Torque Game Engine SDK

When some developers of the Tribes game left Dynamix, they made a deal with the publisher to keep the game engine.

Their idea was to create a game developing community with that engine. The engine became the Torque Game Engine, and the community is now the GarageGames community. The community has been growing steadily and there have been many independent games that are coming out based on Torque. Basically what you get for the license, is the tools and code to modify the engine. You are allowed to sell the game, minus a few royalties for GarageGames.

The engine is still very flexible, although it's some few years old. The graphics engine is good enough, it has nice features for polygon adjustment depending on the distance. The terrain engine allows you a wide open, huge terrain as well as indoor buildings. The scripting language is very similar to C++, which makes it easy to understand and modify. There is a large community of developers in their forums willing to help with whatever problem you might encounter. All in all this is a good option for all starting up studios that want to create a game. There are already fine examples of this, like Instant Action's Fallen Empire game. If you are looking to start up your own idea, take a look at this option.