Shiva is still alive

http://www.stonetrip.com/developer/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=29611&p=65189#p65189

Thought they died, but wow, 64 bit support, C++ plugin, offscreen rendering, flash, all for 1K only.

 

Cool, make a game with it then

 

I own a License for Shiva 1.9 Unlimited. Bought many years ago. In the last 3 years I think, I have fired up Shiva less than 6 times because it had an awful interface. Getting art in to the editor and working properly was painful. I've not forgotten the constant crashing and editor freezing. That and many other show stopping reasons is why it was shelved.

Looking at what Stonetrip have said, it seems they have almost ironed out all the bits that made Shiva bad. Almost that is. I'm downloading it now to test. Lets see if 'editor wise' the freezes, crashes and general awful art pipeline have been improved or fixed.

If so then good for them. I doubt though that I would switch my current project to Shiva unless my tests, when it finishes downloading, suede me.

 

Would be interesting to hear what state its at now.

 

Going back to 2004 Stonetrip 3d/Shiva3d was my introduction to visual game development environments. I can only think of Nokia as I'm almost amazed at the extent in which they've been left behind, even by recent newcomers in gaming middleware.

 

Stonetrip released Shiva 1.9 back in November 2010. I remember they announced free upgrade to 2.0 or something like that if you buy Shiva v1.9 - and they probably announced Shiva 2.0 earlier than that. Its been 3 (maybe even 4) years since then and they are still trying to catch up to Unity 3.0. Are they still alive? Probably. Will they survive? Most likely no. They promised 2.0 release on early 2012, then that's delayed til mid 2012, then July 2013, then August 2013......; They are looking pretty much like Torque - missing their release schedule and falling far behind its closest competitor; and then there were news that they were liquidated.

..............so, I wouldn't hold my breathe if I were you.

 

If they are really planning to release all the stuff they said for 2.0 ( http://www.stonetrip.com/developer/wiki/index.php?title=Release_Info ), I think they can make it. Value for money is great there.

Given the current state of Unity I'm actively searching for a replacement for my next project, Shiva could be it or not. Soon we will see as the 2.0 is planned for early 2014.

 

I bought it when Unity was claiming they'd never support Windows Phone / Windows Store and all, even Android, but Unity's the clear choice now unless you have big legacy projects.

They have been saying 2.0 since 2009.

 

How do you find it?
Do you recommend this product?

 

I've spent the last few days testing the new 1.9.2 version. Where it would crash before it doesn't now. I tried a few exports of a test program to Android, iOS, Blackberry etc and all worked fine.

I'm going to do a few more tests soon. The one thing that still annoys me is the Interface. It's a spaghetti junction of options and really doesn't flow well. Unity has a good layout to its editor, I think Shiva needs to rethink its editor layout and the way it works and take a leaf out of Unity's book.

No matter how powerful and Bug free an application like Unity or Shiva is you'd be hard presses to keep people using it if the editor causes you more headaches than you need, especially if it interferes with productivity.

 

+1, i thought they went under water acording to news?

 

They went under, but seems to have founded new investment. I'm also looking for replacement engine for Unity for future projects, either Shiva or Anarchy, or maybe even Cocas 3D.

I tried it out. UI is abit confusing but the editor is quite full featured compared to Unity. In Unity, I had to buy plugins/write scripts whereas Shiva have those built in.

I talked to their dev team, 2.0 interface will be heavily changed so it's something to watch closely.

 

To me, Shiva 3D is irrelevant. I have tested that engine and it damaged my workflow severely to the point where I said "F#*k it!" and moved to Unity which was a breeze to work with... the hell with Shiva

 

New version preview

http://www.shivaengine.com/developer/2859-a-very-special-shiva-2-0-christmas-
part-1

A lot of these features should be in Unity since a long time ago.

 

I too hated the old pre 2.0 editor/workflow and their own "stonescript" (lua variant).

That 2.0 editor and it's features (alongside with lua 5.2) seems really interesting and could be very potential.

Raises a question tho, are all these indie game engines doomed when udk 4 comes for indies (note, I'm not a fan of udk 3 because of the editor/workflow/unrealscript)? I mean, Unity, Shiva, Leadwerks etc need to set the bar really high to compete with the feature set of ue4 IF they open the C++ (more complex games than blueprint can manage) for indies. Is the new Shiva, and Unity for that matter, too late in the game?

