4 ms·

The industry needs Unity, for the sake of competition and diversity of options. It needs a good, well-maintained Unity. Maybe they'll be able to refocus, maybe

by TillE 3y ago

The industry needs Unity, for the sake of competition and diversity of options. It needs a good, well-maintained Unity. Maybe they'll be able to refocus, maybe their new licensing scheme is good enough. If not, I really hope they get acquired quickly by a company that cares about games. Probably Microsoft.

__loam 3y ago
I don't think the industry does need unity. Godot is quickly becoming the engine of choice for smaller projects and Unreal exists for larger and more complex ones.
- gkedzierski 3y ago
  Unfortunately the founder has some particular opinions on game engine performance https://gist.github.com/devshgraphicsprogramming/faa1f98f65661c54a960b45ed1d450ea https://gist.github.com/devshgraphicsprogramming/faa1f98f656...
  - frfl 3y ago
    Can you provide some context here for those who aren't familiar with the founder or what this link article is about?
  - BLanen 3y ago
    Read Godot's response
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      you mean the: >If you read my text above, you will see why this approach is not wanted. It's fantastic for AAA games, but Godot being a general purpose game engine has different requirements. That does seem to exemplify what the GP means in terms of trying to aim for performance. I am not at all reassured of "CPU driven renderer is very performant" mentioned in the same post I'm reading. I'm sure these days you can run 90% of 2D games on the CPU with zero issue (outside of maybe not having a potato for a minspec if you utilize heavy VFX), but that sounds like a recipe for performance issues on anything more than the most simple 3D games. Comments from the founder here happened consistently over the years and is part of why I decided to pursue another open source engine instead in the end, as someone looking to make a medium-scale 3D game. I don't mean this as a slight to Godot; it is in fact much better to focus on one audience than be a swiss army knife, and I'm sure many game devs are right at home in Godot. But I can't help but admit that these rigid responses of "this way is good, you're wrong" instead of "this way is a compromise to provide design convenience over raw performance" rubs me the wrong way.
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  I’d prefer the industry to have more than 2 main choices. There is room for all 3 if ran competently.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    If Godot were at parity with Unity you’d be a fool to use Unity
    - frfl 3y ago
      Competition drives innovation. See Clang and GCC. GCC, if what I've read briefly is correct, was languishing a bit until Clang came along and pushes GCC to improve.
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        Sure. But my statement stands.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      Big If. But even still, the most important factor for large studios is support: especially tailored dedicated support for AAA production. And I don't know if Godot can ever compete in that regard without living long enough to become the villian.
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        Is that really true or is it just true for Unity because Unity is closed source? AAA games are also by and large not made in Unity to begin with.
        johnnyanmac 3y ago
        Yeah, this isn't just a games thing but a big company anything thing. Labor is the biggest expense, and if you can delegate that to someone else's payroll as a 3rd party to maintain, everyone wins (except possibly the worker if it turns into some exploited contractor role). Also, I know most people think of console when they hear "AAA", but Unity rules the mobile space and that platform makes just as much money as consoles/pc these days. So when I say 'AAA" studios, I'm talking less about Blizzard and more about King, Zynga, and the like. It's especially true in Asia with Netmarble, Nexon, and Tencent (although a few more games these days are looking at Unreal even on mobile). They want support not just for development and maintaince, but to setup and scale up servers,
- jayd16 3y ago
  Yeah but that's basically one engine per niche. No diversity of choice at all.
- cobalt 3y ago
  Godot is unfortunately no where near ready for prime time, and imo also has some weird design choices that has me preferring unity
  - Widdershin 3y ago
    Sure, but a lot of studios still maintain and upgrade bespoke game engines to ship projects. All it would really take is a company of decent scale deciding they want to base their engine around Godot and having an appetite to upstream some meaningful work.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      >and having an appetite to upstream some meaningful work. That's the part that probably won't happen, unfortunately. Not without specific contracting. Blind Squirrel (the devs behind the botched Sonic Colors remaster) didn't even credit Godot as an engine it based it's proprietary engine off of.
willis936 3y ago
This smells more like Unity circling the drain than pulling up. Best to seek better options than hope for doomed ones.

