I’ve been battling between this for quite some time. The main game engines I’ve been eyeing are the Unreal Engine 4 and Unity. I’ve also looked at Leadwerks, but the problem is the lack of tutorials, the developer(s) seem to avoid any questions I have, and the community is atrocious (calling me an idiot for trying to help them get rid of spam and stuff) so I don’t think I’ll look into that much more than I have already. At first, I was definetly going to go with Unity, but I just hate how every feature I want I have to program myself, which takes way too much time, or purchase, which would basically be $200+ for everything I need/want. It’s like a P2W model for a game engine, in some manner of speaking. The big reason I wanted to go with it is because of performance as I’m trying to create games for my fiancee (who has a crappy laptop) and I to play together. The Unreal Engine has everything I need including shader editing, BSP brushes which make layout/prototype maps quick and easy, and a lot more. My biggest concern regarding UE4 is the performance, as it is a heavy weight engine designed for next-gen hardware (I guess now current gen, but as I said, my fiancee’s computer is… lacking). Leadwerks is kind of inbetween the two performance-wise, as far as I’m aware, though the devs and community are a bit rude. Sorry if this is in the wrong section.
Why not just download UE4 on the and see how it runs? You can make low end and mobile games with UE4.
I can tell you that performance will be an issue with UE4–the minimum requirements are higher than Unity at the very least. With Unity, you start out with very little and you have to add/buy the features you want, with UE4 it’s already including a lot of things, many of which you might not want or need, and it’s not always clear where each thing is that you can adjust to improve performance.
It’s one of the things that Epic is working to improve, at some point for instance you’ll be able to basically remove components from the engine that you don’t want. And it’s got some scalability settings you can lower, but the issue now is that there’s still other things that can improve performance that you have to find.
A few years back when she was living with her mother, for whatever reason she put a block on it and her mom forgot the password so she can’t download anything. I have ways to get the game on the when the game is finished, but I tried everything to get the system (Norton Security) off to no avail. So there isn’t a way to get the engine onto it.
have you tried the “Norton removal tool”?
I’ll have to ask her the next time I talk to her. The problem is that her computer locks up saying that it requires a password. Honestly, I think I’ll just go with this engine anyways. I posted the same exact thing on the Unity forums and I received four replies by three people, all unimportant/useless. I can’t afford to spend all my money on their asset store, Epic is being much more generous and I’ll have to hope that Epic increases the performance of UE4. If not, perhaps I can just purchase her a better computer/laptop. I just can’t go with Unity if they’re just going for money. I understand that they’re a company and require money, as is Epic, but Epic is quite generous in everything they do and I’ll support them and Unreal Tournament 4. Thank you all for your replies.
See their replies: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ue4-vs-other-engines-read-before-deleting-please.327142/#post-2121417
What are the specs of your fiancee’s laptop?
Mess with the registry… 
Or install Ubuntu over the old OS. It runs so quick on old laptops!
To be completely honest, I have no clue. It’s kind of **** (a couple of year old, broken screen, battery juices mess up) so eventually I’ll buy her a new anyways, hopefully one designed for gaming, but I’m clueless as to the specifications. I tried asking her, but she was so frustrated because Norton basically says everything is a virus. She was using a calculator, and you know what happened? Yep, it said it’s a virus. She doesn’t actually have any, but it’s strange how it glitches up like that. I know it wouldn’t likely run even a UE3 game, but the graphics won’t be very advanced. I just hope I won’t have to mess with the source to get anything to run better. Again, my biggest concern with Unity over this is expense and the community. I’d have to purchase many assets and the community is a little rotten/elitist. I understand that people want to feel they’ve made the right choice, but it’s difficult to ask something without the users yelling at you and the moderators shutting down things that show Unity in any negative light. If those two things weren’t an issue, I feel like Unity would be the best choice, but I could also use the money spent on assets on a new laptop. I’m not entirely sure, I’m still torn, but UE4 seems like it might be a better fit in value.
