What is the best alternative to&#x20;Panda3D?

jMonkey is completely free, meaning it's possible to develop and release a game with no fees or royalties. Because it is open-source, jMonkey has plenty of people fixing bugs and, adding to the engine as well as creating a variety of plugins that can be used in the engine. See More

680 167

score 29 · Answer 2

jMonkey3

Top Pro

Free and open-source

Top Con

Not an engine for total beginners

While it's clear that you need to know Java first before using this engine, it is recommended that you have some programming experience as well. Most performance issues and memory leaks are more due to bad programming practices than the engine itself. See More

Top Pro

Not limited to using its own IDE

Unlike some engines, jMonkey doesn't force its own IDE. You can use its Netbeans-based IDE, but you can also set up a project to work in another IDE such as Eclipse. You can still use the special tools from jMonkey's IDE in such projects. See More

Top Con

Slow release cycle

jMonkey3 lacks manpower to have a fast and decent release cycle. See More

Top Pro

Engine modifications can be made using Java

Because jMonkey is implemented in Java, the same language its apps are typically developed in, developers will have an easier time modifying the engine to their needs. See More

Top Con

Relies on archaic tool chain

jMonkey Engine uses Apache Ant for build automation, which is archaic and backwards, even by Java standards. See More

Top Pro

Java is a great development platform

Java is a well-optimized just-in-time compiled language. It's faster than languages without an effective native-code compiler such as Python or Ruby, similar in speed to other just-in-time compiled languages such as C#, while slightly slower than compiled languages such as C or C++ (with some low-level and numeric benchmarks being similar to C++). Java also has a wide variety of high-class IDEs available. See More

Top Con

Terrible API reference

The methods are not defined. See More

Top Pro

Ease of extensibility

Engine is modifiable. See More

Top Pro

Freedom of choice for architecture

The user is not compelled to use any programming architecture nor standard in order to make a project working. JME allows the freedom to use what is best for a game. See More

Top Pro

Offers both low-level and high-level ways of editing shaders

Modifying shaders can be done either via a visual tool called Shader Nodes or via GLSL that allow you to make your own shaders without the engine getting in the way or having to hack around to do so. See More

Top Pro

Multiplatform support

Code can be ported to mobile (iOS is in the works) and other Android supported devices with minor changes to the code (just change some implementations that vary on the platform such as inputs and user interface). It can even run on certain Raspberry Pi devices. See More

Top Pro

Has everything

jMonkey3 handles input from computers and mobile devices. It handles networking, physics, rendering, terrain, and cinematics. See More

Specs

Mobile targets:Android; iOS

Console targets:?

The entire engine is open source and makes use of other open source libraries. Source code is licensed under MIT and available on GitHub. See More

29 20

score 48 · Answer 3

Urho3D

Top Pro

Free and fully open source

Top Con

Little documentation and small community

There are some high-level design docs and a bunch of examples, but code is poorly commented and nothing much more can be found. See More

Top Pro

Includes a lot of samples

There are a lot of sample projects included with the engine for both C++ and Angelscript. They are mostly very simple applications built to demonstrate the engines capabilities and features. See More

Top Con

May be a bit hard to get started

To install Urho3D you need to get the archive from GitHub (be careful to download the master branch) and extract it. After that, you need to compile the engine with CMake. If all the dependencies are installed, then it should be a straightforward process, otherwise you will need to track down and install all the missing dependencies. For people who don't have much experience with CMake this whole process may seem a bit like magic. For people who do have experience with CMake, the whole installation will be relatively easy. See More

Top Pro

In constant active development

Bugs are usually fixed that same day. Core devs are very active on forums. New features are always being worked on. HTML5, DirectX11, and OpenGL3.1 support have recently been added. (as of 4/15/15) See More

Top Con

The UI can be hard on the eyes

Urho3D's UI lacks polish and and could cause eye strain. See More

Top Pro

Very high code quality

Urho3D is written in a modular and super-clean way, so that it can be integrated into the other parts of your game seamlessly. See More

Top Pro

Small turnaround times while developing

Builds are quite fast, aids in rapid development. See More

Top Pro

Fat-free codebase

Only use what you need. See More

Top Pro

Good documentation

The documentation for Urho3D can be split in two parts: auto-generated from class references and documentation written to cover the various aspects, features and systems of the engine. The written documentation is pretty good. It covers most of the aspects of the engine in clear and understandable English. See More

Top Pro

Good 3D level editor

Top Pro

Unofficial Oculus Rift support

Information on enabling OR support can be found here. See More

Top Pro

Does not require an editor to get going

Specs

License:MIT

Mobile targets:iOS; Android

Although it's got very nice features as is, and the team does respond to issues at a pretty good rate, the engine itself takes a little while to get updates. It's a 3-4 person team, and they need to work jobs on the side in order to bring in income. Even though the updates come out a little slower than other engines, the team is still very much committed to the project and still support it well. See More

