Polycode vs Irrlicht

Polycode uses Lua and C++ to create native applications for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Mobile platforms are planned for the future.

Polycode is free and open source (released under the MIT license). The source code is freely available on GitHub.

Recently, the editor and its integrated tools have been released in compiled form. Features coding and scene editing in one application.

Polycode is distributed in a C++ form as well as with IDE. And there's an additional LUA-based scripting system.

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.

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.

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

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.

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