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Add to SafariShiVa vs LITIENGINE
When comparing ShiVa vs LITIENGINE, the Slant community recommends LITIENGINE for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” LITIENGINE is ranked 87th while ShiVa is ranked 92nd. The most important reason people chose LITIENGINE is:
Clean and well-designed API that is easily discoverable. Comes with a simple tool (utiLITI) for editing levels based on .tmx maps.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Easy to use
Clean and well-designed API that is easily discoverable. Comes with a simple tool (utiLITI) for editing levels based on .tmx maps.
Pro Free an open-source
The engine is published under the MIT license and is entirely free to use.
Pro they are developing a beta for mac and linux
Pro Active and helpful community
Has an active forum and discord channel to discuss topics about the engine.
Cons
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Con Outdated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
Con Limited to Desktop
Games made with the engine only run on Windows, Linux and MacOS. There is no support for Android or HTML, yet.