48 17

score 11 · Answer 4

Superpowers

Top Con

Not frequently updated

Top Pro

Collaborative

You can spin up a server and work with other people at the same time. See More

Top Pro

Supports both 2D and 3D

This isn't a 3D with 2D on the side type of engine. The scene-editor supports both 3D and 2D views, allowing ease of use no matter what type of game your making. See More

Top Pro

Plugin based

The community can develop and release their own plugins to add additional features making game development easier. All of these plugins can be easily downloaded in the app. See More

Top Pro

Lots of handy built-in editors

It's got a scene-editor, cubic-model creator, text-editor, 2D image / animation importer, and a very useful tile-map editor. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use programming language

Games can be published to the web with good performance, and the game-framework utilizes TypeScript to make programming games a little bit nicer. See More

11 3

score 202 · Answer 5

Corona SDK

Top Pro

Free

Corona SDK is completely free. That includes pro-tier plugins. See More

Top Con

Making a device build requires internet connection

To build your app for the device (iOS/Android/AppleTV) Corona requires to fetch resources from online. This would include base application template and plugins. This allows not to perform local build or use Xcode or Android Studio to do a build. Even Large games/apps would build very fast with good internet connection. Your code never leaves computed. Corona SDK would transfer some information to determine which plugins and pieces has to be transferred in order to make a final steps in build. As a bonus - you get basically one button press to get from your Corona Simulator game to game on a device. See More

Top Pro

Very simple to use

Top Con

Closed source

Since you don't have access to the code, you can't make changes to the SDK. You even have to implement workarounds on issues that have long been reported, but never fixed. See More

Top Pro

Corona Simulator

Corona SDK ships with Corona Simulator, which runs your game/app directly on your PC/Mac and updates every time you make changes. It provides immediate feedback to your actions, you can see your changes right on the screen, without necessity to make build to device. Getting instant feedback really boosts tenfold prototyping and development speed. See More

Top Con

Free, but not completely

Such conventional plugins as a reference to AdMob for example, cost $300 per year! See More

Top Pro

Lua syntax

Uses the great and easy-to-learn Lua programming language. See More

Top Pro

Good documentation and lots of tutorials

Top Pro

Very comprehensive API

It's very quick to get things up and running with Corona SDK. The API is extensive and while it's not 100% feature-complete with the iOS API, it's close enough that you could create tons of games and never run into a roadblock. The API docs can be found here. See More

Top Pro

Amazing learning curve

Corona does not throw photoshop-like madness full of buttons editor. You can go as fast as you want, learning and building game from ground up. Eventually, you'll learn how much corona is doing for you. But to start you don't have to master complex editor software. It's a great tool to learn to start game development if you want to learn how to program and make games. Your experience will be 100% transferable to any other Pro game engine. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform desktop and mobile

Corona works on OS X, Windows and Android (including Kindle Fire & Nook). See More

Top Pro

Live builds - update builds running on a device automatically

With the live build feature, once you have created a build and installed on a device, you get lightning fast turnaround times because any change on the code or data is updated to the devices running the game (within the local WiFi) immediately. So changes can be tested on the real hardware within a very few seconds. What's even more impressive, this even works flawless with multiple devices running the game. You have to use it to learn how good of a feature this is while development and even more, while doing QA. Imagine fixing bugs and everyone of your QA team/friends/whoever helps to get your game done, has all changes on his device without doing anything but waiting 5 seconds - outstanding. See More

Top Pro

Content scaling

It's easy to create a game that looks good on many different sized mobile devices. See More

Top Pro

Marketplace for 3rd party plug-ins

Top Pro

Great community

Top Pro

Ability to call any native (C/C++/Obj-C/Java) library

Top Pro

Well supported

Specs

Languages:Lua

Dev platforms:Windows; Macintosh

Desktop targets:Windows; Macintosh

Mobile targets:iOS; Android; Kindle; Windows Phone 8;

The engine, including full access to source code, is licensed to developers for 5% royalty on resulting revenue if it exceeds $3000 per quarter. See More

202 36

score 376 · Answer 6

Unreal Engine 4

Top Pro

Free development license, including source code

Top Con

Very high build size

A blank project will build in to a minimum of 200 MB. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic global illumination with voxel cone tracing decreases the computational power needed

Voxel cone tracing is a similar algorithm to ray tracing, but uses thick rays instead of pixel thin rays to be able vastly decrease the amount of computational power needed. See More

Top Con

Slow

Compared to other engines, UE4 seems to perform various actions considerably slower. Actions like starting the engine, opening the editor, opening a project, rebuilding shaders, updating references, calculating lightmaps, saving projects, etc take long enough to get irritating and end up wasting precious development time. See More

