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I've been part of shipping one of perhaps the largest used Godot projects in production. It's not a game, and you may not even realize it's Godot. Godot is belo

I've been part of shipping one of perhaps the largest used Godot projects in production. It's not a game, and you may not even realize it's Godot. Godot is below average in quality compared to Unreal, and probably about on par with various idiosyncrasies that Unity has. Unreal is winning the technical race because they ship projects and games themselves with their engine. Unity does none of that, at least nothing that counts. Godot is a bit better than Unity because it's open-source so contributors are often contributing to things they use and want to improve, but it's still got weird opinions at a maintainer level and severe performance downfalls from those opinions. We're considering another renderer, but for the time being we're still tepidly okay with Godot.

jayd16 4y ago
How is Unreal on mobile and VR these days? The new UE5 tech doesn't seem to run on it. I can't really speak from experience but it always felt like mobile dev was a much higher priority for Unity than Unreal. Is that still the case?
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  It works for mobile. Likely not one of the primary use cases though. VR support is there. Again, I think not the engine's priority. Last I checked some of their new core tech behind ue5 (lumen, nanite) didn't work correctly in VR, though that was around launch time. I would probably start a new VR project in Unreal, and Godot for mobile. edit: the RE4 VR remake was in Unreal for example
naet 4y ago
Can I ask what it is you're using godot for if it isn't a game?
- fezfight 4y ago
  You can build really fancy UIs in it so you can use it for basically anything.
  - httpsterio 4y ago
    what's the lowest hardware requirements you would say you could run a Godot built UI on (not necessarily your product, just generally?)
    - sprkwd 4y ago
      Think folks have used in on a Raspberry Pi
      - moffkalast 4y ago
        Godot doesn't really export for ARM though, are you sure?
        fezfight 4y ago
        Is that so? Well there you go, something for me to contribute!
        seba_dos1 4y ago
        There's absolutely no problem to run Godot on ARM (or other architectures). I can run the whole editor on my phone. It's even in Debian repos.
        moffkalast 4y ago
        Yeah I can find the armv7 and v8 build options under Android APK export, but not under generic Linux. At least none I can find under presets. I suppose you could run Android on the Pi instead though, which might be what they did.
        seba_dos1 4y ago
        You can easily build export templates for any platform by yourself. My phone doesn't run Android, but a regular aarch64 GNU/Linux distro.
- barnabask 4y ago
  Not OP but educated guess: Tesla's mobile app. https://twitter.com/AlexGuichet/status/1528149807709048833 https://twitter.com/AlexGuichet/status/1528149807709048833
  - cptcobalt 4y ago
    You’d be right, and we’re hiring to invest more in 3D visualizations in the app. https://twitter.com/alexguichet/status/1549492941202137088?s=21&t=QrEW5A7McUtYFsyVMoh0cA https://twitter.com/alexguichet/status/1549492941202137088?s...
    - cercatrova 4y ago
      Interesting. What do you think of Flutter? It's in a similar space of building mobile apps, not sure how well visualizations work in Flutter though.
- sli 4y ago
  It's probably worth mentioning that the Godot Editor itself uses the Godot engine.
fezfight 4y ago
It's small enough of a code base that you can change things to suit your needs, too. Godot is definitely going to win the race long term, just like blender. People can use whatever they like, of course, but if you want future developer talent, youre going to need to use Godot.
- sk0g 4y ago
  That's a very bold statement, what has Godot done to warrant it? It's not even the most advanced open source 3D engine right now, considering O3DE (a fork of CryEngine) is open and backed by a fair few big players.
  - mackatap 4y ago
    Usability. For artists and non professional programmers, those options are fairly inaccessible.
    - sk0g 4y ago
      Is it usable because it's... usable, or is it usable because it's barebones? It can be hard to tell the difference when it's pretty far from feature parity with the competition. FWIW, I don't think cornering the non-professional developer market will lead to market dominance. GameMaker is even simpler, and even if it were open source, hobby developers will not be competing technically against thousands of full time, professional engineers working on an engine.
  - TeaDude 4y ago
    O3DE requires "40-100 GB of free disk space" and a separate compiler. Godot (3.5) on the other hand requires a paltry 72.6 MB. Even less if you go for older versions or recompile it without certain features. It comes fully featured with it's own scripting language (or C# if you prefer but that requires extra disk space) and pre compiled builds for distribution with the final product. You can still use C++ if you wish however I've personally never needed to. Godot may not be the biggest and flashiest engine out there but I find that it uses what it has got very effectively. It's extremely easy for newcomers to set-up (Just click the executable and you're all set. It even has it's own IDE.) and comes pre-packaged with the majority of features that your average developer will need. For comparison, I'd say that it's the game engine equivalent of "QBE" or "tcc" to O3DE's "LLVM". It packs most of the punch of the latter in a neat little package.
TillE 4y ago
It's totally bizarre to compare Unreal Engine with Godot. One is a AAA 3D game engine with awful support for 2D games, the other is a superb 2D game engine with modest 3D capabilities. There's just very little overlap in sensible use cases, they barely even count as competitors.
- zlsa 4y ago
  It's not a direct comparison, but there are definitely many games that could be feasibly built in any one of Godot, Unity, or Unreal. There's a lot more to consider beyond just the engine features, such as the asset pipeline, the tooling ecosystem, and the availability of third-party assets and scripts.
- welshwelsh 4y ago
  Godot allows for very quick development compared to Unreal. The learning curve is shallower and the developer experience is much better. Unreal, of course, has more features and is more powerful. Choosing Godot means you are more likely to actually finish making the game. Choosing Unreal means you can potentially make a better game. For me, that's a tough choice, and I often have trouble deciding between one and the other (for 3d games)
- pizza234 4y ago
  > It's totally bizarre to compare Unreal Engine with Godot. One is a AAA 3D game engine with awful support for 2D games, the other is a superb 2D game engine with modest 3D capabilities. There is a vocal amount of people (can't say whether they're a minority or not) that tout/desire the major open source engines to be a valid replacement to the commercial ones. This is also happening in Rust, where Bevy is extremely hyped. So, while it's absolutely true that comparisons don't make much sense, practically, there is a lot of talk about such comparison, so it does make much sense to make this very clear, at least in order to inform developers.
coppolaemilio 4y ago
Hey, I'm curious to know what are some of those "weird opinions at a maintainer level". I would love to know more about your experience using it at such scale.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

