Thinking about moving to Godot

The pattern for established pieces of software that people like, is not for some smaller open source project to come in and really compete head to head. But for the established software to adapt and open up more. The only times I can think of when smaller open source projects overtook a giant is when the giant was just universally not liked and/or charging so much that almost any alternative looked better. Oracle for example.

Commits is really not a meaningful metric. Metrics that measure success or potential success in the marketplace is what matters. Capitalization, market share, major companies backing the project, etc.. Commits really say very little about ability to compete in the market.

There are always lots of developers willing to spend time on projects that will never seriously compete, just because they are in some other way interesting. I think games falls into that otherwise interesting slot fairly well and accounts for a lot of the interest.

Databases like mysql/postgres were interesting because we all hated Oracle, just being open source and free was itself a big deal. Many other open source projects offered a new and better way of solving problems, which was what really drove them.

Godot simply isn't doing anything really interesting. It's just open source. In a field of relatively cheap game engines that do the job better. Not a good position to be in.

 

First of all, Unity isn't much of a 'giant' when we are to choose such cases where a company like Oracle is involved. And neither Postgres is the only example of an open source projects that is winning over its proprietary competitors.

In the past, various brands of Unix and commercial middleware products had dominated the business software market, but now it became almost a norm to construct the whole IT infrastructure using open source products alone. The success of Postgres was just a result of this on going trend, rather than a single isolated event, caused by Oracle's bad reputations.

Commit frequency is quite a meaningful metric for open source projects, because unlike their proprietary counterpart, success or failure of the project is not tied to the sales or investment of the product, but to the size of its community.

While you can hire better, or more developers to work on your commercial project with a bigger budget, open source projects don't work that way. In order for an open source project to be able to get more contributors, it needs to attract people's attention and show them some promise of success. And there's no better way to give such a promise than showing them there's an active and growing community of contributors behind the project so it's unlikely to die out anytime soon.

More people using an open source project, there's more chance that it'll find more contributors among them. More contributors means faster development, better documentation, better QA which will bring even more new users. Reaching that level of a beneficial cycle is the ultimate goal of most open source projects, and the ones that sucessfully became a serious competitor to commercial products have almost invariably gone through that stage.

Even with a commercial product, you would doubt if it'll stay relevant in future if the company begins to release new versions less frequently than they did before. With open source projects, metrics like code frequency, or number of issues are a vital sign, by which you can directly measure how healthy the project currently is, and how much potential it has to become a next Postgres.

 

Ok, but when I'm selecting a tool for a project I'm not going to compare commit frequencies of two different engines. I'm going to look at their capability to achieve whatever I'm trying to do.

The question I ask when I pick a tool isn't "how healthy is the project behind this tool?", it's "how capable and reliable is the tool for this project?" The latter question certainly involves a little of the former, but there's far more to it than that, and it's more of a prerequisite than it is a point in favour.

 

Of course, and I'd do the same if I'm to choose a game engine for an important project at this moment.

Code frequency is a metric that shows how actively a project is developed currently. So, while it can be used to reasonably predict how much chance an open source project has to become competive against commercial products in future , it says nothing about how mature or feature rich it currently is.

Maybe commit or issue count can be used to measure maturity of a project indirectly, but with commit frequency you can only know the speed with which it is moving right now, not the distance it has covered so far.

 

That said some open source projects collect funds to pay developers to work on their projects for periods of time that they otherwise couldn't justify doing. Just as an example here's the Blender page where they mention who was hired and for how long in addition to funding sources (gold and higher).

https://www.blender.org/foundation/development-fund/

 

There are lots of open source projects that are healthy but not competitive with X. That it gives some undefined possible edge to competing against someone, isn't really interesting.

Like I'll bank on Godot never being a serious competitor to Unity. But will it compete in some niche at some point? That's entirely possible but not really useful to anyone.

 

Yeah, it seems that it usually happens in such cases where a formerly proprietary product becomes an open source project and gains momentum, like it was the case with Docker, or when an open source project becomes widely popular that it starts a business around it (i.e. training, tech support, etc), like it was the case with Spring Framework, for instance.

Another case would be Linux kernel project, for which many programmers from various companies work full time.

 

I'm not seeing the correlation.

I'm not saying you shouldn't work on it or that it's a bad project or that I see no value or anything like that. I just don't see how the speed at which commits being made are indicative of future competitiveness with existing stuff, purely because there are so many other variables at play as well.

 

And there are lots of commercial products that were once dominating the market but became obsolete and disappeared from the market later. All we can say at this point is possibility, and such metrics can be a good indicator to predict where such a project will end up in future.