 

Totally agree. The hope is that 2.0 isn't vaporware. My group is shopping around, not much choice after being bait-and-switched by four Unity3d asset makers, either being denied the source, or having to trudge through extremely messy, GC hungry non-preallocating, broken, possibly GPL'd or plagiarized BSD/MIT code.

 

No. Unless I missed something, UE4 doesn't offer indie studios enough to make up for its biggest flaw.
+ Graphics:
The number of indie studios that can afford to make use of cutting-edge, AAA-grade, next gen graphics is very low. Indie studios (usually) don't have million dollar budgets that allow them to create assets at such a level of detail.

- Platforms:
PC, PS4, Xbone as of now. Indie games and consoles had a complex relationship in the past. That may change in future, but we need to wait and see. Microsoft essentially ripped Indie developers off by demanding astounding amounts of money for patches on the 360 (see FEZ). Computers are indie-territory.
UE4 gives you Windows. Unity, Leadwerks and Shiva give you Windows, Linux (SteamOS) and OSX support out of the box. Don't need to care about porting yourself.
When making an indie game on an engine that supports multiple platforms you'd have to be totally retarded not to make use of it. Essentially you make your audience bigger for free while also generating positive news. (We Linux users gladly pay money to be able to play games without having to reboot into Windows.) When not having thousands of dollars for marketing, this is very important.

With Valve's SteamOS and Steam Machines on the horizon, developers really shouldn't restrict themselves to Windows. Even CryTek is porting their CryEngine to Linux (not just the games, but the editor itself as it seems).

Semi-offtopic:
Personally, I think that Valve will succeed with making Linux relevant in the gaming industry for a few reasons. Firstly, unlike companies like EA or Microsoft, Valve actually understands its customers and caters towards them. They have their astoundingly good image for a reason. Secondly, they are in the financial position to go for "quality over quantity". Yeah, I want to play HL3 so bad, but what do you think EA would do if they had the rights for one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved game franchises? We'd have Half-Life 8 by now. Lastly, they aren't stupid. What have they failed with in the past?

 

Even with a limited amount of high level features, providing a set of multi-platform packages with only one license, would be a serious contender to Unity. Even if I love Unity with my heart, competition is always good for consumers (and quite often helps to wake all us up)!

 

Well the one man bands and small teams on the CE forum with 3DSMax seem to be having a good crack at it, some of them are simply amazing..

Very much agree with the difficulty of console releases, seems Sony are making a go at simplicity this time around.

As to whether or not UE4 will be the crowning achievement overshadowing other engines, we will see in years to come. It's very difficult to match ease of use and advanced tech, whilst offering large amounts of customization..

Good to see Shiva is finally peaking interest.

 

Oh yeah,
Forgot to mention that LUA and their clunky Editor interface is what hold me to even give them an in depth look at Shiva. On the other hand, C# support (which is a very nice programming language) and a pretty nifty no-brainer Editor is what hook me up with Unity.
I mean, anyone writing game engine editor (at least for the visual interface) they should take notes on Unity Editors interface. It shouldn't be hard, it must be intuitive and natural to pick an interface. If you need a manual or tutorial, then isn't good enough. Look like their v2.0 Editor, it's pretty nifty.

 

Well, I know what those people over at crydev.net are capable of.
Their gallery provides a lot of wallpaper material.

However, how many Indie games on the CryEngine are there?
Besides that showing screenshots of one scene/level is hardly the same as creating a complete game. At least quite a few of them also use student editions of Maya and 3ds which would prevent them from creating commercial projects.

That's another topic though.

 

Point being this: "Indie studios (usually) don't have million dollar budgets that allow them to create assets at such a level of detail."

It's nothing really to do with money, sure if you invest $5000.00 in max I'm sure most people are more obliged to get the best they can out of it.! (As you really can't afford to use anything else with CE) Plus the level of time and devotion to use complex AAA engines are generally higher than buying some basic models from the asset store and slinging a level together. There's something to be said for out the box easy to do most thing engines, they attract more beginners.

