There's a lot of interest in #GodotEngine today, so here's my perspective & advice, as the tech lead on Cassette Beasts, a 2.5D open world RPG that shipped this year on Steam, Switch and Xbox, using Godot 3.5. 🧵
First: I've not used Unity (or Unreal) for more than just trivial experiments, so I can't provide direct comparisons. But there are still a few general points I can make.
Also: I will never recommend switching engine mid-project. If you're gonna switch, do it between projects.
There's a persistent falsehood among Unity devs that Godot can't do consoles. There are more options available than you realise: several companies have private Godot forks that add console support, and you can either license it off them, or have them port your game.
In our case, we worked with Pineapple Works. They worked incredibly hard to port Cassette Beasts to Switch and Xbox, and did a great job. AFAIK, CB is the first (only?) Godot game to release on an Xbox!
One last point to make for (ex-)Unity users: don't overlook GDScript! You're all so laser-focused on C# that you miss one of the best things about Godot!
In GDScript, there's no garbage collector to tiptoe around, the VM uses engine types natively without need of a translation layer, and there's syntactical sugar for common engine tasks like retrieving nodes by path, etc.
As of late I am deeply conflicted about #GodotEngine 😿
I love the design philosophy; I think it's [one of / the] best libre 3D-capable engine out there. I use it and promote it.
I've learned shocking things about reduz (Juan Linietsky) that made me really sad and I don't trust him in regards to money and power within the project.
I don't want to go into specifics, because it won't fit a toot.
Don't downplay "haters" without evaluating their points.
@matias To be clear: I very, very rarely need to deal with troublemakers online. For example I moderated and rised my community (chat.unfa.xyz) so that there really are no people who would do any of that. If they'd appear they are educated, warned and then kicked. We reached the last step only a couple times in the better part of a decade (IIRC) that the community has been going for.
Before Godot became open source, it was used at OKAM Studio to develop games, the first being this interactive point & click adventure based on a popular comic book series 🕵️🍕
The first demo released in 2014, as preparation for a Kickstarter.
This turn-based strategy game once started as a #GGJ submission, and ended up with a sequel. Isometric perspective and hand-crafted pixelart help this game look timeless 🪖🎨
Includes a level-editor, so tag us in your creations!
I'm so happy Unity decided to self-destruct! I mean, sorry for your losses and all, but... Not only is #Godot getting so much great attention, but I swear it's also driven more devs to Mastodon seeking out experienced #GodotEngine devs to chat with, collab, follow, and learn from! The #gamedev community has felt really lively lately!
If you're a gamedev using godot, please say hello in the replies and maybe more folks can find each other to follow!
@CodexArcanum I've got a couple projects going in #Godot. Mostly just learning it at the moment. I'll be sharing more of those in the next few weeks as part of a #100DaysOfGameDev thing I try every fall.
If you’ve decided to start using #GodotEngine this week, this thread is for you.
Firstly though, don’t switch mid-project. You’ll have a bad time! Godot is not a drop-in replacement for Unity! Finish your current project, then start learning Godot by making a few small games. 🧵
The core concepts in Godot are quite different from Unity. You’ll have a much better time by learning how Godot wants you to use it, rather than trying to force Godot into a Unity-shaped hole. Juan has a great thread on some major differences on the birdsite: https://twitter.com/reduzio/status/1702263225004306447
Nobody controls Godot. If someone tries to pull a John Riccitiello, the community will just fork it and switch to that. But it also means complaining to Godot contributors is pointless & needlessly mean. If you don’t like how something works, YOU are responsible for improving it.
We absolutely understand that not everyone can donate. In that case, please share the Godot Dev Fund link! Spreading the word is an excellent way to help.
@godotengine What? You aren't going to charge devs 50cents every time someone opens the game? On top of charging 30% of all sales? How do you expect to keep your venture capitalist investors happy???????
You guys are awesome. I love your timing with this. Keep up the great work and more power to the open source game engine folks.
Does anyone have Godot Engine logo in pixelart form? I wanted to use pixelated logo in credits as my game has quite low res, but can't find anything like that in the official presskit. I can use official SVG's and rescale them, but wanted them to look as crisp as possible.
@Migueldeicaza Hello 👋
I saw your talk on Swift Godot (on YouTube). Very interesting, thank you.
