Why buy a 3D engine - mainly because you can't sell anything you make with Unreal unless you've licensed the engine. I don't have 500K - 1M laying around do you? If you want to make a mod just for fun, fine, use Unreal.

i was wondering which language i would be better off writing a first person shooter game in. i know a fair amount in borland delphi 4 but i am not sure if i should learn c instead...

Thank you all for the replies. Yes, I agree that one wants a development system that is as near royalty-free as possible.

I'm not familiar with the genesis engine. Please describe it more, and provide a link.

Has anyone followed the above link to the A4 site, and what do you think of their product?
Here's another one I found advertised on this website: http://www.morfit.com/developers.html

What do you all think of the Morfit game development package?