Shiva 3D for Mobile Games

Why Use a Game Engine?

If you are an aspiring game developer, you might have considered whether a game engine is right for you.  There are a lot of game engines out there and I’m not going to try and compare the qualities of Unreal Engine vs Unity vs Shiva.

Maybe you’re like me and have rolled some subset of your own 2D or 3D engine in the past using SDL, openGL or XNA.  If you’re also like me, you probably have about a half-dozen or so projects that have been shelved because you either stopped having fun, got frustrated at one of the minutia of tiny details or realized that you did things horribly wrong.  Sounding familiar?

When I have a game idea that I’d like to prototype, what I find most deflating is spending all of my time remembering how to initialize the screen, import textures, draw textured quads, etc.  I want to work on MY idea instead of recreating science.

Why Shiva?

My reasons for choosing Shiva as a game engine may be different than yours.  Here they are:

1. I want the simple things to be easy.
2. I want to publish to as many mobile platforms as possible.
3. I own a Palm Pre and want to prototype on it.

Shiva is the only engine that meets these 3 requirements as of the time of this writing.  Also, there is a Personal Learning Edition that is free.

Who Uses Shiva?

The immediate person that comes to mind is PDK Hot Apps Winner Jopacus Parrott.  More recently the folks at Modern Alchemists used it for their game Aeon Racer.  Both of these are great examples of modern mobile games with unique styles made in the Shiva engine.

What about 2D?

Shiva is a 3D game engine but as you can see in Aeon Racer, it can also do 2D.  There are a couple different options.  I am planning a future set of tutorials on making 2D games in Shiva using a method similar to Aeon Racer.  Goodbye SDL and HTML5 Canvas.