jayd16 4y ago

How is Unreal on mobile and VR these days? The new UE5 tech doesn't seem to run on it. I can't really speak from experience but it always felt like mobile dev was a much higher priority for Unity than Unreal. Is that still the case?

spywaregorilla 4y ago
It works for mobile. Likely not one of the primary use cases though. VR support is there. Again, I think not the engine's priority. Last I checked some of their new core tech behind ue5 (lumen, nanite) didn't work correctly in VR, though that was around launch time. I would probably start a new VR project in Unreal, and Godot for mobile. edit: the RE4 VR remake was in Unreal for example

naet 4y ago

Can I ask what it is you're using godot for if it isn't a game?

fezfight 4y ago
You can build really fancy UIs in it so you can use it for basically anything.
- httpsterio 4y ago
  what's the lowest hardware requirements you would say you could run a Godot built UI on (not necessarily your product, just generally?)
  - sprkwd 4y ago
    Think folks have used in on a Raspberry Pi
    - moffkalast 4y ago
      Godot doesn't really export for ARM though, are you sure?
      - fezfight 4y ago
        Is that so? Well there you go, something for me to contribute!
      - seba_dos1 4y ago
        There's absolutely no problem to run Godot on ARM (or other architectures). I can run the whole editor on my phone. It's even in Debian repos.
        moffkalast 4y ago
        Yeah I can find the armv7 and v8 build options under Android APK export, but not under generic Linux. At least none I can find under presets. I suppose you could run Android on the Pi instead though, which might be what they did.
        seba_dos1 4y ago
        You can easily build export templates for any platform by yourself. My phone doesn't run Android, but a regular aarch64 GNU/Linux distro.
barnabask 4y ago
Not OP but educated guess: Tesla's mobile app. https://twitter.com/AlexGuichet/status/1528149807709048833 https://twitter.com/AlexGuichet/status/1528149807709048833
- cptcobalt 4y ago
  You’d be right, and we’re hiring to invest more in 3D visualizations in the app. https://twitter.com/alexguichet/status/1549492941202137088?s=21&t=QrEW5A7McUtYFsyVMoh0cA https://twitter.com/alexguichet/status/1549492941202137088?s...
  - cercatrova 4y ago
    Interesting. What do you think of Flutter? It's in a similar space of building mobile apps, not sure how well visualizations work in Flutter though.
sli 4y ago
It's probably worth mentioning that the Godot Editor itself uses the Godot engine.

