When comparing Starling vs WiMi5, the Slant community recommends WiMi5 for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” WiMi5 is ranked 70th while Starling is ranked 78th. The most important reason people chose WiMi5 is:
WiMi5 integrates a powerful visual scripting solution based on Blackboxes that allows you to create the logic flow of the game. You don't have to code (if you don't want) but you can also do it. WiMi5's actions and behaviors 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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Lightweight
Starling is just 12k lines of code and doesn't try to do everything — but what it does, as efficient as possible.
Pro Feathers User Interface Components
With Feathers, you can easily add great user interfaces to your games — or even create business apps with Starling.
Pro Free and open source
Starling is available for free with code available on GitHub.
Pro Strong community support
Forum is always active with knowledgeable developers and with lot of inside info, and post mortems.
Pro Works with Flash
With UI, you can design it in Flash Professional (powerful 2D editor), export to swf file, use GAF convert swf file to gaf file, finnally, load gaf file to Starling. GAF can convert a lot of file swf to one atlas. Alway use same resource in design files (fla) to optimize atlas size, avoid duplicate asset in atlas.
You can use flash to create animation for starling.
Pro Hardware accelerated rendering
Let the GPU do the rendering, the CPU has more important tasks to do.
Pro Cross Platform
It can be exported to web flash player, iOS, Android, Windows, and OS X
Pro Works with AIR's native extensions
Using AIR's native extensions any native code that can be written can be run and used by the game engine.
Pro Constantly updated
New features are added regularly.
Pro Better performance than most alternatives
Starling can run more animated display objects than Unity2D and many others frameworks at 60 fps.
Pro Versatile flow diagram script model
WiMi5 integrates a powerful visual scripting solution based on Blackboxes that allows you to create the logic flow of the game. You don't have to code (if you don't want) but you can also do it. WiMi5's actions and behaviors 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.
Pro Integrated servers
WiMi5 provides integrated back-end services, with tools available to save game session data, manage rankings, etc.
Pro Free development
The WiMi5 platform is free to use, supported by post-publication royalties.
Pro Built in monetisation tools
WiMi5 provides features to manage in-app purchases and micropayments. Virtual Goods management is integrated into the Logic Editor.
Pro Publication partnerships
WiMi5 maintains partnerships allowing simultaneous publication to a number of Web and mobile stores, all managed through the WiMi5 platform.
Games can also be downloaded and publish it wherever you want: in your own server or with your own partners. Just check the Download feature in the settings of your game.
Cons
Con Poor text/font support
It supports only 4 features for text rendering:
- bitmap font with batching.
1.1. basic distance fields with support for outline and filters via MeshStyle.
1.2 the new multichannel distance field, the ultimate solution for bitmap font rendering. - Draw and upload texture in runtime
So every new text field required texture uploads or vertex/idnex buffer uploads.
skipUnchanchagedFrames keep the backbuffer static for scenes without changes between frames, leveraging a good rendering optimization.
Con Engine supported mainly by one man
Its open source but in most cases community features or pull request are canceled.
Con 30% royalties
For filling the engine, publisher, and back-end service roles, WiMi5 takes 30% of game revenues.