Thinking about moving to Godot

Yes, you attempted to reason out why popular games do not exist for the engine. Yet you failed to understand the actual reason and it has nothing to do with the engine capabilities. It has everything to do with time. Godot is simply too new on the market. Quality games take years (easily three to five for large studios) to develop. Godot is only four years old.

You can see a similar occurrence with Unity. It emerged onto the market with GooBall in 2005 but it wasn't until 2008 (at least according to Wikipedia at any rate) that third party games started to appear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unity_games

Likewise you won't likely see any games for Godot until it reaches a few years past the point where people started to take notice of the engine. From the looks of it I'd have to say that would be somewhere between version 2.0 and 3.0.

 

"Godot is simply too new to the market"

But Godot is 4 years old as you said? That's not new to the market. All I am saying is there is a reason why there is no popular 3d game with it.

When your Sponza demo can't get 60+FPS on low settings, why would a development team use that engine when a majority of gamers use high refresh rate monitors? Another point that you completely ignored.

It has everything to do with the engine's capabilities. If the performance is poor = less likely a popular/successful game will come to fruition.

I find it hilarious how you are defending Godot when I am actually encouraging people to use it, but just not for 3d.

 

Four years includes the time it took for development to reach 1.0. Unity was officially released on 2006 but that's not the day that development began for it. Development would have started in at least 2005 since that's the release of GooBall.

Four years to develop an engine is nothing. Unreal Engine 4 started development in 2003 but it wasn't made available to the public until 2014. That's eleven years in development.

Is it similar to how hilarious it is when someone shows up for the first time making bold claims?

 

My claims are 100% legit though, go run the demo yourself, 3d has mountains of artifacts/issues, and the 3d performance is poor. That's not a bold claim at all, and even some contributors would agree with that

 

Edited my previous post to point out that development takes time. Four years for Godot versus eleven for UE4. If you had UE4 back when it was only four years old I wager it wouldn't have been that much different.

 

I agree with that statement. However, it doesn't disprove Godot's 3d status right now or any of my claims.

 

Why are you so angry ?(you got a bad experience with other Godot users ?)

And what did you expected about Godot 3D ?
Godot is just starting about usable 3D, there is no culling system, no terrain, so indeed there won't be any big games until it grows. Godot was an hobby, but patreon makes development more active.
It is still open source software not a company or hundred of regular developpers
So why you got such unrealistic expectations about Godot 3D LOL ?

About sponza demo, it's intensive because it has one directionnal light , many real time point lights, real time reflections and real time GI. It's not that bad considering it's a a work in progress without optimisations or tweakings.

I'm not sure you even tried to make a 3D game with Godot 3 Beta ?
Anyway Go with Unity or UE4 and you should be happy.

 

Nah, I'll stick with Godot for 2d, but thanks. Sponza demo gets much more FPS in Unity/Unreal btw. You guys can say "mah optimisations / tweakings" all you want, but at the end of the day it's quite clear.

This is one of the reasons why Unreal / Unity will always excel in 3d compared to Godot

 

A lot of people decided to investigate moving to godot last year, due to the changes to the unity license. Devs in the Godot community had to discus the topic of creating migration documentation for all these ex-unity users:
https://github.com/godotengine/godot-docs/issues/166

The reason people are moving to other game engines is really users not being happy with their current one.
You do things that would piss them off, they start to look into open source alternatives that they know would never suffer from the same problems- because they are owned by their community and not by a proprietary overlord that can cut them off, change the license agreement and gives no access to the source code

If you don't want to lose Unity users to Godot or other engines, be more competitive and less greedy.
I guess this is out of the actual Unity's devs hands, as the suits in the company are the ones calling the shots. It's tough balance to keep both the big dev studios and the indie guys happy

You guys may slag off open source development as not real competition, but you forget to note that Unity is entirely built on top of many open source projects.
You may also miss to note that the development community prefers open source licensing, because it puts them in a much safer place - they can't be cut off that way, can't get any unpleasant surprises in licensing fees such as the ones Unity imposes now and then, they own the source code and have full control to change anything they dont like. Those are huge advantages in favor of godot

To a big degree, the strongest reason to move away from unity for professional devs is the unpredictable license changes

Sure Godot is quite new to 3d, if you want to develop big 3d games and migrate away- Unreal is still there with the open source license.
But for 2d games - it's actually quite a damn good alternative to unity right now. It starts to beat Unity as a development environment for 2d games imo - I listed my reasons why earlier, but there are so many other reasons

A lot is currently going on in godot's github- on the 3d capabilities being improved. If it keeps going this way, it might catch up quite soon.