fezfight 4y ago

It's small enough of a code base that you can change things to suit your needs, too. Godot is definitely going to win the race long term, just like blender. People can use whatever they like, of course, but if you want future developer talent, youre going to need to use Godot.

sk0g 4y ago
That's a very bold statement, what has Godot done to warrant it? It's not even the most advanced open source 3D engine right now, considering O3DE (a fork of CryEngine) is open and backed by a fair few big players.
- mackatap 4y ago
  Usability. For artists and non professional programmers, those options are fairly inaccessible.
  - sk0g 4y ago
    Is it usable because it's... usable, or is it usable because it's barebones? It can be hard to tell the difference when it's pretty far from feature parity with the competition. FWIW, I don't think cornering the non-professional developer market will lead to market dominance. GameMaker is even simpler, and even if it were open source, hobby developers will not be competing technically against thousands of full time, professional engineers working on an engine.
- TeaDude 4y ago
  O3DE requires "40-100 GB of free disk space" and a separate compiler. Godot (3.5) on the other hand requires a paltry 72.6 MB. Even less if you go for older versions or recompile it without certain features. It comes fully featured with it's own scripting language (or C# if you prefer but that requires extra disk space) and pre compiled builds for distribution with the final product. You can still use C++ if you wish however I've personally never needed to. Godot may not be the biggest and flashiest engine out there but I find that it uses what it has got very effectively. It's extremely easy for newcomers to set-up (Just click the executable and you're all set. It even has it's own IDE.) and comes pre-packaged with the majority of features that your average developer will need. For comparison, I'd say that it's the game engine equivalent of "QBE" or "tcc" to O3DE's "LLVM". It packs most of the punch of the latter in a neat little package.

TillE 4y ago

It's totally bizarre to compare Unreal Engine with Godot. One is a AAA 3D game engine with awful support for 2D games, the other is a superb 2D game engine with modest 3D capabilities. There's just very little overlap in sensible use cases, they barely even count as competitors.

zlsa 4y ago
It's not a direct comparison, but there are definitely many games that could be feasibly built in any one of Godot, Unity, or Unreal. There's a lot more to consider beyond just the engine features, such as the asset pipeline, the tooling ecosystem, and the availability of third-party assets and scripts.
welshwelsh 4y ago
Godot allows for very quick development compared to Unreal. The learning curve is shallower and the developer experience is much better. Unreal, of course, has more features and is more powerful. Choosing Godot means you are more likely to actually finish making the game. Choosing Unreal means you can potentially make a better game. For me, that's a tough choice, and I often have trouble deciding between one and the other (for 3d games)
pizza234 4y ago
> It's totally bizarre to compare Unreal Engine with Godot. One is a AAA 3D game engine with awful support for 2D games, the other is a superb 2D game engine with modest 3D capabilities. There is a vocal amount of people (can't say whether they're a minority or not) that tout/desire the major open source engines to be a valid replacement to the commercial ones. This is also happening in Rust, where Bevy is extremely hyped. So, while it's absolutely true that comparisons don't make much sense, practically, there is a lot of talk about such comparison, so it does make much sense to make this very clear, at least in order to inform developers.

coppolaemilio 4y ago

Hey, I'm curious to know what are some of those "weird opinions at a maintainer level". I would love to know more about your experience using it at such scale.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]