13 ms·

Godot game engine reaches 2.0

143 points by nunodonato 11y ago

zubspace 11y ago
Godot is awesome. It's a great alternative to Unity. It has a friendly community (IRC). The all-in-one editor is nice. The scripting language is easy to get into and if you need to, you can extend the engine and scripting language with C++. And the export to windows, linux, mac, ios, android and web works actually quite well. What's really nice is the notion of scenes which I prefer to the way scenes are handled in Unity. Scenes in Godot are are simply node-trees which you can instantiate in existing scenes. For example you create a character in a single scene which you instantiate in a level scene. I always had the impression that this favored encapsulation compared to highly interdependent components in unity. What brought me back to unity was 3D, scripting and debugging. 3D in Godot feels limited. Shader graphs are not really usable, yet. It's a lot simpler to create something nice in Unity with the standard shader and some assets. And well, the debugger, it's simply not comparable to Visual Studio. Variables are sometimes not inspectable. I missed refactoring alot. And sometimes you need to dig very deep to understand how stuff works because many things are not yet documented. All-in-all, I love Godot. It's a nice cross-platform development environment. I simply hope that I can come back later when all rough edges are gone.
- LoSboccacc 11y ago
  same here. much much better at 2d than unity and holds its own in 3d as well, even if not really comparable to what unity 5 can do. gscript is a little too slow, but layouts are great to make ux with and the event framework is sane enough to make user input not a chore as in other engines. eventually moved to phaser.js because that's even more cross platform and I'm fitting more and more stuff in shaders anyway.
- EwanG 11y ago
  My problem with it (and many of the other alternatives) is not having an associated Asset Store. Not that I have an overarching need to buy stuff, but because there is a curated place where I can find a model or prop I need that will (almost always) import properly and work and scale the way I expect. Yes, you can scour the internet for "free" 3d stuff, but as often as not it's worth what you paid for it, and unless you're running the program it was created in you will spend more than a little time getting it to behave. My .02 worth as a casual indie developer.
  - Hrundi 11y ago
    Looks like it is going to happen next. From the post: > Godot community keeps growing and users keep producing more assets, scripts, modules, etc. we are in need of an unified platform for sharing them. As such, we will be working towards having an asset sharing platform (website + REST API + Godot integration) for 2.1. The built-in platform will be free (it will be integrated with GitHub), but we will make sure that the REST API is well defined so anyone can make a commercial asset sharing platform and integrate it with Godot.
Mithaldu 11y ago
Some meta discussion: "xyz reaches/releases version number 234234.324234" is entirely meaningless and the best way to ensure that nobody will care about your release announcement. Your project may internally have a very well defined and entirely logical policy as to how exactly to change version numbers based on internal project changes, but from the outside this is 100% untrustable and invisible, meaning your 2.0 release could mean anything from "we rewrote the entire thing" or "a set amount of time went by" (see Firefox/Perl/probably others). If you actually care at all about your release announcement being read, include in the title line the actual benefit the new version provides to people.
- paulbennett 11y ago
  Arguably anyone following the project will be familiar with their version numbering policy. For those that are new to the project (including myself) a list of benefits in the title provides little information anyway as I have no background knowledge of the project before this release. Either way the best option is to read the announcement to find out more.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  I have to disagree. Announcing a major new release by version number is enough to be most people to click on the link. Now a lack of release notes and a major features/what's new document - that's a release promotion fail.
- erikb 11y ago
  Yeah or announcing other things that are actually valuabe to readers like "Game engine XYZ reached 1000 published games" or "Game engine ABC reached this new platform DEF".
- tcfunk 11y ago
  Yeah I would say the version number definitely has meaning, particularly in the case of a major version release. I could see something like "Godot reached 2.0.1" getting a little tiresome. I would agree that, for a minor release like that, wording the announcement as "Godot engine now supports xyz" would definitely be more helpful. But when they've got 20 or so major new features, there's not really a better way than to say "Godot 2.0 released" with a link to the changes.
laumars 11y ago
The features page looks well presented but has anyone actually used Godot? What are their experiences with it compared to writing your own games from scratch?
