When comparing Leadwerks vs ShiVa, the Slant community recommends Leadwerks for most people. In the question“What are the best 3D game engines?” Leadwerks is ranked 31st while ShiVa is ranked 35th. The most important reason people chose Leadwerks is:
Good API tutoials, workshop elements which can be loaded from steam.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Very good entity system, did have GUI functions, easy to use terrain editor with vegetation system.
Good API tutoials, workshop elements which can be loaded from steam.
Pro Both Windows and Linux supported
Pro Built-in level editor
Has an acceptable 3D map editor that is easy to use.
Pro Versatile flow diagram script model
Leadwerks's flowgraphs resemble flowcharts where each box represents a function or value, with connections between them representing program flow. This provides a better at-a-glance indication of game logic than a simple list of events, and makes complex behaviors easier to accomplish.
Pro Community forum offers plenty of support
It makes game developing much easier if you have someone backing you up when you run into a bug or other issues, and get replies within hours .
Pro Decently sized library of tutorials for both Lua and C++
Pro Very clean and easy C++ API
Pro Lua scripting support
Pro Reasonably priced
Standard edition of Leadwerks costs 92,99€. Additionally, it often goes on sale on Steam.
Pro C++ scripting support
Pro Terrain editor
The terrain editor allows sculpting, paint, vegetation placement and importing of external maps. Especially the painting is done very well and can lead quickly to very professional looking results.
Pro Easy to use API and scripting language
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 Little to no support
This product relies on community support, although some members are helpful and quite approachable they don't like to share their secrets with people that are new to programming.
The product is sold as a Full featured platform but it seems to more in the Alpha stage of development as a lot of the good aspects where taken out in previous versions.
Con Has a track record of broken promises
Con Forums are poorly run and censored
Con Highly misleading advertising
Con Only prefabs made with the Leadwerks IDE could be used.
The two main problems for me is that C++ is not as easy to use like LUA. The IDE should also support C++. The secons is that only prefabs can be used which are made with the IDE. So you can not easy made a game that can be modded by the user.
Con Weak out-of-the-box AI
The only AI movement function is going in a straight line.
Con Very buggy
Leadworks is a not complete, it's a work in progress. As such many parts of the engine are clunky, especially the level editor.
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