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Been playing around with the Release Candidate, coming from Unity. Here's a list of things which I like / dislike: ++ Open License and friendly community. ++

Been playing around with the Release Candidate, coming from Unity. Here's a list of things which I like / dislike: ++ Open License and friendly community. ++ The scene graph (node tree / prefabs) is well done, better than Unity. You can easily switch between scenes (Prefabs) through tabs and convert subtrees to separate scenes. Nesting scenes works really well. ++ The inbuilt scripting documentation is great. - C# is not fully there, yet. No Visual studio integration. Debugging through VSCode is a pain. WebAssembly Exports are not optimized yet. That's why I sticked with GDScript. + GDScript is a nice language with optional type hinting. But refactoring can mostly be done through search/replace. ++ Windows and HTML/WebGL exports are super fast. I did not have problems since the RC. - The inbuilt editor for GDScripts is ok. But I'm missing my VIM shortcuts... - Arrays, dictionaries are not generic. Enums are not typesafe either. Bit me a few times. - You cannot inspect the scene in the editor visually while debugging. This is what I miss the most coming from unity. Some things are really hard to debug this way, for example if you use procedural generation. - 2D coords starting at the top left corner of the screen and increasing right/down is really confusing. If the player jumps, y goes down. It's a bit strange. - I'm a bit afraid regarding the +5000 open issues on github. I wonder, how they will handle that in the future...

_def 7y ago
> 2D coords starting at the top left corner of the screen and increasing right/down is really confusing. If the player jumps, y goes down. It's a bit strange. Where do the coords start in Unity? Just curious
- zubspace 7y ago
  In Unity up is +y, down is -y. In Godot it's reversed, I guess because screen updates usually start at the top left corner of the screen.
  - Insanity 7y ago
    It's reversed in most places historically. 0,0 is top-left. I think unity is the odd one here
wlesieutre 7y ago
Y-down coordinates still feel weird to me too, but that's a pretty longstanding convention for screen space coordinates: https://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/opengl/images/Ex01_Projection.png https://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/opengl/images... (via https://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/opengl/CG_Examples.html https://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/opengl/CG_Exa...)
- kgwxd 7y ago
  Is Unity the odd ball? I've never done any serious game dev but I've done plenty of screen drawing and Y-down is the only convention I've ever come across.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    It's more that there isn't a standard, just a bunch of different conventions in different places. Unity is like DirectX, Godot is like OpenGL. Most content creation software that I've used are right-handed with Z-up, maybe dating back to CAD packages treating floor plans (or other 2D drawings) as XY? Maya is an exception here with a Y-up, and I think SolidWorks might be in that camp as well. https://twitter.com/DJ_Link/status/952185276218200065/photo/1 https://twitter.com/DJ_Link/status/952185276218200065/photo/...
    - weinzierl 7y ago
      POV-Ray uses a left-handed system with Y-up. I think this is pretty unusual but I always found it strangely intuitive.
    - nineteen999 7y ago
      ZBrush is Y-up, Z is front-back. It's freaking annoying.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    Every game or graphics library i've used had y-down coordinates. It always confused the hell out of me and I'll still make mistakes sometimes. It's the opposite of the machines I spent every day programming. They're all y-up.
wkirby 7y ago
Being in a similar boat, I agree with all of your points. I do think 3.2 includes at least a partial fix for: > You cannot inspect the scene in the editor visually while debugging. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuTKFha8QBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuTKFha8QBs) shows how you can override the running game with what is in the scene view.
ravioli_fog 7y ago
> - You cannot inspect the scene in the editor visually while debugging. This is what I miss the most coming from unity. Some things are really hard to debug this way, for example if you use procedural generation. Does this include looking at the [Server] tab in the editor once the game is running? That shows dynamically created nodes at run-time.
- zubspace 7y ago
  Wow, there's a "Remote" button in the scene window which does exactly that. Is this, what you mean? Thanks! Learned something new!
  - ravioli_fog 7y ago
    Yep, that's it! The first thing I made was a roguelike with Godot and I had the same issue w.r.t procedural content and "static" content being disparate. Someone on reddit showed me this same tip. You can even change values on the remote tab and have them reflected live in your game, which is fun for prototyping.
    - ptrott2017 7y ago
      I also totally missed this last time i looked at Godot - so off to to play again - thanks for highlighting this.
      - trynewideas 7y ago
        There's good context/discussion in the PR that implements the game camera override/"hot camera" in 3.2: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/27742 https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/27742
- inDigiNeous 7y ago
  Thanks for this! Didn't realize this was possible.
EamonnMR 7y ago
I second the missing vim shortcuts. At some point I'll probably figure out where the editor source is, mess with it until I have 'i', 'esc', 'd', and 'w' working, then submit an issue on github. I think that sort of pattern is why you see so many open issues - there's just an absolute firehose (dare I say a generation of junior devs) of people looking at this project.
- ttctciyf 7y ago
  If you search for "vim", you'll find there's already an issue: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/17213 https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/17213 - the latest comment is about a year old and says: > The current implementation of the text field looked pretty much straight forward and exchangeable. So at anyone reading this, feel encouraged to grab this issue! :-)
  - cycloptic 7y ago
    FWIW, there is a GDScript syntax highlighter and completion plugin for vim [0], and there was also a GSOC project to add language server support for GDScript [1]. I don't know the exact status of the PRs besides that some parts of it haven't been merged yet, but some did apparently make it into Godot 3.2. I'm sure testing and bugfixes would be appreciated. [0] https://github.com/calviken/vim-gdscript3 https://github.com/calviken/vim-gdscript3 [1] https://godotengine.org/article/gsoc-2019-progress-report-1-part-1#gdscript-lsp https://godotengine.org/article/gsoc-2019-progress-report-1-...
    - ignaloidas 7y ago
      Language server support is in Godot 3.2, there are extensions for VSCode[0] and Atom[1] currently. [0] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=geequlim.godot-tools https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=geequlim... [1] https://atom.io/packages/lang-gdscript https://atom.io/packages/lang-gdscript
shmerl 7y ago
Aren't top to bottom coordinates actually common in computer graphics? The reasons seem historic: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/83570/why-is-the-origin-in-computer-graphics-coordinates-at-the-top-left https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/83570/why-is-the...
- animal531 7y ago
  Yeah, the screen space in memory started top left and ran to the right horizontally and then down vertically.
Rebelgecko 7y ago
IIRC Godot also lets you change the font size, where in Unity it is fixed and awful. I have two 27 inch monitors. Unity looks great on my 4k one, but the UI is basically illegible on my 1440p one because of their janky font handling.
vfclists 7y ago
concerning the +5000 open issues on github, when are you going to pick a few and see what you can do to fix them?
- MrGilbert 7y ago
  Why should he/she? If I support Godot financially, I'm not going to pick up issues. Yet, I should be allowed to raise concerns, shouldn't I?
  - imtringued 7y ago
    You are allowed to raise concerns at any time even without financial support. However, it is considered poor form to waste the time of someone who is working without payment.
- zubspace 7y ago
  I'm so happy, that Godot is open source and it's one of the main reasons for me to switch from Unity. Closed source is such a mess, if there are bugs, which never get fixed or features, which are half baked. And there are quite a few in Unity. They mentioned in the article, that they closed 2000 issues for 3.2 and that's quite an achievement. I simpy hope, that the main maintainers can handle the load. Triage new issues and managing open ones is draining and not a fun task. I mean to look into the list, maybe find some low hanging fruit, but it costs so much time if you ain't familiar with the engine. Time which could be used to write games... :)
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  You don't get to ask that question unless you've fixed a few of them yourself.
keyle 7y ago
I thought Y up in 3D was strange, coming from Blender/UE4 where Z is up. I was told Y up is coming from OpenGL. Agreed about 2D being from top left. Makes sense in theory, feels unnatural in practice.
aliswe 7y ago
In my teens I used Multimedia Fusion extensively, the sequel of The Games Factory (also called Corel Click & Create?), the sequel of Klik&Play, made by the creators of AMOS and STOS. The three (four?) first uses the same 2D coords orientation, and I suspect also the last two. Edit: I believe also Scirra Construct uses the same.

