When comparing Leadwerks vs Stride, the Slant community recommends Stride for most people. In the question“What are the best 3D game engines?” Stride is ranked 5th while Leadwerks is ranked 31st. The most important reason people chose Stride is:
Looking nearly as good as Unreal Engine 4, but rendering significantly faster.
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 Good looking and fast
Looking nearly as good as Unreal Engine 4, but rendering significantly faster.
Pro No royalties or licensing fees
Pro Projects are normal Visual Studio solutions
No proprietary project format, so it works with all the official .NET tooling.
Pro Supports Visual Studio
Pro Very modern render engine
Pro Powerful 3D Rendering Engine
Supports Vulkan. You can achieve good quality as in Unity3d and Unreal Engine
Pro Straightforward editor
Stride provides a simple and clean working environment for designing games.
Pro Community seems friendly and is growing
Pro Engine AND Scripting are both C#
Since the engine is written in the same language as the scripting, there is no weird mix of technologies as other engines have.
Pro Supports Vulkan
Currently the only well known open-source game engine that supports Vulkan, and probably one of the only.
Pro Easy to learn and use C#
Pro Multiple Starter Templates
The engine comes packed with multiole example projects to help you get started.
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 No terrain editor
Unless you like working on planes, there is no terrain support.
Con Editor is Windows only
Since version 1.7, Linux can be targeted for runtime. The editor for the engine is available only to Windows though.
Con Small user community
Unity and UE have a vast amount of user community.
Con Does not currently support Playstation or Switch games
Con Iteration may be slower than with other engines due to longer "build" times when certain changes are made
Con Shader system require's overhaul
Shader's are not easy to get to grips with and Stride's shader system. Needs overhauling for easier use.