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Add to SafariWhen comparing ShiVa vs Crystal Space 3D, the Slant community recommends ShiVa for most people. In the question“What are the best 3D game engines?” ShiVa is ranked 35th while Crystal Space 3D is ranked 44th. The most important reason people chose ShiVa is:
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.
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 Scripting language bindings (via swig) python, perl, tcl
Scripting language biddings are available via swig, supposedly any swig target could be used If you are okay with building, and probably maintaining, the project for your own needs then you may be able to build bindings for your favorite scripting platform.
As noted in a slant "con", there are no binary releases, including no prebuilt bindings.
Pro Cross platform
Runs on all major desktop platforms.
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 No binary releases.
Expect to compile this from source if your want to play with it.
Ubuntu has a package for it, but that package appears to be missing it's scripting language bindings. I expect the build is also quite old and i fear may be dropped in coming Ubuntu releases.
