When comparing Genome2D vs ShiVa, the Slant community recommends Genome2D for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” Genome2D is ranked 47th while ShiVa is ranked 92nd. The most important reason people chose Genome2D is:
It's the fastest gpu-based framework out there for flash. It's beautifully optimised. It has very low rendering latency, low level OpenGL calls that other tech simply cannot do (ie Unity) due to Stage3D, and thus can render a lot more data quicker
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Lightning fast
It's the fastest gpu-based framework out there for flash. It's beautifully optimised. It has very low rendering latency, low level OpenGL calls that other tech simply cannot do (ie Unity) due to Stage3D, and thus can render a lot more data quicker
Pro Cross-platform mobile, desktop and web
Supports Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, Web and native Flash.
And with the HTML5 export, it also potentially supports development for the Wii U :)
Pro Haxe!
Haxe is a strictly typed programming language that saves development time but still compiles high performance executables, and can build for tons of different platforms (flash, c++, html5, java, c#, etc.)
Pro Access to direct draw features
Has access to direct draw features so you can make you own rendering structures (scene graphs etc).
Pro Automatic dynamic batching
Automatically batch geometries with dynamic batching techniques (by using constant buffers).
Pro Component based architecture
Pro Straightforward pricing with capable free option
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.
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.
Pro Great support
In addition to the help forum, Basic and Advanced licensees have chat and direct email access to the developers.
Pro Native c++ export
Pro C++ plugin development options
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.
Cons
Con Lacks documentation
The API documentation is minimal, there's not many tutorials and the ones that are there are very small and only cover the basics. If you want to learn how to properly use it, you have to ask the community or read the source code and figure it out.
Con Not too many games to showcase it
Con Slow development rate
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.
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.
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