How many games are coming out of CE? Well that's the issue and it's not the artwork holding them back!.. I can say that without any reservation.

With the feature set, I'll have to check out Shiva.. It's quite interesting.

 

Well, if you're really aiming for AAA-grade graphics (read: the best of the best), it'll cost you quite a bit. Time is the keyword here.


Creating an entire game with multiple levels that extend far beyond what you see on this screenshot at such a level of detail, takes a ton of time. There's just so much more you have to pay attention at on every square meter. And time = money since people need to get payed.

Game development costs have exploded over the last few years to the degree that studios are hard-pressed just to make their money back (*cough* Dead Space 3 *cough*), and games still managed to become shorter and simpler.
The only aspect that has made progress are graphics, so it's no secret where the money goes.

I have just finished the original Deus Ex because I have heard so much about it. Dude, it plays in a whole different league than even good games of today like the BioShock series.
I don't know of any game that has even remotely the amount of depth and complexity that Deus Ex had more than a decade ago with modern graphics.
The only game I know of that has the chance of playing in the same league is a free mod for the Source Engine called "Underhell" (GO CHECK IT OUT! ). Only the prologue and chapter 1 are out as of now. Chapters 2-4 and the epilogue are still in development and thinking about that it took me something like 15 hours to finish the current parts, I cannot wrap my head around the sheer amount of content this game will offer once it's finished.
It still has really dated graphics though.

 

If you're a company with employees time is money, a fair few of the guys on CE are ex-modders who must neglect anything else going on in there life as the attention to detail is stunning and surpassed some AAA games of previous years.

Well we really are getting onto a new topic here with the graphics vs. gameplay issue that seems to be apparent. (I'm a fan of Deus Ex too)..

I've never looked into source engine, so I will thanks for the tip.. If Shiva has all these features, it looks like things can start becoming competitive for them again. Which is good news as Unity and Unreal need some competition..

 

I was talking exclusively about indie studios there. People who make a living from developing games. Other than a few exceptions, indie developers have it hard. Here's a good read. Rock, Paper, Shotgun | Level with me, Thomas Grip

Oh yeah, and I don't recommend the Source Engine for projects. Not only is the engine dated, but the tools themselves are. It's a royal pain in the ass to work with. This mod is special though. If you stick with it through the end your mind will be blown away and you will behave like me: Banging on about it at all possible occasions. This piece of work desires way more fame than it gets.

And btw, I'm not that much of a fan of Deus Ex. Top notch game design, impressive amount of content, but it didn't manage to suck me in like System Shock 2.

 

Indie developers have it hard? I think I got that, I have my own company I pay my own staff. 50% of all the silly amounts of money going into several projects is my own personal finances.. If it all flops I have a lot to loose!!

Do you have staff? Do you live with it day in day out? The up's the downs, the staff are passionate and working in proximity for such long hours is difficult.. I'm a coder, a manager, an accountant, a cinematic editor, a UI specialist, an artist, a rigger etc. and I need to be to at some level of expertise to give clear concise direction. Even to dictate and get approval's for software from the financers I have to know enough to get the point across.

I owned a telecoms company before, I was a coder and a manager.. That's it, nothing prepares you for being independent in the games industry. You either love it to the point of obsession or you're bat crap crazy to enter this arena as a profession..

At this point, like a well known company in the UK every little helps.

 

I'm not that far yet.
I'm currently studying computer science and decided that I will keep living with my parents until I finish it. It's hard enough already without standing on my own feet.

The games industry being a rough place is no secret.
You're either independent and at constant risk because you don't have any backing. Well, unless you're really lucky like Mojang or Valve. (Yes, technically Valve is an indie studio)
Or you have the backing of a major publisher, who then tells you how to do your job, exerts unhealthy amounts of pressure on you and, of course, blames you when S*** hits the fan. (I'm looking at you there, EA)

And as if that wasn't enough, the community is a place full of harassment, abuse and toxicity too. Sure, not the entirety, but it's enough to make people hate their job and quit.

Thinking realistically, after finishing my studies I could work somewhere else and probably make way more money with a way more relaxed job. It's just that I really want to work in this industry because F*** logic.

