yeah, i dont quite get it either. both art and programming are required to make a decent game. period.

There are different styles of programming.
I used TV3D engine in the past and believe me it is the easyest engine to program i have never seen and used ( after Blitz3D ) !
It has only high level functions, clear , and the language was at your choice, i used VB .net and C#.

I don't like C and C ++ so i think that's whay i don't like a lot engines using similar languages.
For Esenthel it complicates things more with not so easy stuff, and more low level calls to do from your code.

Esenthel for a 3D artist is great, but for the programming side, it's lot more complicated than Shiva 3D for example.
That's not simple hight level script.

That's just what i pointed Esenthel for 3D artists knowing programming a little is not perhaps the best solution.

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For me i should perhaps definitivaly switch to work in a team or only work on modding ?

or complete some c++ tutorials when I started to explore esenthel engine, it was a great motivation to read through some c++ tutorials, to understand better its programming possibilities. there a lot of great ones, somehow I like it batter than C#. but I have very minimal experiences in c#.

maybe there are other engines on the market that suits your requirements better, if you don't want to dig deep into programming. or move towards to be mainly a level designer, and try to find/establish a developer team. but in the latter case, some programming skills are quite useful.

C# is lot more easy, it has some C++ features, but all very simplified and clear.
But there are also 3D engines like Neo Axis, using C# but with big weakness on tutorials or documentation and simple examples.
Even the coding and functions to call can be complicated because the author don't have think in keeping all simple (Neo Axis as example).

So the language don't really means easyness all time !

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I think it's lot more a matter to make the engine very accessible to 3D artists by
- the tools
- the fluid easy workflow
- the easyness of the script or programming language
- tes easyness on 3D functions to call
- Physics used by default for characters, levels, terrain etc and simple physic calls that works.

I think for 3D artists knowing programming a good 3D engine is lot more a matter of good balance.
There are actually two other engines i use( one very knwon and another not very known) so i can say , yes this type of 3D engine open to 3D artists, open to simple or very advanced programmers exists.

But i stop comparing Esenthel to them, and just can say, Esenthel is not so trivial to pick up at beginning with C++.
Perhaps you'll have good performance indeed !

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I just found a test made from some Unity VS Esenthel thread :

just made a little performance test with similar scenes.

esenthel : 35-40 fps
-small terrain(normal mapped material), 1 player character(~6k poly), 400 animated characters(2600 poly, 32 bones, normal mapped material, has physics(not sure char controller or rigid body)), shadows on,

unity free : 25-30 fps
-default plane(no material), 400 animated characters(900 poly, 45 bones, diffuse material, no physics), no shadows


esenthel is fast, solid and cheap but lacks some critical features and has poor tools.

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From my personnal point of view, i seek lot more PRODUCTIVITY.
Learning Esenthel for now , it's not a win, perhaps i'll do better later ?
So im' not productive today with it and i'm more productive with the two other engines.

If you can learn and understand Esenthel programming and not put years to make your game framework based on what can do the engine then this can be a good 3D tool for you.

For interested people in Esenthel i give here some more informations i find usefull in the thread Esenthel Vs other engine :

It has lot of people responding , some saying Esenthel is fast, otehr it is slow on same scenes etc ... seems lot more a flamewars then anything else LOL

Esenthel Vs Unity thread

In fact there is no engine perfect :
And there is a response saying Esenthel is not so bad in the end and Unity not so perfect lol.

The best is to try it, and be more carefull if it would be some professionnal project involving lot mof money from the beginning :
This is different from indies game making wihout investment or any money invested.
In that case of lot of money invested , the best is indeed to try to find the most information you need about the ability to make your game and have something stable.

But well some MMO using esenthel seems solid. I should try one, just to see performance and how it runs on my PC.

What i find is lacking is simple games (not asian mmos), sold on PC or mobile ?
I don't see any ? or i have a problem to find them ?
why ? strange ?

At least i know games for PC can be made with 3DGS and are sold lol

I used TV3D engine in the past and believe me it is the easyest engine to program

I definitely agree with that
Nothing is easier than a set of self explaining classes containing self explaining methods and variables
May be for AAA games it makes sense to use a component based engine such as Unity ( btw I use it, no other choice ) but at an hobbyest or even Indie level it is a nonsense
Some people assume that C++ stand for "hard"
Also it is a nonsense
At basic level C++ is as easy as JavaScript ot basic
It is not a must to use C++ advanced features
It is the game engine architecture which make the difference
It is a shame that TV3D died
I do hpe that Leadwerks 3.0 does not overcomplicated its user friendly engine

Yep LE3 is in the same mood as TV3 : very easy to program.
What was lacking in TV3 was it didn't exist some public level editor/shader editor/ material editor/terrain editor etc ... Juts think about all skilled 3D artists that are not super programmers ...
What really counts , it's not perhaps the architecture for me , but lot more the features/performances and easyness to program.

About Unity vs Esenthel here in this thread
Well, if the test is correct, it seems that there is a big diffrence in favour of Esenthel
In Unity free version, shadows are disabled
It is well known that shadows eat a lot of PC cycles
You can use Unity pro for a limited period of time
Did anybody carry out a comparison test Unity Pro > Leadwerks or esenthel using the same scene ?
Unfortunatley my Unity pro trial version has expired

PS

I got the direct opposite results, Unity was the fastest engine I tried out

In fact, some engines are better in their fields some times it depends.
I'm not sure some comparison would really show something ?
The best is to you to make a big scene, with characters, particles, shadows, SSAO, full screen effect and do the test.
These engines you mentionned are good, some more complicated on programming, other have lot better workflow, some other have shadow and advanced rendering for 100-200 bucks.

(There is some plugin to make shadowsfor unity free, i don't have tried it and don't know if it works well and on what type of models ?)

It's up to you to test and choose the 3D software solution depending on your project siez, complexity and features.