"The time from games like Half-Life 1 are over"
But you wanna spend $250 on the tool you want to develop your "next gen" games in.
Let me ask you this , did you spend $250 on your car ? Did you spend $250 on your computer ? Many PC gamers spend more than that on a video card or ram . My monitor cost me more than that , so do you think it's suitable or even sane to pursue creation of a commercial game of today's standard by using the cheapest engine version of (an already cheap)game engine you've chosen to use ? Be realistic , $5000 for a game engine would be a steal , I mean , compare to a AAA+ engine like U3 , $760,000. And Torque is only $1,000 . To look at Torque 3D and all of it's new features , and it's incredibly price tag , and then complain about the $250 version not including all of the $1000 version features is INSANITY. A successful commercial game will make you a millionaire , and you think spending $1000 on the tool to make it is too much of an investment to shell out ?

I've seen modelers charge over $1000 for ONE next-gen game model , and what can you do with just one game model ? I think we have some people here who have no idea of what a good piece of software is worth. I'm extremely happy to see garagegames still offering it's engine at an extremely fair price , when with their track record they could easily tackle the middle price range and charge $50,000 for it's new engine , or even polish it some more and move to the full commercial arena , as other companies that have taken that road (project offset ?Reality Engine?).

No matter how much of a fanboy , I would have imagined any game developer would have gotten exited after seeing Torque3D's videos , and price tag , but I was wrong. I was pretty exited to see the engine's progress , hence the post. In any case , as soon as I get enough money I'm getting both Torque3D and Unity , as they are beautiful pieces of software and ANY indie game developer would have to be clinically insane not to want to have them in their arsenal.