Suggestion for coding game engine?

[Kori]

I am in the planning stages of making an adventure game. It will be a indie in the style of the Riven game. I have the 3d art tools and experience, but I lack a game engine. I have not seen any game engines that I can afford of a professional nature. The few I have found that I can afford, are rather amateurish. The needs of the game a fairly simple. It’s a slide show with sound and music. The only difficult part is water movement (in Riven the water area was mapped and the pixels were made to move up and down, creating a water movement look), and sprites.

Anyway, since I am new to coding, I was looking for some software I could learn fairly quickly to make a game engine. After a little looking, I found a software called Revolution, which is a upgraded HyperCard software. The site is:

http://www.runrev.com/

Many of you here have experience coding game engines. So my question is, do you think I have picked the correct software to code my adventure game engine, or do you suggest something else? I am trying to find something that can be learned in a month or so, instead of a year.

Thanks
Kori

[Tom Cain]

I know that Director (http://www.macromedia.com/software/director/) meets your criteria because I've used it for exactly what you are describing. The latest version isn't necessary for what you want to do if you're on a tight budget. You can probably pick up version 7, 8, or 8.5 on eBay.

[Steve Ince]

Kori, there are some more links you might try on the Adventure Developers site. Not being interested in developing first person adventures I don't know which might be best, though.

http://www.adventuredevelopers.com/engines.php

[MrPhil]

I'd say Torque 2D ( http://www.garagegames.com/products/62) is worth looking at

Pros:

Cross-platform - windows, mac and linux
Only $100
All the source code in case you want to add or customize a feature
Helpful community
Built-in editors for particle effects, tiles and GUI
Simply to learn script that can do just about anything you need so you don’t have to code or compile anything
Lots of tutorials and example games lying around (you’ll have to poke around some)
Based on Torque core so everything you learn is applicable to using the 3D version TGE (http://www.garagegames.com/products/1) and the shader version TSG (http://www.garagegames.com/products/28)


Cons

A new product
Documentation is lagging behind the development
Isn’t modularized


It is defiantly commercially viable: Check out Gold Fever (http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=goldfever) and King Kong (http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=kong) both where made with it.