I need help with an engine...

[Hallow'sEve]

As an aspiring game designer I want to try and make some of my ideas come to life on something other than paper. But I can't find a good game engine to help me. I tried looking for a free and good engine to use but I got nothing. I'm really trying to get the Half Life 2 engine, but I have no idea how to (I downloaded the entire Orange Box w/ a torrent but I found nothing in it). Can someone please help me?

 

[Good morning blues]

Maybe you should actually buy the game so you'll have access to the SDK, Einstein

 

[Canebrake]

I'd have to agree with Blues here,actually buying it so you have acess to the SDK is virtually required.
HOWEVER,if you want to get into simple modding first i recommend the orange box,and Garry's mod.
Garry's mod,being a sandbox. is a great place to start with designing new and cool things,and then building a full mod around it is fairly simple.(relative)



If you have to have something free,you could get Sauerbraten,built off the Cube 2 engine.

It's free. And yes it's open source.
www.sf.net <--lots of open source engines.

 

[GyroCaptain]

Oh. Dang. Here I was thinking my useless information skillz in the world of machinery would finally come in handy.

We could help you much better if you outlined what kind of work you're trying to do. FPS, FPS/RPG?

 

[Woe Is You]

Not to mention there are plenty of free game engines out there: Nexuiz [http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/] uses a modified version of the Quake engine (also known as DarkPlaces [http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/]) and there's plenty of help for you [http://alientrap.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=2&sid=f90d5ed772ead46e99571e1d7f8578e0] out there if you go that route.

Oh, and just about any PC version of Unreal comes with a toolset.

 

[Hallow'sEve]

I'm mainly looking for an FPS kind of engine

Something I can use versatily to fit many needs

However, yes, if I had to choose between the two, I would choose RPG engine.

 

[Hallow'sEve]

Maybe you should actually buy the game so you'll have access to the SDK, Einstein

Well which one is the best? Half Life? Half Life 2? Can I buy the expansion packs seperately and they still have the engine? Do I even need the expansion packs? Which one comes highly reccomended?

Anwser those and, sure, I'll buy it.

(But really, why pay for something when you can get it for free?)

 

[Good morning blues]

Maybe you should actually buy the game so you'll have access to the SDK, Einstein

Well which one is the best? Half Life? Half Life 2? Can I buy the expansion packs seperately and they still have the engine? Do I even need the expansion packs? Which one comes highly reccomended?

Anwser those and, sure, I'll buy it.

(But really, why pay for something when you can get it for free?)

Each game comes with the SDK. The most up-to-date one is Source 2007, which you will get when you buy the Orange Box, Episode 2, Portal, or Team Fortress 2. None of them come highly recommended for first-time modders, because Source is much more complicated and user-unfriendly, especially in scripting terms, than most other games. All of this can be determined easily with a simple Google search, and that way you don't even have to admit to piracy!

If you're really too poor to buy a $15 game [http://store.steampowered.com/app/420/], you should probably try something like OpenArena first; they've taken the Quake 3 engine, which id made open-source after Doom 3 came out, and added in new graphics so that you can play it. It, too, is open-source, so you've got plenty of pre-made graphics to test your little scripts out in.

 

[Woe Is You]

There's really no "best" engine. The main point of it is pick a genre that you like, find a game that has a toolset for it, then go and create things. While some companies might find experience with some engines useful, the more important thing is having a portfolio of cool things that you've done.