Currently I'm a game developer working like a modder with all the benefits and problems that this brings. Sure, I don't have the financial component putting me under pressure, but I also don't have it to keep me going. This will either turn out to become my ticket to make a dream come true, or a piss in the wind that would be a colossal waste of time.

As for my project.
I'm an idea guy, meaning I make problems. I'm a coder, meaning I solve them. I'm a level designer and will most likely also have to do the writing. Considering that Unity requires you to be proficient with 3d modeling applications for the level design, I will become a modeler too.

Wait! What was this thread about again? Ahh, Shiva. Yeah, cool that they're still working on it.

 

@ Sniper

Aha I'm sure you'll do fine..

Very interested to see where Shiva takes all of this, if the price, performance and feature set are truly ready for professional development than it'll be a interesting as they are priced around the same price as Unity, but it appears they are trying improving on feature set.. Anything that's included saves time on doing it yourself.

 

If you make such detailed vegetation, how many NPCs can you fit into that area without running into FPS problems or line of sight problems? The player will have great difficulty trying to spot the NPCs or try to get out of the place in one piece. Are the trees big enough that they shield the player? Do you play-test using stock objects and let the level designer handle the terrain?


AAA graphics is half the story. If the AI, navigation of the NPCs, UI is bad, your game is toast. Nobody wants to play a game where the AI is dummy -- bullets go through walls, NPCs go through walls, NPCs walk on air to you...


If Shiva don't have good AI, good navigation, good UI capabilities, it's a run-along and you can pass, not interested.

 

Try making the game a little smaller. Make a certain part of your game, say, around 500 x 500 unit of terrain AAA and get the AAA AI, AAA navigation, physics and game-play, graphics right for that area.


Otherwise, if you make huge AAA terrain graphics, you'll start to worry about the navigation of the NPCs on those terrains and if you don't do it right, you'll have to re-do the whole terrain again because of stupid path-finding and navigation issues.

 

Cool, thanks for the tip Joe..

 

There is equal-opportunity and diversity training. If the manager does not know and has very toxic environment, that manager has not managed different teams of people with different skill-sets.


I've seen it all. There are vendors who are deeply troubled about the ethnicity of the person contacting him for support, people who have fake degrees, the artist you hired has problems about the skin-color of the developer doing the coding.

Do business apps. Then you don't have to bother about good graphics, sound-effects, environment (mostly 2D computer-based forms) and models (there is no MS Word Clippy or Mr Excel Wizard)!

 

I think he was talking about the gaming community (Forums, Youtube etc.) .. Which can be very toxic.

 

Check it... Secondary to the terrain is the navigation, way-points, and how the NPCs inter-act with the terrain. Take that Underhell game for example. You can make the same game, for mobile Android and iPhones of the same game-play using Unity -> Export to Android.


If the level designer does not put enough hints for the way-points and navigation, how will the NPC distinguish between the second floor and first floor? Will the NPC float to you or go underground or walk through walls? Doors are troubling when the NPCs walk through walls or go through them. Check the stair-well. It's designed of a certain manner such that the NPCs can walk up and down the stair-case.

How is the AI for the NPCs - did you make the objectives, quests, FSM and BTs working with the terrain? How is the dialogs and cut-scenes going to work with the terrain? Not enough space? ...

The game looks like the private demos that [game engine] full version distributes as examples. That's kinda funny.

 

They start to show contempt and question you. Just leave them alone. When the game comes out, they'll know you by the quality of the games you make.

 

Funnily enough, compared to other engines I love the Unity Navmesh.. Extremely easy to use and very flexible, I had one or two issues with the enemy NPC looking like a dog on skates when the main character moves. But that was easily rectified, compared to other engines it's been nothing short of a delight.

That's what I love about Unity, you can concentrate on making an actual game.

 

If you are making an FPS game, make sure there is balance - sufficient space where the player can move around, where the player can run and hide behind obstacles (are there any?) or make the trees or vegetation thick so that form obstacles and clear path-ways.


If you have very busy terrain and no planning of how the AI will respond, you'll find open areas to be killing fields, the NPCs will hump into a walled area and you can pick them off easy, NPCs bullets going through walls, and obstacles not being respected. Let's not talk about the NPCs walking up the stair case or FPS inside buildings .


