iD don't make games, not good ones anyway, they make engine demos that the community then takes and makes excellant, I have only ever been impressed with DooM, their single players stories sucked ass and the multiplayer has always been much of a much-ness.
I have read this post and there are an awful lot of misconceptions concerning both the Quake 3 engine and the Torque Engine.
First about the Quake 3 Engine:
You are not buying the Q3 engine you are still licensing it, the comment about being able to then sell it on is crap, otherwise I would get a loan together, buy it to $250,000 and then sell it over the net for $300, I have little doubt that I would make my money back. By licensing it, the engine still belongs to iD, you cannot sell it, you can license your modules for it, but not the engine itself, so Raven could license out Ghoul or Ghoul 2, but not the JK2 or SOF2 engine, as it is still 70% Q3.
The licensing structure does include significant Tech Support, you are buying that, and excellant documentation.
Torque:
The Torque Engine is different. When you spend $100 1 programmer gets a license to the engine, it is reasonably documented at the moment, but it is definitly getting better, there are a lot of resources for it to improve your game freely available, and the community and GG staff will try to help solve your problems, but this isn't guaranted. Player submitted resources are often integrated into the source, which the GG guys are constantly working on.
You are not required to resubmit extras you have added into your version of Torque, it would be nice if everyone did, because it would then benefit the community but it is not required.
You have to publish through Garagegames, or Sierra, please note GG only publishes online, if your product is good enough to be boxed and sold mainstream it is published through Sierra, Vivendi.
iD license the Q3 engine for $250,000 because there are few strings attached to it, you can publish through who you want, you pay for tech support and indepth documentation. There is no reason why they couldn't sell their engine for $100 and get a deal Activision that forces those people to publish through Activision (and get money from Activision for that) as well as royalties, then all you would get is the documentation and no tech support
Personally I prefer the Torque over Q3 anyway, it is more flexible and is quickly becoming more advanced, I would love to see Q3 handle half the stuff that is in Torque now, and it's constant community development will see it become something incredibly powerful. Garage Games system works, afterall they are still in business.
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iD don't make games, not good ones anyway, they make engine demos that the community then takes and makes excellant, I have only ever been impressed with DooM, their single players stories sucked ass and the multiplayer has always been much of a much-ness.
First about the Quake 3 Engine:
You are not buying the Q3 engine you are still licensing it, the comment about being able to then sell it on is crap, otherwise I would get a loan together, buy it to $250,000 and then sell it over the net for $300, I have little doubt that I would make my money back. By licensing it, the engine still belongs to iD, you cannot sell it, you can license your modules for it, but not the engine itself, so Raven could license out Ghoul or Ghoul 2, but not the JK2 or SOF2 engine, as it is still 70% Q3. The licensing structure does include significant Tech Support, you are buying that, and excellant documentation.
Torque:
The Torque Engine is different. When you spend $100 1 programmer gets a license to the engine, it is reasonably documented at the moment, but it is definitly getting better, there are a lot of resources for it to improve your game freely available, and the community and GG staff will try to help solve your problems, but this isn't guaranted. Player submitted resources are often integrated into the source, which the GG guys are constantly working on.
You are not required to resubmit extras you have added into your version of Torque, it would be nice if everyone did, because it would then benefit the community but it is not required.
You have to publish through Garagegames, or Sierra, please note GG only publishes online, if your product is good enough to be boxed and sold mainstream it is published through Sierra, Vivendi.
iD license the Q3 engine for $250,000 because there are few strings attached to it, you can publish through who you want, you pay for tech support and indepth documentation. There is no reason why they couldn't sell their engine for $100 and get a deal Activision that forces those people to publish through Activision (and get money from Activision for that) as well as royalties, then all you would get is the documentation and no tech support
Personally I prefer the Torque over Q3 anyway, it is more flexible and is quickly becoming more advanced, I would love to see Q3 handle half the stuff that is in Torque now, and it's constant community development will see it become something incredibly powerful. Garage Games system works, afterall they are still in business.