We live in exciting times, so many game engines, so many free alternatives. Competition drives quality- we all win from this as it keeps the suit guys in check

 

Most Zbrush users that won't use Blender indeed whatever it is open source.
It's the same for 3D engines, it depends if some open source software covers all your needs or if a paid software has better features and will make it even more easy and fast to create content.

You'll have to wait very long time, Unity has already lot of tools,features, and amazing plugins or game templates and it is also growing with new features each releases.
I don't think open source software can catch up or race until they would get lot of money to hire big dev teams.

Anyway, the tool choice is again related to your project needs and your preferences.

 

While I completely agree with you that Godot is simply not ready for creating complex 3D games yet, it doesn't really follow that it will always stay that way forever.

As I said, the development focus of the engine has been on the 2D side until very recently, so it's no wonder you don't see many features for 3D games yet.

Feature rich, mature software products don't normally suddenly appear out of nowhere. It usually takes time to get users feedback and add more features and iron out bugs before reaching that stage.

As to attitude of the contributors, I've made quite many feature requests and bug reports already on Github, but my experience doesn't quite match yours. Also, I'm following the issue tracker via Github and Discord to see what's happening with the project and I haven't yet witnessed anything like you implied.

Of course, things like that happen in any big open source projects, but so far I haven't seen any such troubles so I wouldn't claim it to be something of a norm, and also I'd refrain from making any conclusions before actually reading the discussion.

EDIT: I just searched the issue tracker to see if I could find the discussion you mentioned. Assuming you use the same username there, it seems you haven't created any real issue reports but decided to rant about random things in a completely irrelevant topic there.

And I don't see any problem with the contributors, as they only suggested that you should make a separate issue for such things.

To me, it seems simply that you are not accustomed to how an issue tracker works in open source projects, and misunderstood it to be the contributors' problem.

 

By the way, Unreal is not offering an open source license, as discussed in another thread. How much it differs with Unity in allowing source code access to its paid customers and how big of an advantage it could be is another matter to discuss, however.

Though I agree with you that Godot's being a completely open source project means much to people like me, and the fact that there's no other open source alternative with comparable features and momentum could mean it'd attract more attention from the open source community as time goes by.

 

@mysticfall

If you're having fun with compilation / libraries and nitty gritty tech you'd have a whale of a time with Lumberyard.

 

Seems like it's fair to mention Xenko has gone free too.

 

Yeah, that sure looks interesting, even though I'm more interested in building the 'middle layer', like Skyrim's Papyrus API, for example than to delve lower into the game engine or server architecture territory.

By the way, I happen to use AWS quite a lot since the company I work for is very small so I had to built the entire IT infra on AWS myself.

But since my main motivation is centered on creating an open source game platform to which people could contribute their contents, I'm afraid relying on a proprietary cloud provider might not be a good idea for me.

On the other hand, if I ever have enough time to make it a multiplayer game, then probably I'll build it on top of Akka and deploy it on AWS, possibly as a ECS cluster (which is just a Docker container service, so not directly tied to AWS). But again, cloud side of the things won't be my biggest problem if I ever go on that route, so it's just a mere possibility for now.

 

Actually, I got interested in Xenko first and also considered moving there, before I heard of Godot. But unfortunately, they decided to change their license to a non open source one with the 2.x version, and it seems there's not much activities going on in the public repository since then.

But it's still free, so some people might be interested in checking out that engine if they are looking for an alternative to Unity, and don't mind if it's open sourced or not.

 

Yeah it's strange, that all these engines are going free or dying, like stingray but Unity just sits there getting more and more users. I think Unity achieved that kind of critical mass by being overall the easiest to understand and best all rounder.

People just know they can get Unity for free as well, so for them it comes down to what they can achieve in their chosen engine.

 

I guess it's just that game engines, or any other software products need at least one clear reason to choose them over other competitors to survive.

Unity has a good reason for that, like being free (to an extent) with a lot of features and a large userbase, and Godot might have one too, being practically the only open source alternative that has a competitive edge against commercial engines (for 2D) or at least a potential to become so (for 3D).

But when it's neither as feature rich and proven as Unity, nor completely an open source project like Godot, I can see why some other engines that fall between those two categories without any other clear advantages have trouble attracting more users.

 

Lumberyard is really cool TBH and Is evolving at a very fast rate.

