I have been into game development(as a hobby)for about 3years now,this has meant starting with basic game creating tools from adventure maker to a4,then a5 to 3d rad,learning to program c++ and to where i am now,using the genesis 3d engine.What got me into wanting to make a game was the game "resident evil".I have found that most of the skills needed to make a game,i could do myself. I studied art at school/collage,was in a band for 8years as a vocalist/keyboard player/worked in a recording studio/ can write music/songs,worked in theatre/drama/can write/can model/and can get on with most animation software.Although,there is only one person doing all of this...(me) it means i dont have the time that a team of people would,the good side is,i know exacly what i want,and find the creative side of things much better than prevous attempts of doing a game with people ive met on the net. Doing a game based on the survival horror/3rd person genre is much more difficult than a FPS.I have found over my learning,that the information related to fixed/camera swithching etc was very uncertain,from authors of the software/engine and trying to find an engine to suit my project,that was affordable for someone like myself is very difficult. Can somebody who (sorry if this sounds offending)"KNOWS WHAT THERE TALKING ABOUT"give me some information on if there is a /what kind of engine(affordable)could achieve:2d pre-rendered backgrounds with 3d models,placeable cameras/camera swithching according to location,or whether i would have to develop my own and how difficult/time consuming this would be.or any advice/information at all on this. thanks.

Just about any 3D engine can do what you are talking about, sort of. You say you want Pre-Rendered background, which means you need to render your background onto a flat plane, and then render your objects. You will get what you want, but this will sort of tweak the visuals as you move the camera. For example, if your final frame looks great in 3/4 view, it''s gonna look stretched and distored in first person view, not to mention flat.

Power render has a forum on this board, and it''s a pretty good engine. It''s a lot more APIesq, so you can do more things with it than you can with CrystalSpace (Not bashing crystal space, it''s great for a fps, and it''s free!), or another free engine. It''s cheap, and they offer a demo.

PS: Why not go with a full 3D terrain?

PPS: It''s tough to find a good team of amature game developers, but if you looked hard enough, I bet you could find some people to help.