Hi everyone. I need to make a 3D Mario-like game for college. I'm faced with several problems though. 1) I only know C++. 2) I've never so much as made any game outside of the console window. 3) I'm pressed for time as this project just came out of nowhere... I would like some suggestions on what game engine/library I could use to make this. Whatever it is, it needs to be FREE, work on just C++, oh yeah and work for PC (I forgot to mention, this project is for Windows on a PC. I don't care about other platforms). On top of that, it needs to have an easy learning curve as I don't have more than a couple of weeks to come up with a playable version of the game. So far, I've heard of Irrlicht and Ogre3d. What would best suit a 3d Mario, considering my points above. I would appreciate some answers on this. I would have loved to pick up game development as a hobby instead of a time-constrained project for college, but oh well
Doing a game like Mario may be more demanding than we think. I suggest that you start with some tools like Unity or UDK. I know that Unity as a good 2D editor and the C# is close to C++. You can also do some Javascript. UDK supports C++, but I don't exactly how it handles platform games. Otherwise, GameMaker is another tool I saw quite often. All tools are free.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to branch out into C# or JavaScript. That's why I want something as simple as possible that only needs C++.
I understand the time is a critical issue. Making games is quite demanding. If you don't already master the necessary tools, it may be too demanding because of the learning curve. If you use C++, you can use DirectX. However, if don't know DirectX, that will be even more time-consuming than learning Unity (just the 2D part). Bottom line, there's a learning curve you have to assume. I don't see anything easy to plug in. I presume what you're looking for is mainly a graphic library in C++.
I think I'll just try my luck with Irrlicht as it seems somewhat easier than Ogre3d and it doesn't have that many dependancies. Thanks for the answers. When I have the time to start doing games for fun, I'll definitely look into your suggestions.
Take a look at DarkGDK. I used this when I first started using C++. I now use C# and Untiy. I know you said no to learning C# and Unity but C# is quite similar to C++ so I'm sure you would pick it up pretty quickly if you were to go down that route. Anyways Good luck!