How good is it ?!

[Guest striker7]

Hello,

New to this forum here, and I just wanted to know how good is this engine compared to others like Unity and UDK ?!

is it suitable for commercial development ?!

 

thank you

[Canardia]

At the moment, there is no better engine on the market.

Even CryENGINE 3 (which will be used for Crysis 2 somewhere in 2010) is not as good as LE.

See this comparison chart:

http://siipi.com/public/mika.nsf/0/2AAC3EECC888AC57C22575F7004ADC16

 

A similar question was asked yesterday also:

http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/topic/727-i-stand-and-wonder/page__view__findpost__p__6409

[Rick]

It's a good engine. Lumooja goes a little overboard, but this engine is easy to learn and very powerful. That chart is just something Lumooja created with his own personal weights applied to what he feels important so take it with a grain of salt.

[Canardia]

That's a typical reaction what most people have about the chart, but in the end they will all agree. I know it looks a bit biased at first (and LE was not #1 all the time, it just got there with Lua), but when you start to think about it deeper, and evaluate all the options, you will come to the same conclusion.

 

Maybe the best proof is this: I wouldn't be using LE if it wasn't the best. I would switch to a better engine at any time, if such would exist.

[TylerH]

You list CryEngine3 as:

 

Entity Based System - No

Low End Support - No

OpenGL Commands - No (This isn't even something you should be listing, since you already have an OpenGL Support)

Cross Platform - No

 

CryENgine 3 is entity based - Yes, Has low end fallbacks to DX9 - Yes, and is more Cross Platform than Leadwerks is - Yes.

 

So with that, CryENgine 3 becomes 15 points, and is #1.

 

 

Your chart is definitely biased, as it biases towards OpenGL, giving OGL based engines 2x more points if they are simply OpenGL, and it falls under YOUR opinion of what cross platform is. Running something under WINE isn't cross platform, it is emulation. Other engines on there, on the other hand, compile natively on non Windows/PC platforms.

[Josh]

It depends mostly on what your criteria is. If you want good graphics and good physics, this engine is your best bet.

[TylerH]

I agree that Leadwerks is the best, I do think that chart is a bit unfair though.

 

For the price, you are getting many times over the cost of your investment in Leadwerks Engine.

[Canardia]

Tyler, think deeper. What does DX mean. It means you can't run it on XP. XP lacks 2 versions behind in DX. OpenGL runs on XP, and all other OS. It should be actually much bigger weight than just 2, like you said. I think instead of installing Windows 7 for Crysis 2 (DX11), I rather don't buy the game at all. I don't want to be forced by Microsoft to spend money for a slower OS, and support a company which lies face to face about IBM also. Although both companies have done about the same amount of good products: Microsoft has done XP and Visual Studio 2008 C++ (+MSN), IBM has done Notes and Domino (+SameTime). I think all the rest of their products are ****, and there are much better solutions from other vendors, including open source.

[Scott Richmond]

I'd take all these comments with a gain of salt, as Rick has suggested previously. A couple of things to take into consideration above and beyond what has already been said:

• Documentation - Leadwerk used to have awesome doco, but due to recent developments (v2.3) a lot of it is out of date. Still definitely workable and by no means a show stopper, but its still a problem. Though I understand the developer (Josh) is actively working on it.
• Industry Experience - You might find jumping into UDK will give you a better entry into the industry. UDK has some amazing tools Leadwerks doesn't come close to having. There is also a much larger community and therefore more support and examples to run with.
• Cost - Sure the engine is damn cheap. But you can go grab the full UDK right now for free and create to your hearts content. Only catch there is that if/when you go commercial, Unreal take a slice of the pie.

Lumooja - I have to pull you up on the Win7 comment - The OS isn't slower at all, in fact by almost all accounts it is faster. This is based on personal experience and a number of benchmarks I've seen.

[Canardia]

You haven't done a OpenGL benchmark then, nothing else matters.

[Scott Richmond]

You haven't done a OpenGL benchmark then, nothing else matters.

 

Actually everything else matters. The majority of games are DX-based and therefore Win7 is better over-all. A quick Google found that D3 did indeed take quite a huge dive in FPS when run under Win7. Interesting. Ah well. Personally I've found any small problems like that are far outweighed by the advantages Win7 provides.