 

Aww, the good old.. blame the victim instead of isolating (or merely admitting), some of the contributors have acted wrongly.

"it doesn't really follow that it will always stay that way forever."

Pretty sure this has been said for about 3 years now. "Wait for Godot", right? No. Don't wait, and don't waste your time. Pick the right engine for what you need. And all I'm saying is unless Sponza demo (on low settings) reaches same FPS rate as Unreal/Unity, don't get your hopes up for 3d in Godot. Godot currently only excels at 2d / UI development right now. That's my opinion, and it's a pretty truthy statement.

 

Actually, I tried to be polite when I simply said that you seem to be not accustomed to the way issue trackers work.

While it's understandable one might be ignorant of how such a system works, blaming everyone and making a drama when people try to explain your mistake is wholly a different matter.

Anyway, I have zero intention to bring something happened outside the Unity community to here, so let's just say that I completely disagree with your sentiments about their contributors on this matter, knowing what actually went on with the discussion now.

I honestly don't understand why people think like, "What? It's already 4 year old and still haven't implemented all the features that Unity have built over past 12 years? Forget it, it'll never be as good!" or something like that.

But if that's how you evaluate game engines, then it's fine with me. I don't have the same criteria as you do, but I never said you should abadon Unity and switch to Godot right away. So probably you don't have to choose for me what engine I should use either.

 

To be fair many of us investigate the competition on a regular basis and most of the time it isn't because we're unhappy with our current engine. You don't necessarily need to be unhappy with a product to want to see improvements.

Sounds like someone who goes from engine to engine complaining without making any attempt to follow the procedures necessary to start getting the problems fixed. Wonder how long till he starts doing it with Unity since most of us will point people towards issue trackers if we don't recognize a bug being discussed.

 

Speaking of people like that. Note this is not aimed at Paul.

There was a guy last year on the Godot engine issue tracker that would spam nonsensical rants using a bot and multiple accounts. It got so bad that we had to block him from the Godot engine issue tracker and possibly github blocked this person as well. Only thing I recall about the matter is that he referenced a CRT monitor. Those were dark times as the entire discord server was pissed cuz we could not file our issues and feature requests. This was for about 12 or 24 hrs.

Anyway back to talking about Godot and supposed slowness -

@PaulTaulborg -

Reduz has not implemented the GLES 2.0 rendering system yet but that will be soon. The lead dev also added a Light mapper so give that a shot. Actually now that I think about it are you using The GI Baker with the sponza demo or the last minute Lightmapper? Curious to know what your video card is as well.

 

I wouldn't call being preventing from filing an issue for 24 or even 48 hours any reason for it being a dark time or being pissed. If anything it's indicative of an unhealthy culture. It's open source software - a minor delay like that is not to be worried about - after all it is open source relying on random contributions at random times. In fact your paragraph has me worried about the culture over there.

At Unity you only need to deal with annoying moderators from time to time but I have heard they can be reasoned with in theory

 

We're easily kept under control though. All Unity has to do is threaten to go back to Lithium and we'll behave.

 

I will fight to my end against terror.

 

LY like CryEngine are free but they are work in progress and license might change once LY will be out of Beta or CryEngine 5.6 is out if their popularity grow.

Xenko tried a subscription system, but it is not Unity features, tools or plugins to propose such prices.
And their small team is not enought active in the engine too small, i have some impression they don't work in it each day but in their spare time ?
I followed it from time to time and it took years to implement some basics features and reach the actual state, while they have the same problem as CryEngine as there is almost no support and no community activity.

Anyway anyone is free to choose what they like.

I seen some guys with their own open source framework based on open source 3D engine claiming lot advantages but much later coming back to non open source engines, because of features and tools.

 

The problem is, there are 22 new issues reported and 11 closed in the last 24 hours, for example, so that 'random times' are happening rather frequently there.

They have a chat bot that notifies the Discord channel whenever a new issue is reported, and it's pretty fun to check them from time to time to see what's happening with the project at this moment.

Actually, I see it to be one of the best aspect of using an open source product. To me, being able to participate in such discussions or watch those from others that influence the future of the project in a direct manner is much better than having no other choice but to be left in the dark and accept whatever a company gives you every few months with a new version.

So, I don't see how eagerness of the community to participate in the development process can be seen as some obnoxious behavior, or how not being able to do so as an advantage.

 

It was more along the lines of one user threw a fit because the Godot engine devs could not repro the issue they were having and decided to close the issue. So basically PEBCAK and a bit of ego on that users end I guess.