I won't try to persuade you if you think Godot will never be a competitor to Unity. But to me, it looks like it has already become a viable alternative to Unity when it comes to small scale 2D games, so it'll probably start gaining marketshare in near future.

Let's just say most of open source projects that have shown that much momentum before have become something big now

EDIT: I see that you just added more lines to your post, so I'll try to elaborate on my point more. Usually, an open source project dies out when its lead developer loses initial interest and no one cares to take over. So, initial code frequency has nothing to do with long term viability of such a project, since any single person can make commits like crazy while his or her motivation is still high.

However, when it comes to such a stage where many other people actively forking the repository and making pull requests, it means the project has gained sufficient momentum to grow out of that stage where its future was directly tied to how much free time its original developer can spare.

So, once an open source project reaches that stage, it tends to stay that way for quite some time, because the increased activity means influx of new contributors which don't normally wax or wane that abruptly.

Needless to say, if a software project - open soure or not - can maintain a high development velocity for sufficient amount of time, it will likely to implement more features in better quality, thus becomes competitive in the long run.

 

Every game is different & every hardware is too. Some games with Unity would be impossible to achieve stable 60 even with source. Some easily. Most would however, as INSIDE is not overly costly on performance. It isnt cutting edge, but it is 3D.

It is a matter of fact, as displayed by INSIDE developers, as shown in their UNITE talk, that they did indeed need source code changes.

Unity's horrible transform problems are a well known flaw that UT is currently working on to fix, last I heard from their roadmap.

INSIDE spent months optimizing their game. I dont believe theyre lying, as you are suggesting.

Just watch the video. It is all there.

 

Bingo.

Godot has become more popular on /r/gamedev than Unity. At least, in discussion.

That is a pretty big deal. Very large community.

The users in this thread who claim no big titles have been made with Godot, and then cite Hearthstone (...um...ok?) Are...well, I have nothing good to say about such horribly flawed, nonsense arguments. It takes years for engines to have hits, since it takes years for engines to develop and years more for games to develop. It isnt like the release of Godot 3.0 will have a simultaneous release of a Day 1 AAA godot title. In what world would that happen?

Godot has already broken out in incredible popularity. However the Unity forums isnt the best place to talk about it. The users who frequent competitor engine forums are very likely to be extremely biased in favor of 'said engine'. IMO they are also less likely to even know what Godot is or its benefits or recent updates, as theyre heavily invested in 'said engine'.

Generic gamedev communities are much better places to start discussions on engines other than Unity.

 

Well thats a fickle reason since in practice basically everything sucks through the entire development cycle no matter what you're using. As you get closer to launch it turns into "Just bandaid everything, this all sucks, everything sucks." then it launches and you can start something new all pretty and nice.

 

The reason Godot has surged in popularity is that nearly everyone loves it and people are saying the OPPOSITE of "it sucks."

That is a pretty big deal, since so many engines like Unity/Unreal have tons of criticisms.

Am I the only one here who frequents gamedev communities outside of the unity forums?

Godot is all the rage now. Honestly? I havent heard anyone say anything negative about it. Just tons of "It is awesome!" And a minority of "It is okay, I guess." or "Not bad, but Not for me."

 

Really? I don't see this thread locked yet and moderators are here. Perhaps it was just the other threads had immature arguments or trolls or were just repeats.

Circles I'm in never mention anything except Unity or Unreal.

 

That's great, but seriously it's not a magic wand. There are no magical wands.

 

Who here is claiming it is a magic wand?

There is too much emotion in this thread.

Godot's success seems to be a sour taste in the mouth of this community, so I will just let it be

No one will participate in discussing godot if everyone is deaf to the excitement surrounding it. Enjoy shutting down a thread because you...dislike the idea Godot is becoming a big deal? Weird.

 

Yeah I would hate it if actual censorship occured. General discussion is fine in my book to talk about our industry. If a thread is locked in a censorship way and it smells off I want to know about it.

Unity has nothing to fear, if it goes around locking threads just because it's competition was mentioned, well that says a lot about insecure feelings. But so far the locks I've seen or done were because of user behaviour that so happened to mention another engine. So it's easy to blame it as censorship.

 

Yea. Im an idiot. The whole convo is on the former page. I was just hallucinating this was the only page.

Im not the brightest when using my phone. Sorry about that. Will edit my posts to clear up my mistake.

I found it weird & double checked but clearly my mobile dbl check is equally blind as my first check. I thought it was unusual bc Unity never censors. It's the only place that is great like that.

