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Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

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Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#121

Post by vladms »

kevincox wrote: post #110
anthk wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT allows that. LGPL would in theory but you would need to release the potential changes you did to the game engine. GPL woudn't in any way.

But if they give me the source under the MIT license then I am free to redistribute it. So while they would be in their right to make a proprietary port it seems like they wouldn't be able to legally release it under MIT. (Or at least not the whole thing, as code that touches Nintendo's API would need more restrictions)

My understanding: it is possible to license under a different license any additions or modifications they made. So the original code can remain MIT, but their changes (API integrations, etc) will be under a proprietary license (note: this would not be possible with GPL for example, but MIT is not like that).

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#122

Post by kmeisthax »

derefr wrote: post #75
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with that though, home-brew games are almost nonexistent on the Switch, or extremely minimal. Having the ability to launch a game with a modded Switch, doesn't mean you have access to the SDK, or the documentation. Without those things, you really can't write any useful programs. It's like gaining access to the cockpit of a plane, and having no manual or labels on what all the buttons do. If you truly want to de…

> Having the ability to launch a game with a modded Switch, doesn't mean you have access to the SDK, or the documentation. The very same websites and forums and Discord servers where the people who come up with jailbreaks for the Switch hang out, can also point you to leaked copies of SDKs, and ways to use these with a jailbroken switch and/or an emulator like Yuzu. (After all, while most published console homebrew —…

Modern console devkits don't boot unless they have an Internet connection through the manufacturer's VPN, so buying devkits on eBay is useless now. They started doing this with the Xbox One.

The reason why they did this is because of leakers. The Xbox 360's devkits connected to a separate Xbox Live network called PartnerNet, and anyone who wanted to test Xbox Live functionality - e.g. buying games or DLC - needed to actually upload their game to PartnerNet. This meant that everyone with a devkit got full access to a lot of prerelease games.

There were rings of people with devkits leaking games for gamer clout. The way they got access to the hardware was interesting. Microsoft actually didn't let liquidators touch the consoles[0], but they still needed to dispose of them. The electronics recyclers Microsoft hired didn't do a good job of this, so there was a cottage industry of people taking debug fused CPUs off destroyed motherboards and swapping them onto retail boards. This would give you something identical to a low-spec devkit that lets you run unsigned code and connect to PartnerNet, but doesn't have any of the crazier debug capabilities useful for development.

[0] Notably, the state of Rhode Island tried liquidating the devkits of the Kingdoms of Amalur developers and got stopped by Microsoft

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#123

Post by tezza »

djur wrote: post #116
tezza wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unity so much more polished Unity has Timeline (and Cinemachine) Unity has Entity Component which is superior for many coders to Godot’s node system Unity has better 3D Unity has large bank of answered questions Unity exports to WebGL Unity Asset Store Assets are high quality, abundant and cost effective

> Entity Component which is superior for many coders In what way?

Many ways. When you have a reference to something it is easy to add,query, change elements to that something

Even unrelated things can be added this way (RigidBody, Raycasters) whereas Godot needs separate parallel node trees to accomplish the same thing

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#124

Post by TillE »

kevincox wrote: post #107
SXX wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically to use code they provide under MIT you also need to couple it with a proprietary SDK from Nintendo. If you post any proprietary bits on internet Nintendo will eat you alive.

But presumably the port touches the proprietary bits. So either A) that interface is not allowed to be distributed under the MIT license and they have a problem with Nintendo or B) the interface is fine to publish under MIT so why not make it more available?

It's comparable to how open source code can also be patent-encumbered. It's MIT licensed but Nintendo's NDA still applies. The license can't supersede that.

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#125

Post by kmeisthax »

gs17 wrote: post #119
revjx wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that easy, unfortunately - I'm a registered developer (for the Wii U) and to be 'enabled' for Switch development, you need to jump through a bunch of hoops including describing your previous experience with games development and so on. The barrier for Wii U was significantly lower thanks to the 'Nintendo Web Framework', a web tech SDK that let you build games without needing to use tooling like Unity or mess…

>and to be 'enabled' for Switch development, you need to jump through a bunch of hoops including describing your previous experience with games development and so on. I don't think they're that strict, there's a lot of garbage on the Switch store.

The strictness isn't there to keep garbage off the console store. That was just Nintendo revisionism. It's there because they need to know who to sue into a crater if you use developer mode to play pirated games.

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#127

Post by georgeecollins »

djur wrote: post #113
torginus wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't get why console makers get a boner at the thought of disallowing third party software. What do they gain out of this? With proper security protocols you can sandbox your application well enough that hackers shouldn't be able to get to the OS. And if they do find an exploit, the vendor can always force an OS upgrade, and prevent downgrades with hardware fuses, with new games requiring the latest OS. I…

Making piracy more difficult, primarily.

I think that is right, but I also think that quality control is very important to console manufacturers, particularly Nintendo. You don't think about it so much because the consoles haven't changed that much in market position in years.

There is lore that bad quality software destroyed the 2600. Battles SEGA and Nintendo, SEGA and Sony, Sony and MSFT really depended a lot on the quality of titles and the users experience. So they tend to want to control the experience more then say Google or Apple do on the phone. You can have shitty apps on a phone, but its a much bigger problem for a console.

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#128

Post by TillE »

teamonkey wrote: post #17
Aissen wrote: post #14

It's interesting that they did not keep this a paid product, and use that as a lever: 1. to either get more customers 2. or to get Nintendo to remove the terms forbidding the open source release of software built on their platform I am guessing that 1. will happen anyway, and 2. isn't needed since they have found a middle ground with Nintendo hosting details on their developer portal.

The fact that Godot requires/required a third party studio to port your game to consoles is a major turnoff and one of the things preventing developers jumping on the Godot train. From a solo dev point of view, too scary and expensive; from an indie company's point of view it's an unwanted extra expense and a potential point of failure that you can't control. This opens things up considerably, despite the Nintendo wa…

"Official" paid console ports are coming very soon (Q1 2024) from W4 Games, the company run by Godot's core developers.

https://w4games.com/products/

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#129

Post by nonethewiser »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #45
nogridbag wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like a Switch dev kit is only ~$450 from Googling. I believe dev kits in the past were far much expensive.

"only" If it's to dev a game with your kid, that pricey. Pricier than the console itself. Pricier than to dev for android or iphone, or any laptop. Or the steam deck for that matter. Expensive dev kits made sense for devs 20 years ago, but today they are just a way to lock the ecosystem.

Mostly agreed, but it could also easily be $10k.

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#130

Post by FrustratedMonky »

strich wrote: post #117
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right from site https://godotengine.org/features/#script ""Leverage your C# experience to feel right at home If you're an experienced C# user, Godot offers you first-class support for the .NET platform. Power your game with familiar libraries and give them performance boost, while still benefiting from close engine integration. Note: .NET support is provided as a dedicated engine executable. C# support is available f…

He's talking about the Switch port library. It didn't support C# yet. But also on the wider topic Godot still struggles with making C# a first class citizen compared to its home baked script language. They're improving things but it's not great yet.

Got it. Thank You.
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