6 ms·

Godot has been a breath of fresh air for me lately (been running master branch for a while) and I know that it is going to only get better. I can't wait for the

Godot has been a breath of fresh air for me lately (been running master branch for a while) and I know that it is going to only get better. I can't wait for the vulkan renderer to be ready, I think it's going to a game changer for godot. After Epic originally promised to make linux a first class citizen, I went all in ue4, but they lied and went back on all those promises, and I have since moved to a completely open source gamedev pipeline and I think it's the future. For example, think about how much mods make or break game longetivity and communities. If valve hadnt given us world hammer, there would be no counterstrike, no tf2, no garrys mod, no age of chivalry and ergo no chivalry medieval warfare. The residual effects of modding capabilities are huge, and having formats that are easy to work with with normal tooling (like gltf) mean open source gaming in a game engine like godot (or a few others, armory3d is another) could be a sleeping giant just in the early stages of waking.

diegoperini 7y ago
Did they ditch the entire idea of having Linux support or is it just that they were slow on improving the compatibility?
- leetrout 7y ago
  No OP, but one related example as a dev, you cannot buy / use anything from their marketplace (like a blueprint plugin) on Linux. There are some hacks out there to load them but you still have to buy them from the Windows client.
- michaelbrave 7y ago
  I can't speak for him but my experience compiling from source wasn't that bad, but if I wanted to use any assets from the store it required having the epic launcher installed on windows, so no download of assets on linux. This was frustrating the first time I showed up to a game jam with a linux only machine, not impossible to use but a pain that felt unnessisary.
- EamonnMR 7y ago
  Epic just acquired Rocket League and removed Linux support.
  - simcop2387 7y ago
    and macOS support too, https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/23/21078948/rocket-league-mac-linux-support-final-patch-march-features-online-offline https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/23/21078948/rocket-league-mac...
    - kuerlenonp 7y ago
      thanks for the link!
    - EamonnMR 7y ago
      Especially annoying because we used to play it all the time at the office and we've all got macbooks.
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  No they keep saying words about linux support, but their actions don't match. For over two years community forks had more bug fixes for the linux editor than official because they wouldnt accept pr's. Then they refused to make the marketplace crossplatform, and started doing some other things (like Sweeney publicly talking shit about linux coincidentally around the time they made some deals with MS) All in all it felt like a complete bait and switch. You can cross compile for linux, but often with many errors and almost never if you used marketplace assets that werent just models or blueprints. To be clear, I was talking about two things, linux as a target client platform, and linux as a dev platform.
vincent-toups 7y ago
I'm planning on using Godot for my next game but I hate the scripting language. It feels ad-hoc and I can't stand the absence of anonymous functions.
- uoaei 7y ago
  Houdini apparently is nice to work with, but IDK how inexpensive it is.
- tomtheelder 7y ago
  C# support is pretty great at this point. There are some awkward parts, but overall I don't think you really need to use GDScript. I think GDScript was the biggest mistake Godot made, but they are making strides to make the engine accessible via a conventional language.
shmerl 7y ago
Do you know if Epic scraped the effort to make a parallelized Vulkan renderer in UE? https://trello.com/c/lzLwtb5P/124-vulkan-for-pc-and-linux https://trello.com/c/lzLwtb5P/124-vulkan-for-pc-and-linux While it's great that you could move away from it, a lot of in-development games are already stuck with UE, and it's a concern if they won't be able to make well performing Linux releases.
TeaDude 7y ago
If modding is your thing there's a proposal to implement it in a secure way: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/389 https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/389 Obviously having full game engines available for free has pretty much usurped modding's place in the games industry but they're still cool and you still get new games based on mods (PUBG is a recent example)
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  Very cool, thanks for the link! I am also thinking hard right now about what kind of business model could fit best for foss gaming. That's a whole other conversation though I guess.
sangnoir 7y ago
Speaking of Godot, Epic and Linux: in your opinion, would Godot be a good platform to build a Rocket League clone? How good is it at networked games?
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  I really don't see why it couldn't be done. Take a look at the documentation: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.2/tutorials/networking/high_level_multiplayer.html https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.2/tutorials/networking/hig... To be fair though, in anything where minimal latency is important, the networking comms should probably be done outside the game engine, but I think just doing protyping with the networking api and then seeing if that is needed would be the way to go so you don't create work that isn't needed.
- keyle 7y ago
  It would take a bit more work in the performance aspect, but entirely doable.

