Looking for a game engine to mess with and attempt to make a realistic space game

[DerpenWolf]

Ok, so I pretty much want to take a crack at making a very simple 2D overhead space combat game. I somewhat doubt that I'll accomplish much but I am willing to at least try and give it my all. I'm pretty much looking for some simple engine that can do what I need (also that is free or not overpriced or something? no clue what the scoop is, totally new to all of this stuff). Also note that I am not insanely good but not absolutely terrible at coding, but I am willing to learn a heck of a lot to figure this stuff out. Here is the bare concept of what I want to do.

-Think of the game as realistic space chess. I pretty much want to make a basic 2D solar system with planets, stars, and moons as the base battle field (I might even want to make it so it generates randomly at some point). I don't need to have gravity assists in but I would at least like to be able to make it so crafts can be captured by other bodies.

- For the spacecraft you are basically commanding a small fleet and can spend X starting currency on constructing it (Might and ways to make money). I want the craft to be able to rotate and to be able to change which side is facing where as well as to be able to make it so different sections of a hull may have different thicknesses. I pretty much want to be able to give a vessel a command to move to location X following a specific route if need be to avoid fire as well as manage different aspects of the vessel like weapon targeting and firing as well as cargo and reactor usage. (I might also want to mess with things mounted on the hull of the vessel at some point as well)

No clue if any of this will yield anything as I might just end up totally confused and shove this in a corner full of tears and crushed dreams but I have some free time so I want to give this a shot. Initially I probually just want to get some kind of derpy 1970's arcade game like thing working as most of what I've mentioned is probually going to be VERY long term. Idk, what do you think? Should I even bother?

[sal_vager]

There's some heavyweight free game engines out there, Godot comes to mind, but I think you may want to start a bit simpler than that.

Pygame lets you make simple (and complex) games with python, an easy to learn language that can be used for many things

[problemecium]

There a reason Unity won't work?

[K^2]

There a reason Unity won't work?

I can't think of any. Unity would be my recommendation as well. Primarily, because it's very scalable and is heavily used in industry. Whether you'll decide to do something else later as a hobby, or if you'll want to make a career out of it, Unity experience is going to be very valuable. No reason to waste time with anything else for a project like that.

Oh, and Unity is very portable. Whether you end up making a 2D or 3D game, you can port it to Windows, Linux, OSX, iOS, and Android out of the box.

[Tommygun]

Wouldn't Unity cost a lot?

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

Wouldn't Unity cost a lot?

Yes, but game engines aren't exactly cheap. Being that they take years of development

[Z-Man]

Wouldn't Unity cost a lot?

No. Even for small commercial projects, you can use the free edition. You won't have access to the full feature set, but you probably would not miss it.

[K^2]

Yeah. I've played around with the free version of Unity, and it has everything you need to make a game. I believe, there's a limit to how much money you can make from it if you don't go Pro, but that's something you can start worrying about when you do end up making that money.

[rowns]

At my old school, we used a really simple program, easy to use but I don't think that it is what you are looking for but anyway: https://www.yoyogames.com/studio

[K^2]

Game maker isn't bad, but you are still better off using a proper engine. The learning curve with something like Unity is only slightly steeper (it's very user-friendly, and there are tons of tutorials), but what you get out of it is so much more. Your first game will probably be equally buggy and iffy-looking with Game Maker or Unity. But the experience you'll get from Unity is far more valuable. As I've pointed out, many real game developers use Unity. And it's not just indy studios, like our favorite Squad, but even the giants such as Blizzard. Hearthstone is a Unity game. It has a lot of flourish and custom libraries to make it work, but underneath it all, it's just a lot of polish on the same engine you can use at home to make your own game.

[Geneborg]

Hm, didn't the new Engines like Cryengine/Unreal4 open up their licensing model? As far as i know you can pay a small monthly fee (<50$) to start with them and, if you later commercialize it, you will have to pay them a dividend.

UE4 FAQ