Hello Mnemonic
If you honestly think about making that engine a success for you, you will have to make a price. I have seen this site first time today. And the first thing I hated was the line: ... commercial ... it will cost $$$.
That's bad style. And without that forum and that topic here I would have been gone forever already.
Let me write some thoughts down that I can add here.
Years ago I saw 3D Gamestudio Adverts. Looking closer into it I found out that they have a license system. I wrote an email to them which contained lots of the arguments that Zorro wrote above. Several others must have done that or they may not have been able to sell their commercial and professional engine - what ever it was - they quickly have changed their policy and are now proudly announcing on their website - NO License !!! Making it one of the main arguments to buy their development system. Actually they now leave the impression that it would be the most terrible thing in the world to beg for license fees
Does anyone here know Blaxxun? Blaxxun Contact is a plugin for the Internet Explorer that is used by 3D-Chat-Communities like Cybertown. I asked them for their price (2 years ago) because I planned a Community like that. I got the answer (in other words): That depends how successful you are!!! $50000 if you have up to 500 People online at a time - if more then the price is higher too.
That means: I have the work and the ideas and they get the money. And if I work harder and have better ideas they get even more.
Okay - one should not talk bad about the dead - meanwhile they are broke - and you can imagine why ...
There are several tools for Gamedevelopers on the Market and there are new ones just recently coming and going. 3D Gamestudio, Blitz3D, Dark Basic Pro, DIV, Jamagic, GBasic, etc. are the astablished ones I know. Gamestudio costs between $200 and $1000, depending what sort of game you want to develop. The others are between $80 and $180 as far as I know.
I bought them all and still have not found THE Engine to develop my Community. Each lacks things the others have - and no-one is able to fulfil all needs. A combination of the best features of all would be perfect. Anyway; I have my program nearly finished learning a lot making several parts of it for every system.
Coming back to price-policies:
With all upgrades 3D-Studio cost me about $1500 by now. And there is the new upgrade out (maybe THE thing I am really looking for) but it would cost me another $500 - making it $2000 for me, summed up. Someone who buys it new today gets it for $1000. You see - there is no justice. I have supported the developer for years - helping him to be still alive - and the thanks I get is: I would have payed twice the price for the same product that a newbie pays for it.
This shows that there is no model that suits for everyone.
But one thing is for sure:
If you start with a license system you will not make a penny.
What you (in my view) can do is: Make your product better than the mentioned above, make its language simple (like) BASIC and fix a price between $100 and $150.
Make that public on the net and be sure that nearly EVERYONE - and every wannabe gamedeveloper - that has bought Blitz or Dark or Jamagic or Gamestudio or whatever will buy your Engine, too.
Add a development environment - sort of a WorldBuilderTool thats easy to use, fits to your system and maybe converts from others like Quake3, VRML, Unreal, Half Life or others - and you can make the price $49 higher.
Add an easy to use Model-Editor, that supports Bone-Animation, converts from B3D, X, 3DS, VRML97 etc. and that fits into your system and you make another $30 to $50 from each sold download.
I will watch the development - and will buy for sure if its something like that. And if not I will use the ones I already have or look for something else.