Best 2D/3D iPhone Game Engines

[zaca]

What is the best 2D or 3D game engine, and why?

So far this is what I have heard, but I have never used either:
2D: Cocos2D (open source)
3D: Unity (US$600)

I have a game that I want to develop (2D) this year, and I have a few 2D and 3D game ideas that I want to pursue for next year. I think this info would be valuable for a lot of people.

[FlagellumDei]

SIO2 is a great 3D engine with Blender support (open source and/or indie license)

ShiVa seems that it's a good 3D engine with a great editor (commercial)

Ogre 3D engine has an iPhone port too, which seems pretty stable (open source)

[bpatters]

Originally Posted by zaca

What is the best 2D or 3D game engine, and why?

So far this is what I have heard, but I have never used either:
2D: Cocos2D (open source)
3D: Unity (US$600)

I have a game that I want to develop (2D) this year, and I have a few 2D and 3D game ideas that I want to pursue for next year. I think this info would be valuable for a lot of people.

If tooling is important to you, and you know C++, then I'd strongly recommend iTGB from Garage Games. It's got it's quirks like other game engines but it's really easy to develop 2d games with. Since you get source code with the purchase ($750 total) your pretty much have free reign to do anything you want with your game.

I wrote Kingdom of Gorath using it. The Kingdom of Gorath

[lionfly]

The Sparrow framework is also mentioned as an option for 2D development, but I am not sure how it compares with the more popular Cocos2D.

If anybody has the comparison opinions, please share your experiences.

[milanika]

We`ve started our first game with Cocos2d- it`s realy good for it.

[FlagellumDei]

I haven't looked into Airplay SDK yet, but it seems as a serious engine which supports multiple mobile platforms.

I've coded a 2D engine from scratch for our (still in development) horror themed survival game: iRequiem.

[lefty]

Originally Posted by FlagellumDei

I haven't looked into Airplay SDK yet, but it seems as a serious engine which supports multiple mobile platforms.

I've coded a 2D engine from scratch for our (still in development) horror themed survival game: iRequiem.

I used Airplay on Symbian and thought it was good. Very fast and easy to use and it's in c++.

[H4CK3R]

Originally Posted by lionfly

The Sparrow framework is also mentioned as an option for 2D development, but I am not sure how it compares with the more popular Cocos2D.

If anybody has the comparison opinions, please share your experiences.

I don't know of any direct comparisons but i know the dev of RedBall2 used sparrow to make that and that he then recoded RedBall 1 with sparrow too and released it as an update because he liked working with it more.

There's also CoronaSDK as well which i've heard is quite good to work with (few lines of code).

[Trisect Development]

You can also try iMiniB3D its based on Blitzbasic 3D.

[lionfly]

The SIO2 engine need a splash screen for Free commercial use, and it is using Blender.

My question is: is Blender itself on its own an engine to be used for 3D apps?

[AlexDS]

COCOS2d is good - when you earn money on freeware engine it will be possible to buy shareware...

[FlagellumDei]

Originally Posted by lionfly

The SIO2 engine need a splash screen for Free commercial use, and it is using Blender.

My question is: is Blender itself on its own an engine to be used for 3D apps?

Blender is a 3D modeling and animation software. It's not an engine.

[lionfly]

I came across another option for FREE 3D apps: Panda3D (Panda3D - Free 3D Game Engine), which is not included in many comparison pages.

After a going-through, seems it cannot develop iPhone games?

Anyone has experiences or views on the Panda3D game engine?

[mlfarrell]

Many people disagree but I always say you should at least try to write own game engine. I've made at least 3 big game engines in my life contoured to specific projects and I learn a wealth of information from each one. My absolute biggest one complete with scripting engine was for my now-abandoned PC game hospital. It was done in late 2006 so the graphics aren't that good by today's standards

My latest iPad project is based around constructing a 3D graphics engine to interact with the newton game dynamics physics library. I have a development log thread going on at touch arcade to try to generate in-development interest for it. I'm intentionally leaving out any specifics for the game play however, its good to let ppl speculate