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I have been revisiting Godot this past week after feeling that I didn't give it a fair shake a few months ago. I don't know that Unity has a future. Unity is s

I have been revisiting Godot this past week after feeling that I didn't give it a fair shake a few months ago. I don't know that Unity has a future. Unity is still better than Godot, and in some ways by a wide margin, but Godot is gaining ground fast, the learning/tooling ecosystem has exploded in the last several months, and for most "indie" projects, which Unity's pricing change was targeting, Godot is the better choice. It might be the best open source tool I've ever worked with. Unity is going to either need to position itself at the top of the productivity curve between Unreal's raw power and Godot's "Blenderyness," or it's going to have to become a more mature ecosystem that caters to bigger games (which might be harder after the brand damage). Godot is going to become better, faster in the next 18-24 months.

shadowgovt 3y ago
How is Godot on cross-platform targeting these days? To me, the most attractive aspect of Unity's offering was the opportunity to port the same game core and assets to multiple targets with relatively little retooling.
- coffeebeqn 3y ago
  That’s where open source gets tricky. Most platforms like iPhone or PlayStation are closed ecosystems and require you to make legal contracts with them to develop and release on them
  - tapoxi 3y ago
    Godot can export to iOS/Android just fine, the consoles are an issue because their SDKs are behind an NDA. I wonder why they still do that, seems like it only hamstrings developers.
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      That's actually why. Tl;dr the console owners want the system to be a little bit legally and technically complicated because they only want to developers that have legal and technical competency making product for their consoles. The implosion of the home console ecosystem in the United States between Atari and Nintendo is widely understood to have been caused by Atari giving up or losing the capacity to regulate who made games for their console and the quality of those games. As a result, the need for consumers to exercise their own savviness in finding the good ones went up, but rather than rise to the challenge, consumers just threw up their hands and stopped buying Atari home consoles and the games that went with them. The lesson the whole industry learned is that they're selling a luxury product and they need to control quality to keep it a luxury product. Development ecosystems where anybody can write games of whatever quality are relegated to the home computer space, where the console providers (as console providers) are content to compete minimally.
      - tapoxi 3y ago
        They can remove the NDA on the SDK but still require games to go through a strict quality control and approval process before allowing them to be sold. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.
        shadowgovt 3y ago
        It's risky. Remember Tengen games on the old NES? Tengen chose not to play Nintendo's game, reverse engineered the protocol, and started manufacturing cartridges of their own games without Nintendo's consent. Nintendo tried several flavors of technological and legal obstacle to them doing this, but ultimately those failed. In the end, Nintendo combated the problem by establishing the Seal of Quality branding which, as a trademark essentially, was something they could legally control and choose who received it and who did not. That, coupled with a propaganda campaign hinting that off label electronics could set your Nintendo on fire, eventually added too much friction for Tengen to see profit in continuing this mode of operation. I had a conversation with an Xbox development producer back in the early aughts on this topic where I had the chance to ask why Microsoft cared if people cracked the console to turn it into a home system they controlled, given that consumers would almost certainly still feel more comfortable buying officially branded software from the official distributors. The answer was simple: Microsoft isn't concerned about the home user, they were still concerned about development houses making their own games outside of the Microsoft ecosystem control and, more importantly, developing peripherals and alternatives compatible with Microsoft software, up to and including clean room developed alternative versions of the Xbox itself sold by other companies. A generation of console is one big game of architecture cracking, which is one of the things that keeps console generations evolving: sit on one console architecture for too long, and everything about it from the legal protections to the technical competency required to reproduce the artifact will age out. To give up the NDA is to willingly let that clock spin much faster, and ultimately disintermediate the console manufacturer from the flow of money they need to continue making product and developing the next generation of console.
        tapoxi 3y ago
        I mean I suppose, but the iPhone remains locked to the App Store despite the SDK being public. It might be easier to find an exploit chain to allow unsigned code to run, but those tend to be quickly patched if people want to play online.
    - pandaman 3y ago
      > I wonder why they still do that, seems like it only hamstrings developers. Two reasons: 1. It exposes you to patent trolls, which is fine if you have no money so they won't come after you or have too much money to bleed them dry in courts. 2. If you license third party IP (which had been the case for every console after, perhaps, Atari 2600) you are also bound by the agreement with the third party, which has its own reasons, generally related to the reason #1.
- tapoxi 3y ago
  It works fine for Windows/Mac/Linux (and Steam Deck) /Mobile, so its a great tool for first-time developers, game jams, etc. For consoles there's a company called W4Games developing a console exporter using Godot's GDExtension API, and some other companies will port for you. There's a popular game on Xbox right now - Cassette Beasts - which was developed on Godot 3.
- Kapura 3y ago
  It's OK, and getting better. I reckon console support will improve dramatically over the next 1-2 years.
MikusR 3y ago
How is Godot for Movie VFX work?
- Kapura 3y ago
  You would be better served by Unreal, if that's your usecase.

