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It’s time to make that indie C# game in Godot

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Re: It’s time to make that indie C# game in Godot

#201

Post by Aeolun »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #191
Aeolun wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who want to make games for PC and mobile but have zero interest in any consoles ever I don’t understand why you are surprised by this? By your own admission, nobody that wants to develop for consoles would use Godot, so logically, their entire userbase are people that don’t want to do that.

Can't tell if serious or satire. There are absolutely people interested in using Godot as a game engine, including using it to make games for consoles. But many don't, because porting to consoles is painful and expensive, apparently involving third parties as a general rule. Obviously people for whom porting to consoles is a high priority are unlikely to choose Godot right this second, but we're talking about potenti…

I just don’t think that ‘potential users’ are a really strong consideration for what ultimately amounts to a hobby project (or a project with no corporate backing anyway).

Re: It’s time to make that indie C# game in Godot

#202

Post by plaguepilled »

Godot is a joy to use on its own, but when you also consider how it's licensed and doesn't require some awful launcher, it starts to feel like a breath of fresh air.

Any time a company tries to make me feel like I'm at work, I stop wanting to make games with their product.

Re: It’s time to make that indie C# game in Godot

#203

Post by overgard »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #147
overgard wrote: post #97

As much as I'd like to use Godot, there are two features missing that I really don't think I could do without: - Asset store. I totally get it, handling payments, curating, etc. are a huge task... but man, I'm a coder, and I don't have the funds to pay an artist or a musician full time. Being able to just go buy a pack of trees for $20 or something is a huge timer saver. - Animation re-targeting. It seems like there'…

If you're just talking about some models or sprites, can't you just buy them wherever in any file format Godot supports and import them? Ok, you might have to spend a bit of time wrapping them in Godot's nodes, but it seems like that would be quick and trivial

I mean, you can do that, but you have to consider a lot more things:

- Are these assets authored in a way that's friendly to my game engine of choice? IE, will the materials import correctly, will animations be correct, are things scaled properly, is the Z axis up or is it forward, etc. Having dealt with importing files between various engines and 3d modelers, seamless importing and exporting is no small thing.

- What's the license, and are the licenses standardized? Do I have to pay royalties or record attribution?

- What's the selection on these sites? Do I have to enter my payment info into like 20 different sites?

- This also only covers art/sounds. Unity has a huge selection of code assets that are incredibly useful.

None of those are insurmountable of course, but having one place that solves all those problems is great.

Re: It’s time to make that indie C# game in Godot

#204

Post by TulliusCicero »

Aeolun wrote: post #201
TulliusCicero wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't tell if serious or satire. There are absolutely people interested in using Godot as a game engine, including using it to make games for consoles. But many don't, because porting to consoles is painful and expensive, apparently involving third parties as a general rule. Obviously people for whom porting to consoles is a high priority are unlikely to choose Godot right this second, but we're talking about potenti…

I just don’t think that ‘potential users’ are a really strong consideration for what ultimately amounts to a hobby project (or a project with no corporate backing anyway).

I don't know what your objection is. They make a game engine, they support PC and mobile by default, console is the obvious missing piece of functionality. I can understand why it's lower priority because yeah, it's harder to support, but at least one of the devs works on this full time, and the two core devs have been working on this for several years now. I think it's a bit beyond hobby project, they're clearly trying to compete with Unity, even if it's not a for-profit company.

If you read articles like this, it doesn't sound like a small hobby project anymore: https://godotengine.org/article/donation-changes

Granted, it's still small potatoes compared to Unity, no doubt.

edit: huh, looks like they have several people full-time, from the article

> Godot is developed by more than a thousand contributors, and coordinating this massive community requires a full-time involvement of several of us (and hopefully soon even more full-timers), which your generosity enables.

edit2: holy shit Unity had 5000 employees in 2021 according to Wikipedia. I knew they were fairly big but goddamn, didn't think they'd be that big.

Man, now I'm also confused at how they can have a successful, popular game engine with a flourishing asset store and yet still be losing money. Just hired too many people?

