Which game engine should I use for a shooter I'm planning to make?

Question

So, I've got this idea for a shooter. Let's call it "Generic Shooter," because that's what it is; I won't burden you with the details, but I'm going to have to have quite a few "modded" weapons from the past and hypothetical future.

I've been looking at modding Half Life 2 as it already has most of the features I'd need; which would let me expand on adding content and custom weapons without starting from scratch.

But it doesn't look spectacularly easy to mod; I'll need to get Visual Studio and make my changes in C++ (I'm competent in the language, it's just not my favorite). Unreal has Unrealscript, but I don't know how their tools stack up (I have some experience in Hammer already, but it's not very user friendly).

As this is a hobby project, I'm working alone just to make something fun. Sure, I hope that the game will be marketable, but that's not my immediate goal. But since I'll be working alone (I'll be getting a few graphic design friends to help with assets, but I'll be the lone programmer), I want something with good documentation that's relatively easy to Mod, with a decent free/really cheap cost to start, but with the option to market it.

I'd prefer to use Python, my very favoritest programming language.

Answer 1

I'm not a python programmer, but my understanding that as a scripting language it doesn't seem to be that it was designed to handle the overhead of a graphics engine or gameplay of a shooter.

HL2 would probably be your best bet.

Answer 2

I bought a game engine some years back from http://www.garagegames.com and I believe it was only $99.  It was nice, comes with PLENTY of turtorials and a couple of demos, one being a FPS.