When comparing Clickteam Fusion 2.5 vs libGDX, the Slant community recommends libGDX for most people. In the question“What are the best 2D game engines?” libGDX is ranked 14th while Clickteam Fusion 2.5 is ranked 31st. The most important reason people chose libGDX is:
Lots of references, tutorials and open source code to learn from.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Permissive runtime license agreement
With the Developer edition of the product, there are absolutely no limits or requirements when selling your creations. You are free to make as much money as you want (this applies to the Standard edition too), and you don't have to include any logos or credits in your creations.
Pro Upgrade discounts
If you buy Fusion 2.5, and later decide you want to upgrade to the Developer version, or in the case of moving from MMF2 to F2.5, the company offers upgrade discounts.
Pro Export native runtime for all platforms
Be it Windows EXE, Android APK, iOS, HTML5 and Flash SWF, Fusion 2.5 is able to export your game to fast, truly native runtime for specified platform with a click.
Pro Intuitive drag & drop interface & visual event editor
CF2.5 uses a straightforward drag & drop editor that allows for easy level, animation and event creation without having to write a single line of code.
Pro Developers work so closely with the user base
Dedicated Bug tracking system linked to user forum for ease of access.
Pro Free version
A free version is available for download here.
Pro Can also create Windows applications
CF allows creating Windows applications. Additionally, due to hundreds of available extensions, the process is quick.
Pro Box2D physics engine included on all platforms
Clickteam Fusion 2.5 brings to you the box2D physics engine.
Pro Community-driven extensive object repository
Click Fusion has a great selection of extensions submitted by the community.
The extensions cover a variety of game-building tasks including parsing of strings using up to two alternating delimiters using the "Tokenizer Object", generating random numbers without reusing them from multiple lists which can be refilled and distinctively replenished with the "Random Multipool Object" among others.
Pro Not only is it the best, it is the original
This software has been around since 1994 (then called Klik & Play) and is still going very strong. Also, one of the founders of Clickteam was the developer of STOS BASIC and AMOS BASIC for the Atari ST and Amiga computers.
Pro A great unofficial community for Spanish-speaking users
A great community in Spanish where you will receive all the help you need to solve your doubts and problems. You'll also find all kinds of resources and materials in Spanish.
Una gran comunidad en español en donde recibirás toda la ayuda que necesites para solucionar tus dudas y problemas. También encontrarás todo tipo de recursos, tutoriales y ejemplos en español.
Pro Balanced feature set
An excellent compromise between ease of use, power, flexibility and ability to export to different platforms. Easy to learn for beginners with the ability to make complex things, of course, at the expense of a larger effort. Good rapid application development tool for making 2D games.
Pro Supportive, passionate community
Any time you have a question or a problem, the community and the software developers are there to help you out either on forums or steam. The devs repond quickly to private messages or instantly on ClickConverse (chat). Additionally, many users have support sites with open source examples and tutorials.
Pro Well-optimized
Runs well under high object numbers, particularly on PC and iOS thanks to hardware acceleration.
Pro Great IRL user events
Clickteam holds user conventions for customers to come along, meet the staff and hang out with people who they've met online. This furthers the community spirit which is so prevalent around Clickteam's products and it's a fantastic weekend.
Pro It is very powerful for making 2D games, yet requires no traditional programming experience and very little to no higher math
There is no 'easy button' program that will make a good game for you with no hard work, and this software is no exception to that, but it does make the process easier. With the option of coding in either a spreadsheet style editor or a list style editor, the event based programming language reads more like English than traditional programming languages. This has made it ideal for me as I have a very hard time understanding traditional programming. I would say this is the perfect solution for people that want to make 2D games but who don't have a very mathematically oriented mind, and think more visually. Just like anything it can take some getting used to, but after following some tutorials and tinkering with it, you'll be able to create practically any kind of 2D game with it so long as you have the determination.
Pro Exports native mobile code, making great performance games
Pro Great for non-game apps
Such as tools, utilities, multimedia projects, etc.
Pro Great online store to get free and paid assets
Pro Can create custom extensions
Pro Visual (HLSL) effects
Pro Great formula editor, which allows you to create complex maths and events with ease
Pro Box2D physics engine
Pro Stable
Have used fusion 2.5 through all of its iterations, even when it was owned by imsi as CNC ( click n create ) it has been very stable and projects have been known to run on almost any Windows based computer. The projects you create even run on future versions of Windows with never many issues.
Pro 3D powerful solution
Pro Lots of resources to learn from
Lots of references, tutorials and open source code to learn from.
Pro Great performance across devices
While it may not always have the best performance for a particular device or system, it's one of the few engines which consistently performs very well across different platforms.
Pro Fantastic UI toolkit (scene2d)
scene2d is a 2D scene graph, scene2d.ui is a UI toolkit on top of that. It enables very complex mobile and desktop UIs.
Pro Can use any JVM language
Since it's built with Java and runs on the JVM, any language that compiles to Java bytecode can be used to develop games with libGDX.
Pro Uses Box2D
A Java port of the Box2D physics engine is included in libGDX.