Top Pro

A visual scripting system for non-coders enables quick prototyping

Blueprints are authoring tools designed for non programmers so designers and other team members can help tweak and prototype. UE4's Blueprint scripts resemble flowcharts where each box represents a function or value, with connections between them representing program flow. This provides a better at-a-glance indication of game logic than a simple list of events, and makes complex behaviors easier to accomplish and games a lot faster to prototype. See More

Top Con

No drawcall batching, performance is very bad on mobile

There's no dynamic batching support to minimize drawcalls. There's InstancedStaticmesh concept in UE4, but it's 3d only, functionally limited and requires hardware support which rules out most mobile devices. See More

Top Pro

Developers have full control of the engine and source code

UE4 gives full access to the C++ source code allowing editing and upgrading anything in the system. See More

Top Con

Extremely long build times

Making a full rebuild, including engine can take a good 30minutes. If you plan to use Unreal professionally, you better get some licenses for Incredibuild as well. See More

Top Pro

Lots of resources to learn from

Epic provides multiple official video tutorials, lots of free example projects and content, an extensive wiki and regular streams showing how to use latest features. See More

Top Con

Poor documentation

Most of the "documentation" for code is actually just automatically generated from the source. If you're interested in knowing how things are supposed to work, you must either go to their answers site or pay for UDN. Often their examples won't even compile, since they were written for now outdated versions. See More

Top Pro

Powerful material/shader system

Allows a texture/material artist or VFX artist to create amazing effects from the ground up. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Especially when compared to its primary competitor, Unity. See More

Top Pro

Spectacular lighting visuals

Top Con

Hard engine for beginners

This engine not easy for beginners See More

Top Pro

Active community

Forums have many active and friendly members that are quick to respond and help out. Even staff is very active on forums. See More

Top Con

C++ - oriented development cycle: slow turn-around times

The Unreal Editor is the main place to do stuff (of course), so if someone wants to do a lot of C++ stuff, the compilation and linking turn-around times can be painful. Still they probably are quite fast in comparison to the provided featureset.. Still ,they are far from optimal. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform editor and export

This engine exports for a big range of platforms including Linux. The editor can be run on Windows, MacOS, and Linux (Early Access). See More

Top Con

Royalty based

5% of profits will go to Unreal after $3000 earned in a quarter. See More

Top Pro

Fast compilation for quick iteration

Recompiling an entire game to test a small change takes up a lot of time. UE4 quickly compiles in seconds instead of minutes improving iteration time by an order of magnitude. See More

Top Con

They spend more time adding features than fixing existing ones

Top Pro

Quick release-cycle

New feature releases can be commonly expected about once a month. See More

Top Con

Poor quality assurance on their releases

After each release they almost immediately release a hotfix. And another one. And another one. See More

Top Pro

AAA Ready

This is ready to make the next AAA game. See More

Top Con

C# not natively supported

UE4 does not support C# natively, but this can be achieved through MonoUE, although it requires using the MonoUE fork instead of UE itself. See More

Top Pro

Professional feature set for all aspects of game development

Almost everything a game developer wants has a deep and sophisticated tool waiting for them in UE4. No external plugins are needed to make powerful materials, FX, terrain, cinematics, gameplay logic, AI, animation graphs, post process effects, lighting etc. See More

Top Con

Extremely poorly designed

The code is a mess. Everything is connected, a single Actor is 1500 bytes, because it contains a million things that Epic once needed in a game. Inheritance for AActor: AActor > UObject > UObjectBaseUtility > UObjectBase See More

Top Pro

Realistic graphics

Top Con

Tutorials do not go in-depth enough

The blueprint tutorial just teaches how to turn on a light when you press f. See More

Top Pro

Proven track record

Top Con

Difficult for mac users

If you're installing it on mac, you simply download epic games launcher and watch it download nothing endlessly. See More

Top Pro

No coding experience needed

Top Con

Bad support

The epic games team only assists with billing and account issues, not bugs. See More

Top Con

Terrible physics

Top Con

Frequent crashes

Often the editor crashes interrupting your work. See More

Top Con

Poor error messages

Top Con

Rarely works

Specs

Languages:C++, Blueprints (Visual Scripting)

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac OS X, Linux

Desktop targets:Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, SteamOS, HTML5

Mobile targets:iOS, Android

Tombstone gives full access to the clean and professional C++ source code allowing editing and upgrading anything in the system. See More

376 122

score 5 · Answer 7

Tombstone Engine

Top Con

Small community

Top Pro

Complete access to high quality C++ source code

Top Con

Lacks D3D support

Top Pro

Reliable, fast and well optimized

Top Pro

No royalties

Top Pro

Lots of learning resources

Including extensive documentation both in code as well as online along with a wiki, tutorials and a demo game. See More