 

My point is if there are zero complaints, they aren't digging or you're greatly exaggerating. Comparatively, reference the video of INSIDE where they made some source changes - no engine is going to do everything perfectly and in using highly generic tools to build something unique with a team of people... You will have complaints.

 

Why are you taking my abstract summary of large community's excitement with Godot as some singular detailed summary of exactly what everyone thinks about it?

Acting like no one has any criticisms when I state most people seem excited about it or have high praise, is weird.

I am telling you that in general, it is catching on for very valid reasons and because Godot seems to be a very high quality project with an exciting future.

Your rebuttal (which isnt needed, as youre just arguing against thousands of developer's praise for something) consists of "They must be wrong...cause!" Really?

Achieving a stable, smooth, minimal framerate isnt perfection. It is a very basic, rudimentary standard goal for all gamedevs.

We arent talking about achieving 200fps @ 4K or something. We are talking about basic performance, which is a major basic element of all video games.

Furthermore, the problems which INSIDE fixed using source are hideous problems Unity should immediately tackle themselves. Yet they didnt.

There is a very large difference between having minor complaints and having MAJOR game-stopping complaints.

Are you even aware of the performance problems of Unity Transforms? Can you describe to yourself in detail what the major performance woe in the INSIDE video was?

Let me guess: You didnt watch it and will respond saying you dont have to watch it or dont have time to watch it.

Do not live in denial of major flaws with Unity, which are strengths of Godot, and then claim you know for a fact Godot is inferior to Unity in all the ways others claim. That is just silly...

 

What makes you think I'm defending Unity? My only comment here is that this 'discussion' seems primarily composed of eccentric hype and aggressive labeling of participants software preference and inner motivation rather than actual facts about Godot and it's precise successes. If we're all here to say "Oh look Godot is new and nice" well then great. I don't plan on riding a hype train as these things come and go pretty regularly.

It's like we get another thread about a different engine and people turn around like "Okay buddy whose side are you on?! Yeah?? Well who do you think you are?!"

And that is why engine threads get locked.

 

Again, I did not intend this thread to bash Unity or promote Godot and I still don't. I think it's fine to discuss pros and cons of both engines here, or exchange our thoughts about whether or not Godot will ever become better than Unity in future.

But for such a discussion to be constructive, there need to be more concrete arguments than "Unity sucks" "it'll never become as good as Unity" and less accusations on each other for things that have nothing to do with the engines themselves.

I know there are many major and minor flaws in both engines, but if we want to discuss them here without turning this into another flame war, we better concentrate on how some specific thing is done by one engine, and how it is done by the other and why it is better. It's not a competition about who can enumerate more random things that people hate about the other engine to win.

As I already started working on my new project with Godot, it's likely that I won't be as active on this forum as I was before.

And I certainly don't want my potentially last thread in this wonderful community to degenerate into another flamewar and get locked. So, I'd urge people to try to keep it from going that direction.

Thanks!

 

I haven't watched it, but is it the one where setting position then rotation was highly unoptimized so they added

Code (CSharp):

1. transform.SetPositionAndRotation

which now exists in Unity by default.

 

Well it's just when you set the position, you have to traverse the hierarchy, and it's the same for rotation, so you can omit the traversal again by setting them both at once.

Regarding Inside, I would think Unity probably will look at streaming more stuff or making it more automagic if more users are asking for it. I suppose that would mean having a new kind of staggered startup for streamed-in assets and some pools of some sort.

Actually I haven't the foggiest. I expect I would use it though because I really hate loading times. So I would use it even in relatively smaller titles. It also allows for more dynamic content.

It would be easier to do in Godot I guess.

 

I've refrained from talking about specific things in which I think Godot is better than Unity so far, because I didn't mean it to be another Unity bashing thread. Actually, this thread was just what you mentioned, indeed - my personal motivation and preferences to work on an open source game platform.

Moreover, I haven't made anything significant with Unity and I've only played with Godot for couple of days so far, so I thought I'm not in a good position to talk about the subject in an objective manner.

But now it seems that the thread is going into that direction anyway, so it might be better if I list some of the specific things that I liked about Godot, so we could stop fighting on some vague claims.

As noted above, the biggest difference between the two engines seems to be how they treat reusable components respectively.

As we all know, Unity has Prefab which is kind of handy. But so far, it doesn't support nesting and in order to test it visually, you need to add it to some scene first.

In Godot, however, things are much simpler with its unique 'scene instancing' and node system. In short, you can save any arbitrary subtree of a scene and reuse it just as you do with Prefabs, but it supports infinite nesting and more importantly, each of such tree is a scene itself so it can be edited individually and you can even run it, just like a normal scene.

