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Defold: cross-platform game engine

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Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#141

Post by simonbw »

poulpy123 wrote: post #71
evv wrote: post #6

They have gone with an interesting licensing solution here. I really appreciate that it is labeled as a source-available license instead of Open Source. https://defold.com/license/ You can make proprietary changes to the engine without releasing them (unlike GPL). You can freely monetize games built with the engine, and they make some assurances that there won't be a bait-and-switch. And finally, the reason why this…

I like the licence, and it is for me open source in spirit if not in letter, but there is a case that could cause problems : what if you sell services for a closed source version of defold ?

It specifically says you are not allowed to commercialize the engine or a derivative, so that sounds like something that is not intended to be allowed, though I feel like it might take a lawyer to decide whether or not that is technically allowed by the license.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#142

Post by neonsunset »

maheart wrote: post #136
neonsunset wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That third party is owned by Godot's leadership and management. Your Godot contributions go towards their pockets.

Here's a list of other 3rd party porters: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/co... Stop spreading FUD. It's FOSS. It's like saying contributing to systemd lines the pockets of Red Hat.

The situation with systemd cannot be compared to special circumstances of Godot and shady practices of its management. It's an essentially open core but privately owned product. I guess this is a better arrangement than Unity but it is not a true FOSS engine in the sense of the word.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#143

Post by hokumguru »

rockyj wrote: post #56

Defold has been there for a while, not sure of why this in on the front page right now. Anyways, Defold is good, the community, docs etc. are on the lower side as compared to Godot. The other options include MonoGame https://monogame.net/ (Stardew Valley was written in it) and of-course the biggies like Unity or Unreal. A lot depends on how much investment in learning one wants to make, what is the feature set one is…

I cannot stress enough how much I love Monogame. Its been a joy to work with.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#144

Post by James-Bennet »

I am looking for a game framework that allows interactive programming like LISP for browser games. So far I have tried love2d, TIC-80, and defold. Fennel (Clojure like language for Lua) works with love2d and TIC-80, but I could not get emacs repl to connect to TIC-80. Also I couldn't get Fennel to work with defold. Maybe there's a way I haven't found yet, but for now the only way to achieve interactive programming is to use love2d (love2d + fennel + emacs repl).

https://vxlabs.com./2018/05/18/interactive-programming-with-... https://technomancy.us/188

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#145

Post by agnishom »

zahlman wrote: post #55
agnishom wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No such claim appears to be made, so I don't understand what motivates the question.

Fair enough. I guess what I am asking is: What is special about this license? Is it more permissive? Does it address a specific issue better than other licenses?

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#146

Post by benoau »

echelon wrote: post #40
evv wrote: post #6

They have gone with an interesting licensing solution here. I really appreciate that it is labeled as a source-available license instead of Open Source. https://defold.com/license/ You can make proprietary changes to the engine without releasing them (unlike GPL). You can freely monetize games built with the engine, and they make some assurances that there won't be a bait-and-switch. And finally, the reason why this…

This is an awesome license. More products should be source-available like this. This is what sustainable "equitable open source" looks like. It keeps the team that built the product able to monetize, but it does so without harming or killing the community. The community has full access to the code and can modify it, make money from products made with it, and can presumably take over if the originating organization di…

Really what it means is there is one entity entitled to monetize the project, so it will probably just die if their monetization ideas or execution are lacking or their enthusiasm wanes. GitHub is full of dead projects like this because monetizing software is hard, building important software is hard, and doing both is even harder. Open source should be funded, but this isn't an efficient way to do it.

Mullenweg, approximate net worth $400 million, should have thought long and hard 20 years ago if "a rising tide lifts all boats" allows for others to have boats, or just his. There should be a $billions ecosystem around WP even if Mullenweg doesn't get that money.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#147

Post by sarchertech »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #129
sarchertech wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t really look at overall user base, you have to look at the number of users making enough money off of Godot that they’re willing to pay for commercial features. That number is vastly smaller. If Godot games were making anywhere near the revenue that Untity games do, I’m willing to bet they’d there would be an Amazon fork.

It's you who brought user base size in. (and it's still bigger for Godot)

And now I’m clarifying that I should have been more precise when I said user base. Amazon clearly doesn’t care about users that aren’t going to make them money.

It also doesn’t matter what the user base is today. It matters what it might be tomorrow. It’s not easy to change your license. If you wait until Amazon is coming for you, it’s too late to do anything to stop it.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#148

Post by sarchertech »

Philpax wrote: post #134
sarchertech wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not an actual problem. Games don’t ship with the editing tools from the engine because engine editing tools aren’t suitable for that purpose. That would be like shipping photoshop with your game to allow people to customize their character’s hair color.

Plenty of games have, with the most famous example being Valve's games, which (eventually) ship the same tools Valve uses for game creation.

Shipping the custom tools the developer built to make content for their game is relatively common.

Shipping 3rd party engine tooling is not. At all.

The equivalent to what valve did would be if Defold released some games made with Defold and then released the Defold engine, which is basically what happened.

There’s also nothing stopping from releasing your game, linking to Defold and saying use Defold to mod this game.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#149

Post by sarchertech »

Zambyte wrote: post #108
sarchertech wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn’t ship your game with built in editing tools from the engine. Those editing tools are not restrictive enough to just hand out to the general player base. They’re too powerful and too hard to use.

Maybe they would (different games foster different cultures). Maybe they'd use it as a starting point and derive something more friendly.

Maybe, but this isn’t remotely common with existing open source game engines.

Modding a game engine’s editing tools to the point where they are user friendly enough for your players is almost always a bigger challenge than building basic editing tools using the engine.

This entire argument is insane to me. Someone is releasing something for free with the caveat that you can’t use it for this one specific very uncommon thing. Then people are up in arms “what if one day I want to do this one specific thing? Do you? No but what if I did?” Don’t use Defold.

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