So I've been trying to figure out what would be good to use for this 3D game I'm making…

The game is planned to be a multiplayer combination FPS/RTS - players carry out the strategy parts on a world map, but then can go into smaller first/third-person shooter matches in which they fight for control of the localized map.

Complicated? Probably. Difficult to the point where I won't finish? Maybe, but I want to try anyway. :P

That said, I've been considering a few different engines/languages/what-have-you to use (looking for good performance over good graphics):

Blender/Python

Pros:

- I'm already making all the models in Blender.

- I love Blender. Plus Python is nice.

Cons:

- Potential performance issues with scalability, networking - I don't know how big I can make a map before it gets too slow to run. Also, I've seen at least a few small-scale attempts at networking, but I don't know how well it'll handle on larger scale. (By "large" scale, I mean 16-32 players. Or something like that.)

Unity 3

Pros:

- It seems to perform nicely.

Cons:

- The usual closed-source stuff (watermark, some features not available, etc.). Also I don't really trust Unity yet (maybe because I just started looking at it a few days ago…)

- Possible performance issues with scalability and networking, blah blah blah.

Source SDK

Pros:

- Valve!

- It's proven to work nicely for decent-sized multiplayer and such (Counterstrike, Half Life 2, etc.)

Cons:

- Time, work, etc.

Ogre3D/C++

Pros:

- I know C++ already, and this'll most likely work.

Cons:

- This might take a while.

- I get the feeling I'm going to have to do a lot of coding from ground-up. : (

My question to y'all is - what do you think will work best?

Any suggestions you have (whether they be on the above list or not) are greatly appreciated.

(Bravo if you read all that by the way. :D)

ON NEARLY COMPLETELY UNRELATED SUBJECTS

- I bought Minecraft yesterday. Very fun.

Though a spider jumped into my shelter and hit me in the face before I had time to make a door…it was a bit of a surprise.

Then there were the spiders that kept camping over my front door. >_<

- YouTube video that actually motivated me to do game-making work:

It happens sometimes. :P