4 ms·

as someone who just picked up godot i really hope they eventually reach a point where console support is feasible.

by rmvt 6y ago

nightowl_games 6y ago
I dont know if we're on the same page here. It isn't a question of engineering time. It's a legal problem. It's not going to become feasible in the way ordinary problems do. There's a couple companies out there that will port your game to consoles for you. [1] (1): http://www.lonewolftechnology.com/ http://www.lonewolftechnology.com/
- jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
  If Godot becomes big, you can bet vendors would contact Godot to include support for their systems (under NDA).
  - CJKinni 6y ago
    The issue here is that Godot isn't someone you can contact to support their systems. It's an open source project. They either add it to the source, which they can't because of NDAs, or they point you to companies who have a track record of porting and publishing Godot games on Switch, PS4 and Xbox One, which they are currently doing: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/consoles.html https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/co...
    - jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
      Open source projects can definitely be contacted in most cases (including Godot) and anybody can fork the project to support a given console. Vendors can publish such support under NDA.
    - backpropaganda 6y ago
      FNA, Monogame, Heaps, Kha, and many other open source engines have closed source forks supporting consoles.
    - bananaboy 6y ago
      It's feasible that they could do the work themselves and only allow access to a branch or patches for console to folks who have signed the NDA. This is basically how Epic works with Unreal. The Unreal source code is available for anyone to look at on github, but it doesn't include any console-specific code.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
georgeecollins 6y ago
Also, if there is enough of a market for it, someone can maintain a version of Godot as a company (like RedHat) and then you can use that version for consoles, although obviously at some cost. If Godot grows, that could be an interesting business for someone on HN. I really like Godot. It's not as full featured as other engines but it feels very logical and clear.
cycloptic 6y ago
Technically speaking, improvements to the Vulkan renderer like this are not beneficial to the two major consoles that do not bother supporting Vulkan. The console manufacturers need to get with the program if you want to have any chance of running cross-platform code on there. As long as most studios remain reliant on the small handful of middleware companies (Unreal, Unity) to supply these abstraction layers for them, then this likely won't change. The Switch does support Vulkan but it still leads to the problem of the walled-garden and NDAs which has already been discussed here at length, and also prevents any further abstraction layers for consoles from being developed by anyone besides these approved middleware companies. If the open source aspect is important to you then I would suggest avoiding these walled-garden consoles completely.
- Arelius 6y ago
  Lightmapping is mostly a bunch of higher-level infrastructure that is mostly portable between rendering APIs, there is often some additional amount of work that has to be done per API but I generally expect it to be minimal. I don't think the console manufacturers have many incentives to work too hard on supporting these shared APIs. Their business models make it much more valuable to provide higher performing and more specialized code that works better on their console. And that price generally ends up being pretty small and well worth it for a team maintaining their own engine. And that math only becomes more insignificant the more teams are switching to the main engines such as Unity and Unreal.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    Of course lightmapping is just one part, but the major focus of the 4.0 release is the entirety of the Vulkan backend. There is a lot more code there than just this. I don't think your second paragraph is quite true and it's only because Vulkan is already supported on one of the consoles (Switch) and has been promoted by them for years as a way to make it easier for PC developers to port their games. There are also things like MoltenVK (which was a prime motivator for Vulkan support in Godot) that prove that there is some demand AND that other companies are willing to pay the expense of maintaining it, so it's not something that has to cut into their business model or mess with other products either.
Mikeb85 6y ago
You can publish to consoles with Godot. The issue is that the console makers don't give anyone access to their API without being officially licensed developers (and signing an NDA) so there's no public export templates. However there are several companies that help with this and I believe the Godot devs do as well if you can prove you're a licensed developer.

as someone who just picked up godot i really hope they eventually reach a point where console support is feasible.

by rmvt 6y ago

as someone who just picked up godot i really hope they eventually reach a point where console support is feasible.

I dont know if we're on the same page here. It isn't a question of engineering time. It's a legal problem. It's not going to become feasible in the way ordinary problems do. There's a couple companies out there that will port your game to consoles for you. [1] (1): http://www.lonewolftechnology.com/ http://www.lonewolftechnology.com/

jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
If Godot becomes big, you can bet vendors would contact Godot to include support for their systems (under NDA).
- CJKinni 6y ago
  The issue here is that Godot isn't someone you can contact to support their systems. It's an open source project. They either add it to the source, which they can't because of NDAs, or they point you to companies who have a track record of porting and publishing Godot games on Switch, PS4 and Xbox One, which they are currently doing: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/consoles.html https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/co...
  - jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
    Open source projects can definitely be contacted in most cases (including Godot) and anybody can fork the project to support a given console. Vendors can publish such support under NDA.
  - backpropaganda 6y ago
    FNA, Monogame, Heaps, Kha, and many other open source engines have closed source forks supporting consoles.
  - bananaboy 6y ago
    It's feasible that they could do the work themselves and only allow access to a branch or patches for console to folks who have signed the NDA. This is basically how Epic works with Unreal. The Unreal source code is available for anyone to look at on github, but it doesn't include any console-specific code.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

georgeecollins 6y ago

Also, if there is enough of a market for it, someone can maintain a version of Godot as a company (like RedHat) and then you can use that version for consoles, although obviously at some cost. If Godot grows, that could be an interesting business for someone on HN. I really like Godot. It's not as full featured as other engines but it feels very logical and clear.

cycloptic 6y ago

Technically speaking, improvements to the Vulkan renderer like this are not beneficial to the two major consoles that do not bother supporting Vulkan. The console manufacturers need to get with the program if you want to have any chance of running cross-platform code on there. As long as most studios remain reliant on the small handful of middleware companies (Unreal, Unity) to supply these abstraction layers for them, then this likely won't change. The Switch does support Vulkan but it still leads to the problem of the walled-garden and NDAs which has already been discussed here at length, and also prevents any further abstraction layers for consoles from being developed by anyone besides these approved middleware companies. If the open source aspect is important to you then I would suggest avoiding these walled-garden consoles completely.

Arelius 6y ago
Lightmapping is mostly a bunch of higher-level infrastructure that is mostly portable between rendering APIs, there is often some additional amount of work that has to be done per API but I generally expect it to be minimal. I don't think the console manufacturers have many incentives to work too hard on supporting these shared APIs. Their business models make it much more valuable to provide higher performing and more specialized code that works better on their console. And that price generally ends up being pretty small and well worth it for a team maintaining their own engine. And that math only becomes more insignificant the more teams are switching to the main engines such as Unity and Unreal.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  Of course lightmapping is just one part, but the major focus of the 4.0 release is the entirety of the Vulkan backend. There is a lot more code there than just this. I don't think your second paragraph is quite true and it's only because Vulkan is already supported on one of the consoles (Switch) and has been promoted by them for years as a way to make it easier for PC developers to port their games. There are also things like MoltenVK (which was a prime motivator for Vulkan support in Godot) that prove that there is some demand AND that other companies are willing to pay the expense of maintaining it, so it's not something that has to cut into their business model or mess with other products either.

Mikeb85 6y ago

You can publish to consoles with Godot. The issue is that the console makers don't give anyone access to their API without being officially licensed developers (and signing an NDA) so there's no public export templates. However there are several companies that help with this and I believe the Godot devs do as well if you can prove you're a licensed developer.