Top Pro

Extending engine's functionality is straightforward

Due to the well-organized, highly modular design of the engine adding custom functionality is easy. See More

Top Pro

Full-featured and modern

Comes integrated with support for physics, audio, networking, input devices, resource management as well as modern features such as real-time shadows, horizontal mapping, voxel-based terrain, dynamic lighting, post-processing effects and much, much more. See More

Top Pro

Lifetime engine updates

Top Pro

Supportive community

Tombstone has a small, tight-knit community that's well educated and professional. Eric Lengyel, the main developer, can often be found giving thorough advice to users on the forums. See More

Top Pro

Proven to be a capable engine

Specs

Torque3D is a free game engine licensed under MIT with source code available on GitHub. See More

5 5

score 13 · Answer 8

Torque3D

Top Pro

Free and open source

Top Con

Limited platforms

torque3D only publishes to web. See More

Top Pro

Many stock features for a FPS but flexible enough for other Genres

Top Con

Weak AI

Movement AI is limited to moving in a straight line. See More

Top Pro

Continually updated by a dedicated and skilled community

Top Con

Aging

If you are planing on using some of the latest graphical options, pick another engine. See More

Top Pro

Incredible Performance on low-end PCs

Even on low-end-PCs the Engine and its games run perfect See More

Top Pro

Easy to implement 32 to 64 multi-player networking

Torque's approach to networking makes this one of the best performing and easiest to implement multiplayer game engines available. See More

Top Pro

Redistributable tools

Specs

License:MIT

Supported languages:C++;TorqueScript

This is a 3D graphics engine similar to Ogre3D. Thus, it doesn't provide any pathfinding or physics support. Support for those will have to be added by the dev. See More

13 17

score 7 · Answer 9

Irrlicht

Top Con

Not a game engine

Top Pro

Free and open source

Top Con

Outdated

Obsolete over 5 years ago. While the engine is being worked on with plans for new features and support, the movement is slow, leaving many engines far more advanced in certain areas. See More

Top Pro

Good polymorphic design

If you are considering writing your own engine with openGL, you might want to consider Irrlicht instead. It makes many features of any engine worth its salt easy, including events, serialization, nodes, animators, materials, logging, and animation. Bring your own sound and networking. See More

Top Pro

Lightweight

Especially if you compile it yourself, it can be very light in memory usage. See More

Top Pro

Easy to entry level C++ experience

If you want to start game developing with C++, then Irrlicht is a good candidate since it removes most of the complications in game making in C++. It will let you obtain experience in programming and games at the same time. See More

Top Pro

Support for multiple formats

This engine supports multiple formats for 3D objects and textures. See More

Specs

Mobile targets:iOS; Android

Console targets:-

Pygame uses Python as its scripting language. Python is widely considered one of the easiest languages to grasp even for beginners. See More

7 11

score 73 · Answer 10

pygame

Top Pro

Easy Python syntax

Top Con

Very basic

Pretty much just a wrapper for SDL. See More

Top Pro

Very easy to understand

The API is very straightforward. See More

Top Con

Messy documentation

The docs are messy, and some basic functions are infuriating to work out. There's even some places in the documentation where it's clearly wrong about how a method is called/what the arguments really do. See More

Top Pro

Good canvas system

Pygame has a drawing system that allows the user to create and draw on an unlimited number of canvases. See More

Top Con

Deathly slow

Top Con

Outdated

Pygame uses a really old version of SDL and is missing some of the features developed for SDL2. See More

Top Con

Nonexistent community

No good forums, wiki, or other ways to reach other Pygame developers. See More

Top Con

Pygame is a language, not a game engine

Physics, AI, networking, and input are not supported. See More

Top Con

Hasn't been updated in years

Hasn't been updated in years. See More

Specs

License:LGPL

Since pyglet is so tightly woven with OpenGL it allows the support of drawing in 3D. See More

73 14

score 16 · Answer 11

pyglet

Top Pro

3D support

Top Con

Small community/popularity

There is a decent amount of documentation and API to go along with pyglet, but in terms of community support there seems to be very little. See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Works with Windows, Linux, and OS X. See More

Top Pro

Written in pure Python

A small advantage, but being a core Python developer, it may be the best to stick to the roots and develop with pyglet as it is able to compile using other Python interpreters. See More

Specs

License:BSD

16 4

score 205 · Answer 12

Blender

Top Pro

Free and open source

Blender is licensed under the GPL. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Blender is not a very intuitive 3D modeling software. It has its own ways of doing things, and it is often hard to guess how to achieve simple tasks. See More