Pro Allows you to migrate from 2D to 3D within same framework
LibGDX supports both 2D and 3D game development. Allowing developers to migrate from 2D to 3D with ease without having to switch the engine they are using or having to learn a new API.
Pro Doesn't force a specific design
Unlike some engines, which only allow you to make your game in a few specific ways, libGDX allows you to design any type of game you wish as it is extremely customisable.
Pro Active and helpful community
The libGDX community, in the official libGDX forum is extremely helpful and approachable for any kind of question regardless of the its quality or difficulty.
The forums themselves are a very helpful resource for any issue or guide simply by searching past posts in there.
In addition to the forums, there's also the official #libgdx IRC channel on Freenode.
Pro Interfacing with platform specific code
Sometimes it is necessary to access platform specific APIs, e.g., adding advertisement services or leaderboard functionality provided by frameworks.
Pro Free, open source & permissive license
libGDX uses the Apache License 2.0.
Not only is libGDX free and open source but also it's license gives you a lot of power over the engine. As long as you provide a copy of the license, give credit, do not hold devs liable and do not use libGDX logo in any engine forks you can do pretty much anything you want.
Pro Kotlin support
It is written in Java so you can easily make games using Kotlin and Ktx project will help you get all advantages of this language.
Pro Very easy to customize
Pro Constantly improved
LibGDX itself is pretty mature, and get updates not quite frequently, but various libraries for it are actively updated.
Pro Across platform support
You can write once and run anywhere (Android, IOS, Desktop, Browser) also lately came with lib to deal with VR.
Pro Support for 3rd party tools
libGDX has built in support for many 3rd party tools, including (but not limited to) Bullet Physics, Box2DLights and the well-praised Tiled Map Editor.
Pro Lots of tutorials to get you going
Even though the official documentation might be lacking, there are many tutorials on YouTube for libGDX.
Pro Excellent font rendering support
Very good tools for rendering fonts.
Pro Similar to the Microsoft XNA framework
Old XNA users may like libGDX since it's API is actually very similar to XNA's.
Pro Focusing on object pool patterns, to control memory without pointers
Unlike Unity or other engine, it allows to optimize a language that uses garbage collector when using patterns of objects you can control the use of memory without needing a language like C / C ++, getting the same speed in a more productive language.
Cons
Con Some features are really outdated and major updates are few and rare
There are some features that could make the software a lot more powerful but Clickteam does not have the staff resources to handle updating the software to be competitive with similar software.
Con Its Event Editor can be cumbersome if you are working on complex projects
While Fusion's visual programming event system is great to simplify things, it can be much more cumbersome to work with it than reading lines of code when you are working on a complex project. Especially if your events involve many nested conditions and lots of objects on the frame.
You are able to group events and objects, but it doesn't help at all if there's lots of conditions on an event and it becomes pretty hard to read.
Con Many extensions not available on non-Windows platforms
A lot of community-made extensions are only written for Windows, making it hard to port your game to other platforms.
Con It is very expensive
100$ to $400.
Con Many event 'gotchas', especially with object selection
Many events have very unpredictable selection behavior, e.g. the 'Create' action (where the selection depends on whether a selection list already exists).
There is also a lot of subtle selection behavior, e.g. implicit object pairs for actions when an object is used in an expression.
Con No native animator with curves, etc
Con Poor native movements
The native non-physical movements are practically unusable if you don't want to use Box2D physics in your game.
Con Need to write C++ extensions when existing extensions don't cut it
If you need e.g. a Steamworks extension or 3D display extension, you need to move out from the event system and create extensions in C++ with a cumbersome API. Fusion does not have FFI calls like other programming languages.
Con No animation/object hierarchy
You need to position/rotate objects manually.
Con Cannot script editor
You cannot script the IDE or editor with e.g. macros or custom functionality, like you can in other popular game engines.
Con Slow event system
Since the event system is interpreted, complex frames will start to slow down. This is also caused by poor code reuse, as usually, you need to copy+paste events with new conditions, making it impossible to cache intermediate results.
Con Lack of native network multiplayer system, built-in database support, social media support
Con Exporters are separate purchases, and they are not cheap
Con No console/Linux exporters
Up to now, Clickteam has a console convert service.
Con Simpler than Scratch
Fusion 2.5 is more Simpler than MIT'S Scratch!
Con The free edition is severely limited
Con Not starter friendly
Even default applications fail to load in Android. It doesn't have any documentation on errors either.
Con Documentation could be better
Other than a brief installation / getting started overview, libGDX's documentation consists of an official wiki with several incomplete pages, and automated Javadocs. The community recognizes these shortcomings, and new users are encouraged to ask for help.
Con The project slowed down in development
The number of active developers has decreased, many open issues and pull requests.
Con Build system is clunky
LibGDX uses Gradle, which is very demanding of memory and makes IDEs freeze on anything if your computer is not powerful enough.
Con Does not create compiled code
LibGDX runs entirely on Java and does not create executable binaries.
Con A bit difficult to use
This engine is not well put together. Is made from various free modules each with their own peculiarities. At times it feels you need to learn a couple of libraries rather than just one. Is not an engine for beginners as it requires coding. Lots of coding. You need to be intermediate to advanced in Java to develop in LibGDX.