(sorry about thread placement as i didn't really know where to put it)
Me and a couple of friends are looking into game development and were going to make a game (or at least attempt to make one) over the October holidays however we are all noobs when it comes to game development. We have no idea where we should we start. Should we learn how to use an engine like unity, learn a new language like c++ or something else ?
Anything that could steer us in the right direction would be much appreciated.
I personally wouldn't use unity because of the gap of features between the free and paid version but the ease if use is there depending on the complexity of the game.
you mentioned unity so I assume you want to make a 3d game, platforms like UDK offer great indie game creation ability and udk script is very similar to java script so its no harder then unity.
another option is monogame that's a C# dev kit thats based off xna (xbox game engine) that works across multiple platforms, its a bit more of a traditional coding experience but it allows you to work at a lower level and is open source so you can add things to the engine as you see fit.
all of these engines have lots of tutorials Microsoft has a game development center for XNA(which directly transfers to monogame) unity has a great forum and docs and alot of nice addons that do the work for you and udk has a indie game center.
there is no wrong choice so i would try them all out and see which one is suites your needs the best.
But as far as your question goes. Unity is good for indies and learning. I just would not recommend launching a full AAA Project using the free version. I personally had for a long time made games in it. You can make games fast with it, but I personally prefer to write my own code and invent my own wheel.