And when you instantiate such a saved scene and attach it to another one, its subtree is hidden by default, so it results in less clutter. All in all, I find Godot's way of doing things is more intuitive and convenient, especially when it comes to building a large scene by constructing its constituent parts in a hierarchical manner.

And another great feature of the engine is how its animation system works. In Godot, you can easily create and edit animations inside the editor like you can with Unity. However, Godot's the animation system also applies universally to every aspect of any arbitrary nodes.

It means that you can easily make an animation that controls node properties or even function arguments in the same way you can move it around the scene. It's really useful if you want to animate UI elements or 2D sprites including making them pulsate or flying around in a curve, and etc but it can also applied to 3D elements as well.

And when it comes to building UI, I think Godot has much better system with more intuitive API and more number of components out of the box. You no longer have to attach various sub components to change layout or work with deeply nested subtree to compose more complex element out of smaller ones.

It's closer to how WYSIWYG UI designers in more generic development platform works. I've seen many such threads here asking whether or not it's possible to build business applications with Unity, and I agree with most other people that it's not the best way to go. It still holds for Godot, but with its UI system I feel it to be at least a viable approach to build more complex, business like applications.

Also Godot uses the same system for both in game, and editor UI. Even though some might argue that the lack of an immediate mode GUI could be a flaw, personally I don't really miss it, especially when considering how inconsistent and cluttered Unity's IMGUI API looks.

Lastly, Godot's UI system has a builtin support for styling and localisation which currently Unity supports via 3rd party assets. I also created my own system for those features in Unity once, and even though it worked quite well, such things are better be integrated tightly to the UI system rather than done in an ad hoc manner.

Godot supports notifications between nodes via 'connecting' them both in editor and in scripts. Personally, I prefer Unity's event system (aside from sending messages, for which Godot has equivalent feature) because it's a more idiomatic C# way, but I can see how it can feel easier that way for other people.

It's a minor point, but I also like how Godot manages most of its resources without creating a metadata file for every one of them. Especially when using a source management system, dealing with those metadata files can be quite a nuisance. And even though Unity also supports text mode serialization for scenes, Godot's file format is designed from the start to be friendly with source management systems, so it's much easier when you compare the changes.

All in all, I believe Godot already has enough features to compete with Unity when it comes to creating 2D games. Even with many rough edges, and lacking some features that Unity has, I can see how it'd be much easier to create simple 2D games in Godot than it is in Unity.

Probably it'll take some time before it'll be more widely adopted, especially with its limited platform support and C# binding still in its early beta stage. But with the speed it's moving at, I'm pretty certain it will be quite a serious contender to Unity quite soon, and I have high hopes that it might be as competitive in 3D department in the long run as well.

 

Godot has most features to make 2D games, but Unity have lot of plugins and robust 2D game templates that can be used by people that are not coders.
You can make some game like HyperLightDrifter with Godot if you learn scripting, while i don't know if a game like Ori could be made in Godot and would get as good frame rate.

For 3D games,this is different, Godot 3 is too lightweight and needs to improve on performance. The language is not what would make choose some engine if the features and tools are missing.

It has some nice graphics but performance is not great. For example global illumination and advanced effects like SSAO in Godot 3 are not not usable in game , the frame rate drops too much with good quality , while some systems like Svogi for example is usable in game while keeping the frame rate good.

There is no culling systems, no culling baking like umbra , no blendshapes, no mecacnim tool , no navigation agents system, no terrain and vegetation system and editor , no water system, no time of day system or many other features not available.
Godot is also small team, you can't have the same features as Unity and plugins (Gaia, TC 2, Map Magic , CTS, Invector, NodeCanvas, Playmaker etc ... ).

If your goal is faster game production you need advanced tools or plugins available on a store, so you spend your time in content creation instead. With Godot there is many features and tools missing while there is no store or such Unity plugins, so yeah productivity won't be the same if it is important for you.

Also people that don't know coding can make games in Unity with full game templates ready to be customized, while this doesn't exist in Godot for non coders.

I'm not saying Godot is not good, perhaps it will grow, get more users , more plugin developers , i don't know ?
But as many open source projects or games, their development will never be as fast as big companies with thousand devs and plugin developers to achieve the same level of features and tools.

I just can say you won't make the same level of games you can make in Unity, CryEngine, UE4 for example.
Godot 3 as it is , is good for users able to script to make very small games with very limited tools, graphics and features.
While it is pretty complete for pixel 2D games.

 

If that's the case though, then Godot really only has one advantage over GameMaker: price. GameMaker is an incredibly robust 2D tool and SUPER performant and also has loads of support and existing learning materials. I just don't see the point at all.

