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Like many other developers, I have experience with many programming languages. I've worked with C++, Java, JavaScript (+ HTML5 Canvas), etc. The question thing that I've found very difficult to answer when it comes to game development is "Which engine is 'best', agnostic of language?"

I would like to begin work on a 2.5D game (let's compare it to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in terms of complexity), but do not care which language I write the game in. Ideally, cross-platform, but that's not a huge issue.

Which game engines, libraries, or toolkits are the most well known?

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I think this will get closed because it's somewhat subjective and also not likely to remain true for long. As you've noted, answering this question is very difficult, which is partly why the FAQ (gamedev.stackexchange.com/faq) recommends against such questions. – Kylotan Jul 30 '12 at 20:31
I agree, @Kylotan, but this will provide an excellent google-able source. Perhaps it should just be marked as community wiki. – Bloodyaugust Jul 30 '12 at 20:34
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If it was done well then you could be right, but generally this site doesn't go in for subjective answers or lists of links. – Kylotan Jul 30 '12 at 21:03
Such a list exists already: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines – Byte56 Jul 30 '12 at 21:08

1 Answer

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Unity 3D with C# or Javascript is more than capable of this, and is cross-platform. It is extremely popular, and there are many success stories out there.

If you'd prefer to stick with C++, perhaps you should try SFML. It's easy, cross-platform, relatively well-supported and popular.

There really are hundreds of options as far as frameworks/libraries, these are just a couple of the more popular ones in two major languages for game-dev.

More options: Ogre, Flashpunk, Flixel, Torque, Irrlicht, Allegro, pygame, XNA, Three.js, LWJGL, just off the top of my head.

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-1. This answer boils down to: Any game-engine that supports 3D or 2D graphics. No offense, but "Three.js", "Ogre" and "Unity3D" are vastly different and this illustrates how vague your answer is. – bummzack Jul 30 '12 at 21:01
Of course it boils down to that, most do. He asked for some that were popular, and cross-platform. I presented some other examples to be thorough. – Bloodyaugust Jul 30 '12 at 21:14

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