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4.7 star rating
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Game Development
3D
Game Engine
What are the best non-copyleft open-source 3D engines?
6
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Considered
32
User
Recs.
Dec 7, 2023
Last
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6
Options
Considered
Best non-copyleft open-source 3D engines
Price
Platforms
Popular Language Bindings
--
Godot
-
Windows, Linux, Mac, Android
GDScript, C#, C++
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Ogre3D
Free
-
-
--
Panda3D
FREE
-
-
--
jMonkey3
0.00
-
-
--
Stride
FREE
-
-
See Full List
--
Godot
My Rec
ommendation
for
Godot
My Recommendation for
Godot
All
27
Pros
22
Cons
4
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Easily expanded scripting system
With 3.0's addition of NativeScript and PluginScript via GDNative, developers can easily define bindings for new scripting languages. In addition to the primarily supported C++, GDScript, VisualScript, and C# languages, the community has contributed D, Nim, and Python as well with more on the way.
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Top
Con
•••
Difficult to optimize
Godot has an OOP architecture. Everything is an object internally and data is spread among many classes, thus it's difficult to optimize (i.e. not cache friendly, difficuly to vectorize or paralellize, etc). Read about "Data Oriented Design" for more info about the problems and solutions.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac, Android
Popular Language Bindings:
GDScript, C#, C++
Top
Pro
•••
Creating editor tools is a breeze
Godot Engine is itself a Godot game. By adding the "tool" keyword to the top of a script, you can design extensions for the editor itself INSIDE the editor. Integrating these editor scripts into a bundled plugin for sharing is extremely easy to do.
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Top
Con
•••
C++ Engine API not very friendly
The base C++ code from Godot is not documented, it's hard to set it up, to compile and hard to extend, it could use better programming standards.
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Top
Pro
•••
Simple and readable codebase
The engine's source code is easy to read and understand with a self-documenting approach to code design. You don't have to wait months or years for other people to fix an engine bug that is important to your game. Often times, you can spend an hour or two of your own time to fix whatever problems you encounter yourself.
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Top
Con
•••
Tileset management could be more efficient
The tileset creation and management is lacking common features found in more developed tileset managers. However, it features support for Tiled - the only downside being that it is an external program.
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Top
Pro
•••
Built-in documentation linked to the internal ScriptEditor
The editor has a fully searchable index of class API documentation for everything the engine offers (NOT just a web interface). You can easily open the documentation for any class by Ctrl-clicking the class's name in the in-engine text editor for scripts.
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Top
Con
•••
No built-in way to import atlases
Godot does not have an easy and automatic way to import atlases created by other tools. However, there are plugins that can be used to import atlases from other engines.
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Top
Pro
•••
Friendly towards Version Control Systems
The engine is build not only to support version control but to really use it. Scene files for example which usually get compiled into some sort of unreadable data stay in a text format - that way you can actually see your changes in a version control system like Git.
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Top
Pro
•••
Internationalization of the editor
You can change the language shown in menus. Godot translations: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/godot-engine/godot/
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Top
Pro
•••
Really good community
The community is great and really cares about the engine. It is easy to get help and to be part of Godot's future.
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Top
Pro
•••
Drag & drop interface
Many parts of the editor allow you to drag & drop, which makes working with assets and scene trees a joy.
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Top
Pro
•••
Instancing and node concept makes sense
The node and the instancing concept work very well and helps developers to structure content efficiently.
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Top
Pro
•••
The list of supported languages is growing
Officially, Godot supported languages for now will be GDScript, C#(Mono), VisualScript and C++.
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Top
Pro
•••
Easy to learn scripting language
Godot has their own scripting language called GDscript. The scripting language is easy to learn with python-like format, but it is not python. More like a mix of Javascript, PHP, C++. It's very powerful, easy to learn, and it's free of unnecessary things because it's designed for this purpose. It can be used to add custom behaviors to any object by extending it with scripting, using the built-in editor with syntax highlighting and code completion. A built-in debugger with breakpoints and stepping can be used and graphs for possible bottlenecks can be checked.
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Top
Pro
•••
Fun to use
An important aspect that can't be grasped without using the engine for a few days. The Interface is evolving nicely and making games is just fun.
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Top
Pro
•••
User friendly UI for all your team
Non-programmers (musicians, artists, etc) can join the development easily.
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Top
Pro
•••
Editor and runtime are fully cross-platform
You can run Godot on all 3 major operating systems (Windows/Mac/Linux) and build your game to all available platforms from each without any platform-specific work needed. All platforms including Linux are supported first class.
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Top
Pro
•••
Lightweight
The executable is portable and less than 40 MB in size.
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Top
Pro
•••
Free and open source
Godot is licensed under MIT license. Anyone can grab the source from https://github.com/godotengine/godot, and compile the engine themselves.
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Top
Pro
•••
Fully dedicated 2D engine, no hacks
Godot has a mature 2D engine with many features used by modern 2D games.
