Hi there,
I am an indie game developer that currently works on a first-person puzzle with elements of stealth. I have no much experience in 3D game development, my experience in this area limits with some small 3D demo scenes I had used to create when I was in a high school. At the time I am on my last course of the particle accelerator physics department in the Moscow Engineering-Physics Institute. So game development is just my big hobby. I am working alone at the time.
Taking into account the facts that I am working alone, not funded and have no great experience in game development, I tried to design a game that would not require tons of content (like textures, models, animations, sounds and so on) and put efforts to design original game mechanics and sophisticated levels. In other words, I tried to design a game that would be feasible for me to implement it alone.
So far I have designed basic game mechanics, the gun and two conceptual levels. I work openly, so you can find the description of the game on my GitHub page https://github.com/duburlan/MW/wiki/Game-concept. I have not stuffed the gameplay with lots of elements yet, because it would be a waste of time if I fail with this concept.
Initially I planned to make a HL2 mod, because there is some content I could use to create a demo and the Source engine fits my needs. The problem is that they do not tell what conditions they have for indie developers who want to sell mods. Licensing a several thousand dollars engine then realizing that people do not buy the game is not wise and affordable for an indie developer. I sent them two emails with questions but no answer so far. Then I learnt about tempting options of UDK commercial use, but I am not sure the Unreal engine is the right choice.
So my question to the community is which SDK do you recommend for implementation of this kind of game? I would appreciate any feedback: do you find this game funny, what would you change, add or remove?