_def 7y ago

> 2D coords starting at the top left corner of the screen and increasing right/down is really confusing. If the player jumps, y goes down. It's a bit strange. Where do the coords start in Unity? Just curious

zubspace 7y ago
In Unity up is +y, down is -y. In Godot it's reversed, I guess because screen updates usually start at the top left corner of the screen.
- Insanity 7y ago
  It's reversed in most places historically. 0,0 is top-left. I think unity is the odd one here

wlesieutre 7y ago

Y-down coordinates still feel weird to me too, but that's a pretty longstanding convention for screen space coordinates: https://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/opengl/images/Ex01_Projection.png https://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/opengl/images... (via https://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/opengl/CG_Examples.html https://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/opengl/CG_Exa...)

kgwxd 7y ago
Is Unity the odd ball? I've never done any serious game dev but I've done plenty of screen drawing and Y-down is the only convention I've ever come across.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  It's more that there isn't a standard, just a bunch of different conventions in different places. Unity is like DirectX, Godot is like OpenGL. Most content creation software that I've used are right-handed with Z-up, maybe dating back to CAD packages treating floor plans (or other 2D drawings) as XY? Maya is an exception here with a Y-up, and I think SolidWorks might be in that camp as well. https://twitter.com/DJ_Link/status/952185276218200065/photo/1 https://twitter.com/DJ_Link/status/952185276218200065/photo/...
  - weinzierl 7y ago
    POV-Ray uses a left-handed system with Y-up. I think this is pretty unusual but I always found it strangely intuitive.
  - nineteen999 7y ago
    ZBrush is Y-up, Z is front-back. It's freaking annoying.
- grawprog 7y ago
  Every game or graphics library i've used had y-down coordinates. It always confused the hell out of me and I'll still make mistakes sometimes. It's the opposite of the machines I spent every day programming. They're all y-up.

