Question

I am looking for some advice about what game engine I should use. I have prototyped a game in Flash (an engine I am very familiar with) and I want to take it further, my main problem with flash is it isn’t quick enough – without access to the GPU I am pushing the limits without all the game play features complete.

Here is what I am looking for:
-2D Game engine
-Free or reasonable indie pricing
-Javascript, c# or similar language
-A decent community and documentation
-Powerful – able to access GPU/Make full use of GPU
-Able to publish to Mac/Windows – linux and consoles a bonus but not required
-Decent IDE/Engine interface

I am just playing with Torque 2D now, I like it but the downside is TorqueScript is similar to C++ which I am not to familiar with. Also I am not sure how powerful it is.

I am also comfortable using Unity but this is a 2D game and I don’t like making 2D games in a 3D engine.

Hopefully you guys have some good ideas?

Answer 1

I have no real experience with it, as I’m only starting to learn it now, but consider NME:

NME is a free, open-source framework that enables development for iOS,
Android, webOS, BlackBerry, Windows, Mac, Linux and Flash Player from
a single codebase.

[…]

The API for NME is very similar to the Flash API, making it possible
to target both Flash Player and native targets using a common (and
familiar) set of classes. NME applications written in haxe, an
incredible cross-platform programming language.

Haxe looks a lot like ActionScript, I think, so you should be confortable with it.