Its okay, but compared to other engines it falls far behind

Its feature set is nice, but if you're serious about game dev, there are much better solutions out there for you. Many like comparing it to the

CryEngine, but its definitely not even close to that level. It's more comparable to Blitz and Dark Basic level, with a few more fancy features.

Performance is something I would consider horrible. Its very slow, so if you are wanting to target a wide range of end users for your app then

its simply not going to happen (even with plenty of optimization).

Its fairly stable, and I didnt run into many problems, which is pretty good considering that there isnt a large team behind the development of the

engine.

Support is also very very weak. Getting straightforward answers is like pulling teeth sometimes. The forum community is also quite rude at

times, including the main developer.

Ease of use is okay if you're a programmer. If you're an artist you'll definitely have a hard time with it, and expect to run into a myriad of

problems. But even for programmers it can be problematic as well.

This engine does have plenty of potential to become something really good if a team was assembled to take it to the next level. But seeing how

other indie engines out there like Torque, Unity and UDK are moving forward quickly, LE2 is starting to fall far behind very quickly.

Overall if you're a hobbyist, then its not bad if you just want to play around with it, but dont expect to finish any game within a reasonable

amount of time, in fact there arent any completed and published games from this engine yet, so that in itself is not a good sign.

This is not exactly a game engine

This is really more of a graphics a engine at this point. The specs listed above are WAY off base. The author of the engine has been aware of the vast discrepancy between the specs posted here and what the engine actually does for ~6months. Your guess is as good as mine as to why he chose not to post a disclaimer here.

I used "average" for all the ratings as my intent was not necessarily to rate it but rather to correct the misinformation posted above.

Here are the specs directly from the leadwerks site.

Rendering
BSP geometry (brushes).
Static meshes.
Alpha-blended heightmap terrain.
Hardware-accelerated animated models.

Brushes
Automated texture mapping with adjustable parameters for offset, scale, and rotation.
BSP acceleration for raycasting and collision an order of magnitude faster than linear methods.

Meshes
Fast batch rendering can handle many instances of high-polygon geometry.
Convert .x, .3ds, or .b3d meshes to Leadwerks .mesh format.

Terrain
Alpha-blended texture layers.
Arbitrary subdivision and detail levels (LOD).
Automatic edge turning to smooth out slopes.

Lighting
Lightmaps on bsp geometry and terrain.
Vertex colors on static meshes.
Dynamic shader-based lighting on moving objects.
Projected shadows.
Built-in lightmapper.

Physics
Physics system based on Newton Game Dynamics.
Support for interactive objects (rigid bodies).
Hardware-accelerated physics on compatible graphics cards.

Textures
Load .png, .jpg, .bmp, .pcx, .dds, or .vtf textures.
Material settings for blend mode, transparency, z-sorting, collision, occlusion, etc.
Optional shader program per material.

Shaders
Support for pixel and fragment GLSL shader programs.
Normal maps with specular reflection on all lighting types.
Support for reflective and refractive materials.
Water shader.

Effects
Particle system with control over speed, acceleration, particle size, etc.
Projectors cast an image for light and shadow effects.

Sound
Sound system based on OpenAL.
Sound management prevents too many simultaneous instances of the same sound playing.
Support for EAX on compatible hardware.

Editor
Load 3D World Studio files directly.
Set up interactive worlds using entities without editing source code.

Programming
Write and compile a script program with no external programming language.
DLL for use with any programming language.

Are you experienced ?

this point is quite annoying though, that an update can cause all that worked well before to no func without an advice... shaders are commonly the cause... ATI card and shaders...

in fact if the lead developper, Josh, found a thing not at his taste, (not as god as he wanted) he drops it out as this...

As i am not a developper, in the futrure release,
Lua script will be a time saver for me, don't get Blitzmax and don't master C++, hope so...

But all in all, it is a great little jewel engine among a lot of crap on the market.
Big Bang for your Bucks

Showing Promise

There have been many improvements to this engine recently. The most important aspect added recently is the addition of the Sandbox editor.

The renderer is coming along very nicely as well. I do experience some performance issues on a mid-high end PC. With that said performance has improved recently.

performance you don't expect for 100 bones

if you want a good reliable and most importantly FAST indie engine, leadwerks is it.

features are growing weekly, the performance is good even when hit with big poly counts. the full compatibility of 3dws5 is of major help, if you design a map in 3dws5 it will work in leadwerks.

the scripting system seems easy enough, i'm no coder so i wont lie and tell you it's awesome. it's a scripting system. it totally baffles me.

the art however is improving, shaders have just been implemented and now we have normal mapping. more features on that front to come and unlike some engines out there when they say their working on something, they are.

a really low price for what this thing will be capable of, i can't give it a higher mark for features simply because they aren't their YET, but i trust leadwerks to deliver. they haven't steered me wrong on 3d world studio.

Best engine ever I choose.

I love this engine for It's graphical quality.
even it have some leaks, but it extreamly is under develope.
I know it will be one of greatest engines for just a few years.

Easy and looks great

Well I've manage to do more in the last month with this engine,compared to years with other engines.The community is growing strong, and are working together to make it even better than what it already is.It was definitly worth the buy, and Sandbox Editor is free with it.Sandbox Editor is still growing, and has an excellent terrain editor with texture layers and mesh layers, which I find really cool.

Leadwerks 2.0 = Unbelivable good featured engine for $150 !!

The recently relased LE v2.0 is miles ahead of other products I tried like Gamestudio A7 (Slow & Old) and TGAC (unstable & overly complex), C4 ( physics??), Unity (Mac only , terribly expensive)

This engine is extremely powerful, fast & stable and easy to use . With unified lighting system with dynamic soft shadows, SSAO, Render enormous landscapes up to 33 million polygons, custom addable shaders, Multi-platform, dll with Newton 2.0 physics, and since it's a .dll you can use any language you like to write it. (blitzmax / C++ prefered)
The upcoming "Sandbox" will make this engine complete with real-time scene editor.

Most of the features that was missing before has now been almost all implemented.

Support is fast as Josh actively check his email and the forum is very active.

Dont' just take my word for it, take a look for youself :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNNzL0mv4XA
www.leadwerks.com

Great for the price!!

Engine is used in conjunction with 3d world studio, which is the best level editor I've ever used. The scripting language is easy to use, and engine can be used with blitzmax for advanced users. Developer answers posts himself on the forums and releases patches and updates regularly. Things are being added to the engine all the time. The only drawback is that because the engine is so new, the docs aren't great yet.