigms
It seems they haven't reached their Linux client goal yet, with only 6 days to
go:

<http://www.indiegogo.com/torque3d-for-linux>

~~~
melling
They are only at $9,144. Maybe with a little visibility on the front page of
HN they'll get a pop? I don't have much use for the app, but I'd pay $10 to
see it ported to Linux. Signing up...

~~~
klaussilveira
We tried: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5026882>

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roryokane
Apparently Torque3D has been on Github since September 2012. Here’s the blog
post where they announced it:
<http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/21886>. And here’s the most
recent blog post about it:
<http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/22106>.

The blog post <http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/21876> notes
that they are open sourcing only Torque3D for now, to see how it works out.
Their other engine Torque2D is still closed-source.

~~~
dysoco
I read somewhere (Can't remember) but a Torque developer said that they are
looking to open-source Torque2D.

~~~
Yoms
Indeed they are:

The Future of Torque 2D is Open Source -
<http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/22065>

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richardwhiuk
I wonder how this compares in terms of features to <http://www.ogre3d.org/>
which is also MIT licensed and has a decent level of cross platform support.
It seems to be a more complete game engine solution compared to Ogre which is
only a graphics engine.

~~~
shadowmint
O_o have you ever tried programming something for torque 3d?

It's not fun.

~~~
RobotCaleb
Do you have something more substantive to say on this subject? I haven't tried
programming for it and am curious to know why it's "not fun".

~~~
speeder
By the way: Ogre is not much better.

For pure graphics I used to recommend Horde3D

~~~
aerique
It's been a few years but I always enjoyed using Ogre's API. It was nice.

That said, Ogre has always been clear about it only being a 3D engine and not
a game engine (which add network, sound, input, etc. capabilities).

------
erdevs
That's great. The Torque engine code improved tremendously over the years. In
the early days, the code was rough, as it was inherited from a game studio
that built it in a rush to ship a game and carried over from ~2001. It got
better and better over time though and by 2006-2008, it was solid. Great
performance, good features. Lots of the interdependencies at the system level
were refactored and lots of the ugly bits of code (long inheritance chains,
massive classes, etc) had been removed or deprecated.

Not sure how it continued to evolve later, or if they ever got rid of that
scripting language... but it was on a good trajectory 5 years ago.

Glad to see it go open source, in any case. Lots of good memories with this
engine and the smart, indie game community around it.

------
speeder
I wish people paid more attention to Cube2 instead... That is a awesome
engine.

~~~
cookiecaper
Don't know what your experience was like but I found eihrul et al utterly
inhospitable to tinkerers/new contributors, and it always seemed like Cube2
was not intended as a generalist engine. I'm not really surprised that the
projects that use the engine are all controlled by that core group.

~~~
speeder
eihrul used to be very kind to me...

Also you can just go and fork it, like Hirato did (and created Sandbox) or the
guys from Bloodfrontier.

In both cases they created the fork without eihrul wanting it, and after a
while eihrul recognized their work and started helping them too.

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epreisz
Here's a cool T3D physics demo released yesterday.
<http://www.beamng.com/entries/25-BeamNG-and-Torque3D>

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smountcastle
Very nice. Though where's the iOS port that they use to offer for sale? Was
the code for that not released?

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nirvana
Can someone whose used both compare this to Unity3D for me? I know Unity is
closed source, but it's the one I've used in the past (and found it really
nice.)

How much harder is Torque3D to develop for (or is it easier?)

~~~
erdevs
Well, Unity was always easier to use. They focused on slick editors and tools
early on.

It used to be that Torque had higher-end features, better performance and
source access.. while Unity lacked many graphics and other high end features
(they still don't have a great networking solution AFAIK), no source access
but was way, way easier to pick up and use out of the box.

Now, with all the investment Unity has put in, I think it has most or all the
capabilities you could want... and lots of other great stuff like first class
cross platform support, including mobile. And it performs pretty well, at
least as well as Torque by now, I imagine. Still no great networking, and
still not even available source unless you pay huge (six figure+) fees.

Hard to argue that Torque should be the choice, at this point. Unless you want
source access or a free solution. Unity has evolved into a pretty robust
engine over the last 7 years, and its out of box experience and ease of use
have always been pretty amazing (and fun!).