diegoperini 7y ago

Did they ditch the entire idea of having Linux support or is it just that they were slow on improving the compatibility?

leetrout 7y ago
No OP, but one related example as a dev, you cannot buy / use anything from their marketplace (like a blueprint plugin) on Linux. There are some hacks out there to load them but you still have to buy them from the Windows client.
michaelbrave 7y ago
I can't speak for him but my experience compiling from source wasn't that bad, but if I wanted to use any assets from the store it required having the epic launcher installed on windows, so no download of assets on linux. This was frustrating the first time I showed up to a game jam with a linux only machine, not impossible to use but a pain that felt unnessisary.
EamonnMR 7y ago
Epic just acquired Rocket League and removed Linux support.
- simcop2387 7y ago
  and macOS support too, https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/23/21078948/rocket-league-mac-linux-support-final-patch-march-features-online-offline https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/23/21078948/rocket-league-mac...
  - kuerlenonp 7y ago
    thanks for the link!
  - EamonnMR 7y ago
    Especially annoying because we used to play it all the time at the office and we've all got macbooks.
arminiusreturns 7y ago
No they keep saying words about linux support, but their actions don't match. For over two years community forks had more bug fixes for the linux editor than official because they wouldnt accept pr's. Then they refused to make the marketplace crossplatform, and started doing some other things (like Sweeney publicly talking shit about linux coincidentally around the time they made some deals with MS) All in all it felt like a complete bait and switch. You can cross compile for linux, but often with many errors and almost never if you used marketplace assets that werent just models or blueprints. To be clear, I was talking about two things, linux as a target client platform, and linux as a dev platform.

vincent-toups 7y ago

I'm planning on using Godot for my next game but I hate the scripting language. It feels ad-hoc and I can't stand the absence of anonymous functions.

uoaei 7y ago
Houdini apparently is nice to work with, but IDK how inexpensive it is.
tomtheelder 7y ago
C# support is pretty great at this point. There are some awkward parts, but overall I don't think you really need to use GDScript. I think GDScript was the biggest mistake Godot made, but they are making strides to make the engine accessible via a conventional language.

shmerl 7y ago

Do you know if Epic scraped the effort to make a parallelized Vulkan renderer in UE? https://trello.com/c/lzLwtb5P/124-vulkan-for-pc-and-linux https://trello.com/c/lzLwtb5P/124-vulkan-for-pc-and-linux While it's great that you could move away from it, a lot of in-development games are already stuck with UE, and it's a concern if they won't be able to make well performing Linux releases.

TeaDude 7y ago

If modding is your thing there's a proposal to implement it in a secure way: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/389 https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/389 Obviously having full game engines available for free has pretty much usurped modding's place in the games industry but they're still cool and you still get new games based on mods (PUBG is a recent example)

arminiusreturns 7y ago
Very cool, thanks for the link! I am also thinking hard right now about what kind of business model could fit best for foss gaming. That's a whole other conversation though I guess.

sangnoir 7y ago

Speaking of Godot, Epic and Linux: in your opinion, would Godot be a good platform to build a Rocket League clone? How good is it at networked games?

arminiusreturns 7y ago
I really don't see why it couldn't be done. Take a look at the documentation: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.2/tutorials/networking/high_level_multiplayer.html https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.2/tutorials/networking/hig... To be fair though, in anything where minimal latency is important, the networking comms should probably be done outside the game engine, but I think just doing protyping with the networking api and then seeing if that is needed would be the way to go so you don't create work that isn't needed.
keyle 7y ago
It would take a bit more work in the performance aspect, but entirely doable.