I have researched game development for some time but keep dropping it for one reason or another. I have been approached about starting a new larger project and have gotten back into it. My main concern right now is what 3d/game engine to go with. I am also new to some of the programming languages. I have some experience with C but mostly deal with visual basic. However, I have been checking out Python and wanted to get input on it?.?.

Right now I am leaning toward the Blender engine but I wanted to see if anyone has had any luck with it. I have played with other free engines and I like most everything about them other then the way they compile. The other ones I dropped seem to just make a new folder and copy the engine run files to it. The main "save" files you create are just placed in a sub folder and the game is run from that. This would cause major problems for the type of game we are working on. From what I can tell, Blender doesn't do that. Correct me if I am wrong. I need to make sure that users can not edit the game files once it gets compiled.

I also need a good networking system. Blender seems to do okay with Python but I have not even tried it as a test. Has anyone messed with this? The setup is planed as a master login server and individual servers to control MMO style "zones". Again, security is a issue here.

Any help would be great!

not sure of what you expect.

but all i can suggest you for a game engine is

1.UDK
2. Unity

both are free to a certain limit. actually Unity is a high school kids engine.

just give a try. scripting is easier than most of the other engines.

actually Unity is a high school kids engine.

What do you mean by that exactly? (I just ask because it might be kind of a misleading statement.)

actually Unity is a high school kids engine.

This is incorrect. Unity is a casual game engine. Its actually more work to use than the UDK for a lot of things. With Unity you have to know scripting in order to achieve anything in it where as the UDK you can use Kismet to do a ton of different things eliminating a bunch of code, you also have Matinee to handle many different types of animations.

To the OP, if you are looking for an easy to use engine and are on Windows, check out the UDK. There are plenty of different tutorials and you can do a lot of stuff with the UDK without touching a single line of code. There are also plenty of video tutorials to get you started.

I use both Unity and the UDK on a regular basis and both have their merits. The UDK is obviously more powerful. (I actually prefer Unity though since I can stay on Mac OS where my Maya, Photoshop and ZBrush licenses are).

Give both a try though but if you aren't terribly familiar with code Unity may be a bit difficult to pick up without more experience.

I will have more of a team to work with so it doesn't have to be the easiest engine. I am more interested in features, networking, and being able to make the files editable.