Android Game Engines

[SavannahLion]

I don't want to spend time fiddling with two or three or four or more different game engine frameworks for the Android to decide which one I want to settle with.

I also don't want to spend months creating my own.

Any suggestions from those who did fiddle with said engines? I would prefer open source rather than proprietary but it is what it is.

[RayB]

Just use Unity free.

[SavannahLion]

Just use Unity free.

I would if I could get the damn thing to start up correctly. 

It's stunning how ---fouled up beyond all recognition--- up the Android dev environment is. Seriously.

I dug around a bit in some of the configuration files (trying to work out why the emulator keeps stalling out) and the paths are a mishmash of Windows and Unix-like nomenclature. For instance, AVD kept complaining that it can't find the correct image, so I found the path and set it to the full path (getting rid of some of the Unix notation). It didn't like it at all and it reset my full path to a relative path, but guess what? It found the image. Still won't run though. 

I have less of a headache getting the AVR programmer to play nice with my USB ports with every major FLIP update.

But I digress... Not sure if using a game engine is the correct way to go. I'll fiddle with it some more when the dev suite finally works.

[NiN^_^NiN]

It depends if you want 3D or 2D?

My top picks are 
UE4 (2D and 3D it's $20 and you can cancel the subscription)
Unity (2D and 3D it's free but missing features from pro mostly lighting)
Torque 2d/3d (3D is still being ported i believe but 2D is pretty good and open source)
citrusengine (2D and 3D and opensource)
GameMaker (2D but very easy to use)


There is a few more but i would check out www.reddit.com/r/gamedev for more info on the engines and stuff people use they have some good resources especially free assets for 2d games for commercial use.

[RayB]

Just use Unity free.

I would if I could get the damn thing to start up correctly. 

It's stunning how ---fouled up beyond all recognition--- up the Android dev environment is. Seriously.

I dug around a bit in some of the configuration files (trying to work out why the emulator keeps stalling out) and the paths are a mishmash of Windows and Unix-like nomenclature. For instance, AVD kept complaining that it can't find the correct image, so I found the path and set it to the full path (getting rid of some of the Unix notation). It didn't like it at all and it reset my full path to a relative path, but guess what? It found the image. Still won't run though. 

I have less of a headache getting the AVR programmer to play nice with my USB ports with every major FLIP update.

But I digress... Not sure if using a game engine is the correct way to go. I'll fiddle with it some more when the dev suite finally works.

Get used to Unity first. It's very cross-platform, so no need to worry about Android emulators n ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- like that. Just make your game work within Unity/Windows then figure out what you have misconfigured later. Test the APK file on a real device if the emulator won't run.