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Godot Engine receives $100k donation from OP Games

103 points by doppp 5y ago

zibzab 5y ago
Not a gamedev but have played around with godot and its such a fun and joyful thing. I wish they had a librapay account that ordinary people could donate to.
bogwog 5y ago
So there is a (at least short term) benefit to the web3/NFT scam train. Good for you Godot!
- aero-glide2 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Fund https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Fund Hah not the first time crypto millionaires have been quite charitable.
dimgl 5y ago
Congratulations! Every so often I get the urge to boot up Godot again. It’s come a long way.
TillE 5y ago
A non-earmarked donation for general development sounds particularly generous, that's great. I have a litany of particular complaints about every game engine or framework I've ever tried, but Godot is by far my favorite option for 2D game development. The scene tree model works extremely well, and C# is pretty close to a first class citizen at this point.
echelon 5y ago
Looks like Unreal and Unity might get Blendered. If the metaverse is like the web, then a step like this is crucial. The web would suck if we had to pay Netscape and Opera to browse it. It'd be nice if Google and Microsoft jumped on board the Godot train.
- mcraiha 5y ago
  Microsoft has already sponsored Godot development multiple times "Before starting, I would like to announce that this work is possible thanks to a generous donation of $24,000 by Microsoft" https://godotengine.org/article/csharp-android-support https://godotengine.org/article/csharp-android-support
  - ffhhj 5y ago
    24k to adopt C#, that's a bargain.
pradn 5y ago
I'm glad they're getting funds, but they're from a company trying to add NFTs to games, which at best is distasteful. Now that I think of it, this seems like a mixed bag - they could have refused and took a stand, if they had cared about this issue, which they may not.
- idle_zealot 5y ago
  Godot gets a lot of money from shitty game developers/publishers that specialize in mobile gambling games etc. This seems to have had some impact on the engine’s feature set, as the wiki has pages/guides specifically about integrating mobile ads and in-app payments, along with script/asset encryption to enable developers to frustrate any attempts by their users to inspect/modify their games. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a “How to integrate NFTs and Blockchain transactions” wiki page pointing to some well-maintained plugin adding said integration in the near-to-mid future.
  - pradn 5y ago
    I didn't know this, thanks for the context. Well, if at least the common features useful for most games are improved, that's not a loss.
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    To be fair in-app payments are something absolutely every developer is interested in. As is code obfuscation as there's plenty of scammy publishers that copy games verbatim and then use fake reviews to push them above the legit games.
georgeecollins 5y ago
I love Godot! I really find it pleasant to work with. It was designed decades after Unreal and Unity so it is much cleaner conceptually. Although admittedly less fully featured and less optimized in some places like physics. As engineers, people on this forum should support open source alternatives for game engines. So much AR / VR software is going to depend on this. I don't care if it is Godot, LJGL, Resy or what have you, we should get behind it.
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  Actually first version of Godot was made in 2007 so it's only a couple years older than Unity (2005) and only 9 years older than Unreal (1998). It's probably cleaner conceptually though as it was pretty simple when it was open sourced (2014 I think?), so less baggage to fix, versus something like Torque3d which never really caught on after it was open sourced, despite being more fully featured than Godot at the time.
  - georgeecollins 5y ago
    I didn't know that. I actually saw a demo of Unreal in 1997 at Activision. We were thinking about using it for an upcoming game. Even then it seemed like a revolutionary engine. It's funny in retrospect because as I recall the big issue was we didn't trust them to finish because their previous game was like "Jazz Jackrabbit" or something like that.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

103 points by doppp 5y ago

Not a gamedev but have played around with godot and its such a fun and joyful thing. I wish they had a librapay account that ordinary people could donate to.

bogwog 5y ago

So there is a (at least short term) benefit to the web3/NFT scam train. Good for you Godot!

aero-glide2 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Fund https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Fund Hah not the first time crypto millionaires have been quite charitable.

dimgl 5y ago

Congratulations! Every so often I get the urge to boot up Godot again. It’s come a long way.

TillE 5y ago

A non-earmarked donation for general development sounds particularly generous, that's great. I have a litany of particular complaints about every game engine or framework I've ever tried, but Godot is by far my favorite option for 2D game development. The scene tree model works extremely well, and C# is pretty close to a first class citizen at this point.

echelon 5y ago

Looks like Unreal and Unity might get Blendered. If the metaverse is like the web, then a step like this is crucial. The web would suck if we had to pay Netscape and Opera to browse it. It'd be nice if Google and Microsoft jumped on board the Godot train.

mcraiha 5y ago
Microsoft has already sponsored Godot development multiple times "Before starting, I would like to announce that this work is possible thanks to a generous donation of $24,000 by Microsoft" https://godotengine.org/article/csharp-android-support https://godotengine.org/article/csharp-android-support
- ffhhj 5y ago
  24k to adopt C#, that's a bargain.

pradn 5y ago

I'm glad they're getting funds, but they're from a company trying to add NFTs to games, which at best is distasteful. Now that I think of it, this seems like a mixed bag - they could have refused and took a stand, if they had cared about this issue, which they may not.

idle_zealot 5y ago
Godot gets a lot of money from shitty game developers/publishers that specialize in mobile gambling games etc. This seems to have had some impact on the engine’s feature set, as the wiki has pages/guides specifically about integrating mobile ads and in-app payments, along with script/asset encryption to enable developers to frustrate any attempts by their users to inspect/modify their games. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a “How to integrate NFTs and Blockchain transactions” wiki page pointing to some well-maintained plugin adding said integration in the near-to-mid future.
- pradn 5y ago
  I didn't know this, thanks for the context. Well, if at least the common features useful for most games are improved, that's not a loss.
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  To be fair in-app payments are something absolutely every developer is interested in. As is code obfuscation as there's plenty of scammy publishers that copy games verbatim and then use fake reviews to push them above the legit games.

georgeecollins 5y ago

I love Godot! I really find it pleasant to work with. It was designed decades after Unreal and Unity so it is much cleaner conceptually. Although admittedly less fully featured and less optimized in some places like physics. As engineers, people on this forum should support open source alternatives for game engines. So much AR / VR software is going to depend on this. I don't care if it is Godot, LJGL, Resy or what have you, we should get behind it.

Mikeb85 5y ago
Actually first version of Godot was made in 2007 so it's only a couple years older than Unity (2005) and only 9 years older than Unreal (1998). It's probably cleaner conceptually though as it was pretty simple when it was open sourced (2014 I think?), so less baggage to fix, versus something like Torque3d which never really caught on after it was open sourced, despite being more fully featured than Godot at the time.
- georgeecollins 5y ago
  I didn't know that. I actually saw a demo of Unreal in 1997 at Activision. We were thinking about using it for an upcoming game. Even then it seemed like a revolutionary engine. It's funny in retrospect because as I recall the big issue was we didn't trust them to finish because their previous game was like "Jazz Jackrabbit" or something like that.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]