wkirby 7y ago

Being in a similar boat, I agree with all of your points. I do think 3.2 includes at least a partial fix for: > You cannot inspect the scene in the editor visually while debugging. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuTKFha8QBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuTKFha8QBs) shows how you can override the running game with what is in the scene view.

ravioli_fog 7y ago

> - You cannot inspect the scene in the editor visually while debugging. This is what I miss the most coming from unity. Some things are really hard to debug this way, for example if you use procedural generation. Does this include looking at the [Server] tab in the editor once the game is running? That shows dynamically created nodes at run-time.

zubspace 7y ago
Wow, there's a "Remote" button in the scene window which does exactly that. Is this, what you mean? Thanks! Learned something new!
- ravioli_fog 7y ago
  Yep, that's it! The first thing I made was a roguelike with Godot and I had the same issue w.r.t procedural content and "static" content being disparate. Someone on reddit showed me this same tip. You can even change values on the remote tab and have them reflected live in your game, which is fun for prototyping.
  - ptrott2017 7y ago
    I also totally missed this last time i looked at Godot - so off to to play again - thanks for highlighting this.
    - trynewideas 7y ago
      There's good context/discussion in the PR that implements the game camera override/"hot camera" in 3.2: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/27742 https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/27742
inDigiNeous 7y ago
Thanks for this! Didn't realize this was possible.

EamonnMR 7y ago

I second the missing vim shortcuts. At some point I'll probably figure out where the editor source is, mess with it until I have 'i', 'esc', 'd', and 'w' working, then submit an issue on github. I think that sort of pattern is why you see so many open issues - there's just an absolute firehose (dare I say a generation of junior devs) of people looking at this project.

ttctciyf 7y ago
If you search for "vim", you'll find there's already an issue: https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/17213 https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/17213 - the latest comment is about a year old and says: > The current implementation of the text field looked pretty much straight forward and exchangeable. So at anyone reading this, feel encouraged to grab this issue! :-)
- cycloptic 7y ago
  FWIW, there is a GDScript syntax highlighter and completion plugin for vim [0], and there was also a GSOC project to add language server support for GDScript [1]. I don't know the exact status of the PRs besides that some parts of it haven't been merged yet, but some did apparently make it into Godot 3.2. I'm sure testing and bugfixes would be appreciated. [0] https://github.com/calviken/vim-gdscript3 https://github.com/calviken/vim-gdscript3 [1] https://godotengine.org/article/gsoc-2019-progress-report-1-part-1#gdscript-lsp https://godotengine.org/article/gsoc-2019-progress-report-1-...
  - ignaloidas 7y ago
    Language server support is in Godot 3.2, there are extensions for VSCode[0] and Atom[1] currently. [0] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=geequlim.godot-tools https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=geequlim... [1] https://atom.io/packages/lang-gdscript https://atom.io/packages/lang-gdscript

shmerl 7y ago

Aren't top to bottom coordinates actually common in computer graphics? The reasons seem historic: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/83570/why-is-the-origin-in-computer-graphics-coordinates-at-the-top-left https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/83570/why-is-the...

animal531 7y ago
Yeah, the screen space in memory started top left and ran to the right horizontally and then down vertically.

Rebelgecko 7y ago

IIRC Godot also lets you change the font size, where in Unity it is fixed and awful. I have two 27 inch monitors. Unity looks great on my 4k one, but the UI is basically illegible on my 1440p one because of their janky font handling.

vfclists 7y ago

concerning the +5000 open issues on github, when are you going to pick a few and see what you can do to fix them?

MrGilbert 7y ago
Why should he/she? If I support Godot financially, I'm not going to pick up issues. Yet, I should be allowed to raise concerns, shouldn't I?
- imtringued 7y ago
  You are allowed to raise concerns at any time even without financial support. However, it is considered poor form to waste the time of someone who is working without payment.
zubspace 7y ago
I'm so happy, that Godot is open source and it's one of the main reasons for me to switch from Unity. Closed source is such a mess, if there are bugs, which never get fixed or features, which are half baked. And there are quite a few in Unity. They mentioned in the article, that they closed 2000 issues for 3.2 and that's quite an achievement. I simpy hope, that the main maintainers can handle the load. Triage new issues and managing open ones is draining and not a fun task. I mean to look into the list, maybe find some low hanging fruit, but it costs so much time if you ain't familiar with the engine. Time which could be used to write games... :)
DonHopkins 7y ago
You don't get to ask that question unless you've fixed a few of them yourself.

keyle 7y ago

I thought Y up in 3D was strange, coming from Blender/UE4 where Z is up. I was told Y up is coming from OpenGL. Agreed about 2D being from top left. Makes sense in theory, feels unnatural in practice.

aliswe 7y ago

In my teens I used Multimedia Fusion extensively, the sequel of The Games Factory (also called Corel Click & Create?), the sequel of Klik&Play, made by the creators of AMOS and STOS. The three (four?) first uses the same 2D coords orientation, and I suspect also the last two. Edit: I believe also Scirra Construct uses the same.