 

Yeah we should all endeavour to remove ego from tech and science. It is irrelevant to progress. I think it has uses, but not when we need to have a proven solution. Plus this industry is all built on the shoulders of true giants

 

ITT: Defending Godot while it barely achieves 30-60 fps in Sponza on low settings, while blaming I'm the culprit for calling out Godot is not suitable for 3d.

Hilarious. Whatever makes you feel better, lol.

 

All = Godot is good at 2D

Paul = Godot is Not good at 3D
Others = Godot is getting better at 3D

You guys talk a lot

 

With a real time GI rendering you will use one directional light and emmissive materials instead.

I kept only one directional light (removed other point lights) and the result is not so bad considering it's full real time GI, nothing is baked.


Unity real time GI needs you to bake lightmaps while Godot GI doesn't bake anything.
A scene voxelization option for Godot GI will be available, so you should expect a big performance boost.

 

Of course, not saying otherwise although compared to Unity the level of knowledge required even just to compile the engine so you can code is several steps above. Last version I tried was 1.9 and it was rough around the edges as they're trying to balance the lines of new and old, I love that they're moving away from the old archaic infrastructure the original engine was based on and in years to come it's going to be a VERY competitive engine..

Maybe even more so than Unreal with all the excellent tools and how well optimised it is, 60FPS on average in an openworld game with real-time global illumination is a feat and then some.

Back from 2014 it's amazing how far all the major engines have come and once I used Unity for purposes outside of large games it's appeal became very apparent. After trying some small "lundum dare" style projects I noticed how fluid Unity is for development and contains types of workflow that simply no other engine can match (hence it's popularity). It's not the sort of engine you want to fight with though..

I breifly tried Godot and I think it's a great engine to tinker with although if you want to get deep into the technology that powers cutting edge engines I think UE / LY are the best one's to go for.. They are extremely well thought out, I've learnt so much from Unreal I'm glad I used it for that purpose alone.

 

i get 60+ fps on my laptop?

https://preview.ibb.co/f7EXGm/godot_v3_2018_01_14_21_03_02_19.png
https://preview.ibb.co/bwTEU6/godot_v3_2018_01_14_21_03_16_92.png

 

What's your GPU/CPU may I ask, and what is the FPS when you traverse around the map not just idle?

 

Gtx 1070 and i7 6820HK (ROG-G752VS) between 60 and 80 fps

 

Damn, money well spent eh? Can u do tests on the unreal/unity demo and report back? I want everyone to see the FPS differences ^^

 

If it isn't the same set of shaders and the same techniques with the same post effects (ie none) then you're wasting your time with trying to get any numbers that make sense to people.

 

That's the point, the performance is poorer on Godot.

 

And that's surprising, how? This is pointless.

 

Yes, Godot's 3D performance is bad. That's why nobody here who is using Godot has claimed they're using it for 3D.

 

I’ve never understood the idea of “supporting” a tool or product, beyond using it because it solves a problem. I choose a tool because it best solves a need I have. I “support” Unity because it is the best tool for my needs at the moment. (By support I mean buying their product). No emotional attachment to it, if a better tool is available that fits my needs, I’ll happily use that instead. That goes for anything in my tool box.

As @Ryiah pointed out, most of keep abreast of other tools available, and what is going on in the market. If something appears viable, I’ll look closer, but not invest too much time into it.

 

Because you and others just spent all day yesterday defending it / getting mad at me for saying it is? Nice double standard for new users you have.

 

Tell me, exactly who said Godot is exceeding Unity in 3D performance right now?
And also tell me how being slow today 'proves' that it will stay that way forever?

Stop beating the strawman and get some senses.

 

You seem upset and argumentative. I haven't got mad. Can you quote where you felt I was angry in this thread toward you? will be nice to get right down to it and clear up every single last misunderstanding.

And what does double standard mean to you? please quote the example where I was being of a double standard to you in exact detail.

 

Are you referring to how I challenged that popularity somehow equates to capabilities? Because Godot being involved in that conversation wasn't necessary. We could have easily substituted it for another engine and my own example was Java which isn't even a game engine.

Generally speaking new users don't show up for the sole purpose of taking part in game engine discussion...

 

Well, you posted this on the 2nd page, right after my post:

Which is a pretty passive aggressive post towards me, no? For no reason, what have I done to you?

 

This isn't an attack, it's a pretty direct comment on how attitudes like yours get threads locked.

 

Which is a passive tone towards me, for no reason. When I was talking about the engine in my post, not him at all.