Are there any 3d engines with drag-and-drop mechanics?

[Kilyle]

So... you know how in RPG Maker or Game Maker you create a world by sticking objects into a grid, and then you run the game and see how your character interacts with the objects?  (If you're good, you do a lot of other stuff, but this is just basic.)  Where you can see in the planning stage where items are, like terrain or floor tiles, and barrels you've put there, and such?

Is there a 3d engine that does a similar thing?  I'm particularly interested in ones with Oculus Rift support, if that's available.

I realize that once you get into 3d mode you have a lot more versatility, but I'm willing to sacrifice versatility a bit in hopes of user-friendliness and a shorter development time.  I'd like to be able to design in a 2d mode (ideally where I can switch perspective to look at the ceiling or any of the walls to make sure the textures there look right, then back to floor layout for most of the work), and then have the game play in a 3d mode with physics where there's a base physics setup and I can play around with the numbers if I care to (make you jump higher, run longer, etc.).

I realize this would probably make it much harder to have an organic feel to the world -- that I'd be stuck with a kind of blocky feel.  I'm okay with that.  I mean, I remember making levels with Doom and then years later with Left 4 Dead, but it's time-consuming and I'd rather not have to relearn that all right now.

So like, say I map out the floor on a unit grid, and set up walls (and doorways and windows) as the lines between tiles.  And I can define the height of the walls, maybe, or maybe they have a set height of say 3 unit-blocks high (with the character being 2 unit-blocks high, capable of jumping onto a one-block item).  And I can have multiple levels, where I set up stairs that go from this level to that level.

And then I have an object layer, where I set up (on the 2d floor grid) which objects are on the ground, like boxes, barrels, sinks and stoves and chairs and statues and what have you, trees and vines and rocks and such, and there's a lot of predefined objects but also the possibility to make your own custom objects in some fashion.  And maybe I can stack objects on top of each other, that'd be good, but keep it simple with the 2d interface.

Then I can look at the wall and add simple wall-hang objects, like paintings, that don't just look like part of the wallpaper, but don't have their own hitboxes.  Or maybe some things, like torches, do.  And maybe I could add things hanging from the ceiling, like a chandelier.

And for certain objects, they have different states (like on/off or open/closed), and state changes can trigger code.  And some items you can put things in, like the ever-popular key-in-a-toilet (for some reason), or that the top drawer of the dresser has Random Dresser Junk A and the bottom drawer has Random Dresser Junk B and a letter (which you can pick up and read).

And there are creatures, which you can choose existing or custom textures for, or make your own if you know how.  Definitely a Humanoid or several variants, and a few variants of Animal, and some Monsters, maybe some Flying or the like, maybe some weirder ones.  You get to define their movements and reaction to the sight of the player and such.  But there should be some basic AI's you can attach them to, like "Simple Enemy" or "Slow Enemy" or "Fast Enemy," "Motionless NPC" or "Guard NPC" or whatever.  Tweak some numbers for their attacks and such just like in RPG Maker.

Being able to make use of water-filled areas would be a plus.  Having slippery tiles would also be a plus, as would damage tiles and things that could set you on fire or afflict you with other status ailments such as a slowly-getting-worse cold effect that makes your screen get frostbite over time, or a poison effect that makes the screen wonky and maybe starts subtly messing with your control scheme or something.

Does anyone know of an engine that's at all like this?  Or has the switch to 3d moved past 2d drag-and-drop mechanics altogether?

[Prpl_Mage]

I simple search gave me Indie Game maker for 3d games but can check on monday

[Fisherson]

3D Engines that are like a Maker are hard to find outside the consoles, which have horrible anti-user friendly setups, and you have to keep in mind editing and importing can be limited in those. Honestly it's one reason I stick with RPG maker 2003: user friendly importing and editing. Even if they had something clever enough to make a FF10 quality game in minutes for free I'd likely not switch cause of the limited powers of the maker. Oh and my favorite ...Packs often are limited and expensive from my past researches. The ones that aren't are usually shoddy at best.

