Game Engine decision

In the process of building my first Android game ever I have chosen to build my own engine. This has been very interesting and rewarding but at the same time somewhat frustrating experience.

I have tackled a lot of issues with the engine that would I would have had by default in other engines. This has taught me that whenever I spend time fixing the engine, it is away from the game itself. Of course this is self evident but now it’s clear to me that I would rather concentrate on the actual game than the engine.

I have to tell a brief story here. I was in a game developers meeting last December and I talked to a bunch of guys. I wanted to know if they are game programmers and what engines they use and why. I won’t go into details about the engines other than quite many had experience with Unity3D. But what I found interesting that some people said that their ultimate goal is to create an own engine rather to use something ready.

There’s of course nothing bad in a dream or goal of building an own engine but I would think that it’s very hard (resource wise) to compete with the existing engines. Or maybe the idea is not to compete, rather than to be proud of the product and maybe learn something while doing. Just like my game project actually. 🙂

Nevertheless, I think I won’t build another engine, at least not for now. My next project is going to be more ambitious than my 2D word game for Android and I think if I want ever it to be ready I need to focus on the actual game. Unfortunately I don’t have experience on any other engine so I cannot compare, but I was thinking to try Unity3D.

Only negative thing I can come up is the price. I am a hobbyist game programmer and I cannot invest a lot of money for something that probably never yield anything back (money wise). Is there other good choices and what are those? Can anyone recommend me anything? Does anyone have hands on experience?