18Aug Round 2: haXe vs Unity3D vs O3D vs SFML
1,542 viewsThe bell rings, and it’s another showdown between modern drawing APIs. Over the past couple weeks, I have weeded out many of my choices of libraries to now these four. What happened to some of the others? XNA, I determined, was way too XBOX360 centric with its multitasking, shaders, and DRM all tailored to the platform. Again, my primary aim was to develop on a Windows platform with possibly Mac compatibility. In addition, XNA requires end PC users to install the XNA framework package which only causes additional hassle for the user to install the game. Blade3D is also removed from the list as they recently went under last week, leaving many of their subscribers scratching their heads. Below is my up-to-date list for viable platforms to use for developing my prototypes and AI research:
- PROs
- Faster than AS3 10% to 200% depending on use
- Single language to also write the server platform
- Flash Player 10 has a huge penetration rate (87% roughly)
- CONs
- Still rather slow
- PROs
- Faster than Flash by at least 400% in math and drawing APIs
- Growing community (10,000+ users)
- CONs
- Costly
- Focused around primarily 3D development
- Small penetration rate for its player (maybe 5% or less)
O3D by Google Labs
- PROs
- Comparable to Unity3D
- Bleeding edge technology
- Google’s supported platform
- CONs
- Buggy and very new
- Lacks industrial strength demos
- Extremely small player install base (< 1%)
Super Fast Media Library
- PROs
- Super fast 2D library (several times faster than the above APIs)
- Uses C++ and would allow higher customization and flexibility
- CONs
- Desktop installation / is not loaded by the browser (user barrier)
- Only meant for 2D
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Author: Jonathan Dunlap Jonathan is an experienced software engineer, sole blogger of JADBOX, author of FlashMVC, humanitarian, and has contracted work for Microsoft, Coke, and Disney. |
August 19th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
good. I use o3d. let me know others.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Hi! This post could benefit if it has links to the mentioned libraries and platforms. More to that. The correct name of SFML is Simple and Fast Multimedia Library. Googling for superfast one gives nothing.
September 4th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Flash player 11 will be a 3D powerhouse, Adobe has already said they intend to make “Flash” the defacto gaming environment, and “Flex” will be the defacto web environment. But its all up to the developer how each gets used I suppose. No matter, I would personally choose Flash for anything but a truly intensive 3D gaming environment. Flash is very fast with bitmap rendering as well, probably fast enough for any bitmap based game you can imagine. When it comes to using a plugin like Untiy 3D, I have to say, what is the difference between that and downloading an .exe that installs on the hard drive and connects to the net? Flash is the only one of the techs that come across as a seamless experience on the web.
September 10th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
I have unity3d and use it for 2D development. It naturally is a bit of a waste, but it’s easily doable – Look at Blush on Blurst for an example. I’m about to convert my latest into using this: http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=SpriteManager which looks good, if a ugly hack that shouldn’t be necessary. So that could easy some of your fears about 2D – it’s possible! people are doing it! Unity is still lovely, even when you do contort away from it slightly. And Unity -is- lovely to use. Tweaking magic numbers midway through playing is so good, frinstance.