[CrankyTulip]

Put me down for another 'don't get Torque unless you enjoy cheap things that don't work very well'. My school has just switched to it(...from unreal :S) for some insane reasoning, and, we've had nothing but problems with it since day one of using it; everyone in the class, including the teachers. The thing with Torque is that it has an included 3DSMax-wannabe bsp 'modeling' app called Constructor, which may seem like a good thing at first, but then you come to realize it's very, very limited, and has an export crash about 1 out of 5 times. To me, it's an engine created to be intuitive, quick, affordable to small game companies, and robust, but missed all the targets except the low price. I have not used Torque Advanced, nor do I want to... The Torque Forums have also not been as helpful as one might expect a game engine forum to be.

Yes, I've always been a fan of unreal(ever since the first game came out), but don't let my 'bias' interfere with your engine judgment. UE3 is just gorgeous! Contrary to the horror stories, lawsuits, or outdated licensee version releases you may have heard about, I believe the engine's functionality, pipeline, and final product are cumulatively very near the best out there, if not the best. No, I haven't used Epic's UE3 UED, just the RoboBlitzEd, but most of the main features are still there, and it is very smooth! And no, it doesn't have 'MegaTexturing' like iD does...(atm)or an incredibly dynamic connection to Maya like ZootFly does...or a separate BSP modeling app like Torque does... But, if there is an easier way to load & browse your game content package files, create and edit shaders, or make entirely visual no-programmer-needed game scripts, I'd like to see it. (Obviously,) a single artist can now create an entire, production-quality, functioning level himself. Downsides, in some ways, are that there is aparently no light radiosity, which would improve lighting setup time & render quality, and license cost is roughly 1 million US dollars...which is definitely bad for a small 2-person game dev company, and the perfect compromise for engine dev time & cost for bigger companies. I can't wait to get my hands on UED4 in November(Hopefully) with UT3!

Some of my favorite things about UE3(too many to recall):
-Additive OR Subtractive BSP worlds.
-Instantaneous Play-in Editor window.
-Ability to be 100% artist-driven, absolutely no programming knowledge needed.
-The Generic Browser
-Kismet Editors
-Multi-platform
-Scalable(performs decently on my old ~$1900 Dell M90 laptop)
-If there is not a desired feature in UE3's base engine code already, there is a high probability that it can be implemented by your programming team.
-Similar editor UI layout from all previous Unreal Editors, now much improved.
-Ability to see file sizes & memory usages of ALL assets used in a level.
-Overall stability

From my future career standpoint(as level designer)& learnings, no one has ever gotten a job from having used Torque, but many, many have gotten jobs from having used Unreal. Unreal has been used in movies, animated shorts, various types of games, the military...so it must be decent at least, heh.