- PostOnce 11y ago
  "From scratch" isn't the right metric, you'd compare it to unity or unreal. The key difference is this is actually open source so you have 100% control over your own distribution and licensing. I haven't looked at it in 6mo but back then on the 1.x branch there were many, many thoroughly polished example games ranging from 2D (platform / isometric / tile) to 3D (third person, others i forget). Normally you get 1 incomplete mechanic as an example, not an actually playable "game" with more polish than most app store stuff. I was pleasantly surprised with these polished examples, but at that time the docs were not that thorough (cursory look tells me they've improved), but the examples pretty much made up for it. Almost any game you'd want to make you could start with their example and build out. I'm excited it's growing. I'll probably play with it for 7DRL.org in a couple weeks.
  - kriro 11y ago
    I don't see the sample games listed on their site but found some googling. I'd be very interested in a good sample point&click adventure game especially for a FLOSS-engine. Creating one has always been in my "neat project" pile but I suck too much at drawing to motivate myself. Last time I tried (with no engine, just pygame) I got stuck figuring out a good way to do paths/movement/blocking areas and it sort of fizzled :D
    - PostOnce 11y ago
      Yeah like I said the docs could be improved, the website could be improved (although I checked yesterday and the whole site is new). The examples are in godot/examples or something after you extract it I think.
- mintplant 11y ago
  I tried it out for a hobby project a while back. I really wanted to like it but there was a lot that felt broken. One problem, if I recall correctly, was that running from within the editor worked but exporting a standalone build produced something that just would not run. Honestly, having been burned once after investing a significant amount of time, I would stay away unless they've significantly overhauled things.
chris_wot 11y ago
So we are no longer waiting for Godot. Don't you think this puts them in a bit of an existential crisis?
- sw00 11y ago
  Underrated post.
- GoodOldNe 11y ago
  Came in wanting to make this joke, was surprised when I didn't see it already in top comments. Good for you, sir.
Cyph0n 11y ago
One thing I don't get with game engines: why do they feel the need to make a X-like scripting language, where X=Python in this case, and X=JavaScript in Unity's case? Why do they make people re-learn the specifics and slight differences of a language that has been around for more than a decade? On top of this, they are making their engines more difficult to maintain: bug fixes, new features, deprecation and backwards compat., keeping docs up to date, writing tutorials for the language, etc. etc. I just don't see why these engines want to re-invent the wheel, even though what they end up with is simply a slightly modified wheel. /endrant The engine looks cool however, and the fact that it's FOSS makes it a better option for budding game devs. I might give a go when I decide to make a simple game.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Do they have a document detailing their scripting language? And can they expose bindings for other scripting languages? Is so, maybe this is something they can move to.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Ah. They can! Initially, Godot was designed to support multiple scripting languages (this ability still exists today). However, only GDScript is in use right now. There is a little history behind this.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  There's a history of reinventing the wheel in game development just for the sake of doing so. Until Unity became popular, everybody was doing their own game engine for their own game. All those game engines have their own image formats, sound formats, archive packing format, etc. None of this is ever open source, of course... And before you think "in the name of performance", it's usually actually in the name of premature optimization and ends up being a bad idea. Reinventing the wheel indeed. Edit: I've been in the games industry (specifically, in reverse engineering and dealing with these exact issues) for a decade and this is all true, and from experience. I see I'm still being downvoted, without any reasonable explanations though. If someone here disagrees, I'd like to hear it.
irremediable 11y ago
I really need to get around to trying Godot. I've had it installed since 1.0, but I've been too busy/lazy to try any (amateur!) gamedev lately.
justincc 11y ago
Anybody know if Godot has a business model behind it or is it co-ordinated purely by volunteers? Perhaps it's enough that improving the game engine via open source could help Okam Studio produce games more quickly?
revanx_ 11y ago
As someone who just wants to try it out, really wish the site had https and hashes with the supplied binaries.
some_guy1234 11y ago
Atomic Game Engine is also pretty sweet. I actually like it a bit more. http://atomicgameengine.com/ http://atomicgameengine.com/
- bobwaycott 11y ago
  Kind of a bummer that it cannot build for Linux.