 

Godot is entirely free , and you have source code in case you want to customize it.
Another big advantage is godot exports are free for mobile and other platforms while Game Maker 2 platform exports are expensive and updates are not free.

GM2 is robuts with bugs and missing features.
About performance i was super disappointed about HyperLightDrifter whith frame rate issues specially wen there was lighting shader effects. While i don't know for GM2 or Godot performance as there is no games like Ori.

Using both , i prefer a bit more the simplicity of Godot, i find it more clear , less useless panels everywhere.
I also got some 2D artists saying they prefered GameMaker 1 than GameMaker 2 with it's multiple floating fancy panels.
GM2 reminds me Gimp software with it's floating panels many people didn't liked , while Gimp 2.9 is now getting a unified interface with one panel only

Again it's up to you depending on your budget, your needs, what matters is you choose the tools that suits you the best to complete your game.
You like GM2 go for it, you prefer Godot or Unity for 2D games go for it.

 

I agree that in its current status, 3D capabilities of Godot is nowhere near those of Unity, and it will certainly takes time before it can catch up, if it ever will.

But I think it is mainly due to the fact that the focus of the engine has been in making 2D games until recently, so I expect to see more improvements after 3.0 version gets released.

And I believe that open source projects actually have a potential to attain greater development speed than proprietary software projects, but just few ever reach that stage.

Maybe it's easier to explain this to those who are familiar to Unity than anyone else, because one of the most important reason why it has become so popular is the existence of Asset Store.

Unity Technology, or any other company with comparable size would never have been able to replicate the work needed to develop all those Asset Store items by themselves. It's something only can be done by such an active community as the one built around the Unity ecosystem.

That's why it is so important for an open source project like Godot to create and retain the momentum, to build such an active community of contributors, and eventually the whole ecosystem around it.

Unity has become great because many commercial and open source developers contributed to Asset Store. The difference with Godot is that, they are doing the same thing with the core engine itself. So, if they can keep attracting more contributors like they have done so far, Godot will rapidly improve on what missing features it currently has in developing 3D games.

And from what I've seen so far, I'm quite optimistic about the prospect, because Godot is probably the only viable open source project at the moment that has a potential to reach the capabilities of other commercial engines, and the momentum that it's been showing so far is quite phenomenal.

Of course, it's just my thoughts so I respect your opinion if you believe Godot won't ever be as good as Unity in making 3D games.

Personally, I think Godot has at least a good potential to reach that stage in another 5 years or so, if it can retain current speed of development. And at that point, probably there will be more people contributing game templates or even selling commercial addons for the engine, just like it is with Unity right now.

 

Epic for example brings phenomenal features each update.
Until Godot gets developers teams working daily on it, UE4 or Unity always be years ahead

With "if" anything is possible lol

Last Godot 3 progress is because money got involved to motivate and have some devs putting more time in it, without any money it would never get some progress like it has recently.

Godot 2D was pretty complete from years, but 2D developpers mainly used other solutions like Unity, Game Maker and others
Even with some progress nothing says users making 3D games will choose it instead of other engines with support, services, tutorials , big plugins.

Godot 3 performance is not great, it lacks 3D tutorials, Unity has teams of devs working dayly on it , Unity has thousand tutorials about anything and it is the most popular with lot of mobile and desktop games.

As i said until godot gets more money with contributors to hire big teams working on it daily, it can't race against Unity or UE4

Godot put a year getting shiny graphics, but the editor is the same, creation tools and plugins are still missing.

What about Gaia, Map Magic, Dungeon architect, Invector, Archimatrix, Probuilder, Amplify shader editor,Bolt Visual Scripting , NodeCanvas, Rtps 3, Megasplat etc ... ?
The level of game quality a 3D artist can do in Unity is not comparable with Godot

I don't know or believe anything, i just see it as it is.
You can only make small games with actual limitations in Godot, while you can make in some days some open world game with Unity and some plugins.

If your game can wait 5 years to wait for tools and features, good for you.
Meanwhile i think you will still use Unity for very long time before Godot gets all you need lol

"probably"
It's all about money, without some money and patreon Godot would never had some devs putting more time in it.
Perhaps it's open source, but money makes it possible, all progress or features will depend on how much money is invested in it.

I see no big plugins or big features announcements, nothing is in place like some Godot market similar to Blender market. Best plugin developers won't be attracted until they can't make some money
I think you'll wait many years to get awesome plugins , if it ever happens.

Godot 3 will be available this month as an official new version, with some paid devs working on it.
You'll only get a a glimpse in the end of year about how Godot develops, what tools it gets and how fast, or how many releases you can expect per year.

