We are planning on using TorqueX 2.0 for our DBP entry as well but a huge concern we have is that the engine does not currently work in 3D on the 360. Between now and September I would hope that they can have this fixed but our concern is what if they don't!  I know that the safest approach would be to use XNA directly but our game is a bit complex for creating everything  from the ground up.

you really should post that comment over in the torquex forums - Garage Games are the only ones who can answer that question for you. Of course GG are not exactly noted for hitting their deadlines so it may not matter even if they say they can get there.

Actually, I already did... So far, know body is home!
Does not give you that warm feeling at all.

Between the lack of response on the GG forums when I used to try to use it, disliking the way the code is set up and the years old look of the 3D engine, I've pretty much given up on TorqueX. It's sad, because I had such high hopes when it first was shown.

I'm getting a bit worried about Torque myself - my game is a little complicated to build the engine from the ground up as well especially with the deadline and working on it part time.  Torque appears to be the most fully featured engine available but the docs aren't that helpful and the forums don't appear to get much in the way of responses.

There does appear to be an update coming soon so maybe they're all busy working on that...

Well, I've given up with TorqueX.  I've spent the last don't know how many nights banging my head against a brick wall with different things.  The documentation for the api is ok but there's no real hints on how to use it.  There's a couple of examples to go through but not much else.  The forums have tumbleweed blowing through them.  It honestly appears that GG have no interest in it apart from one member of staff who makes the odd post.  There are plenty of posts where someone has run into a problem and there's no resolution at all.

A good example of the support is the 360 version.  The 360 version of 2.0 didn't even work properly.  The terrain demo would run but didn't render correctly and the rest would just crash - did no-one at GG try it?  It took a heroic community member to go to the effort of fixing all the problems with the source code until it was working.   

Hopefully they're busy getting the 3d builder out the door but I just can't keep my fingers crossed that there'll suddenly be a burst of activity on the forums to help people out.  I have artists generating content for my game and I can't let them down in regards to the engine.   While I can look at the FPS Demo and think "that's about 40% of what I need in my game" I've made zero progress in over a week.  It's frustrating because the feature set is pretty good.  Maybe next years DBP competition.

I've given up on TorqueX too. The dearth of documentation to actually tell me what I'm doing is ... well... pathetic. I hardly have any  game development experience (ample coding experience though C++, java etc) but i felt after watching the TorqueX demos that i could probably get the game done for DBP by sept. Like the post above its been over a week and ive made no progress, i have the charactar designs and everything down.

At this point im ready to bash my head straight into the monitor.

No 3d tutorials. No api documentation ( one that's easy to find). no support... its frustrating as hell... but i still need a viable 3d engine i can make a cool 3rd person action rpg on. any suggestions?

I was about to give up on TorqueX as well until I started thinking again about how difficult it was going to be to create my own engine from scratch. I decided to go back one more time and dig really deep into the engine and decided it was worth paying for the Pro version to get the source code. I figured that even if I did not use the engine, the source code would be a great reference to see how GarageGames handled interfacing with XNA for things like Scenes and loading levels.

The reality that I found is that game development is just plain HARD and there is no easy way around it. The way that I got around the lack of documentation was to study the structure of the 3D level (desertLevel.txscene). Reading XML without the 3D editor permitted me to study the way that TorqueX structures its code into components. Once I realized that things are sort of snapped together I was able to set break points in the engine and walk through to see how everything fits together. Once the light bulb went on it jumped out at me and it’s just like reading the Matrix J

Like everyone else, I would love to have thousands of pages of documentation and especially would love examples the way that Microsoft has laid them out on this site, but then again I doubt most developers would be willing to pay the cost. If Microsoft did not have a long term plan for XNA and actually charged us for their time invested in XNA and the creators site the cost would scare off almost every one of us!

In my opinion, TorqueX is a really good engine for the price and has a bright future once it matures.  
John   

Almost forgot to mention that TorqueX 3D does now run on the 360, the code changes are in the GarageGames Pro forum but a new version of the engine with those fixes will be out soon.

I originally started with just TorqueX and then when I ran into problems figured I'll try the version with source code.  It has helped, but only slightly. I didn't have any trouble understanding the component method they use, just using systems they've already supplied.  Here's what I tried to do...

* Started with the 3d starter game and wanted to add a sun.  After looking in the xml files figured it out but it came out as white squares.  It rendered correctly with the profiling system on. After lots of looking around to see if the problem was with my textures I found a thread on the forum where someone pointed out you needed a fog colour.  No mention in the docs, no logical reason from what I can tell.

* Posted a thread that the 360 version didn't work.  No response from GG.

* Tried to randonly generate a terrain.  Looked at the source and setup the XML.  Had a terrain but it came out black.  Could see no way of specifying textures.  Lots more faffing and another ignored post from GG and I figured out there was no support for a random terrain to be textured.

* Switched to using the FPSDemo.  Added my own building in.  It was fine.  Tried scaling it in the code and the collision goes wrong.  Posted a thread and no solution and no response from GG.

* Tried get an object environment mapped.  Didn't work.  Posted a thread and no response from GG.

* Starting to get concerned I started a thread about the lack of responses and how it's a bit worrying for the DBP competition.  No response from GG.

The 360 support is a good point but I can't help but feel we still wouldn't have a working 360 solution if it wasn't for community members actually doing the work.  TorqueX is advertised as cross platform yet it didn't work and just running the demo once on the 360 would have revealed that.

It would be nice to have thousands of docs but I'd just be happy with an employee who will respond to questions on the forum.  It's not like it's flooded with hundreds of people.  I got the engine so I could save time but if I'm just wasting it trying to get the engine to do things I may as well roll my own. I don't really buy the money thing though, they're charging so should support it.

I have appreciated your posts on there though, you're one of the few people making sure that it isn't literally zero responses.