When comparing ShiVa vs NeoAxis Engine, the Slant community recommends NeoAxis Engine for most people. In the question“What are the best 3D game engines?” NeoAxis Engine is ranked 32nd while ShiVa is ranked 35th. The most important reason people chose NeoAxis Engine is:
You can use the engine for any commercial products and keep all the profits since NeoAxis does not ask for any royalties.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion 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 Royalty free
You can use the engine for any commercial products and keep all the profits since NeoAxis does not ask for any royalties.
Pro Completely free
Pro Simple interface
You can learn how to use Neoaxis in a few days.
Pro Excellent visual tools, map editor and resource editor
You can easily create maps/scenes and add custom objects with physics and animations in a few minutes.
Pro Lot of maps and game-modes already built-in
Has about 30 built-in maps with different game modes which can be opened by the map editor and their source code can be edited.
Pro Good IDE support
Supports Visual Studio, SharpDevelop or MonoDevelop.
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 The developers do not actively communicate with the community
Not only have the developers driven the community away, they have actively closed the forum.
News articles have not had any changes since 2016, and the last news article still has links to the now removed forum.
Con Windows-only
NeoAxis Engine is Windows-only.
Con No community
As of 2016, the creator has completely destroyed his own community in order to silence any criticism from developers.
Con Lack of tutorials
Unfortunately, the wiki doesn't contain many programming tutorials, and the source code itself isn't very self-documented. Creating new gamemodes or AI will require lot of research for beginners.