When comparing Orx vs Moai SDK, the Slant community recommends Orx for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Orx is ranked 5th while Moai SDK is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose Orx is:
Powerful config system that makes orx data-driven and provides an easy to use load/save system.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Powerful config system
Powerful config system that makes orx data-driven and provides an easy to use load/save system.
Pro Friendly community
Good friendly development community ready to help each other with tips and advice for setting up and best practices.
Pro Automatic hot-loading of resources
Automatic hot-loading of resources upon modification on disk, shortens drastically iteration times.
Pro High performance
Written in C with high emphasis on memory and CPU efficiency.
Pro Supports desktop and mobile
Supports Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, iOS and Android.
Pro Data configuration
Orx is a Data Driven engine that greatly reduces required code. You can configure object definitions, bodies, cameras, sound, animation, event tracks, etc.
Pro Custom shader support
GLSL code can be added straight into data configuration files and can be applied to any texture: background or objects whivh allows for some amazing effects. All GLSL versions are supported, again by providing the shader language version in your configuration file.
Parameters are supported and values over time for shader animation.
Pro Flexible clock system
Clock system that provides time consistency and allows time stretching + high precision timers
Pro Flexible and simple FX
Color and translation FX are simple to configure and apply to objects.
Pro Good animation engine
Includes a chaining graph & custom animation events for synchronization.
Pro Free and open source
Uses the zlib license. Lets you use Orx for free for any kind of projects, even for commercial ones.
Pro Input controls and binding
All input devices are fully supported: Joysticks, Mouse, Gamepad, Keyboard and Touchscreen. Multiple physical devices and be mapped the same binding.
Pro Excellent results on performance benchmark
Rated the fastest engine in the OpenFL’s BunnyMark since October 2015.
Pro Great audio support
Samples for sound effects, or streams for music. All sounds can be groups via audio buses just like in a typical DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).
All sounds can be spatial relative to the camera.
Pro Viewport scheme allowing multiple views
Camera/viewport scheme allowing multiple views displayed with camera translation, zoom and rotation.
Pro Good render support
Fragment (pixel) shader support, render to texture, MRT, easy composition and custom rendering support.
Pro Easy post-processing/compositing for complex visual effects
Pro Integrated runtime profiler
Integrated runtime profiler (with graphical display) to easily spot which parts of your game need to be optimized.
Pro Collision handling and rigid body physics
Pro Screenshot capture tool
Supports .bmp, .png, .jpg, .tga and .dds
Pro Multi-Threading
Pro Great IDE Support
Out of the box Windows support for:
- Visual Studio
- Codelite
- CodeBlocks
- gmake
Out of the box Mac support for:
- XCode
- Codelite
- gmake
Out of the box Linux support for:
- Codelite
- CodeBlocks
- gmake
Pro Well-supported C++ wrapper
Orx provides a excellent c++ wrapper for object oriented design, called: orx/Scroll. You can, of course, roll your own.
Pro Fast
Because it uses Lua + C++.
Pro Gives you total control
You can use your own custom shaders and extend the language with C++. MOAI doesn't give you everything, instead it gives you the tools you need to develop any game you want.
Pro Full source code is available
So it is extendable with C++
Pro Easy-to-use particle engine
Uses a limited subset of Lua
Pro Uses Lua, with LuaJIT where possible
Pro Is used by many pro developers
Moai SDK is used by popular developers including Double Fine for their mobile game, Middle Manager of Justice, and for their Kickstarter hit, Broken Age(formerly, Double Fine Adventure.) It was also used to create the popular mobile game Bubble Ball 2.
This proves that this engine can be used to make fully-featured and fun games.
Pro API interfaces
Has options for development like Hanappe and Rapanui, providing a different way to interact with the engine.
Pro Helpful community
The Moai SDK Forum is active and users will go to great extents to answer queries, post code snippets, beta test, and even purchase and give feedback on each others' games.
Pro Helpful and detailed documentation
Although the Moai SDK is very advanced and uses complicated features, the documentation wiki thoroughly and clearly explains how to use these features, such as the Moai Cloud(a service that provides web services for your game), and multiple ways to build from source.
Cons
Con Feature discovery and explanation could be better
Some features are not well explained / highlighted: for example, unless you use the interactive project initialization, you have to go over the tutorials and examples in the wiki to learn that there is an optional C++ layer, Scroll, developed on top of the C API. Similarly, some major information are missing from the website, wiki and Doxygen documention, and are left for the users to discover in source headers and INI template files, or by searching the forum (e.g. the 0,0 coordinate being the center of the screen and not top left, the list of all Orx scalar types and their use, etc).
Con No network support
Con Not for beginning developers
The Moai SDK has very advanced features which allow it to create powerful games. A drawback from this is that it is not very suitable for beginners.
Con Not necessarily tested or stable
Con Scarce documentation
Since it is a minimalist framework there is not that much documentation, but if you are used to reading API references and source code you are good to go!
Con Development has ceased
The last update was over a year ago. Users should not expect things to still work on future OS versions unless they're ready to fix them yourself.