Totally agree. Way of writing code in Unity or Unreal is really weird, it is difficult to explain why. Only what I know is that LiteC is natural, pleasant and very readable for peoples who are not professional programmers. The real shame is that Gamestudio development has suddenly slowed in the last few years, but in this state Gamestudio it is still very usable for many indie developers. With some cosmetic changes, new editor and Android port Gamestudio may long to live.

Writing code in those engines is not exactly "weird", it's just object oriented.

I'm not the biggest friend of wait() and some other lite-C/ Gamestudio peculiarities anymore but I still (in general) love the way you code and make games in A8. I like (real) C as a programming language a lot, too.

It's still viable. It's not being developed at any measured pace. Lite-c is Better than the unreal blueprints system, because it is as easy to learn and use for the most part, It teaches real programming that transfers to learning Java,ect..(Well it did for me), It's way faster to work in and revise.

Sure the tools need a work over. And no doubt that port-exports for mobile and now possible linux are needed.

I think this engine can get new life if there was a chuck of game releases by us and more community effort. Fact is no one knows what it is and why to use it. Unity and Unreal have massive market presence. But true be told Unreal is very heavy for lower level users. Unity also lacks the low-level learn and use curve of 3dgs. But both have flashy UI's and Great graphics displaying. However, there are games genres in the indie world that fit best here and can be made quicker with 3dgs.

-- I recently read about the death and rebirth of the game woolfe - the red hood dairies, The team lead believed that a indie team could make a AAA looking game. He didn't want geared down graphics and movements. He admits he fully failed and that it couldn't be done so. Studio Rebellion, bought out the game, is fulling the broken kickstarter rewards and retooling the game.

However a team of 6 could do a lot with this engine. Both still the core engine needs reworking. I'd keep WED MED if they reworked the core. We know it's slow and inefficient.

Ok
Mal

Partly.
I don't know about Unreal Engine, but Unity is not really hard to learn. There are very good free tutorials and well written books available. It's all about basic understanding how the system works - from then on you find your way. Being at that stage, it is by far more easy to get the desired information as many users will produce many search results

Indeed C is easier to learn, but once you get past that point, the procedural programming style may get in your way where an object oriented language will support your needs better later on.
It's a different way of thinking, and when you're at that point where you think in objects and members automatically, (Lite-)C can really get annoying, as it's not made for that.
For anything not too far away from hacking (gamejams :D) procedural language is nice, as usually the architecture builds up on the fly

WED MED are a bigger problem than the engine itself, imho.

I agree with Firoball.

3dgs is definitely a very easy start, you can go forward in tiny steps, gives you a simple insight into programming, 3d graphics asset creation, and also to shader programming (the latter is a great help if you want to move on to professional engines where material/shader programming is done in a visual editor).
it is also described in an old Game Programming Gems book article, that for beginners a non object oriented script language is easier, especially because they can work in an experimental way, i.e. in fast coding-compiling-testing loops.
this is how I had worked with 3dgs. but when my project became large and complex I sucked a lot because of it, I had to re-plan and rework totally my code structure and all my scipts. twice at least, each costing 2-3 months. so now I do more careful planning, similarly to object oriented programming, but fortunately 3dgs offers the fast testing of the little new script additions. I really like it.
but 3dgs badly lacks a lot of tools today expected by artists and designers. without a good WYSIWYG all in one editor it is hard to test visually in real time a lot of things e.g. particle effects. my little sweet child MapBuilder is not a solution for all the problems stopping the development of new WED dug 3dgs under the ground (beside stopping the android port). sad that 3dgs developers had seen the right direction but were unable to complete the targets.
the rendering system of 3dgs is simplistic, you have to create your own or use 3rd party solutions (shade-c), lacks advanced optimizations, what you get by default with other engines.

I had good experiences with Unity (version 3), but only after I had some experience with 3dgs. the editor is a bit complex for the 1st sight, if you are inexperienced with 3d game development you can get lost, but there are plenty of good tutorials and nice free stuff. after lite-c, it was easy to program, you just need to separate the initialization and loop parts of your "actions", the documentation was also good enough. and today its licensing system is much more competitive than it was.

UE4 is a strange hybrid. It needs a good hardware to develop, but you can target a bit lower end machines too. it offers a lot, really helps artists, but requires a lot from the programmer, needs careful game design.
its C++ programming section is hard to start and badly documented. the game architecture you get is for one character controlled games (FPS, RPG etc.), but in most cases it results in benefits, well designed, somewhat flexible, and you can possibly develop faster a game than with 3dgs. and it features a lot of great subsystems you had to create with 3dgs by your own e.g. pathfinding, AI, character control, animation control, cheat unfriendly multiplayer system etc.
they focus rather to make blueprint programming easy, but without some programming knowledge it is not so easy to make those wire diagrams working. and when games become complex, blueprints can lead to hard to track bugs...
but because the community is huge, if you are a programmer, you have great chance to find good artists there to your team.
not to mention huge amount of free or very cheap graphics assets to use with an advanced/optimized renderer. and community is definitely a great help.

, that is what I had experienced too. In the beginning it went quite well, doing the tutorials etc. Experimenting with AI and the legendary Acknex characters, like: wizard.mdl, sf_women.mdl and enemy.mdl (with the green hair ). Than I tried to do big projects like Diablo clones etc. and it became a complete mess. Now I do more careful planning & especially better/cleaner code writing and it goes quite well again.

, yes completely agree (especially WED) and lack of linux & android support (which will force quite alot to use an other engine).

When i see how many times my workshops and tutorials are downloaded there
are still a lot of people out there working with 3dgs the main problem of
3dgs is the lack of simple and clear examples it's a good thing we have
a nice forum still.

it's the creative artist that makes a game it does not have to be made
with a great super engine as gameplay is important.

I tried unity but i still can't get used to that stuffed work area with so
many buttons and functions that you simply get lost in it. I like working with 3dgs and although it should use a major update the working enviroment feels good to me

I do remember the old days when i bought 3dgs as it stated no programming was needed well boy were they wrong

, well technically it is possible with the templates, you will just get your average half-assed game coming out of 2001