Top Pro

Python extensibility

Blender embeds Python 3, which can be used to write add-ons, tools, extend the interface, rig characters and automate tasks. See More

Top Con

Poor particle system

The Blender particle system can at times be a little limiting and finicky (and buggy) to get working. Even if it can get most straight forward jobs done, it is far from the most advanced system, and could benefit largely from advancements. See More

Top Pro

Powerful animation suite

Blender provides a full rigging system, and automates animation by interpolating between keyframe positions. See More

Top Pro

Wide import and export format support

Support lots of modern 3D formats including DAE and FBX - ideal for game developers. See More

Top Pro

Supports both low-poly and hi-poly modeling

Top Pro

Regular release schedule

Releases are made every ~3 months. See More

Top Pro

Has a good rendering engine

Blender runs the Cycles path tracing engine under the hood. Cycles is a very powerful rendering engine capable of full path tracing (light fall off, caustics, volumetrics). It is mostly compatible with OpenCL and CUDA rendering, and is implementing mycropolygon displacement features. See More

Top Pro

Keyboard shortcuts

Good keyboard shortcuts for everything. Keep your left hand on the keyboard and your right hand on the mouse. See More

Top Pro

It has sculpting and 3D painting features

Although blenders 3d painting and sculpting tools (mostly painting) are not at par with specialized software like Substance painter, z brush, or mari; it is more than capable of getting most jobs done if the user takes the time to learn and understand it. See More

Top Pro

Includes video editing & compositing tools

Blender's node-based compositor has comprehensive video sequencing and post-processing features. See More

Top Pro

Node based modeling support

Top Pro

Very useful for a freelancer

It offers a round solution (it covers many areas and professional fields) for a freelancer, for free, constantly updated, very polished, and allowing high quality results that clients do require. After some learning, it becomes very useful for professional work. See More

Top Pro

Coherent and streamlined workflow / internal use logic

The trick with Blender is to get used to its usage philosophy, as it keeps consistent through all the application. Once you get it, every feature or addition is learnt naturally, almost effortlessly. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows; Macintosh; Linux; FreeBSD

Desktop targets:Windows; Macintosh; Linux

205 46

score 34 · Answer 13

Esenthel

Top Pro

Quicker development by using the integrated code editor

Esenthel has a built-in code editor which drastically simplifies the programming process. Programming with Esenthel is based on C++, however, when using the code editor there's no need to make separate .cpp or .h files. Code can be written once and the editor will be separating definitions and declarations automatically in the background allowing for quicker development. See More

Top Con

Slow roadmap implementation

Bugs are fixed promptly, but the developer maintains a growing 'roadmap' of features with no indication to users of time frame and priority of feature implementation. See More

Top Pro

Can be easily extended

Built in pure C++ so it is easy to use and extend however needed. See More

Top Con

One-man developer

Although the complete engine is maintained by a single, highly-skilled individual, he can be limited to what he is able to see or perceive, and sometimes he doesn't recognize broken or incomplete features until he sees it firsthand and sometimes doesn't recognize valid reports from his users. But when he does recognize the gap in the engine's feature-set, he is quick to make adjustments and updates. See More

Top Pro

Engine issues are resolved quickly

The author is very device minded and able to handle any problem quickly and effectively and he has a good track record of listening to requests. See More

Top Con

Lack of in-depth tutorials

There are plenty of beginner coding tutorials which serve as a basic introduction for a new user to get up to speed, but once having passed that stage there is a real lack of free more advanced tutorials/examples/code snippets demonstrating the finer details of the vast and varied API functions. See More

Top Pro

Incredibly stable

The engine is rock solid and stable which, considering its extensive feature set, is a huge plus for game developers See More

Top Con

Lack of editing tools

Top Pro

Helpful and responsive forum

Top Con

Web support practically non-existing

Web support exists only on paper. The way it works is that Emscripten is used to convert an entire project to unreadable Javascript. That practically only works for very simple demos, no real-world projects. See More

Top Pro

Constant development and progress

New features or update to features are provided monthly. See More

Top Con

Expensive

Top Pro

Can import a wide variety of formats

3D - FBX, DAE, OBJ, 3DS, B3D, MS3D, BVH, ASE, PSK/PSA 2D - BMP, PNG, JPG, TGA, DDS, TIF, WEBP, PSD, ICO Videos - VP9, Theora Sounds - OGG, WAV, MP3 (once decoding patents expire) See More

Top Pro

Available on Steam

Esenthel is available on Steam. See More

Top Pro

Can be used for collaborative development

Esenthel comes with tools allowing for multiple developers to work on one project at the same time in collaborative mode. Every change made is instantly visible by other team members. See More

Top Pro

Attractive licensing

Free to try, with license as cheap as 9.50$/month (with yearly subscription), 11.40$/month (monthly subscription) or full source code license 228$/year. See More

