Yesterday I was looking for a good game authoring language and came across a very interesting one called 3D GameStudio. I was very impressed by some of the samples. I think I might get into it during this summer. If you're coming from a C/C++ world, then it should be a snap to pick up because it's based on C. The link is http://conitec.net/a4info.htm
I also had my eyes open at DarkBasic, but 3D GameStudio seems a little better. This one is based of course on BASIC. http://www.darkbasic.com