You're basically asking us to compare an Engine and an SDK - good thing about Torque is you've already got the game engine features built, so you all you need to do it use the scripts, gui building and level building tools. However not every game feature you'll ever need is built in and could require you to edit the engine inside C++ - if you don't know what you're doing then it's not a good idea - however the good news is the community is full of resource (scripts and codes for the engine) I recently modified the engine for melee attacks, worked perfectly - recompiled the scripts to find an error there. Torque is quite slow to pick up in my experience as you have got to look at it as a game engine and not a programming language/library because it isn't one. What you're basically doing with Torque is what modders do with Source, except you have full access to the source code. The engine comes with what you need to make a full game, you have the 'FPS Starter Kit' (can easily switch it to third person with a small change to a script) and 'Racing Game Starter Kit' and you can buy the MMORPG (External site) and RTS starter kit separately - these have the necessary features for those sort of games. As for networking, the beauty of Torque is that it works via a Client and Server system, even if the game runs offline it has a server side to it - meaning it's ready for internet game play.
The main issue with Torque though I've found is understanding how the bloody thing works. Which is where DGDK and DBP have their vantage points. As for support, I've never used their customer services, I have just asked the community questions, as there's a good number of them there. Also, it's a good idea if you're going to buy Torque is to buy one of the books, the 'Kenneth Finney' ones are a little out dated but are still valuable for a good lesson in the way the engine works and how to scripts, plus they're big buggers with plenty of stuff in them (It actually has so much, at the end of the first book, you will be ready to make a 3rd person/first person shooter with custom players/enemies, enemies with an AI, you're own media made from Milkshape and Quake Army Knife, your own textures. And all of the scripts will be built from scratch rather than using a starter kit - me, well I'm still on chapter 4 and got distracted by using the starter kits.
) For your own media, you are kind of restricted as to which programs you export from as Torque uses their own file formats. Objects are .dts with animation states as .dsq, their maps or 'interior models' are .dif. Programs with exporters available are:
For dts/dsq - Milkshape, Lightwave3D, TrueSpace 6, Softimage|XSI, 3D Studio Max, Maya, Blender
For dif - Quake Army Knife (Free), Torque Constructor(free), Cartography Shop, 3D World Studio, Deled.
The torque engine is built in with a Level Editor (accessible with F11) and a GUI editor (F10). However it doesn't come with a script editor - you can edit them in notepad or a preferred text editor (I use scintilla, there is a freeby with Torque syntax highlighting called 'TorqueIDE' and an external company has provided a editor you can purchase from the Garagames/Torque website - which is a fantastic tool I tested during the beta stage (unfortunately the beta deactivated itself on release)
Hope that gives you enough information on the Torque Game Engine side of things.
I cannot say much about DGSDK simply because I haven't used it, I'll just say this, my current game project is using Dark Basic Pro because I know how to get it to do everything I want it to do, I've had Torque for over a year and on and off am learning it.
Hope someone can give you the same sort of info about DGSDK as I did with Torque to give you two descriptions to compare. But I'll re-emphasise some of the difficulty I've had picking up the knowledge to use it - despite the large amount of resources there is to explain it all, but personally worth the effort. I'd download the demo and google 'Realm Wars archives' - realm wars is a community Torque project - it might be an idea to see how far you can mod the Torque demo.exe scripts and the Realm Wars project before you consider purchasing your game dev tool of choice.
Just as a sample, here is a Torque Script code snippet - it's a datablock for an AIPlayer/bot with a function (the script contains several other bot functions I haven't included):
datablock PlayerData(DemoPlayer : PlayerBody)
{
shootingDelay = 2000;
};
function DemoPlayer::onReachDestination(%this,%obj)
{
// Moves to the next node on the path.
// Override for all player. Normally we'd override this for only
// a specific player datablock or class of players.
if (%obj.path !$= "") {
if (%obj.currentNode == %obj.targetNode)
%this.onEndOfPath(%obj,%obj.path);
else
%obj.moveToNextNode();
}
}
function DemoPlayer::onEndOfPath(%this,%obj,%path)
{
%obj.nextTask();
}
function DemoPlayer::onEndSequence(%this,%obj,%slot)
{
echo("Sequence Done!");
%obj.stopThread(%slot);
%obj.nextTask();
}
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
// AIPlayer static functions
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
function AIPlayer::spawn(%name,%spawnPoint)
{
// Create the demo player object
%player = new AiPlayer() {
dataBlock = DemoPlayer;
path = "";
};
MissionCleanup.add(%player);
%player.setShapeName(%name);
%player.setTransform(%spawnPoint);
return %player;
}
[edit]
Of course, you needn't spend a penny, use irrlicht, Newton (if you want physics), LUA (if you want scripting), RakNet (if you want networking) and Irrklang (if you want audio) and you've got yourself the libraries necessary to make a game in C++ without giving any money to anyone. Though I'd probably value the two other two choice above irrlicht.
I shot the sheriff