I tried resetting the OS itself several times, I have no clue what her mother did to it.
There are more than just those engines! Here is a list of great engines that don’t require a super computer!
Here are some choices:
Construct classic. Free 2d game creator. Pros: It does not require programming! Plus, You can sell it without giving them Money! Cons:Sometimes buggy. A little outdated.
Game Develop. Same as construct classic. But newer. A little buggy to. 
Ken silverman’s Voxlap! This is a voxel engine! It will run on even the **** of computers! Also you can make things with his Slab6 voxel creator! Cons:It’s old and requires some coding if I am correct
Sourceforge. This is actually a website! But is worth checking out for Game dev stuff. (Also some free games!)
Duality. I’ll just give the creators comment on it. “Duality is a modular 2D game engine that provides its own visual editor. It’s highly extensible, written entirely in C# and backed by OpenGL”
There is many more out there! but these are my favorites!
Also, Sorry to hear about the rude folks on leadworks forum. The unreal4 comunity Is the greatest one I have encounterd on the Net! (You guys are ! And we don’t tollerate spam!)
Install a difrent OS? Maybe she did something in the Bios? Check that out.
Screw Norton. Get Kaspersky Resue disk! It will even kill LUHE! Because it probably does have a virus! That has taken controll of Norton! (I reccomend Avast free.)
Also I know about the unity forums! They will delete most critiscm. Especially the one’s I leave. That’s why I switched over to UDK. Unreal 4 went free!!!
I read that wrong… I thought he said that the whole computer was locked! Looks like I was wrong…
Thank you for the list of engines, I’ll have to check out that voxel one, but at the moment I’m trying to create a 3D game. If not to play it with her, at least to gain some revenue. It’s hard to find a job right now and while I’ve searched for online stuff, even it seems difficult! Eh, the USA sucks sometimes xD Also, just curious, do you know anything of the Source Engine? Another one, though I know it’s really only 2D and is kind of talked poorly of by some, but there’s this old engine called GameMaker by YoYo?
Never visit their forums. Ever. If you’re one of those people that get off when people trash talk you, you might enjoy it, but otherwise it’s best to steer clear.
I just want to say now that I love this community so far and I hope to become part of it one way or another. You’re all very friendly and helpful compared to everyone else I’ve met on various forums. Thank you all 
I would steer clear of source… It is valve’s engine for HL2 and beyond. But will soon be replaced by source2. The best way I could describe source is… To quote Ross Scot’s quote of a quote… A tower held together with ducktape! UE4 smokes it! Gamemaker is really cool, but I found Gdevelop to be much better for the price of Free! (Also they won’t ask for money if you sell a game! I think it is open source? or was it construct?) And for gamemakers forums… I’m no Machosist. (And If you are a programmer I would reccomend Ken’s EVALDRAW.)
Keep the questions coming!
I wonder when Source 2 is being released, I’ve found literally nothing on some kind of general release date (not even something such as Fall 2015 or whatever) but I that would likely be my engine of choice, if available now. Great performance, easy to get up onto Greenlight, I’ve done Source mods before, ran servers for Source games, know and enjoy lua, and a lot more.
Source 2 is coming soon I believe. But it’s not here yet. But source 1 is getting old and has some interesting bugs. Do you do c++? If so your home is with UE4!
And if you do python there is this FREE 3d engine. Panda3d.
I’m not extremely well versed in any particular language. I know how to get things done, but it may take a minute for things to click or I might have to go deeper into it all. That’s one of my few issues with UE4 (other than performance) and I know there’s BP but I believe that’d create even more performance problems. I’m more of an artist, writer, sound, and voice acting kind of guy. Basically anything but music and programming xD I can learn quickly and one of the reasons I was originally eyeing Unity was because it’s quick and simple C# scripting, but the community and dependence on the asset store are issues. Again, I do know some Lua though and can do things very quickly in it… but I’m not sure how far way Source 2 is going to be. Perhaps I should just make everything BUT the actual gameplay itself and wait, maybe learn a programming language or two in the process.