Godot for AA/AAA game development – What's missing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Godot for AA/AAA game development – What's missing?

#161

Post by SXX » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 1:09 AM UTC

Okay I'm little late to the party, but our company actually released commercial game on Steam and GOG. It called Dwarven Skykeep and it built in Godot. Now I'll list a few things that for some reason are not mentioned in article, but crucial for Godot success in commercial game development.

1. Official console support and partnership with platform owners. Yes this code will be closed source, but without this there can't be many AA/AAA games. I'm aware that Godot Foundation is a step to solve this, but it's not yet here and unfortunately 3rd-party companies selling porting services are not sufficient.

2. Once console support is here there will be dire need for game publishers who have pipeline to fund and do marketing for games using Godot. Unfortunately it's very hard to find a publisher for game that built with Godot.

3. Godot need more stable and official support for pesky closed source ecosystems like Steamworks, GOG, etc. There are plugins for that, but they are not as easy to use as in proprietary competitors and not easy to find.

4. There need to be much better tooling for debugging and performance profiling. I've already had some lengthy discussion about it in previous Godot topics so I'm not gonna elaborate much. Its slowly being worked on and improved, but it still inferior than competition.

I love open source and love working with Godot, but unfortunately it's difficult to make commercial games when ecosystem is not there. Game development is hard enough on it's own and sometimes you have to make a choice of whatever you want to support FOSS or you want to make a great games.

Re: Godot for AA/AAA game development – What's missing?

#162

Post by georgeecollins » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 1:29 AM UTC

SXX wrote: post #161

Okay I'm little late to the party, but our company actually released commercial game on Steam and GOG. It called Dwarven Skykeep and it built in Godot. Now I'll list a few things that for some reason are not mentioned in article, but crucial for Godot success in commercial game development. 1. Official console support and partnership with platform owners. Yes this code will be closed source, but without this there ca…

That game looks cool. Good job!

Re: Godot for AA/AAA game development – What's missing?

#163

Post by worldsayshi » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 1:59 AM UTC

rcme wrote: post #114

worldsayshi wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why there hasn't been a widely successful crowd financing platform for open source yet. I imagine it has to be a bit complex but it sounds like a solvable problem.

People generally don't like to pay for things they can get for free.

I feel that your point isn't the whole story. Patreon seems to be financing a lot of creators nowadays.

Personally I feel more inclined to donate myself when I feel there is a reliable way for others to donate in unison with me, so that it has a chance to become substantial enough to make a difference. I think that's the value proposition of Patreon and Kickstarter.

Re: Godot for AA/AAA game development – What's missing?

#164

Post by astrange » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 2:04 AM UTC

pdntspa wrote: post #149

Jensson wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They started banning creators who made NSFW content a few years ago, might be that. They never allowed porn, but they started hammering down on all sorts of erotic material. I don't really care, but others do.

I think that was more at the behest of the payment processors, Visa and MC absolutely hate adult content-related stuff. Which is fucking stupid, IMHO

That won't be a problem once/if the US has more popular payment rails that don't allow chargebacks.

Re: Godot for AA/AAA game development – What's missing?

#165

Post by astrange » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 2:09 AM UTC

avx56 wrote: post #104

logicprog wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I prefer using libraries to abstract away the complicated parts of doing low level graphics, sound, etc over game engines/frameworks. Engines call me, instead of being called BY me, and that forces me to use their whole environment instead of picking just what I need, as well as forcing me to distort the concepts and abstractions that are most natural for how I think about a problem to fit into the existi…

I find this hard because games often end up quite tightly-coupled, so while you don't have the pathfinding code reaching into the rendering, the rendering is usually coupled to the game object model and it's hard to make it reusable outside of a specific engine. That and the fact that AAA studios do not want to open-source anything for some reason.

Open-sourcing commercial code can be difficult because it might contain or use things from other companies that you don't have permission to release.

Of course, it might also just be that you don't want your employees to get any fame, but they do seem to be allowed to talk at GDC.

Re: Godot for AA/AAA game development – What's missing?

#166

Post by suby » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 2:24 AM UTC

jarsin wrote: post #109

Does godot have multiplayer options? I know Unity abandoned their old networking and is working on a new one, but at least there are open source options like mirror, and paid options like photon fusion.

They have multiplayer in the form of a wrapper around ENet.

Re: Godot for AA/AAA game development – What's missing?

#167

Post by avx56 » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 2:30 AM UTC

astrange wrote: post #165

avx56 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this hard because games often end up quite tightly-coupled, so while you don't have the pathfinding code reaching into the rendering, the rendering is usually coupled to the game object model and it's hard to make it reusable outside of a specific engine. That and the fact that AAA studios do not want to open-source anything for some reason.

Open-sourcing commercial code can be difficult because it might contain or use things from other companies that you don't have permission to release. Of course, it might also just be that you don't want your employees to get any fame, but they do seem to be allowed to talk at GDC.

Yeah, I think it's that and the fact that there isn't (obvious) money in fixing up and maintaining code for a shipped game.

Re: Godot for AA/AAA game development – What's missing?

#168

Post by andrewmcwatters » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 2:49 AM UTC

jarsin wrote: post #109

Does godot have multiplayer options? I know Unity abandoned their old networking and is working on a new one, but at least there are open source options like mirror, and paid options like photon fusion.

The answer is no, you have to write your own networking. They provide enough to say, “Yes, we have multiplayer support,” but the real answer is “No,” because you still have to do it yourself.

It’s a farce. It’s like including fmod bindings and saying yes we support fmod, but having zero integration.

There’s no serialization, deserialization, no prediction, no reconciliation, no interpolation, nothing.

Re: Godot for AA/AAA game development – What's missing?

#169

Post by aiqq » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 3:00 AM UTC

georgeecollins wrote: post #162

SXX wrote: post #161

Okay I'm little late to the party, but our company actually released commercial game on Steam and GOG. It called Dwarven Skykeep and it built in Godot. Now I'll list a few things that for some reason are not mentioned in article, but crucial for Godot success in commercial game development. 1. Official console support and partnership with platform owners. Yes this code will be closed source, but without this there ca…

That game looks cool. Good job!

Yeah but it doesnt seem to be selling and looks like thousands of other games released daily.

Re: Godot for AA/AAA game development – What's missing?

#170

Post by SXX » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 3:31 AM UTC

aiqq wrote: post #169

georgeecollins wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That game looks cool. Good job!

Yeah but it doesnt seem to be selling and looks like thousands of other games released daily.

Making games is hard and marketing them for the right audience is even harder. Anyone who want ot make make game development their primary job have to take a risk of their game not becoming bestseller. Though in reality 90% of games simply never getting to release at all.

At the same time I think 2 years working with Godot full time is enough to talk about it's strong and weak sides including ecosystem problems that make commercial game development even harder.