This forum seems awfully empty, so I thought I would introduce myself.
Currently, I am making games using AS3 and Unity (C#). I love working with the AS3 language, but I also love the performance of Unity3D. I love the IDEs for both. Of course I use FlashDevelop (free IDE) for coding for Air/Flash/Haxe. I use Notepad++ for Unity scripts since they are not all the same language, but the Unity scene editor doubles as a compiler, so I can check for errors just by switching to the Unity editor window.
Other tools I am considering for future work include Maratis (BGE), GameKit (BGE), and NeoAxis. I was considering others, as well, but I pretty much narrowed my choices down to just those options, because I don't have time to be experimenting with every single game engine out there. NeoAxis looks very promises, because it supports gamepad/joystick input and utilizes Ogre3D (extremely fast but also very pretty 3D engine). GameKit probably would not work for my needs, but it looks like it would be fun to mess with, anyway. Maratis is a game engine I have already messed around with. It offers a decent editor, but the Lua scripting is less than desirable. Both GameKit and Maratis utilize old versions of the Blender scene file format for level design. Maratis has its own editor for adjusting game objects and test-playing scenes, but that editor is not yet very fast and likes to freeze every once in a while. I would have to save very often obviously.
I have also considered CryEngine, which has a royalty fee of 20%. I think it would be very useful if ever I wanted to make something pretty, but it is overkill for the games I want to make. I like my games to run on my laptop and not just on my gaming rig!