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Top
Pro
•••
Can be deployed to multiple platforms
Deploy games to desktops (Windows/OS X/Linux), smartphones (iOS/Android/BlackBerry), and the web (HTML5 via Emscripten).
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Top
Pro
•••
Integrated animation editor
Every property can be animated.
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Top
Pro
•••
Unified game editor interface
All the game developing work is done inside one program: the engine editor. This feature is something only high end engines have. Even the scripting is done in the same program. No need for Eclipse or other front end editors.
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Top
Pro
•••
Built-in physics
Add physics to 2D and 3D scenes, through rigid and static bodies, characters, raycasts, vehicles and more.
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Top
Pro
•••
Under constant development
This engine barely released one year ago has more than 1000 forks on github and about 100 developers. Not only that just a bit of browsing trough issues you will quickly find out the dev community loves new esp free technology and does not shy away from completely rewriting parts of the engine. The audio engine is being completely rewritten to use threads and so forth.
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Recommend
7
1
--
Ogre3D
My Rec
ommendation
for
Ogre3D
My Recommendation for
Ogre3D
All
4
Experiences
1
Pros
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Platform support
Direct3D 9 & 11, Metal, Vulkan, OpenGL (incl. ES2, ES3 and OGL3+) and WebGL (Emscripten) support.
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RickZeeland's Experience
OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine) is an open-source scene-oriented, flexible 3D engine.
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Specs
Dev platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
Desktop targets:
Windows, Linux, Mac
Mobile targets:
Android, iOS
Languages:
C++
Top
Pro
•••
Good user community
It's been around a long time and still has a very strong user community.
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Free
Recommend
6
--
Panda3D
My Rec
ommendation
for
Panda3D
My Recommendation for
Panda3D
All
1
Specs
Specs
Dev platforms:
Windows; OSX; Linux; FreeBSD
Desktop targets:
Windows; OSX; Linux
Mobile targets:
-
Supported languages:
C++; Python
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FREE
Recommend
2
--
jMonkey3
My Rec
ommendation
for
jMonkey3
My Recommendation for
jMonkey3
All
10
Pros
9
Specs
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.
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Specs
Dev platforms:
Windows; OSX; Linux
Desktop targets:
Windows; OSX; Linux
Mobile targets:
Android; iOS
Supported languages:
Java
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Has everything
jMonkey3 handles input from computers and mobile devices. It handles networking, physics, rendering, terrain, and cinematics.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Top
Pro
•••
Ease of extensibility
Engine is modifiable.
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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.
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Top
Pro
•••
Free and open-source
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.
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0.00
Recommend
5
1
--
Stride
My Rec
ommendation
for
Stride
My Recommendation for
Stride
All
15
Pros
12
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Supports Vulkan
Currently the only well known open-source game engine that supports Vulkan, and probably one of the only.
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Top
Con
•••
Editor is Windows only
Since version 1.7, Linux can be targeted for runtime. The editor for the engine is available only to Windows though.
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Specs
Dev platforms:
Windows
Desktop targets:
Windows, OSX, Linux
Mobile targets:
Windows Phone, iOS, Android
Supported languages:
C#
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Engine AND Scripting are both C#
Since the engine is written in the same language as the scripting, there is no weird mix of technologies as other engines have.
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Top
Con
•••
Small user community
Unity and UE have a vast amount of user community.
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Top
Pro
•••
Community seems friendly and is growing
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Top
Pro
•••
Very modern render engine
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Top
Pro
•••
No royalties or licensing fees
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Top
Pro
•••
Good looking and fast
Looking nearly as good as Unreal Engine 4, but rendering significantly faster.
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Top
Pro
•••
Powerful 3D Rendering Engine
Supports Vulkan. You can achieve good quality as in Unity3d and Unreal Engine
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Top
Pro
•••
Straightforward editor
Paradox provides a simple and clean working environment for designing games.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Supports Visual Studio
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Projects are normal Visual Studio solutions
No proprietary project format, so it works with all the official .NET tooling.
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Top
Pro
•••
Easy to learn and use C#
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Top
Pro
•••
Multiple Starter Templates
The engine comes packed with multiole example projects to help you get started.
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FREE
Recommend
5
--
Irrlicht
My Rec
ommendation
for
Irrlicht
My Recommendation for
Irrlicht
All
7
Pros
5
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Lightweight
Especially if you compile it yourself, it can be very light in memory usage.
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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.
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Specs
Dev platforms:
Windows; OSX; Linux
Desktop targets:
Windows; OSX; Linux
Mobile targets:
iOS; Android
Supported languages:
C++
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Free and open source
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Top
Pro
•••
Lots of examples and docs
Many working examples to study and learn. You can easily experiment modifying an example code to grok in full how the engine works. In the beginning of your learning curve, the example code will offer you many useful code snippets.
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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.
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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.
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0.00
Recommend
5
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