I commented on YouTube two questions, but you probably did not see them, so I would like to ask you here again:
One question about swift: Does Apple/Swift treat none-apple swift user well? Do I (as a Linux user) get the latest versions in time, and is the swift tooling well-supported on other platforms than macOS? I don't want to use Swift when I get treated as a second class citizen. #godot#swift
@gamingonlinux One question, don't think it's the best place but anyway, how are the courses of Zenva, I've heard really opposite opinions and would like to know a bit more. Not only for this case.
I'm at the point with #Godot of needing to know why things exist. These are fair questions, some I knew already since 1980s but now there are newfangled things. I get that variables just store values, that arrays are kinda tables, that loops do looping. I got the sense studying engines that I need to know programming but any time I learn programming I feel I need to know the concepts & notions & that's how I end up with everything always being philosophy & maybe that's why I get fatigue. But...
@media_dept Have you tried Adventure Game Studio?
It's not totally without code, but since it's focused on creating adventure games, it has all the needed tools built in, and you don't need to do as much groundwork, because the direction is already clear.
You won't have to program a GUI, inventory system, pathfinding, dialogue system and all that stuff
@spinning_bird with AC for Unity I thought - wow this cuts a lot of corners in building an adventure! But I could see that any Unity tricks I learned could be added to a game. That seemed like great potential as well as output to every platform. Now I see Godot similarly. Also I realize, crucially that I probably don't only want to make adventure games, so I'm trying to keep a wide view. I'm not complaining about Godot, I'm just reminded in learning something new that i've a feeble brain 🤯
Hey #godotengine users! About to start a new project in #godot 4, in 3D this time! Anyone have any addons suggestions to take a look at? No real direction yet, just exploring and learning.
@forteller depends on what you want.
If you want horror with unconventional controls: Endoparasitic is a really good game to consider
If you want an AAA project, Sonic Colors Ultimate is made in Godot, although it's not perfect.
If you want something like a point-and-click + visual novel, look into "Looking Up I can Only See The Seiling"
Want a top-down Rogue-like arena shooter like Vampire Survivors? Brotato.
There's also an interesting rhythm game being developed in Godot, but it's AO, so I'll not share the name of it here
@godotengine I had been learning Blender on my dad's old computer and Blender Game Engine got removed in 2.8. Godot was the only engine that would run on my ancient hardware. Naturally I had to follow it on all socials.
That was 2018. Now I have a decent powered computer but no intentions of leaving Godot.
@godotengine I found the engine from a video YT recommended in late 2019. Around 3 months later in february 2020 I gave it a try and have been using it since then.
Found the account on mastodon by searching.
@krapp I guess I didn't mean time so much as workflow. If you're working on a new project that includes the character controller template, do you ever update the template if you make desirable changes in the project?
@SirLich I set up a GitHub template a while ago (https://github.com/njamster/godot_game_template), that I use as a base for most of my projects. It's still very much a work-in-progress and completely undocumented, mostly because I'm not so great at working consistently on it, but it's a great aid already. Currently, it entails:
@krazyjakee@db0 Yeah 😅 I just really am not the right person to give you feedback on code. Game development in general I understand, but this goes over my head^^
Working on a Digital Asset Manager built using the Godot Engine. I've yet to find a tool that matches my specific requirements, so I'm building it myself!
The main purpose is to easily and efficiently browse my asset catalogue.
There is easy support for gltf, ogg, png, and jpg. Will try to support everything else though (mp4, flac, bmp, fbx, whatever).
@SirLich Can always just do a scan on load and explicitly not support changes made externally
This IS also mitigated if you write everything to a .asset-tags file in every folder, which is the slightly polluting solution I was talking about. This way your program can look for the tags there when it scans the folder. Even if you move it, those would get moved with the assets
In #godot, how do I render a giant 3D planet in space without rinsing my GPU? #godotengine I've tried viewports and skybox shaders with a viewport texture rendered on top. Subviewports are sooo heavy
@popey@JayLittle Yeah there's no real super easy way to tell the game engine before purchase, SteamDB lists plenty but only what it can actually properly access
Would be good if Steam itself noted it, but for 99% of actual players - the game engine just doesn't matter
@BenBot Thanks yeah, I'm active on Discord, reddit, and a bit on Rocket Chat. Also make some tutorials lately. Maybe I will do a tutorial on creating custom command palette commands :)
Yeah I’ve always sort of fantasized about learning C++ because it would really open up the amount of repositories I could contribute too. Currently I pretty much only continued to stuff that I can edit a markdown file for :) (oh yeah and openstreetmap but that’s a whole different thing)
