Best Free 2D Game Engine?
 

So I'm looking for a good free 2d game engine, here's what I would like for it to have:

-Text based coding. Not entirely drag and dropping with a UI. Preferably object oriented. A little bit of a GUI is okay(such as for importing assets), but the coding shouldn't be drag and drop.
-Somewhat active community. Somewhere I can post online for help if I'm confused with coding
-Easy to learn. I don't want to spend 2 weeks learning how to simply render an image on the screen.
-Lots of functionality. I don't want how much you can do with it to be limited. It should be able to create anything, from arcade games to rpgs. I should be able to develop my own systems such as combat systems and stuff.


Are there any engines that do this?

I think you'll be hard-pressed to find a gaming engine that focuses on being code-oriented. That tends to be a bit of a counter-productive marketing plan, as the idea for game engines are to be easily accessible to a wide-variety of people. However, much engines I know of, while being UI-oriented, also allow some sort of scripting. Even Game Maker does so now.

Unity is free as long as you don't bring in lots of money with it: https://unity3d.com/unity/download

And I think it's pretty much the most popular engine floating around now. I think it uses interfaces Javacript and C#, the latter being Object-Oriented:
http://unity3d.com/unity/workflow/scripting
https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/...nner/scripting

You are describing graal

I've used Unity, it's not really ideal for making 2d games. It contains pretty much no tools for 2d games, only 3d. I don't know anyone talented enough in 3d model creation, so I can't really make a game with original content using Unity.


I found something called dragonfiresdk, which allows you to code games in C++ and they compile it into an iOS application. Has anyone used it? It's $100, but I think it would be worth it. Considering that I already know c++, adjusting to use their libraries(which look simple) should not take long at all. Considering making a game through them, as iOS games are very popular and the most simple ones are the ones that spread most.

Try SFML or SDL.

Graal .....

Not enough functionality, only makes MMOs hosted by eurocenter
Not free, costs like $100+ a year to rent a server. And that server you make is making them money-and you still have to pay for it.

Graal would make an amazing 2D engine if Stefan would bother -_-

Servers fail, it's insanely hard to create a server because making an online environment is leagues more difficult than single-player content. I would use Graal as a 2D engine if Stefan made it possible.

http://www.rtsoft.com/wiki/doku.php?id=proton
How about this?

Graal is incredibly flexible. You can even point out your own variable names as string (@ "string").obj = function (e) {...}; is also a delegate object.

If only Stefan adds pointers, it would be great.

XNA is really easy to use! Try it, it uses C#.

I believe they used XNA to create Terraria. It's a very awesome engine.

It's not awesome at all, I only said it's easy to use.

Very true. My bad

As far as I know XNA is no longer supported. I mean it works, but it's not being updated anymore.

If you're looking for entry-level game making programs, Game Maker: Studio, Construct2, and Multimedia Fusion 2 / Clickteam 2.5 might all be good choices.

They're all kind of competing very well with each other right now, and are capable of producing some really good games.