i know it can be bad to plan too far ahead, but i can't help it sometimes.

i think that when i'm done with god's disdain, i'll split my time between a much simpler project (one that already has all its story, designs, and puzzles on paper) and learning a new engine, i'm thinking either godot or construct.

i like the thing i've got going now where i work on my project a little bit every day, and i think i can keep it up pretty well given that i've been doing it for, what, a month now? so if i can keep doing that between an easier project and learning something new i think that would be awesome.

@beardalaxy Godot requires you to either learn C++ or C#. They do have a Python-like scripting language called GDScript, but I heard that like Python, it's pretty slow, and it's a good idea to write the bulk of the code in either C++ or C# and use GDScript for the small parts like scripted events. As someone who knows both, C# is much easier than C++. You do get that overhead because it's running on a .NET/Mono VM, but a lot of games use it these days.

Construct on the other hand seems to be much easier. It even seems to be easier than GameMaker, but I'm not sure that I like the licensing. It requires you to purchase either a personal ($19.99 USD/month) or business ($149.99 USD/year) license if you plan on making any money off your game and I assume that includes donations.

https://www.construct.net/en/make-games/buy-construct-3/personal-plans

Another engine that you could try is Stencyl. The engine is open source but the editor for it is proprietary and also requires a license for commercial use ($99/year). It has a Scratch-like programming language and can export to Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and HTML5.

https://www.stencyl.com/

But if you don't like these licensing fees and are willing to get a little more advanced, you could try frameworks like Love2D. It claims to be an engine, but it's not. You have to program level formats and other stuff yourself, but it's done in Lua which is a pretty easy to learn scripting language. The best part is that the whole thing is FOSS and you can do whatever you want with it.

https://love2d.org/

You could also try JavaScript. It's easy to write games in it, using the HTML5 <canvas> element, and it doesn't require any additional libraries.

https://www.w3schools.com/graphics/game_intro.asp

@xianc78 some of those don't seem any better than me just continuing to use rpg maker, like stencyl for instance. My end goal is to be able to make a simple game akin to star fox, and I was only looking into godot and construct because I know 3d is possible in them and they're not as difficult to use as unity or unreal. Perhaps it would be better to use one of those but hey, if I like the way the engine feels I'd rather use that. There's a reason why I've stuck to rpg maker for so long... Nothing else feels anywhere close to as user friendly.

I'll see what's around when I get to that point lol, it won't be for another year at least most likely. Hell, the new version of the game creators' engine could actually be really good when it releases for some reason.