5 ms·

I think it's great to see increased support for open source engines. Those engines might not be at the same technical level as Unity (yet), which shouldn't be

by hooby 3y ago

I think it's great to see increased support for open source engines. Those engines might not be at the same technical level as Unity (yet), which shouldn't be a surprise given the way lower budget and man-power behind them. But they are getting better - and they do have some massive advantages over proprietary engines. One example for such an advantage would be that you can just fork the code, if they do something you don't like. They can't hold your game hostage to force changes on you.

Leo_Germond 3y ago
IMO this is not the technical level that matter, it's the UX, if we leave aside the super duper AAA games, which would use Unreal, then it's about putting a whole lot of different assets together, and hold them with code glue. Unity has some nice things that are not there yet in godot (from the top of my mind: better font support, in term of UX once again), and C# is way better than thw half-assed language that is Godotscript. That being said I'm pretty sure that Godot is about to close this gap before 2025, given the recent boost in popularity.
- lvncelot 3y ago
  Never used Godot myself but can't you use C# in place of Godotscript? The docs[1] would suggest so. [1]https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/c_sharp/index.html# https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/c...
  - Rapzid 3y ago
    Yes it's the second of the two first-class scripting language options. My initial impressions are pretty positive. They moved to .Net 6 from mono with Godot 4. Support for deployment to Android with c# is coming in 4.2. There also seems to be interest and discussions around how AOT can be used in the future. The engine is super easy to build and I think I actually built it with .Net 7 haha. Others are already using .Net 8.
  - rcarmo 3y ago
    You can. There are plenty of people porting their Unity code to Godot in that way.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  > C# is way better than thw half-assed language that is Godotscript C# is a horrible language, but if you must use it then you can in godot. You can use c++ too.
  - zigzag312 3y ago
    Why do you think it's a horrible language?
    - gumballindie 3y ago
      I gave it a try for a while - I really like the syntax and some of its capability. But somehow my head was just spinning. I can't explain it, it was horrible to use. The moment I switched back to C++, Python and similar, I felt relief. I genuinely gave C# a chance but it just didn't work. There's nothing specific, it has all the "right" things, but it forces you to work in a way that's just so unusual. I never experienced this with another language. It feels like a language that's intentionally aimed at bloating headcount in development teams where everyone works on that "little" thing that somehow becomes a project in itself.
      - zigzag312 3y ago
        Thanks for honest answer. I think I get it. C# has certainly accumulated a lot of history. From being OOP heavy, Windows centric, closed-source, with mostly enterprisey frameworks/libs to more multi-paradigm, cross-plaform, open-source, with iteratively more sane frameworks/libs. A lot has changed (and is still changing). Modern C# is getting more streamlined, but there are limitations to this due to backwards compatibility, and old boilerplate-heavy syntax is still supported, which leads to having multiple ways of doing the same thing. While I really like the direction the language is taking now, the official documentation of the new stuff is often sparse or scattered all over the place and a lot of answers on Stack Overflow are dated. Diving into an ecosystem like that, which is in a middle of a big transition, can certainty be overwhelming. The only tip I can provide is that if you ever try it again, try it in combination with a good IDE like Rider. C# is designed to be used in combination with an IDE. Rider can automate lots of things and analyzers can offer helpful guidance.
globular-toast 3y ago
Why do I feel like those useful changes in the forks will never make it upstream? It's not GPL I suppose? I guess I just don't really understand how people can be ok with companies like EA freeloading their work, which they almost certainly will if they can.
- TheRoque 3y ago
  Is GPL practical for a game engine ? Doesn't it mean that all code produced with this engine would be also open source ? Seems pretty much like a no-go, and nobody would use the engine. Please correct me if I didn't understand it right.
  - Rapzid 3y ago
    I don't think you'd ever be able to do a console port with a GPL engine. The SDKs are all proprietary and behind NDAs.
    - slikrick 3y ago
      correct. GPL zealots completely ignore usecases that are incompatible though
  - nunodonato 3y ago
    Godot is not GPL, it's MIT
  - globular-toast 3y ago
    The value of a game is mostly in its artwork, story, gameplay etc., not the code.
    - slikrick 3y ago
      you would need to release those assets for the project to be buildable under the GPL. you can't just not provide build assets