shadowgovt 3y ago

How is Godot on cross-platform targeting these days? To me, the most attractive aspect of Unity's offering was the opportunity to port the same game core and assets to multiple targets with relatively little retooling.

coffeebeqn 3y ago
That’s where open source gets tricky. Most platforms like iPhone or PlayStation are closed ecosystems and require you to make legal contracts with them to develop and release on them
- tapoxi 3y ago
  Godot can export to iOS/Android just fine, the consoles are an issue because their SDKs are behind an NDA. I wonder why they still do that, seems like it only hamstrings developers.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    That's actually why. Tl;dr the console owners want the system to be a little bit legally and technically complicated because they only want to developers that have legal and technical competency making product for their consoles. The implosion of the home console ecosystem in the United States between Atari and Nintendo is widely understood to have been caused by Atari giving up or losing the capacity to regulate who made games for their console and the quality of those games. As a result, the need for consumers to exercise their own savviness in finding the good ones went up, but rather than rise to the challenge, consumers just threw up their hands and stopped buying Atari home consoles and the games that went with them. The lesson the whole industry learned is that they're selling a luxury product and they need to control quality to keep it a luxury product. Development ecosystems where anybody can write games of whatever quality are relegated to the home computer space, where the console providers (as console providers) are content to compete minimally.
    - tapoxi 3y ago
      They can remove the NDA on the SDK but still require games to go through a strict quality control and approval process before allowing them to be sold. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.
      - shadowgovt 3y ago
        It's risky. Remember Tengen games on the old NES? Tengen chose not to play Nintendo's game, reverse engineered the protocol, and started manufacturing cartridges of their own games without Nintendo's consent. Nintendo tried several flavors of technological and legal obstacle to them doing this, but ultimately those failed. In the end, Nintendo combated the problem by establishing the Seal of Quality branding which, as a trademark essentially, was something they could legally control and choose who received it and who did not. That, coupled with a propaganda campaign hinting that off label electronics could set your Nintendo on fire, eventually added too much friction for Tengen to see profit in continuing this mode of operation. I had a conversation with an Xbox development producer back in the early aughts on this topic where I had the chance to ask why Microsoft cared if people cracked the console to turn it into a home system they controlled, given that consumers would almost certainly still feel more comfortable buying officially branded software from the official distributors. The answer was simple: Microsoft isn't concerned about the home user, they were still concerned about development houses making their own games outside of the Microsoft ecosystem control and, more importantly, developing peripherals and alternatives compatible with Microsoft software, up to and including clean room developed alternative versions of the Xbox itself sold by other companies. A generation of console is one big game of architecture cracking, which is one of the things that keeps console generations evolving: sit on one console architecture for too long, and everything about it from the legal protections to the technical competency required to reproduce the artifact will age out. To give up the NDA is to willingly let that clock spin much faster, and ultimately disintermediate the console manufacturer from the flow of money they need to continue making product and developing the next generation of console.
        tapoxi 3y ago
        I mean I suppose, but the iPhone remains locked to the App Store despite the SDK being public. It might be easier to find an exploit chain to allow unsigned code to run, but those tend to be quickly patched if people want to play online.
  - pandaman 3y ago
    > I wonder why they still do that, seems like it only hamstrings developers. Two reasons: 1. It exposes you to patent trolls, which is fine if you have no money so they won't come after you or have too much money to bleed them dry in courts. 2. If you license third party IP (which had been the case for every console after, perhaps, Atari 2600) you are also bound by the agreement with the third party, which has its own reasons, generally related to the reason #1.
tapoxi 3y ago
It works fine for Windows/Mac/Linux (and Steam Deck) /Mobile, so its a great tool for first-time developers, game jams, etc. For consoles there's a company called W4Games developing a console exporter using Godot's GDExtension API, and some other companies will port for you. There's a popular game on Xbox right now - Cassette Beasts - which was developed on Godot 3.
Kapura 3y ago
It's OK, and getting better. I reckon console support will improve dramatically over the next 1-2 years.

MikusR 3y ago

How is Godot for Movie VFX work?

Kapura 3y ago
You would be better served by Unreal, if that's your usecase.