Top Pro

Access to full source code

Having easy access to the full source makes it possible for any skilled developer to add features that a project requires. See More

Top Pro

Good support for Android and iOS

Android and iOS support is pretty stable and easy to develop on. It's possible to, for example, develop the entire game on Windows or Mac and then easily compile for Android and iOS. See More

Top Pro

Rock solid

Top Pro

Supports modern graphics and sound APIs

Graphics - DirectX 9/10/11, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, WebGL Sound - DirectSound, OpenAL, OpenSL See More

Top Pro

Oculus Rift native support

Oculus Rift API integrated into the engine platform. See More

Top Pro

Supports multiple compression libraries

LZMA, LZHAM, LZ4, ZLIB, Snappy, RLE See More

Top Pro

Supports in-app purchases

IAP support for both mobile and desktop devices. See More

Specs

Mobile targets:iOS; Android

Console targets:-

While it may not always have the best performance for a particular device or system, it's one of the few engines which consistently performs very well across different platforms. See More

34 14

score 415 · Answer 14

libGDX

Top Pro

Great performance across devices

Top Con

Not starter friendly

Even default applications fail to load in Android. It doesn't have any documentation on errors either. See More

Top Pro

Allows you to migrate from 2D to 3D within same framework

LibGDX supports both 2D and 3D game development. Allowing developers to migrate from 2D to 3D with ease without having to switch the engine they are using or having to learn a new API. See More

Top Con

Documentation could be better

Other than a brief installation / getting started overview, libGDX's documentation consists of an official wiki with several incomplete pages, and automated Javadocs. The community recognizes these shortcomings, and new users are encouraged to ask for help. See More

Top Pro

Lots of resources to learn from

Lots of references, tutorials and open source code to learn from. See More

Top Con

The project slowed down in development

The number of active developers has decreased, many open issues and pull requests. See More

Top Pro

Active and helpful community

The libGDX community, in the official libGDX forum is extremely helpful and approachable for any kind of question regardless of the its quality or difficulty. The forums themselves are a very helpful resource for any issue or guide simply by searching past posts in there. In addition to the forums, there's also the official #libgdx IRC channel on Freenode. See More

Top Con

Build system is clunky

LibGDX uses Gradle, which is very demanding of memory and makes IDEs freeze on anything if your computer is not powerful enough. See More

Top Pro

Interfacing with platform specific code

Sometimes it is necessary to access platform specific APIs, e.g., adding advertisement services or leaderboard functionality provided by frameworks. See More

Top Con

Does not create compiled code

LibGDX runs entirely on Java and does not create executable binaries. See More

Top Pro

Can use any JVM language

Since it's built with Java and runs on the JVM, any language that compiles to Java bytecode can be used to develop games with libGDX. See More

Top Con

A bit difficult to use

This engine is not well put together. Is made from various free modules each with their own peculiarities. At times it feels you need to learn a couple of libraries rather than just one. Is not an engine for beginners as it requires coding. Lots of coding. You need to be intermediate to advanced in Java to develop in LibGDX. See More

Top Pro

Fantastic UI toolkit (scene2d)

scene2d is a 2D scene graph, scene2d.ui is a UI toolkit on top of that. It enables very complex mobile and desktop UIs. See More

Top Pro

Free, open source & permissive license

libGDX uses the Apache License 2.0. Not only is libGDX free and open source but also it's license gives you a lot of power over the engine. As long as you provide a copy of the license, give credit, do not hold devs liable and do not use libGDX logo in any engine forks you can do pretty much anything you want. See More

Top Pro

Very easy to customize

Top Pro

Doesn't force a specific design

Unlike some engines, which only allow you to make your game in a few specific ways, libGDX allows you to design any type of game you wish as it is extremely customisable. See More

Top Pro

Support for 3rd party tools

libGDX has built in support for many 3rd party tools, including (but not limited to) Bullet Physics, Box2DLights and the well-praised Tiled Map Editor. See More

Top Pro

Uses Box2D

A Java port of the Box2D physics engine is included in libGDX. See More

Top Pro

Constantly improved

Top Pro

Across platform support

You can write once and run anywhere (Android, IOS, Desktop, Browser) also lately came with lib to deal with VR. See More

Top Pro

Lots of tutorials to get you going

Even though the official documentation might be lacking, there are many tutorials on YouTube for libGDX. See More

Top Pro

Excellent font rendering support

Very good tools for rendering fonts. See More

Top Pro

Focusing on object pool patterns, to control memory without pointers

Unlike Unity or other engine, it allows to optimize a language that uses garbage collector when using patterns of objects you can control the use of memory without needing a language like C / C ++, getting the same speed in a more productive language. See More

