Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
• Though it is claimed to work with Mac OS X through parallels, Shiva 3D editor
is Windows-only, which means that you don't need to own a Mac to develop
iOS titles
• Unlike other engines, what is displayed in the editor windows of Shiva 3D is
almost equal to the final rendering you get after building your app
• The lightmapping is generally of high quality, performs pretty well on mobile
devices, and dynamic shadows are fully supported
• It includes libraries to manage basic pathfinding and allows control of it
through scripting, which saves development time
• The same project file can be compiled for any target platform
• Finally, when compared to its competitors, Shiva 3D is quite cheap, as the
editor is free to use and a license is required just to publish games
The flexibility Shiva 3D offers with regard to the target platforms it can address,
comes at a price, though:
• Shiva 3D doesn't support popular 3D file formats such as
*.fbx
or
*.obj
,
as other engines do, and it only imports
*.DAE
files. Several users also claim
that the only way they could import 3D models and their mapped textures in
the editor was thanks to a third-party software, namely Ultimate Unwrap Pro
• The learning curve to get proficient with the interface is quite steep, and the
editor doesn't allow reconfiguring the layout of the different windows of the
editor, which can only be set according to a list of predefined layouts.
• The physics engine is claimed to be very limited.
• The error messages, which may occur when building your app are vague and
not very helpful (a trait unfortunately shared by its main competitor Unity 3D).
• The documentation is sparse and poor.
• The most frustrating feature of Shiva 3D in the opinion of users is the terrain
editor. Differently from its competitor, the terrain editor in Shiva 3D is imple-
mented through chunks, which are a bit tricky to select and keep selected as
you sculpt the terrain, with the result that creates terrains with Shiva 3D re-
quires a lot of time and effort.
In conclusion, Shiva 3D is a very good tool that offers a perfect balance between
costs and capabilities, which make it especially fit for teams with a low budget. There
are better tools available on the market, but they all cost much more than Shiva 3D.