by TillE 3y ago

__loam 3y ago

I don't think the industry does need unity. Godot is quickly becoming the engine of choice for smaller projects and Unreal exists for larger and more complex ones.

gkedzierski 3y ago
Unfortunately the founder has some particular opinions on game engine performance https://gist.github.com/devshgraphicsprogramming/faa1f98f65661c54a960b45ed1d450ea https://gist.github.com/devshgraphicsprogramming/faa1f98f656...
- frfl 3y ago
  Can you provide some context here for those who aren't familiar with the founder or what this link article is about?
- BLanen 3y ago
  Read Godot's response
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    you mean the: >If you read my text above, you will see why this approach is not wanted. It's fantastic for AAA games, but Godot being a general purpose game engine has different requirements. That does seem to exemplify what the GP means in terms of trying to aim for performance. I am not at all reassured of "CPU driven renderer is very performant" mentioned in the same post I'm reading. I'm sure these days you can run 90% of 2D games on the CPU with zero issue (outside of maybe not having a potato for a minspec if you utilize heavy VFX), but that sounds like a recipe for performance issues on anything more than the most simple 3D games. Comments from the founder here happened consistently over the years and is part of why I decided to pursue another open source engine instead in the end, as someone looking to make a medium-scale 3D game. I don't mean this as a slight to Godot; it is in fact much better to focus on one audience than be a swiss army knife, and I'm sure many game devs are right at home in Godot. But I can't help but admit that these rigid responses of "this way is good, you're wrong" instead of "this way is a compromise to provide design convenience over raw performance" rubs me the wrong way.
nickthegreek 3y ago
I’d prefer the industry to have more than 2 main choices. There is room for all 3 if ran competently.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  If Godot were at parity with Unity you’d be a fool to use Unity
  - frfl 3y ago
    Competition drives innovation. See Clang and GCC. GCC, if what I've read briefly is correct, was languishing a bit until Clang came along and pushes GCC to improve.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      Sure. But my statement stands.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Big If. But even still, the most important factor for large studios is support: especially tailored dedicated support for AAA production. And I don't know if Godot can ever compete in that regard without living long enough to become the villian.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      Is that really true or is it just true for Unity because Unity is closed source? AAA games are also by and large not made in Unity to begin with.
      - johnnyanmac 3y ago
        Yeah, this isn't just a games thing but a big company anything thing. Labor is the biggest expense, and if you can delegate that to someone else's payroll as a 3rd party to maintain, everyone wins (except possibly the worker if it turns into some exploited contractor role). Also, I know most people think of console when they hear "AAA", but Unity rules the mobile space and that platform makes just as much money as consoles/pc these days. So when I say 'AAA" studios, I'm talking less about Blizzard and more about King, Zynga, and the like. It's especially true in Asia with Netmarble, Nexon, and Tencent (although a few more games these days are looking at Unreal even on mobile). They want support not just for development and maintaince, but to setup and scale up servers,
jayd16 3y ago
Yeah but that's basically one engine per niche. No diversity of choice at all.
cobalt 3y ago
Godot is unfortunately no where near ready for prime time, and imo also has some weird design choices that has me preferring unity
- Widdershin 3y ago
  Sure, but a lot of studios still maintain and upgrade bespoke game engines to ship projects. All it would really take is a company of decent scale deciding they want to base their engine around Godot and having an appetite to upstream some meaningful work.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >and having an appetite to upstream some meaningful work. That's the part that probably won't happen, unfortunately. Not without specific contracting. Blind Squirrel (the devs behind the botched Sonic Colors remaster) didn't even credit Godot as an engine it based it's proprietary engine off of.

willis936 3y ago

This smells more like Unity circling the drain than pulling up. Best to seek better options than hope for doomed ones.