But even with some hype and big hopes, this is too soon to make any estimation
Even Godot would grow most 3D artists and big game devs will choose complete, prooven and popular 3D engines offering more tools, more plugins, more tutorials, more support or more services.

 

Godot is about 4 year old now but already starting to catch up on Unity in 2D department, which is a 12 year old commercial product. So, how can you be so certain that Godot won't change that much in another 4 years?

I already said Godot is currently far behind Unity in making 3D games myself, and I also said I don't have any intention of making a commercial game any time soon.

I never insisted anyone should abandon their beloved Unity and start making some big 3D commercial games with Godot right now.

So, what gave you such an idea that everyone should use Unity to make some commercial games today, instead of doing whatever they want, with whatever tool they like, and in whatever schedule they see fit?

A software project doesn't get more features when its developers get paid, but it does when they - paid or not - actually write codes.

So, unless you believe pull requests from unpaid contributors somehow vanish when they get merged, you can only look at their commit log and issue tracker to see how fast they are improving Godot.

And tell me how fast you get your issues resolved by all those paid employees of Unity Technology when you report them.

I know they are doing their best and try to help their customers. But honestly speaking, my own experience wasn't that great.

Probably they are just too busy to handle bug reports from that many customers, but compare that to my experience with unpaid volunteers of Godot, who have fixed all of major issues that I reported myself, or subscribed within a day or two so far, then you might get how sometimes open source contributors can do things better than corporate employees even without getting paid.

Blender was nothing but a failed commercial product before it was turned into an open source project and become a huge success. So, what has convinced you that Godot will never be another Blender over the years?

If you somehow believe that open source projects, or Godot in particular won't ever be as good as a commercial product, I don't agree with you but I have zero intention to persuade you into abandoning Unity or using Godot.

So, I don't quite see where you got that sarcasm with all those rolls eyes and 'lol's in this kind of a discussion.

 

All my discussion is about Godot for 3D to make a high graphics game.

For 2D Godot is available and ready form long time, while most games are still made with Unity or Game Maker, why ?
Why Godot for 3D would get more appeal than it's 2D ?

No, competition is always good, new comers is good.
Godot will be an interesting alternative, specially for all devs doing small games that does not require advanced features until it would grow more on features eventually.
About it's plugins or coming features this year, we will see, nothing is certain or announced.

Pateron helped a lot, without it i doubt you would see actual progress and actual dev team.

Blender took many many years before gaining more notoriety. Why Godot would get faster popularity ?
Version 3 is just coming this month , no big plugins announced , no terrain and vegetation systems , sky or water systems , no new tools , no Godot market etc ... lot of stuff remains to do.

I don't know, perhaps it will be as good as most popular 3D Engines and if best plugin developers start using it and more people use it to make games.
But it's not the case, as it is as version 3, and like you said you'll have to wait some years.

While my mobile or desktop games needs the features and tools right now lol

You forgot, CryEngine is getting lot of stuff redone to become more easy to use ( entities, new schematyc visual scritping, C# , new character tools , new easy Ai tools ...), once it will be as easy to use as Unity, you'll get another big challenger about totally free , no royalties 3D engines

So i don't speculate as much as you, Godot can get popularity growing , perhaps 3D bigger commercial desktop games announcements this year, i didn't say it's not possible.
But if you start your game and you want the best features and tools, or simply complete terrain systems you won' t use Godot 3.

About interest in Godot or the hype , right now i don't see any big indie games announcements saying they want to start it with Godot 3 (unlike CryEngine , Unity or UE4).
Perhaps that will come, it will be great, but it's again speculation only.

If you just want to play with it, and you have no game to release and no special features and tools needs, indeed have fun with Godot and keep the hype hight lol

 

Yes, donnations and fundings are always helpful, whether it is an open source project or not.

However, while you need sufficient budget to make a proprietary project successful, it is normally the other way around with open source projects. They usually get financial supports in forms of fundings and donations after they get popular.

So, money is not really a prerequisite of making an open source project successful, but usually a result of making it so.

No reason, actually

I'd be happy if Godot would take as many years as what Blender took to become what it is now, and be as successful.

The point is, I don't have such an unrealistic expectation of a 4 year old game engine to already have all the 3rd party extensions that Unity has built up in the past 12 years.

In fact, that's part of the reason why I'm interested in moving to Godot, to help building that ecosystem myself if possible, because I find it worth while to contribute to such an open source effort.

And I didn't say it's a certainty either. Then again, I already said it's not advisable to start building your next 3D commercial games with Godot right now for multiple times, so probably you don't need to repeat it to remind me in every posts.