Top Pro

Similar to the Microsoft XNA framework

Old XNA users may like libGDX since it's API is actually very similar to XNA's. See More

Specs

License:Apache

Languages:Java

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux; HTML5

Except for basic FPS games getting anything done will require solid knowledge of C++, Flash, ActionScript and Lua. See More

415 125

score 59 · Answer 15

CryEngine

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Top Pro

DX12, Vulkan support

CryEngine 5.4 now supports DX12 and Vulkan See More

Top Con

No Mac OS X support

Top Pro

Dynamic water rendering

Cry Engine has realistic water effects that even simulate ocean physics. Features such as waves that respond to global wind, and dynamic water volume tessellation allow for some of the most realistic water effects available to a game developer. The engine also takes into account LOD (level of detail) on water geometry to allow it to stay performant for water at a distance. See More

Top Con

No GNU/Linux support

Top Pro

C# integration

CryEngine has some C#template and also C# based system to write your function/ideas in to your game. See More

Top Con

Hard to develop games other than FPS

Cryengine is a great engine to be used for developing an FPS (and it's relatively easy to do so). But if you want to develop another type of game, it requires at least advanced knowledge of C++ and Visual Studio. See More

Top Pro

Advanced volumetric cloud system

Cryengine has an optimized volumetric cloud system for Virtual Reality to give clouds full 3D spatial rendering. This ensures a high rendering quality with a minimal performance hit. See More

Top Con

Restrictive license

Cryengine is not restrictive anymore just more personalized. The model is Pay what you want and if you want more you get a membership with them. Or private support, help and lessons directly from the CryEngine team. See More

Top Pro

Realistic rendering of vegetation and landscapes

Where Cry Engine really shines is with rendering scenes of nature. The Crysis games feature incredibly detailed vegetation and weather effects and it's the Cry Engine that enables that. The engine has many features to create a cohesive realistic looking world. Dynamic water effects allow users to have beautiful oceans, fog and cloud effects allow for realistic weather, and a plethora of lighting effects optimized for natural looking scenes make Cry Engine one of the best engines for creating vast beautiful landscapes. By having all these features built together from the ground up, Cry Engine is capable of doing more complex effects more efficiently, than other engines that didn't have these effects planned from their inception. See More

Top Pro

Features allowing for realistic weather effects

Cry Engine has volumetric fog rendering which allows for realistic cloud shadows that actually render shadows onto the fog itself. Combined with their time of day system, it's possible to create incredibly realistic weather effects. On top of this, color grading allows user to post process pallets allowing them to change the color tone for different type weather, such as using a deep dark blue for rain. See More

Top Pro

All platforms, including next-gen consoles, are supported

Supports miltiple platforms including: Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Wii U, PC, iOS, and Android. See More

Top Pro

Disallows bad practices in asset creation

Simply by looking at the RC log when exporting can greatly improve your work. Cryengine doesn't handhold you constantly and helps greatly with avoiding bad practices in asset creation. See More

Top Pro

Online marketplace available

The Cryengine marketplace is an online marketplace which enables developers to access and use individual assets from thousands of materials, sounds and 3D objects created by the community. Even Crytek's own library assets are available there. See More

Top Pro

VR support

Cryengine (starting on Cryengine V) has Virtual Reality support. Developers can create games with VR support for multiple platforms: PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. See More

Top Pro

There is already a built-in AI

It can shoot, walk on patrol points, can see the player and so on. See More

Top Pro

Versatile flow diagram script model

Flow graphs resemble flowcharts where each box represents a function or value, with connections between them representing program flow. This provides a better at-a-glance indication of game logic than a simple list of events, and makes complex behaviors easier to accomplish. See More

Top Pro

Dedicated channel for Q&A

Crytek has launched a dedicated Q&A forum for everything Cryengine related. It's called Cryengine Answers and it's a community dedicated to sharing and answering any question related to Cryengine. See More

Specs

Desktop targets:Windows, Linux

Mobile targets:iOS, Android

Console targets:Xbox One, PS4

The free ShiVa Web version is limited to web publication, but otherwise has the same capabilities as the $200 ShiVa Basic. Upgrading to the $1000 ShiVa Advanced brings tools geared toward team development and professional releases, such as integrated SVN support and profiling tools. All versions are royalty-free. See More

59 26

score 24 · Answer 16

ShiVa

Top Pro

Straightforward pricing with capable free option

Top Con

ShiVa 2.0 has been worked on for nearly 4 years!

