Hello everyone! I am new to this world and have a few questions seeing as how everyone on here knows a lot more about this stuff than me. Recently, I have decided to try a little game development and see if I can get good at it. I've been playing games since I was a kid and have always had a fantasy about turning that passion into a career. Here is my dilemma: I have a MacBook Pro. To be specific:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-macbook-pro-13-display-intel-core-i5-8-gb-memory-128gb-flash-storage-latest-model-space-gray/5721723.p?skuId=5721723

I know Macs are notorious for being horrible at game development and gaming in general, but I have had this dream for a long time and would like to do something about it rather than just sit around and wonder "what could have been?". The big question I'm asking you all is: what game engine (both 2D and 3D) would suit me best? I'm not looking for the drag-and-drop engines with no coding. I realize that I need to learn a bit, but I don't know where to start. An engine with tutorials, video or written, is also what I'm after. I figured I would start on mobile games since there is not a chance in hell that this tiny laptop can handle the awesome power of UE4. Please get back to me as soon as possible and thank you all for reading this.

P.S. I plan on buying the MacBook Pro this week and was wondering if I should throw in an extra $200 for 16GB. Thanks!

2 hours ago, Writersface13 said:

I know Macs are notorious for being horrible at game development

This is entirely false. If you are comfortable with using macOS, you will have no more or less difficulty developing games for it than you would anything else. Outside of work, it's all I do, and I greatly prefer it to the experience of working on Windows. Your experience might be different, as might anybody else's but that's just their experience. There's nothing particularly wrong with the platform in that respect.

2 hours ago, Writersface13 said:

and gaming in general

This, however, is more true. The Mac platform has historically not enjoyed nearly the same popularity as Windows, and consequently there have historically been significantly fewer games of the AAA quality you find on Windows. This has improved in recent years, but it's still very likely that <insert upcoming game you want here> isn't going to be available for the Mac. This means it's also not as strong of a market for releasing and selling your games as Windows might be. However, if you're just getting started that's not likely to be a huge concern. And in the long run it's still very possible to make a living selling Mac games... you just might have to work a bit harder at it.

At this point I wouldn't consider it too much of an issue for you.

2 hours ago, Writersface13 said:

The big question I'm asking you all is: what game engine (both 2D and 3D) would suit me best? I'm not looking for the drag-and-drop engines with no coding. I realize that I need to learn a bit, but I don't know where to start.

Both Unity and Unreal provide ways for you to write your own code. You can do basically as much or as little "drag and drop development" with those engines as you are comfortable with. This makes them good places to start. If they really turn you off, though, Cocos2D is a popular framework that is available for the platform, and Apple's SpriteKit and SceneKit are reasonable things to explore when you're getting started as well.

I'd try to run Unity and Unreal, incidentally, if they interest you. You might find them more usable than you think, performance-wise. If not, you can fall back to something like Cocos2D or some other framework you can just manually link into your app in Xcode.

2 hours ago, Writersface13 said:

P.S. I plan on buying the MacBook Pro this week and was wondering if I should throw in an extra $200 for 16GB. Thanks!

If you're buying one without user-upgradable RAM, then absolutely. Starving a macOS machine of RAM is one of the best ways to render it unacceptably slow and the low-end configurations Apple provides are borderline-unethically starved of RAM, especially for serious work like software development. If you are getting an older model you can upgrade, and you are comfortable swapping the RAM yourself, it's cheaper to buy the RAM from a third party. If not, you can't upgrade it later, so get as much as you can up front.

First off, thank you so much for the feedback! It made my night! Second, are you sure that a MacBook Pro will be able to run something as powerful as Unity or Unreal. I've read a lot of horror stories during my research concerning lagging that makes it impossible to work or causing my computer to crash altogether. It's not that I don't believe you, I'm just incredibly nervous and skeptical because as much as I want to use Unreal, I don't want to get my hopes up only for them to be crushed.

I'm not sure at all. If you get the low-end model (as far as RAM is concerned), I've have my doubts. If you get as much RAM as you can, I'd be less doubtful. I don't use Unreal outside of work so I don't have first-hand experience with how well it runs on laptop specs. I also work on games that are significantly more complex than the ones you're likely to be building with it, so my experience with how and where it performs poorly even on my work desktops isn't likely to translate well for you.

What I'm suggesting is that you just try it for yourself. You don't seem like you're on the "Unreal or nothing else" train so if it doesn't run well, there are plenty of other good options.

Is Unity in the same boat as Unreal in terms of running on a MacBook Pro? Or do you think I'd have better luck going with that one instead? The specs on the Unity website make me unsure (pardon my lack of tech savviness).

I couldn't tell you, as I've never done anything beyond launch Unity and quit it on any of my machines. It's possible somebody else may be able to chime in though. I'd still just give it a shot and see.

Okay. Well, thank you very much for your time and responses.