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[theenderling]

Hey all,

So i'm a concept artist which is switching to programming in frustration for not being able to find a solid team to build a game I'm working on. I've just started learning C++ and I'm burning through it pretty well so far. I can model in 3D and and texture well but now I'm at my next hurdle; Engine.

I'm beyond sure that you have had this subject of "Which is the BEST engine?!" a billion times, but no-one ever asks which engine to use for specific projects. I know the big ones are Unity and Unreal but i'm looking for something that can handle a 3D side scroller which has a few unique mechanics which need coding in, i would make this in OpenGL but the 3D is fairly heavy and it would be more hassle than its worth for a non-studio based team.

[Klaim]

1. There is no best engine, they are only tools or sets of tools, so it depends;
2. Some engines are optimized for ease of development, others for flexibility, sometime for both, sometime usable by beginners, sometime by experienced programmers;
3. For C++, there is  too much engines possible, including combining different libraries to build your game-specific engine. For a beginner I would suggest trying to build a simple 2D game with SFML first, so that you begin to understand the basics. There is a SFML book just fresh out that explain how to make a simple shoot them up with SFML, teaching basics about game programming using C++ and SFML.
4. For ease of development, try Unity3D, Flash+Flixel or FlashPunk, MonoGame - none of these uses C++ because they focus on making the dev fast- in exchange hey are not the most efficient but frankly the number of games needing efficiency is not big;
5. If you go the way to combine libraries using glue code, never forget to not build a generic engine but one for your specific game. Otherwise you'll get lost and never finish.

[EdgeOfProphecy]

The only engine I ever used with C++ was C4, and it was godawful.

Unity's my go to engine nowadays.  It's in C# (or Javascript if that's your thing), but it is pretty feature rich and very capable.  Unless you're doing something really zany, I doubt you'll run into irreconcilable performance issues with it.  Even if you had to switch to learning C#, it very well might be faster to pick it up than try to roll your own engine on the back of frameworks.

It does matter what's most important to you, and your goals for the project.  If you really want to learn C++, then Unity's not going to work.  If you want to finish the game quickly as possible, it'd be a strong contender.  If you have a change of heart and want to do something in 2D, maybe gamemaker or Flixel, or even SFML would be better.

Do you have any platforms in mind that you want to make the game for?