http://www.sixbysevenstudio.com/wp-flexible/project/probuilder-for-unity-3d/ 

I have priveliged information about [Unity's] corporate structure that morally compels me to avoid it.

to be frank, they are thieves, spies, and saboteurs. in keeping with stereotypes of 1980s movies about corporations. but, game engines. 

Well, our financial situation went tits in a quite hilarious way pretty quickly, so I've been making stuff for a proper company again to pay the bills.

Not for long though! I'm leaving the industry for good in six weeks, in order to manage a small music festival with my bro', and (more importantly) arse about with Quake again :}

Unity is the dog's danglies though. I'll make a proper post about what I've made so far in it (at some point). 

Well, our financial situation went tits in a quite hilarious way pretty quickly, so I've been making stuff for a proper company again to pay the bills.

Snap! 

"snap" as in "oh, snap!", or as in "lol, same here"...? 

Snap as in the British kid's card game. 

Is a powerful engine that removes most of the barriers at beginner and intermediate level.

Once you start trying to push it to do things it wasn't designed for it gets more complex. Manually writing shaders is also a pain in the arse, but has the benefit that you don't have to precache anything.

There is a package that allows you to generate shaders as well.

the amount of packages and stuff available is pretty impressive - there's tools to do most stuff that might cross your mind.

And it's multiplatform, including all major consoles, devices and web browser. 

That does look good spiney 

It's a DayZ / Minecraft thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_qTqZaMkn8 

You dudes gave me some decent ideas before. I ended up playing quite a bit of Torchlight 2 which was fun. I did have issues with steam's offline mode, game updates, and a load of other shit and I think eventually the game simply couldn't update nor start, and I ended up uninstalling it and steam in frustration.

So....I need similar advice to last time: Low-ish spec (or scalable), easy to control RPG / RTS / action games, NOT totally old-skool, and ideally NOT requiring Steam nor any other online system. I had a brief look at Drakensang which might be an option. I'm open to other ideas.... 

 

 

 

 

And not at all funny.

Now you've got the hilarity out of your systems, sensible suggestions please.

Currently thinking about Drakensang and Dragon Age, so would welcome sci-fi-esque or strategy-esque to contrast with that. I think Xcom might not run at all, and Fallout2 etc too dated for my tastes. 

 

That's funny! 

at the risk of ruining the joke...

path of exile? 

you haven't played any of the Dragon Age games?
I'd start with that.

not sure it's really a laptop game though, maybe too complex for laptop. 

What about Magicka 

Seems pretty good so far, very pretty, with turn+grid based combat.

XCom is a really good game if you can run it yeah. 

Path Of Exile is online only and I've played it through.

T'bird reassures me Dragon Age is not too intense to play so it might be okay.

Banner is not my style at all, sorry.

Magika looks fine, definitely suitable, although yet more iso-metric-ish fantasy RPG and I did plenty of that in TL2 and POE.

Pretty sure my laptop is below the minimum specs for Xcom. 

is a nice alternative to Xcom. 

Dragon Age.

Might get Drakensang and maybe XCom, gotta check my stats first.

Any thoughts on: Ground Control 2 , Supreme Commander , Homeworld , Overlord 2?? 

not played it but many consider it a classic. I didn't like supreme commander because in order to control the insane army sizes you have to zoom out to a point where all the units become little icons on the map.