Loonie said:
ShiVa does look interesting, although Unity (not Unity Pro) is free free for personal and commercial use. Is there a similar license for ShiVa?
Well, Unity just recently became free (wasn't when I was demoing it). But as for ShiVa, there is a free version, but it is limited in that it cannot be used to export the final product. (The PLE I mentioned earlier.) It's basically a never-ending demo of the
Unlimited version. A more in-depth look at the three versions can be found here: http://stonetrip.com/version-comparison.html
Unlimited will suit everyone here. Advanced is pretty much only for the large commercial devs that need the extra performance reports and priority support over Unlimited users.
Though the commercial versions of ShiVa (non-PLE) have a price, the Unlimited is fairly priced for what it is, and in fact, has features on par with Unity Pro!
If you have any questions as to what ShiVa is capable of, you could check out some of the demos they have, or join the forums and ask any questions you have. I've never had a bad experience on their forums, and IMHO, the community there is much more...how would I say this...accommodating? Nice? Helpful? Yeah, all of the above - when compared to the Unity boards.
Though I suspect that might be due to the massive influx of users once Unity 2.5 came out with Windows support. Unity was a nice place to be around when there weren't so many new users. Haha! But the atmosphere there has just gone downhill since I was last there.
ShiVa is actually not as well-known as I think it should be. But I'm somewhat glad for this, as it isn't as crowded and the admins are more easily able to help. (And in my experience, they have always been helpful, and usually quick to reply.) But we've actually been seeing quite a few people come in and say "I'm a former Unity user interested in ShiVa, and..." Most are usually delighted.
EDIT: Example of this:
http://developer.stonetrip.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=2&func=view&id=16711&catid=27
But of course, it really all comes down to preference in the end. Unity Pro and ShiVa Unlimited are very similar in terms of feature-set, but they have pretty different ways of doing things. It takes practice, a lot of reading in the documentation, and maybe a couple questions on the boards to get started. ShiVa is at a disadvantage when it comes to available tutorials and start-up guides for beginners, but a ShiVa user actually took the time to write an entire book on it to help with that! As well as Stonetrip themselves writing a "The Making Of" book for their tech demo, "The Hunt".
I highly recommend checking it out if you're really interested though. Just play around with the PLE, follow along the book that Shando (ShiVa user) wrote, and see if it's for you. Doesn't cost a thing but your time for that.
EDIT: Can find resources like these on StoneTrip's Developer site:
http://developer.stonetrip.com
Well, that's enough of that. I think I've de-railed this thread into oblivion. My apologies, _dickie. Didn't mean to hijack your thread. Heh-heh. :lol:
