Hey everyone, I was wondering what the optimal game engine to use is for a game that one would plan on releasing by themselves or with a very small team. I was leaning towards DirectX 9 since it has everything like graphics and input.

I did a little work with SDL and SFML, but i feel that they aren't powerful enough. I know OpenGL is there too, but I believe that is graphics only.

And as another question, if you can refer me to any books/resources for whichever engine you reccommend, that would be extremely helpful. Thanks!

Whoops, I meant to post this in the C++ forum. If an admin can move it, sorry and thank you

There is no universal "optimal game engine". It depends on the type of game and/or what you expect to obtain from the engine.
That is, SDL is optimal if you only expect basic IO functionality, game-maker is optimal if you expect the engine to do pretty much everything.

In-between is a wide range of game engines with different levels of support, sometimes for specific types of games, eg FPS or RTS.

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thanks for the reply. I realize i worded that question poorly. What I kind of meant to ask was what game engines are there that can do pretty much everything like DirectX aside from SDL and SFML.

Since I don't know about DirectX, I'll leave this question for others.

However, I feel you may get better answers when you give more information, maybe there are better alternatives than a DX thingie, which you now won't get pointed to, as you don't give any context.

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My project: Messing about in FreeRCT, dev blog, and IRC #freerct at oftc.net

What exactly are you looking for? DirectX is an api that interfaces with hardware and input directly. It is not so much an engine but an api/framework that has a lot of methods and functionality to get barebone functionality.

An actual engine does so much more, like loading and rendering models, providing ways to control your objects, timing, networking and many more.
The implemention of those features depend on the engine and featureset obviously.
If you're working with c++ you can try the Unreal Development Kit as it is probably one of the most feature complete engines you can access, although you should check their licensing if you're interested in using them.
For other engines i cannot speak from experience but there's irrlicht and ogre which are written in c++ as far as i remember.

In the end it really depends on what you want/need.

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Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

/me thinks of the Allegro library: http://alleg.sourceforge.net/
Never used it (anywhen recent), but it may be what you are looking for.

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My project: Messing about in FreeRCT, dev blog, and IRC #freerct at oftc.net

For Android, Basic PC, or HTML5 games: http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/
For Beginner Developers: http://www.yoyogames.com/
For Hardcore PC Development: http://www.unrealengine.com/udk/