I have a copy of Torque, it's a good stable engine - the only problem I find is with version 1.4.2 is that the water likes playing a disappearing act (version 1.4 didn't have it, when I bought it) I doubt it'll be a bug they'll fix as they have TGE at 1.5 (which I'd have to pay $50 to upgrade to) and TGEA is a different engine.
It's a nice engine, luckily you can download Torque Constructor for free with it, which is just like 3D world Studio in some respects, it's just a map builder designed specifically for Torque (however you can export to .lwo as well as the native Torque .dif format) actually for the TGC forum 3D modelling challenge this month I'm using Torque Constructor.
The map editor and GUI editor are easy to use, but the engine itself is quite complex - I'm still having trouble using it, the amount of times I've tried getting this Melee code snippet to work is immense. To make games into Torque you'll need to know how to use the scripting engine (which doesn't come with an IDE, but there are a couple of free IDEs and a fantastic one you can purchase on the GG site (which I was disappointed about as I was using the IDE for free during the BETA stage)) The scripting isn't so bad. But if the engine doesn't have something you need you have to code it in C++ with the source code - which sounds daunting, but the brilliant thing about Torque is that:
It has massive amounts of documentation
It has a massive base of snippets for scriptin and editing the source
It has 3 books (last time I check) jam packed with information to learn - I've got the "3D game Programming All in One" book by Ken Finney, the version used in the book is a bit outdated (1.3) however it has a lot of great info in there.
But learning it with all that can be a bit of struggle, but if you have the time you can do it, the resources are all there.
For making content you'll need to bear in mind Torque uses its own file formats, which as .dts and .dif - for .dif Torque Constructor (Free), Quake Army Knife (Free), Deled and 3DWorld studio can export, for .dts, Maya, Blender, 3DSMax, Milkshape, Lightwave and Softimage can export.
The engine is powerful, you just need time to dedicate to it (which is why mine's collecting virtual dust)
Alternatively there are other engines - Leadwerks is really an Engine with Physics, awesome graphics and scripting and an editor - might be worth buying (I've been contemplating on it) but it sounds like to me, you want:
Something that looks good, allows you to make a good game, yet being easy. Now, I found a solution to that myself, it's called NeoAxis, which is based off of the Ogre graphics engine - you can get nice results, it's easy to use (I'm not a fan of its editor so much) the scripting can be done by clicking, you can edit the source in C# if you need it - it's poorly documented but there are loads of examples - it comes with a free non-commercial version, so it's worth playing with until you decide. Also, there's a resource editor which can be great for setting things up (Animation, entities, items, materials, physics and so on) - NeoAxis uses the Ogre .mesh file format.
I've been playing with NeoAxis recently and will be releasing a small project in it. It has its disadvantages of course - I feel Torque is more solid and is more professional standard, mind you NeoAxis isn only at version 0.56, so it's far from its main build and it probably good for hobbiests.
"Experience never provides its judgments with true or strict universality; but only (through induction) with assumed and comparative universality." - Immanuel Kant