 

I doubt you will be able to create your own Gaia, Mega splat, RTP3, Archimatrux, ProBuilder etc ... plugins while we have them already in Unity. But i understand your point to jump in and create your small tools to speed up level buidling for example.

But it's promising and you can already make cool 3D stuff until you don't need big terrain open worlds or tools like Mecanim, NodeCanvas for example.
Some issue is 3D games tutorials are really lacking if they want to really get more users on board.

 

I used to be a Unity user, but then I switched to godot when the 2.* branch matured - even before they got support for c#.
It took me a week to learn gdscript and actually really liked it because of its similarities to pyhon.
It's almost python, with some nice extra features.

What are my very specific reasons to prefer godot?

- Much smaller footprint - the entire godot engine and editor takes 1 second to load and is a single executable -about 30-50 mb. Runs flawlessly without need to install it or register. You can run it from a flash thumb and has no dependencies on other libraries- unless you need to build it from source. Unity is fat, bloated and slow in comparison. Getting it to run from a flash thumb without internet connection is not possible or a huge pain in the ass

- Godot is much more stable than unity on linux. It runs flawlessly on linux ,mac and windows. Believe it or not. Unity on linux is almost unusable. Crashes so often you can call it a gamedev toy. Moreover it is a complete pain in the neck to install due to it's billion dependencies. To run godot editor , all I have to do is download a file and click on it - on all three OS-es
Godot editor is so flexible, that someone made it run from a web browser
https://www.reddit.com/r/programmin...ne_ported_godot_engine_editor_to_webassembly/
Just for fun. A guy, in his spare time.Sure its not very practical right now,but runs better than unity on linux lol

- Godot's editor has included an actual code editor- with full api documentation both offline and online, autocompletion and all the good stuff you would expect from a code editor. It's seamless and tightly integrated with the engine and editor. Unity uses monodevelop- which takes more time to load and more space to keep and is a separate application developed by a third party- Unity devs bundled. Godot lets you use other code editors of course- but the editor includes one itself. In that 30-50mb godot devs squeazed what unity devs couldnt squeaze in 5+ gb and couldn't bother to make a part of Unity's editor in 11+ years

- Its much easier to extend nodes in godot - as mentioned earlier in this thread- I too find it easier to manage and debug

- Considering its size, godot has a fleshed out 2d engine and a work in progress 3d engine

- In order to build games for ios,android and other platforms - you do not need to install and setup dependencies like unity and many other game engines. Godot can use pre-compiled export templates instead. All you need to port a godot game to your target platform is a single file- the template. If you want to build a template- that is when you have to setup the pain in the neck dependencies

- Godot has an actual 2d engine, sepparate from the 3d engine. The editor is designed for 2d games from ground up. Unity is a 3d editor and engine that has workarounds and tools for making 2d games.

These things make godot much easier to get started with than unity. Especially for quick experiments, it beats the hell out of both unity and unreal in terms of time to get it running.
The only time it would be slower to get started is when you want to build the bleeding edge version of godot from scratch. Even that takes about half an hour to set up and build to an executable to run- which isless than the time to register an account here, download unity, install it with its dependencies, set them up (again- android, ios,etc compiling needs some third party libraries last I checked)

Sure godot is far behind Unity for big 3d games and big projects relying on performance. But for 2d games and gamejams- it has already become much more viable than unity. Its just more convenient - some things are faster to do. It feels snappier, and the architecture and design of the engine feels a bit more fun to make projects in than unity.
Unity has become too big, slow and locked down for my taste

But yes, Unity has a huge lead on content, money,AAA titles, features. That doesn't change its shortcomings for the indie crowd. It is almost as if godot devs know exactly what those shortcomings are and are constantly sweetening the deal. They are not competing, they are filling a niche that you have left

 

There was a long period when discussions about other engines were locked, along with a message that if you wanted to discuss that engine, go to their forums.

I think it much better that other engines are discussed here. Staying in the Unity forums means more chance of staying in the Unity engine.

During the locking period I consequently looked at the Cocos forums, then registered, followed by downloading and experimenting. If I wasn't so far into a Unity project at the time, I would have left.

 

I have to agree with this even though I'm still grateful for Unity people for wokring on the Linux editor at all, even in its current status.

Actually, I began using Unity specifically because I heard that they provide a free Linux editor. And before I moved to Godot, I've enjoyed using it despite of its many issues. It's still in beta status anyway and honestly, there are not a whole lot of people who want to develop games on Linux, so I'm disposed to be more lenient about the issues I had with it.

However, those issues were quite severe and the tech support wasn't always effective in resolving them. I had constant crashes and lock ups, and screen update problems, so I just had to accept it for a fact and got used to restart the editor when it happens.

