Hey, guys!

Me and some friends of mine have had an Idea about a game. We want to make it an overhead 2d rpg (either Jrpg style, ultima 6 and 7 style OR classic isometric Fallout I and II style), but we wanna make the battles turn-based, on a square, diagonal square or hexagon grid Heroes style (mostly H II & H III. The first game I haven' played, though I guess it's the same think) We're thinking that when the battle starts, it should be fought on a new screen, different from the one for "exploration" We're also going to add an interesting crafting system, but my trouble is with the engine we should use. I saw there are some "rpg makers" and so on, but I'm not sure how much that's going to help the battle system we have in mind. All of us have some experiance with code writing, some more, some less. We want to make a baseline-game for now, so we know how the gaming mechanics work and if it plays as well as we think it should.

So, what engine should we build the game upon? Also, is there an engine we could youse that is free (or cheap), and allows us selling the game? Also,should it be better if we make the "Skeleton" of the game on another engine?