[Kilyle]

3D Engines that are like a Maker are hard to find outside the consoles

Definitely don't want console-based; I have had nothing but bad experiences even trying them (technically, via emulation, but still).  Plus, I want to be able to port easily to PC and not be limited by medium.  Or at least, if limited medium is necessary, PC is the limited medium I would go for.

[Fisherson]

Definitely don't want console-based; I have had nothing but bad experiences even trying them (technically, via emulation, but still).  Plus, I want to be able to port easily to PC and not be limited by medium.  Or at least, if limited medium is necessary, PC is the limited medium I would go for.

Hmm have you tried Steam? I always find all kinds of crazy things are on it when I use the search function. Sometimes so many I have to pinch myself to make sure I'm not having some crazy dream like when I was kid and I imagined the perfect game hen bought it only to awake and it not be there!

[Prpl_Mage]

Unity and Unreal are the two softwares that the students are working on in school, it got some drag and drop and some simple code. C++ I think.
Both are free but demands a 5% profit on games sold using them, a quick google search resulted in several guides on how to use them.

[Momeka]

Unity and Unreal are the two softwares that the students are working on in school, it got some drag and drop and some simple code. C++ I think.
Both are free but demands a 5% profit on games sold using them, a quick google search resulted in several guides on how to use them.

Unity doesn't take any profits, but the free versions have limited functionality. Unity doesn't have any drag and drop programming , it's all C# or Javascript scripts. Although there are user made drag and drop plugins but they are quite expansive. I would recommend Unity for a 3D editor (2D as well), there is plenty of resources to help you get started and plenty of communities to help you if you get stuck with scripting or anything else.

I would wait with doing VR stuff until you gotten familiar with Unity. It's quite expansive to run since your game will need to be rendered twice (once per eye). You really don't want to go below 75fps as every little lag and stutter will be quite disorienting for the user. You'll have to make sure your code is optimized and your models don't have to much poly, not using too many real time lights, bake lighting maps etc. Thing you'll get hang of once you used it for a while.

[Kilyle]

but they are quite expansive

You use "expansive" twice and I'm not sure if you mean expansive or expensive.

At present I'm not intending to make games for profit, though it's possible I might want to do that in future (I don't see myself as a for-profit game creator, just a hobbyist).  This does mean that my budget is next to nothing, and preferably nothing at all.  (If I expend money on my hobbies, aside from buying RPG Maker to begin with (on a really cheap Steam sale or Humble Bundle), it'll be for a camera so I can convince my friends to make movies with me.)

What I'm after right now is the ability to make use of the Oculus Rift with the least possible time investment and least possible brain-power/processing-cycle investment.  I have enough on my plate without trying to wrap my head around 3d stuff, which I've traditionally had trouble doing even when there's a level of drag-and-drop (e.g. I recall being thoroughly annoyed just trying to make a functional level of Left 4 Dead 2).  I enjoy being able to use code to do a lot of things, but at present I don't think I'm going to enjoy keeping track of which vertex goes where, or troubleshooting my way through my failure to conceptualize the 3d imagery of the code.  I've looked over the triangle-based 3d imagery stuff before and gotten an idea of what it is and that it's really cool, but generally beyond what I want to do with my time investment.

I could see working with something similar to Minecraft or Legos, just sticking blocks everywhere and then programming some AI's to act within that setup (whether it's basic pathing or moving toward the player if they see him).  I don't want to get much more complex than that, and I would appreciate a few dozen to a few hundred of the basic models built into the engine itself so the end user just chooses them and slaps textures on them, rather than having to worry about creating them, let alone optimizing them for best FPS.  (I've played 30fps Minecraft for years and only recently wrapped my head around the idea that 60 had any significant gameplay improvement.  We used to have computers that weren't up to the 60fps challenge, and only recently got ones that were and I never realized.  In Minecraft it still doesn't seem that different to me.)