After 4 years of development and promises ShiVa 2.0 has JUST gotten into beta access. See More

Top Pro

Lua can be used for fast coding and C++ for optimization

All game logic can be scripted in Lua. ShiVa also provides a cross-compiler from Lua to C++, allowing Lua scripts to be further optimized and compiled to native code for performance. See More

Top Con

Outdated

The current version 1.9.2 of ShiVa was released in December 2013. While there is active development on version 2.0, its beta is available only to paid licensees of the current version. See More

Top Pro

Great support

In addition to the help forum, Basic and Advanced licensees have chat and direct email access to the developers. See More

Top Con

High Cost

Costs $200 for the basic version alone, which allows you to publish to any format other than web. The Team/Pro version costs $1000 See More

Top Pro

Native c++ export

Top Pro

C++ plugin development options

Top Pro

Great performance on mobile

Smaller platform specific executables, native code export, good FPS even for complex scenes. ShiVa has great advanced optimization features, including PVS and LOD, decreasing number of drawcalls even in complex level. Platform specific profiles allow developers to customize size and compression level for textures and test those settings directly in editor. Other engine features, like lightning baking, mesh combining and GPU skinning will boost performance too. See More

Specs

Mobile targets:Windows Phone; iOS; Android; BlackBerry 10; BlackBerry Tablet OS; Marmalade; WebOS

Console targets:Xbox 360; Xbox One; Wii; PlayStation 3; PlayStation 4; PlayStation Vita

Scripting language biddings are available via swig, supposedly any swig target could be used If you are okay with building, and probably maintaining, the project for your own needs then you may be able to build bindings for your favorite scripting platform. As noted in a slant "con", there are no binary releases, including no prebuilt bindings. See More

24 16

score 2 · Answer 17

Crystal Space 3D

Top Pro

Scripting language bindings (via swig) python, perl, tcl

Top Con

No binary releases.

Expect to compile this from source if your want to play with it. Ubuntu has a package for it, but that package appears to be missing it's scripting language bindings. I expect the build is also quite old and i fear may be dropped in coming Ubuntu releases. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform

Runs on all major desktop platforms. See More

Specs

Supported languages:C++; Java; Perl; Python

2 3

score 29 · Answer 18

Adventure Game Studio

Top Pro

Easy to learn tool

Good for newbie game creators. Can be used for prototyping: on several occasions was used to make a demo/experimental version before creating a final commercial product on different engine. See More

Top Con

Development is slow

Further development of the engine is currently slow, done by only few people in their free time. See More

Top Pro

Completely free and open source

AGS is licensed under Artistic License 2.0 and is completely free for use for creating both freeware and commercial games. See More

Top Con

Assets cover almost exclusively adventure/quest genre

The features, script functions and game templates are very biased towards adventure/quest genre. The non-adventure games were made in AGS (2D shooters, platformers, turn-based strategies), but their development usually requires to write everything from scratch. See More

Top Pro

Relatively well documented

Besides the manual there are multiple text and video tutorials and code samples written by community. See More

Top Con

No visual editor for scripts

You have to actually write all scripts yourself. See More

Top Pro

Used for a number of high-profile commercial releases

Adventure Game Studio has been used to develop games such as "Resonance", "Blackwell" series, "Gemini Rue", "Primordia". See More

Top Con

AGS Script isn't as full-featured as other scripting languages

Its own scripting language has lower syntax capabilities compared to modern script languages. See More

Top Pro

Lots of assets available

An extensive library of game templates and script modules accumulated over years. You can construct a simple game in hours (if you know what you are doing). See More

Top Con

Workflow is closely coupled with the editor

Workflow is very tied to the editor and custom file formats, which can cause problems for bigger, more professional projects (interfering with source control, parallel development, automated builds, etc) See More

Top Pro

Friendly community

An old, big and active community which would support newcomers not only in learning basics of the engine, but can help with every aspect of game making (including art, voice acting, moral support, etc). See More

Top Con

Graphics renderer is a bit dated

Graphics renderer is not well optimized for high-resolution games and complex effects. See More

Top Con

Uses dated tech

Engine is based on the old technologies, which impose number of limitations and may cause problems on latest systems (level of annoyance varies depending on your priorities). See More

Top Con

Natively supports only 2D

2D only native support, 3D could be supported with plugins though. See More

Specs

License:Artistic License 2.0

Languages:AGS Script

Desktop targets:Windows; Linux

The software itself is very easy to learn and use for beginners. See More

29 2

score 8 · Answer 19

BYOND

Top Con

Only meant for multiplayer

Top Pro

Easy to use

Top Con

Exclusive programming language

The language is known as DM, and is modified using Dream Maker. It is an object oriented, interpreted language, which closely resembles C++, Java and PHP. More information available in the DM Guide. See More

Top Pro

In active development

BYOND is in active development and updates are released constantly. See More

Top Pro

Helpful community

BYOND's community is relatively large and extremely helpful. Any question a beginner or an experienced user may have is quickly answered. See More

Specs

License:Proprietary

Price:Free to use. Free to publish your games.

Languages:DM