by hooby 3y ago

Leo_Germond 3y ago

IMO this is not the technical level that matter, it's the UX, if we leave aside the super duper AAA games, which would use Unreal, then it's about putting a whole lot of different assets together, and hold them with code glue. Unity has some nice things that are not there yet in godot (from the top of my mind: better font support, in term of UX once again), and C# is way better than thw half-assed language that is Godotscript. That being said I'm pretty sure that Godot is about to close this gap before 2025, given the recent boost in popularity.

lvncelot 3y ago
Never used Godot myself but can't you use C# in place of Godotscript? The docs[1] would suggest so. [1]https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/c_sharp/index.html# https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/c...
- Rapzid 3y ago
  Yes it's the second of the two first-class scripting language options. My initial impressions are pretty positive. They moved to .Net 6 from mono with Godot 4. Support for deployment to Android with c# is coming in 4.2. There also seems to be interest and discussions around how AOT can be used in the future. The engine is super easy to build and I think I actually built it with .Net 7 haha. Others are already using .Net 8.
- rcarmo 3y ago
  You can. There are plenty of people porting their Unity code to Godot in that way.
gumballindie 3y ago
> C# is way better than thw half-assed language that is Godotscript C# is a horrible language, but if you must use it then you can in godot. You can use c++ too.
- zigzag312 3y ago
  Why do you think it's a horrible language?
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    I gave it a try for a while - I really like the syntax and some of its capability. But somehow my head was just spinning. I can't explain it, it was horrible to use. The moment I switched back to C++, Python and similar, I felt relief. I genuinely gave C# a chance but it just didn't work. There's nothing specific, it has all the "right" things, but it forces you to work in a way that's just so unusual. I never experienced this with another language. It feels like a language that's intentionally aimed at bloating headcount in development teams where everyone works on that "little" thing that somehow becomes a project in itself.
    - zigzag312 3y ago
      Thanks for honest answer. I think I get it. C# has certainly accumulated a lot of history. From being OOP heavy, Windows centric, closed-source, with mostly enterprisey frameworks/libs to more multi-paradigm, cross-plaform, open-source, with iteratively more sane frameworks/libs. A lot has changed (and is still changing). Modern C# is getting more streamlined, but there are limitations to this due to backwards compatibility, and old boilerplate-heavy syntax is still supported, which leads to having multiple ways of doing the same thing. While I really like the direction the language is taking now, the official documentation of the new stuff is often sparse or scattered all over the place and a lot of answers on Stack Overflow are dated. Diving into an ecosystem like that, which is in a middle of a big transition, can certainty be overwhelming. The only tip I can provide is that if you ever try it again, try it in combination with a good IDE like Rider. C# is designed to be used in combination with an IDE. Rider can automate lots of things and analyzers can offer helpful guidance.

globular-toast 3y ago

Why do I feel like those useful changes in the forks will never make it upstream? It's not GPL I suppose? I guess I just don't really understand how people can be ok with companies like EA freeloading their work, which they almost certainly will if they can.

TheRoque 3y ago
Is GPL practical for a game engine ? Doesn't it mean that all code produced with this engine would be also open source ? Seems pretty much like a no-go, and nobody would use the engine. Please correct me if I didn't understand it right.
- Rapzid 3y ago
  I don't think you'd ever be able to do a console port with a GPL engine. The SDKs are all proprietary and behind NDAs.
  - slikrick 3y ago
    correct. GPL zealots completely ignore usecases that are incompatible though
- nunodonato 3y ago
  Godot is not GPL, it's MIT
- globular-toast 3y ago
  The value of a game is mostly in its artwork, story, gameplay etc., not the code.
  - slikrick 3y ago
    you would need to release those assets for the project to be buildable under the GPL. you can't just not provide build assets