[Rekindled Phoenix]

is it suitable for commercial development ?!

 

 

Leadwerks is the best game engine I have seen yet. The upcoming and newly released features within the engine (along with the community of dedicated individuals) make the license worth every cent.

 

Think about other engines like Torque which costs a grand, (with hundreds of followers...) yet have been out 5+ years without even current generation features like dynamic lighting! Most of the 'shiny' additions to other engines come at an extra cost, or are created by the community only. I've learned that (literally) minutes before getting a Torque license, and then I found Leadwerks.

 

This engine comes with everything that is next-gen out of the box. All you need is a dedicated programmer, content for your game, and you're good to go. For a low-cost indie game engine for commercial use, this is the engine to use.

[Niosop]

I've worked with the UDK and own a Unity Pro license, but I find myself working with LeadWerks the most. Here's my experiences with all of them:

 

UDK - One of the best toolsets available. Integrated SpeedTree, FaceFX, Cascade, PHAT, etc really rocks. The big downside for me was the class layout of UnrealScript. I had a hard time doing anything except a first person shooter. They just added the ability to call DLL functions from UnrealScript which removed the biggest limitation it had, but it's still a pain for me to work with. If you plan on a releasing a game and making any money off it (via sales, ad revenue, donations, anything) then Epic gets 25% of that money. The dynamic lighting system in LeadWerks is much better than that of the UDK, but LightMass in the UDK is better for static lighting, even though it does slow you down a lot having to rebuild your lighting every time you make a change.

 

Unity - Excellent asset pipeline. It's drag and drop simple to get your assets into Unity. Mono and per entity scripting make it really easy to code for as well (even easier than LeadWerks at the moment). I find myself slightly more productive in Unity than in LeadWerks, but LeadWerks is a close second and upcoming features are narrowing that gap. The ability to deploy via web browser and run on Macs and lower end hardware are good for casual games. The free version of Unity doesn't have real time shadows or render to texture abilities.

 

LeadWerks - Excellent dynamic lighting system. Higher graphics card requirements because a lot of things are done via shaders (GPU skinning, shader based terrain painting, etc), but this leaves more cycles free for doing CPU intensive things like AI. And for some reason things just look good in LeadWerks. I can drop the same assets into LeadWerks and Unity and the LeadWerks version just looks better. LeadWerks also adds features all the time. Josh (the developer) is very involved with the community and the community itself rocks. People giving away models to use, code snippets, etc. In just the past two days community members have added the ability to render video and web pages to textures.

 

In conclusion, you really can't go wrong by getting a LeadWerks license. At $200 it's a steal. If you have a team of people who need to be licensed then $200 for LeadWerks vs $1500 for Unity Pro adds up quickly. If you plan on making more than $5000 with your game then the 25% Epic takes for UDK usage will be a huge drawback.

[Scott Richmond]

Some really good points Niosp, one thing though: The $200 license is for one seat only. So $200 per person on the development team.

[Niosop]

Right, but $200*5 is a lot less than $1500*5.

[Pixel Perfect]

Leadwerks is a great engine and I would whole heartedly recommend it ... for $200 dollars you are simply not going to better it! To compare it directly to CryENGINE 3 is frankly insane and you should look at UDK before making a decision as, like the CryEngine, it has some wonderful tools the like of which you are never likely to see released for Leadwerks but a correspondingly high learning curve should you decide to go down that route. With Unity you'd need the professional package to approach the graphical quality of Leadwerks Engine and that's around $1500 if my memory serves me correctly.

 

The graphical quality of Leadwerks is on a par or better than anything out there, the language support is good, the API is very good, the toolset is minimal but for a small Indie engine fairly representative. The documentation is minimal but sufficient given the great and very helpful community.

[wh1sp3r]

you can always make own tools like everybody company does but i think, new editor is enough good tool to make something

[Michael Betke]

I can recommend Leadwerks and all its possibilities if you can code.

For me as an artist there are some productivity issues which need to ironed out to make it more artist friendly and produce more content in less time.

 

But at the end you have to decide on your own. Do you have the money for Cryengine3 or are willing to pay 25% like in UDK. Or can you code in most stuff on your own and have the patience to wait for updates some time.?

 

I decided to buy LE.