Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile
1–10 of 79 posts
Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile
#2I really like Defold, have used it for a number of small games I've developed for a side hustle.
Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile
#3I've been seeing a ton of game engines on hackernews in the last couple days.
I think many hobby game developers don't realize the astounding important of designer oriented tools. Even most game companies have coders create designer oriented gui tools for games to be more productive.
Whatever open source engine cracks an easy 3d player controller, dialogue system, human retargeted animation system, and easy editor extensions will KILL the competition asap.
Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile
#4I really like Defold, have used it for a number of small games I've developed for a side hustle.
It’s the problem with this whole Unity crisis. Every other engine out there is… small. I have a 50+ person team with a big open world game and I’m basically fucked into accepting whatever Unity wants. I can’t just switch engines with four years of tech and team experience. And Unity knows this. It’s so fucking slimy and malicious.
Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile
#5I've been seeing a ton of game engines on hackernews in the last couple days. I think many hobby game developers don't realize the astounding important of designer oriented tools. Even most game companies have coders create designer oriented gui tools for games to be more productive. Whatever open source engine cracks an easy 3d player controller, dialogue system, human retargeted animation system, and easy editor ex…
What's really missing is one (or multiple) open source "bring your own engine and asset pipeline" editor tool(s).
Game editors have pretty much all arrived at the Unity scene model and editor workflow (game object outliner to the left, scene view in the middle, property panel on the right, asset browser at the bottom, plus floating panels for things like animations, material definitions, game specific data, or anything else really - everything needs to be extensible through scripting).
The Unity Editor and asset pipeline is hackable enough to use it as editor for another engine, I did that in the past as "proof of concept" and it definitely works, but is most likely a legal minefield.
Blender is also definitely hackable enough to serve that role (see: https://armory3d.org/) (again I did something similar in the past with Maya, it kinda works, but this wasn't very popular with artists because they were overwhelmed by the unfamiliar and complex Maya UI).
PS: the Defold examples page is actually really cool, with realtime examples running in the browser:
Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile
#6Not actually open source. This is yet another instance of a project eager to reap the rewards of being associated with "open source" without committing to it (i.e. with a license that would make it so). Defold is source-available and some flavor of royalty-free with limitations.
It's actually worse than that, though, because it goes out of its way to obscure the license terms; in this instance, they're going for association with the cachet and warm fuzzies of the Apache license by throwing that name around, despite not actually being Apache licensed. This is not the result of oversight or ignorance. It's intentionally deceptive.
For anyone who thinks that I'm reading between the lines and overstating this, you can refer to the last time this came up. They received sufficient pushback about their messaging. They're not just aware of the discrepancy between the consensus definition and the way they're using it, they acknowledged it explicitly. In response, they said, "We are humbled [...] also sorry for misrepresenting the license" and that "We have updated the website to reflect this and we no longer use the term"[1]. In 2023, there's a big fat nav item at the top of the site that says "Open Source". You click it and read the fine print which gradually reveals the truth of the matter. The "open source" part refers (apparently?) to... their extension ecosystem?
Everything about this screams, "We know exactly what we're doing, but we're going about it in such a way that we can claim plausible deniability."
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23235217>
Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile
#7I really like Defold, have used it for a number of small games I've developed for a side hustle.
It’s the problem with this whole Unity crisis. Every other engine out there is… small. I have a 50+ person team with a big open world game and I’m basically fucked into accepting whatever Unity wants. I can’t just switch engines with four years of tech and team experience. And Unity knows this. It’s so fucking slimy and malicious.
For someone who's completely out of the loop, what changes are the Unity peeps doing to their business model?
Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile
#8I really like Defold, have used it for a number of small games I've developed for a side hustle.
It’s the problem with this whole Unity crisis. Every other engine out there is… small. I have a 50+ person team with a big open world game and I’m basically fucked into accepting whatever Unity wants. I can’t just switch engines with four years of tech and team experience. And Unity knows this. It’s so fucking slimy and malicious.
This is why I only use Open Source... if you build on a proprietary platform, the owner of that platform can change the terms at any time and you are stuck with a massive cost to change, or you just pay the ransom.
Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile
#9Not actually open source. This is yet another instance of a project eager to reap the rewards of being associated with "open source" without committing to it (i.e. with a license that would make it so). Defold is source-available and some flavor of royalty-free with limitations. It's actually worse than that, though, because it goes out of its way to obscure the license terms; in this instance, they're going for asso…
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Re: Defold: Lua game engine for web and mobile
#10Not actually open source. This is yet another instance of a project eager to reap the rewards of being associated with "open source" without committing to it (i.e. with a license that would make it so). Defold is source-available and some flavor of royalty-free with limitations. It's actually worse than that, though, because it goes out of its way to obscure the license terms; in this instance, they're going for asso…
to be actually honest, I tend to distrust anything that comes out of people who go out of their way to weasel their words like the maintainer of this project.