Beware of blind spots where the NPCs congregate together and make it impossible for the player to finish the scene, bad AI where there NPCs wait for you behind the door, you open it and you're dead.

 

When you make your FPS authoritative-server (so nobody can cheat), that's when the trouble starts ... You can use Unity server and uLink on the server, but can get get it to scale?

 

Well our game in Unity is an RPG, a couple of very early screenshot's are on this thread page:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/193650-Unity-Cannot-Produce-Good-Graphics-I-Think-Not/page6

Typically everything is hand to hand combat, but that bring it's own set of issues.. Especially designing how the AI react's to a flurry of flowed attacks..

This is one thing that prevents jumping from one engine to another when you get a good handle.. Still never a bad idea to keep an eye on the competition.

 

Check around...

There are people who are on the forum who make the great kongregate.com top-playing FPS games. You can hire them . They were made in Unity and always looking for a job.

 

Did you consider scaling it down and making the game mobile? You could easily get 100,000 installs and 1/4 or maybe 1/10 of the terrain you are going to create.


For instance, that Joe Lone Wolf game... it uses simple NGUI and that Strumpy Shader for effects <shock>. When my artist saw it, he spent some time re-doing the shaders to get similar effect. Some of the shaders are ready-made -- that Core Shader that Hippo-coder recommended comes to mind.

 

Yeah and that Lone wolf is a good looking game, I was shocked when I heard it was for mobile. But were too far into the project to start pulling everything back, also the follow up is going to be in a *New* engine when we get enough experience with it (If you catch my drift) that's already been paid for..

 

If you are referring to that engine, check the private demos for the RPG GUI. It has full inventory, spells, chat window, slots and everything almost ready-made. The FPS UI looks like a mix between Dead space and transformer UI.


If that thing was working well instead of crashing on Android all the time, we would have probably licensed it too.

 

It really doesn't work like this. People have varying opinions everywhere, but in the games industry this is totally blown out of proportions.
Zoe Quinn, developer of the game "Depression Quest" got harassed for - believe it or not - being female. They even got her phone number so she had to get a new one.
The whole controversy surrounding "Skullgirls", Phil Fish leaving the industry after a long lasting, constant stream of hate. Oh yeah, and of course Anita Sarkeesian.
But my favorite from this year has got to be David Vonderhaar. The Treyarch developer who balanced a weapon in CoD and got death threats over it.

That's what I will do if I fail.
Before I decided to study computer science, architecture, constructional engineering and sports were in the race too. I'm already looking forward to finishing the basic programming and starting to do the first level. It's work I really enjoy.

 

Sorry to bump an old thread but I thought it would be worse to create a new one.

Shiva 2.0 Beta is out and only accessible for those with a 1.9.x licence - I was wondering if one you guys own a old licence and want to give it a try and let us know what it looks like. Not sure what to expect rom Shiva but I'm curious ;-)

The link : http://www.shivaengine.com/developer/2999-shiva-2-0-first-beta-release

 

Is it named for the Indian god of destruction or the week long mourning period in Judaism? Either way reminds me of when Chevy tried to sell the "Nova" in Spanish speaking countries.

 

Except the "doesn't go" thing is a myth. Also, Shiva isn't a "god of destruction"; that's just one aspect, along with dance and reproduction.

--Eric

 

True, but then I couldn't make bad jokes.

 

2.0 beta 1 is pretty badass. I've been messing about with it for a bit and the impressive thing is the whole UI and way of exporting to various platforms is so much easier and smoother. The editor redesign is a godsend. If theres one thing that annoyed me about 1.9.2 it was the Editor and the way it was all borked together; a big bork because half the time was spent pulling your hair out when the editor would crash and corrupt the project.

The new editor is very smooth and responsive. I've got a good feeling this will probably boom with popularity. The biggest bonus though is that what would cost thousands to be able to do with unity is all included + much more with shiva for just one single price. Shiva 2 exports to so many platforms it's quite a shock that it's all included for just one indie/commercial license.

People may want to keep an eye on this as this is likely, as long as the shiva devs dont screw up, to kick major ass when it's fully out of beta and ready for release.

 

Sounds like Shiva and Unity will both have to adjust to compete with the new game engine pricing model adopted by Unreal.

And it looks like Shiva still does not support WebGL.