hello, well a few days ago i learned that Epic Game's engine (Unreal Engine) is now free known as the Unreal Development kit. I was reading the website and articles about the development kit, and it looks like it is for non-commercial use but if you wanted to sell a game using the development kit you would have to pay $99 plus 25% Royalty (witch is a lot) or you can pay $2500 per seat. Now i went on indie commercial use engines like Unity and Torque's website and i found a article (here: http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/18741) and i know Torque is good and all but does it stand a chance to Unreal Development kit? What do you think? But say you where going to make a serious game and sell it over the internet (e.g, Steam, Direct 2 Drive) would it e worth to buy the commercial license or pay for Torque or Unity to make a serious game. Like if you were trying to break in to the industry and make some games to gather some money to get better engines latter on. What do all you guys think? Thanks you for reading. Armbuck

I think that the toolchain will not be your limiting factor, so why don't you try them out and stick with the one you like the most / feel the most productive with?

You read the license wrong. It's not 2500$ a seat, unless you're using it for business. It's 2500$ in royalties for every 10,000$ that your game, using the engine, sells. You aren't required to pay anything besides the 99$ until your game makes something. I imagine if your game does well, or that you are able to make a commercial game, that 2500 per 10,000$ is not too much to ask.

The biggest issue, I think, is going to be content. Are you going to be able to create enough content for a commercial 3D game? You asked the question about torque, in reality, it doesn't matter what engine you use, unless you are a proficient coder, you could end up with a pile of crap.

The UDK is already the best engine out there right now for 3D game development (in my opinion). The toolset is extremely easy to master, at least it was for me. After a few hours mucking about with it, I was able to create some fairly complex levels (geometrically speaking) and the lighting engine is second to none with the possible exception of the Crytek engine. I've never really spent time developing a full game with it, but I have used the scripting engine, the editor, etc., and found them all extremely simple to use, especially if you're already using a programming language like Java or C++ or C#.

To be fair though, I've never used the Torque or Unity engine yet.

Also, I believe the $2500 per seat is only if you are using the engine for service. For example, if your company does outsourced work for another company who is making a commercial game with UDK and you are charging them a rate for the outsourced labor, you would have to pay the $2500 per seat and they would have to pay the $99 + 25% royalties. You have to pay the larger per-seat cost because you are still using the engine commercially, but you are not selling any completed product to pay royalties on.

I may be wrong, but that is how I took it.