And after I switched my Linux distribution to Manjaro, they had even stopped receiving my bug reports even when I attached a full stacktrace of the problem, saying they only support Ubuntu Linux for now.

Some of the severe problems, like UI components completely ignoring user inputs were resolved with the help from Unity developers. But some others were not, like a problem which has prevented me from actually building or playing any games.

The tech support representive was willing to go through quite a hassle to help me with that problem, even downloading and setting up my project on their end to test. I feel thankful for their effort, and was hoping to get the problem fixed soon since they said they were able to reproduce the problem. But I haven't heard from them again since, even though it was a few months ago.

With Godot, on the other hand, I had a quite the opposite experience. As I was building a unreleased beta straight out of the source repository, I had quite a few crash issues and blocking problems. But I was usually able to find an issue reported by others already, and I also reported one when I wasn't.

Regardless, all of them got resolved within a day or two, even just in a few hours sometimes. And the good part is, I didn't have to way another week or a month to wait for a new release with the fix. All I needed to do was updating my source tree and build it again, and I was good to go.

I still don't really want to turn this thread into Unity vs Godot, so I'll refraining from writing such posts unless I see more of similar arguments from others which I feel to be unfairly comparing them.

But I have to agree that Godot provides a much experience for Linux users, and they would also appreciate the fact that it's completely open source, considering their usual preferences in such matters.

 

Yeah I guess I'm not into locking threads about competing products so long as it doesn't exist just to promote another product, which is IMHO obnoxious and doesn't serve users of this forum.

This thread is open minded so it's open.

 

Unity may be 12 years old but, while it of course leveraged plenty of other existing stuff, Unity's 2D stuff was only announced in 2013 if I'm not mistaken.

 

I see, then I think it's just a case of one engine moving from 2D to 3D while the other going in the opposite direction.

As my statement regarding the issue wasn't much to argue that Unity is lagging behind than to emphasize how fast Godot is improving itself, I'm glad to see that both engines expanding themselves in an area that they had been weak respectively.

And if Godot took similar time as Unity in doing so, I guess it proves my point that it's a viable competition to commercial engines in making 2D games, and at least has some potential to become so in 3D department in future.

 

Not only that, but there was plenty of 2D assets on the asset store for long before then, and it isn't terribly difficult to implement 2D in a 3D engine in the first place.

 

The most impressive 2D game is still Ori a Unity game.
While Godot has never been choosen to make impressive 2D games, will this change ? not sure.

 

As someone who is on r/gamedev a lot (daily), I would disagree with this statement. There was a period of time (several months ago) when Godot posts were garnering a lot of discussion, but that seems to have died out to a great extent. Lately, release update posts, or even posts by game developers trying to drum up discussion, receive only a few responses--except for a recent one where some complainer from the Godot forums took a fight with the principal developer to Reddit (which was highly entertaining). Criticism generally runs along the lines of poor documentation, no tutorials, no community, etc.

I agree with the sentiment above that while it is cool, it will struggle mightily given the number of free alternatives already in existence (and in the case of Unity have massive communities, tutorials, etc). Having said that, I think the developer's efforts to create a new engine optimized for 2D are truly admirable.

 

If you are doing 2d go for Godot. For 3d, stay far far away. Not a single game has been released for 3d that's been even remotely popular. Their current fb is a complete cesspool of fanboy/favoritism. (for example, their recent meme right now).

Also, make sure you don't make any suggestions on their github regarding GDScript, as you will be shunned into oblivion by egotistical contributors. The engine simply shines in 2d development and it should stay like that. The developers are wasting their time adding all this 3d crap that is infused with mountains of artifacts and slow performance, especially when Unity / Unreal will always Trump them in that aspect.

And if you do decide to go 3d, have fun shipping your game and having it be smooth for 100hz+ monitor users. Their sponza demo even on low settings barely reaches 30-50.

2d and UI features is what they should be focusing more on, imo. 3d stuff is simply a waste of time

 

What does this have to do with the capabilities of the engine?

 

Because it would show what the engine is capable of doing? Nice nitpick btw.

 

Is this why engine threads get locked?

 

Because I answered the OP with my opinion and some facts? So sorry for wrong think.

 

Popularity has nothing to do with the engine capabilities. If popularity were the determining factor for engine capabilties then Minecraft proves without a doubt Java is the only way that is worthwhile to develop games... except it clearly isn't.

 

Obviously my point was to illustrate the following point in my paragraph (which you didn't address, and willingly ignored), is that there is a reason why no popular 3d games exist.