Sigh. So, the big, flagship project I’m working on, the one I’m tech-lead for, was supposed to be completed last week, signed off on Friday. Of course, Murphy’s Law kicked in and the testing department uncovered a major issue at 2 pm on Thursday afternoon after a full month of testing. Half a day before sign-off, bloody typical. 

Not simply a normal bug, no, this was a subtle-as-all-hell, hard to replicate, uber bug. Which turned out, after days of pulling out hair trying to find it, to be related to a fundamental engine issue, one which had only become a problem because this project is so resource intensive, one which only pops up over time. And the engine can’t be changed at this point so it is a limitation that needs to be worked around. At this late date, when redesign of the game is near-impossible. Fek!

Suffice to say, late nights ensued, this week has been killer. I’m fairly close to burn-out right now. It looks like things are pretty much done and dusted at this point though and the minute it’s over I’m taking leave for a week.

The month after next another flagship project starts. Ahahaha, it never ends. 

Oh well, could be worse. I hear the video game industry has 6 month crunch periods. Hell. No.

But this situation well illustrates a point. You see, I hang around game dev forums and programming communities in general. And I use Torque as a game engine, as we know. Now, Torque has a reputation for being a bit clunky. It’s an older engine, its got flaws, stuff that really should be refactored, etc.

So what happens is that you browse these communities and you will always find someone going on about how Torque is the suck and NewEngineX is beautiful and flawless and will solve all game development woes. 

My Noob Sense starts tingling immediately. 

You can always tell the inexperienced programmers. That cynicism that comes from hard-gained experience has not taken root in them yet, instead the bright light of happy ignorance shines from their eyes.

When you’ve been around the block a few times you start to learn to expect something to go wrong. I certainly have, yet the code still surprises me by throwing curve-balls that even my pessimistic outlook didn’t expect. So when some exciteable type tells me that NewEngineX is flawless, I take it as a good reflection of both their experience level and how tried-and-tested that engine is. The engine has got flaws and limitations, and some of them will be biggies. You just haven’t found them yet, haven’t pushed the boundries hard enough. I’ll wait here while you learn the hard way, yes?

So coming back to Torque. Why do I use it over, say, Unity? Unity looks incredibly spiffy and polished. And some Unity proponents are quite vocal in praising how flawless it is, so flawless that you don’t need source code access at all. Yeah, sure buddy.

This is why I will stick to Torque for now, thanks. And this. Those are a list of games completed with Torque. Torque is proven technology. Sure, it’s not perfect. Far from it. But all software is imperfect. Experienced programmers know this. The question is not whether there are flaws but whether those flaws are so great as to prevent game making. As the list shows, Torque has proven itself many times over, with a variety of game types. Unity hasn’t, for all its shininess.

Torque is the grizzled sergent, the one with the scars who has been in war after war and has proven himself capable of going the distance. Unity is the fresh-faced young man straight out of the military officers academy, all shiny brass buckles. I’ll give it a chance to prove itself before I think about jumping ship. And it certainly may prove itself; make no mistake,  I’m keeping a careful eye on it and the other engines out there. Torque has stiff competition and I think the recent efforts to update the engine show that they are aware of the up-and-comers. 

But I’ll let the enthusiastic types run into the mine-field first, find the problems the hard way while I get on with making a game on the platform I know can get me there. When I look on the Unity forums and see pages full of complaints and bug lists I will know things have matured enough so that I can more accurately gauge how Unity compares to Torque, hehe.