143 points by nunodonato 11y ago

Godot is awesome. It's a great alternative to Unity. It has a friendly community (IRC). The all-in-one editor is nice. The scripting language is easy to get into and if you need to, you can extend the engine and scripting language with C++. And the export to windows, linux, mac, ios, android and web works actually quite well. What's really nice is the notion of scenes which I prefer to the way scenes are handled in Unity. Scenes in Godot are are simply node-trees which you can instantiate in existing scenes. For example you create a character in a single scene which you instantiate in a level scene. I always had the impression that this favored encapsulation compared to highly interdependent components in unity. What brought me back to unity was 3D, scripting and debugging. 3D in Godot feels limited. Shader graphs are not really usable, yet. It's a lot simpler to create something nice in Unity with the standard shader and some assets. And well, the debugger, it's simply not comparable to Visual Studio. Variables are sometimes not inspectable. I missed refactoring alot. And sometimes you need to dig very deep to understand how stuff works because many things are not yet documented. All-in-all, I love Godot. It's a nice cross-platform development environment. I simply hope that I can come back later when all rough edges are gone.

LoSboccacc 11y ago
same here. much much better at 2d than unity and holds its own in 3d as well, even if not really comparable to what unity 5 can do. gscript is a little too slow, but layouts are great to make ux with and the event framework is sane enough to make user input not a chore as in other engines. eventually moved to phaser.js because that's even more cross platform and I'm fitting more and more stuff in shaders anyway.
EwanG 11y ago
My problem with it (and many of the other alternatives) is not having an associated Asset Store. Not that I have an overarching need to buy stuff, but because there is a curated place where I can find a model or prop I need that will (almost always) import properly and work and scale the way I expect. Yes, you can scour the internet for "free" 3d stuff, but as often as not it's worth what you paid for it, and unless you're running the program it was created in you will spend more than a little time getting it to behave. My .02 worth as a casual indie developer.
- Hrundi 11y ago
  Looks like it is going to happen next. From the post: > Godot community keeps growing and users keep producing more assets, scripts, modules, etc. we are in need of an unified platform for sharing them. As such, we will be working towards having an asset sharing platform (website + REST API + Godot integration) for 2.1. The built-in platform will be free (it will be integrated with GitHub), but we will make sure that the REST API is well defined so anyone can make a commercial asset sharing platform and integrate it with Godot.

Mithaldu 11y ago

Some meta discussion: "xyz reaches/releases version number 234234.324234" is entirely meaningless and the best way to ensure that nobody will care about your release announcement. Your project may internally have a very well defined and entirely logical policy as to how exactly to change version numbers based on internal project changes, but from the outside this is 100% untrustable and invisible, meaning your 2.0 release could mean anything from "we rewrote the entire thing" or "a set amount of time went by" (see Firefox/Perl/probably others). If you actually care at all about your release announcement being read, include in the title line the actual benefit the new version provides to people.

paulbennett 11y ago
Arguably anyone following the project will be familiar with their version numbering policy. For those that are new to the project (including myself) a list of benefits in the title provides little information anyway as I have no background knowledge of the project before this release. Either way the best option is to read the announcement to find out more.
chris_wot 11y ago
I have to disagree. Announcing a major new release by version number is enough to be most people to click on the link. Now a lack of release notes and a major features/what's new document - that's a release promotion fail.
erikb 11y ago
Yeah or announcing other things that are actually valuabe to readers like "Game engine XYZ reached 1000 published games" or "Game engine ABC reached this new platform DEF".
tcfunk 11y ago
Yeah I would say the version number definitely has meaning, particularly in the case of a major version release. I could see something like "Godot reached 2.0.1" getting a little tiresome. I would agree that, for a minor release like that, wording the announcement as "Godot engine now supports xyz" would definitely be more helpful. But when they've got 20 or so major new features, there's not really a better way than to say "Godot 2.0 released" with a link to the changes.

laumars 11y ago

The features page looks well presented but has anyone actually used Godot? What are their experiences with it compared to writing your own games from scratch?

