Game Engines (Help Choosing)

[nemesis567]

I've been searching around for game engines and I've come along severall dozens of them. In the end I got a list like this:

-Ogre3D;
-DX Studio;
-UDK;
-Blender Game Engine;
-CryEngine;
-Horde3D;
-JME 3.0;
-Delta3D;
-Unity;
-HPL1;
-Irrlicht;
-C4;

After this, I narrowed my search to full featured open source engines and I obtained:

-HPL1;
-Horde3D;
-Ogre3D;
-Irrlitch
-Blender Game Engine;
-DX Studio; // I didn't exclude this because I have a pro comercial license(for free), and it might be of use depending on the flexibility of itself.

Now, I've got these 5 options left. Both Horde and Ogre are only graphical engines so I'd have the trouble to create my own development tools, but I quite like Ogre. Horde3D seems more immature, but is also a quality option.
I don't exactly know Blender Game Engine, but I know it's lacking lots of features and it's very immature. Irrlitch is not the best nor the worse.
DX Studio has got a nice interface, it's full featured and is a full-fledged game engine.

My objective is to learn the mechanics of game engineering and to build a small project(probably alone, so it's a simple project). All the engines mentioned are built under C++, so understanding them and modifying them wouldn't be much of a problem.

I'd like to know(since I've been trying to choose one for more than a week now), which one should I choose. Any engine I'ven't mentioned can also be recommended. Anyway, I really appreciate your help.

[Sprog]

i'd say unity, i havent used many of the ones you've listed but unity can be manipulated and used easily and quickly. i have a personal love for blender but it's hard to learn everything and there's almost no tutorials out there.

otherwise here's another nice engine called neoaxis that i've had some fun messing around with
http://www.neoaxis.com/http://www.neoaxis.com/

[BlueFury]

Umm...how about source? Or are you planning on a full game?

[nemesis567]

I know NeoAxis, which uses OGRE as graphics engine. It's a nice engine but has no Source Code with it, which limits the flexibility of itself. Unity takes away features I require and has no source, unless I buy the 1500$ license. Source is pretty nice, but the SDK is pretty much outdated since it's been the same since Half Life 2's release.

Bluefury, Source engine allows you to make a new game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:So...gine_games

UDK was removed as an option because of the simple fact that it takes too much time to build anything on it and has too high specs.

I appreciate your help anyway. This is really an hard decision and the only way to make it is to get other people's opinions.

[Danny Boy]

i was actualy going to ask something like this too... for sci fi flight battle/strategy game... but i am not sure of eny thing XD doesn eny one know a good game engine for it?

i want it similar to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHXMvKLxS1w but in SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE !!!

eny good ideas?

[nemesis567]

If that's a simulator game there's no better option than Delta3D, unless you don't have enough programming skills an if so you should choose an engine with a ready SDK to start developing. Still, I'd like to keep this threads interest on me(I don't mean to insult, is just that...).


One of the reason that drives me away from HPL1 is the community support. It has no active community support...

[Arvuti]

Unreal Engine 3 http://udk.com/

[nemesis567]

As mentione before, it's not an option for the kind of project I'm developing. It's specs are too high. Besides I already have experience with UDK, so I wouldn't be learning anything new from it. Thanks for the try.

[Sprog]

i'd recommend blender then. it's hard to learn but ive heard it can be one of the most flexible engines out there once you learn python.

[nemesis567]

I'm a C++ programmer with few experience on Python, so I don't think it's a good idea. Besides Blender is a very immature engine. Unless you can prove your point I don't think I'm choosing blender over the others. Thank you anyway.