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Defold: cross-platform game engine

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Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#111

Post by Zambyte »

echelon wrote: post #41
progbits wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but seems like the only addition is preventing you from selling a game engine based on it. So you can sell a game, but not an engine. I wonder where a game with built-in editor ranks. Seems fair, but sadly not OSS. I wonder why they think it's necessary?

There are a lot of reasons to go "source available", such as preventing hyperscalers or enterprises from lifting your product. Here's some commentary I made in another thread on this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43728095

What product? They aren't selling anything. Like at all.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#112

Post by chickensong »

noodletheworld wrote: post #33
jbverschoor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For small scripts. Lua is a huge minefield

That seems kind of unfair. There are things that aren't great about lua, and I'm not going to pretend they're not. buuuut... - It's really perfectly ok if you use competently. - There are large complex systems and games built using it (eg. factorio) that show that scaling it is both pragmatic and possible. - It has a big active community. When you compare it some other scripting solutions (boo, unityscript) that were…

FWIW, Factorio is primarily C++, with Lua for mods and map editor.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#113

Post by echelon »

Zambyte wrote: post #111
echelon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of reasons to go "source available", such as preventing hyperscalers or enterprises from lifting your product. Here's some commentary I made in another thread on this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43728095

What product? They aren't selling anything. Like at all.

This looks similar to the classic "enterprise support" and "distribution" lifestyle business play, which is incredibly sustainable and benefits both the software community as well as the maintainers. From their website:

Support [1] page:

> Please contact us at business@defold.se for more information on how we can help you publish great games made with Defold.

About [2] page:

> Product development, marketing, support and sales - Refold AB is owned by members of the Defold team and is contracted to perform most of the day to day work on the Defold product.

Open [3] page:

> Q: Is there still going to be a roadmap for Defold?

> A: The Defold Foundation has decided to no longer share a public roadmap at the beginning of each year.

Status [4] page:

> Defold will never change into a subscription model, request royalty payments, introduce licensing fees or in other ways charge for access to the main (emphasis added) product.

FAQ [5] page:

> Q: What kind of user tracking are you doing?

> A: We log anonymous usage data from our websites and the Defold editor in order to improve our services and product.

They're using a lot of SaaS typical for startup/business growth. Their forums are Discourse [6], they're running a bunch of analytics, SendInBlue for campaigns, etc. That in and of itself doesn't imply anything, but they do seem to be very mindful of their community's health and growth.

There are some very dedicated people at the wheel. It looks like they've carved out enough leeway for commercial and support offerings to sustain themselves and keep others from stealing it like Amazon and others have done to other open source projects in the past, all the while building a cool community-powered open game engine.

[1] https://defold.com/support/

[2] https://defold.com/about/

[3] https://defold.com/open/

[4] https://defold.com/status/

[5] https://defold.com/faq/faq/

[6] https://forum.defold.com/ ; Discourse is $100/mo or more for custom domains

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#115

Post by Arelius »

Ethee wrote: post #104
executesorder66 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can make proprietary changes to the engine without releasing them (unlike GPL). Why is that a good thing? >You can freely monetize games built with the engine, You'd also be able to do the same if it had a GPL license >and they make some assurances that there won't be a bait-and-switch. If it was licensed under a GPL license you wouldn't need to rely on "some assurances"

Consider the space we're in. For game development you're going to have a lot of developers with a lot of different ideas about how to make a game, all utilizing the same engine. If the engine doesn't come with a feature I need, I'll probably have to code it myself, but seeing as the whole purpose of me making this feature is for my game, then it makes sense that I should be able to keep my game's feature private/prop…

More importantly, a successful game is likely to need porting to proprietary platforms, with APIs behind restrictive NDAs.

Honestly, not great, but that's the world we live in.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#116

Post by britzl »

mtnygard wrote: post #87
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is King, then it's got a huge (financial) backer; King is one of the most profitable game publishers thanks to e.g. Candy Crush that made their revenue jump from $62 million in 2011 to $1.88 billion in 2013. It was bought in 2016 by Activision Blizzard, which in turn was acquired by Microsoft in 2023. Ah, the wiki page also mentions the Defold engine, which was first developed in 2007 and acquired by King in 20…

AFAIK, King spun Defold back out as a foundation.

Yes, this happened early in 2020. Defold has been a public product longer with the Defold Foundation than with King. King has not been affiliated with Defold for a very long time.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#117

Post by britzl »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #43
progbits wrote: post #7

Major props to them for not only calling it "source available" (and not trying to misuse "open source" like so many do), but also for highlighting the additions to their Apache-based license: https://defold.com/license/

> (and not trying to misuse "open source" like so many do) They only stopped because of the backlash they received when they tried to. Their initial announcement was about "Defold becoming open source".

The Defold Foundation immediately stopped calling Defold open-source when it was pointed out that the license was in conflict with the OSI definition.

https://defold.com/2020/05/20/Some-thoughts-on-the-open-sour...

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#118

Post by britzl »

chucklenorris wrote: post #44
progbits wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but seems like the only addition is preventing you from selling a game engine based on it. So you can sell a game, but not an engine. I wonder where a game with built-in editor ranks. Seems fair, but sadly not OSS. I wonder why they think it's necessary?

I remember this was initially developed at king games (candycrush saga authors) before they got acquired. Probably that's the reason for the weird licensing model

Yes, you are correct. An MIT license was preferred by the Defold team but the modified Apache license was what was decided upon in the end.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#119

Post by britzl »

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #51
sbarre wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the answer to "why" is on the website if you read about the foundation's objectives: https://defold.com/foundation/

≥Support the open source community and the use of open licenses. Tbh I'm a little more confused after reading this

The main repository (github.com/defold/defold) is the only one with the Defold License (ie the modified Apache license). There's also around 80 or so MIT licensed repositories with Defold engine plugins for things such as analytics, monetization, ads, attribution, game servers as well as tools such as Spine, Tiled, Rive etc.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#120

Post by anentropic »

japhib wrote: post #82
xandrius wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, read Lua and got out instantly. Games are complicated beasts, something along the lines of C# help massively the development and the avoidance of bugs. Python, Script and Lua are not languages I'd wish to switch to from the coziness of C#. I'd consider Go or Java (although not as hip as it used to be).

If you just want static typing, you can write Typescript and compile to Lua: https://typescripttolua.github.io/

The Defold site recommends:

> Optional typed Lua using Teal.

https://defold.com/product/

https://defold.com/assets/teal/

https://github.com/teal-language/tl

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