PostOnce 11y ago
"From scratch" isn't the right metric, you'd compare it to unity or unreal. The key difference is this is actually open source so you have 100% control over your own distribution and licensing. I haven't looked at it in 6mo but back then on the 1.x branch there were many, many thoroughly polished example games ranging from 2D (platform / isometric / tile) to 3D (third person, others i forget). Normally you get 1 incomplete mechanic as an example, not an actually playable "game" with more polish than most app store stuff. I was pleasantly surprised with these polished examples, but at that time the docs were not that thorough (cursory look tells me they've improved), but the examples pretty much made up for it. Almost any game you'd want to make you could start with their example and build out. I'm excited it's growing. I'll probably play with it for 7DRL.org in a couple weeks.
- kriro 11y ago
  I don't see the sample games listed on their site but found some googling. I'd be very interested in a good sample point&click adventure game especially for a FLOSS-engine. Creating one has always been in my "neat project" pile but I suck too much at drawing to motivate myself. Last time I tried (with no engine, just pygame) I got stuck figuring out a good way to do paths/movement/blocking areas and it sort of fizzled :D
  - PostOnce 11y ago
    Yeah like I said the docs could be improved, the website could be improved (although I checked yesterday and the whole site is new). The examples are in godot/examples or something after you extract it I think.
mintplant 11y ago
I tried it out for a hobby project a while back. I really wanted to like it but there was a lot that felt broken. One problem, if I recall correctly, was that running from within the editor worked but exporting a standalone build produced something that just would not run. Honestly, having been burned once after investing a significant amount of time, I would stay away unless they've significantly overhauled things.

chris_wot 11y ago

So we are no longer waiting for Godot. Don't you think this puts them in a bit of an existential crisis?

sw00 11y ago
Underrated post.
GoodOldNe 11y ago
Came in wanting to make this joke, was surprised when I didn't see it already in top comments. Good for you, sir.

Cyph0n 11y ago

One thing I don't get with game engines: why do they feel the need to make a X-like scripting language, where X=Python in this case, and X=JavaScript in Unity's case? Why do they make people re-learn the specifics and slight differences of a language that has been around for more than a decade? On top of this, they are making their engines more difficult to maintain: bug fixes, new features, deprecation and backwards compat., keeping docs up to date, writing tutorials for the language, etc. etc. I just don't see why these engines want to re-invent the wheel, even though what they end up with is simply a slightly modified wheel. /endrant The engine looks cool however, and the fact that it's FOSS makes it a better option for budding game devs. I might give a go when I decide to make a simple game.

chris_wot 11y ago
Do they have a document detailing their scripting language? And can they expose bindings for other scripting languages? Is so, maybe this is something they can move to.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Ah. They can! Initially, Godot was designed to support multiple scripting languages (this ability still exists today). However, only GDScript is in use right now. There is a little history behind this.
scrollaway 11y ago
There's a history of reinventing the wheel in game development just for the sake of doing so. Until Unity became popular, everybody was doing their own game engine for their own game. All those game engines have their own image formats, sound formats, archive packing format, etc. None of this is ever open source, of course... And before you think "in the name of performance", it's usually actually in the name of premature optimization and ends up being a bad idea. Reinventing the wheel indeed. Edit: I've been in the games industry (specifically, in reverse engineering and dealing with these exact issues) for a decade and this is all true, and from experience. I see I'm still being downvoted, without any reasonable explanations though. If someone here disagrees, I'd like to hear it.

irremediable 11y ago

I really need to get around to trying Godot. I've had it installed since 1.0, but I've been too busy/lazy to try any (amateur!) gamedev lately.

justincc 11y ago

Anybody know if Godot has a business model behind it or is it co-ordinated purely by volunteers? Perhaps it's enough that improving the game engine via open source could help Okam Studio produce games more quickly?

revanx_ 11y ago

As someone who just wants to try it out, really wish the site had https and hashes with the supplied binaries.

some_guy1234 11y ago

Atomic Game Engine is also pretty sweet. I actually like it a bit more. http://atomicgameengine.com/ http://atomicgameengine.com/

bobwaycott 11y ago
Kind of a bummer that it cannot build for Linux.