Exclude me of this lot of people that think Torque3D competes with Unity3D. In my opinion Unity3D is superior.

Recently Unity has gone free for iOS and Android deploy which is also a big plus. You can easily jump from one platform to another and maximize your downloads. That's what make me stick around with Unity.

Hi, I'm working on C + + for two weeks. Previously working with Unity3D. Torque3D distributed as open source. A lot of people think that these two competing engine. Did you think Torque3D quality motor? Do I use?

You need to check your requirements. There are lot of engines available, even unreal engine is free for limited income. Therefor check your requirements:

1. Is the game project free or commercial ?

2. If it is commercial, is it still feaseable to pay royalities later to get some really superio engine ?

3. What platforms to I need to support ? (iOS, Webbrowser, Win, Linux, Android ...)

4. What tool support do I need ?

5. Do I really need to modify the engine code ?

6. How many reference game projects have been release on the given engine ?

7. What is the support of the given engine ? Must I pay for special support, is the communtiy large enough to receive some help ?

I've been using Torque3D at my college and ultimately it is the better one (Not out of the box) because you have the source code to the engine, you can make it do Anything!. Out of the box with no source code Unity seems to be superior (I haven't used it).

From the beginning Torque is actually quite lengthy to get simple things to work. A lecturer said to me "It took me a week to do something in Torque that unity did in a few hours"
Personally if I was to make a game with it, I'd use Torque because I have experience there and the license allows complete control of everything.
If i was starting off I'd try unity to see how it goes, I'm not sure how the licensed work, but I do know you have to credit Unity unlike Torque.

In addition to get ALL the features of Unity you need to get Unity Pro ($$$$), features which Torque already has for well you guessed it Free.

Overall i'd say Unity pro is superior to Torque, the lack of sourcecode(you can get a sourcecode license for Unity as well but it costs extra) is a disadvantage but its not a big one in most situations since the engine is flexible enough on its own and the high productivity is extremely valuable(We use off the shelf engines to boost productivity afterall).

The free version of Unity however (Which really is the one that competes directly with Torque) is a bit harder to compare, it has some nice productivity advantages as well as automatic iOS and Android support (you get those for free now as well) but the crippled renderer can be a huge disadvantage on the desktop for certain types of games.

Thus my recommendation:

For mobile games or PC desktop games that don't need an advanced renderer: Go with the free version of Unity. (unless you have over $100k annual turnover allready in which case you have to buy the pro version anyway)

For Desktop PC games that need an advanced renderer: it depends on your budget, Torque is the cheapest(since its 100% free) good option imo, UDK and CryEngine start out cheap but have rather high royalty costs once/if you start selling well and Unity Pro costs $1500 per seat. (which can quickly add up to quite a lot if you got a large team), If you are just starting out then it is often preferable to not spend a lot of money up front (Your first few games aren't likely to pull in large amounts of money)

I have used Torque 3D full time for a year now. I would say Torque 3D, not because it is superior but... Okay here we go:

• Torque 3D is free(try to imagine what it would cost if 10 people had to buy a license for like 1500 $)
• You get the source code(sooner or later you want that access, trust me)
• No payment for source code access(try to think about the price you need to pay if you need Unity access)
• You are free like in FREE to hack and bend Torque 3D in any way you want and no damn royalties
• You get an awesome community with great hacks and resources for making games
• You are not dependent on other than your teams own programming abilities(maybe at first bad but later on a true investment)
• You will learn a great deal of how an engine is put together(a great knowledge to get)

Last I would say this:

"Give a man a fish and he can eat, learn him how to fish and he can survive"

You want the Torque 3D engine in the long run, Unity3D is great but it is like peeing in the pants on a cold winter day. In the beginning you feel great and then you soon realize that it is getting colder again. You need to get under the hood of a game engine in order to stay over the water in this business.

All the best