Re: It’s time to make that indie C# game in Godot

#205

Post by no_time »

Thaxll wrote: post #130
Zhyl wrote: post #3

With 4.0 getting more and more advanced features [0] and Unity merging with an Ad company [1], Godot is looking like it could be an attractive proposition for a lot of Unity shops. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32003065 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32081051

Godot is an amateur project compared to Unity, it's not even close. What game actually shipped on Godot? I can't cite a single major game on it. https://godotengine.org/showcase Looking at any of thoses games looks bad tbh it's like weekend project / low indie games.

>What game actually shipped on Godot

Cruelty Squad is probably one of the best selling Godot game yet its missing from that page.

Re: It’s time to make that indie C# game in Godot

#206

Post by TulliusCicero »

esperent wrote: post #198
TulliusCicero wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what we're discussing. From another comment: > MonoGame gets around it by having core team members that grant access to private trees for approved developers. It's not open source, but it's available. Not ideal, but better than the Godot status quo.

Yeah I feel like there are definitely ways around this, technically and legally. However, it seems they are not compatible with the goals and philosophy of the Godot project. That is their choice to make and if you don't agree with it, then your needs don't match with Godot and you should choose a different project. I can understand where Godot is coming from. Getting involved with the corporate world is a slippery a…

If Monogame can do it, I don't see why Godot couldn't. Godot clearly wants to compete seriously with Unity at least in the indie game dev space, I don't see how you do that without a decent console solution. The more mature Godot becomes, the weirder it's going to seem that they don't support consoles.

I think just doing the minimal amount of cooperation to get SDK's or what have you for consoles would be fine, and very few people would object even within the open source community. A few diehards would no matter what, but as long as the cooperation is bare minimum I think it'd go okay.

> Getting involved with the corporate world is a slippery and corrupting slope and before you know it you'll be partnering with ad and malware companies like Unity is doing.

Godot's team isn't a for-profit company, that's the key distinction here. Unity's primary purpose is to make money, offering a game engine is just a means to that end. Godot's primary purpose is to be a useful and easy-to-use game engine, so much less incentive to blatantly sell out.

Re: It’s time to make that indie C# game in Godot

#207

Post by democracy »

Godot is really great, and the GDScript is something you don't really need to "learn". It feels intuitive and easy enough to be productive from day one. The performance, compilation speed, binary build - very quick. If was I writing a "game engine" that probably the system I would've come up with. The GUI feels flawless, responsive, very easy to work with. Online/offline help/documentation is top notch.

Would I use it if I am serious about gamedev as a job? Probably not. Version 4 is supposed to bring a lot of improvements and this is awesome. I am not sure I would invest into building a product in version 3 (as it will be deprecated if not by its team then by the plugin makers). Version 4 is not ready yet and specifically mentions to have "tons of bugs" once it's out. As a hobby game developer this is an truly great product to work with. I started with a few 2d tutorials and probably after a week felt really productive. Also it feels like 1st class citizen on Linux (tbh Ubuntu also made great progress here).

The only really thing missing for me - in order to use my C++ simulation engine I need to re-compile C++ Godot sources along with my code? A bit too much for me at this stage. But didn't investigate it enough if there is an easier solution (version 4 is supposed to give more options). Using C# is as an option too. But they mention C# in terms of "support" is "secondary" whatever this means - without more experience it is hard to understand the implications.

Unity is too mature and skills are there if you need to hire or outsource. Mobile publishers, for example (from what I've seen) only accept unity games. You can buy great plugins/assets for reasonable amount of money. Obviously with the money they have it is the product you want to base your business on if you develop professionally. If anything Unity should be compared to Unreal engine, not Godot from the perspective of developing professionally.

Anyways it is really great to see an OSS product that is so close to the mature big commercial products that people have these discussions, run benchmarks and seriously consider switching to Godot. The quality of effort and skill I've seen people put into Godot development (and its plugins) is something unreal and too awesome be true. Go Go Godot!!!

Re: It’s time to make that indie C# game in Godot

#208

Post by chii »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #206
esperent wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I feel like there are definitely ways around this, technically and legally. However, it seems they are not compatible with the goals and philosophy of the Godot project. That is their choice to make and if you don't agree with it, then your needs don't match with Godot and you should choose a different project. I can understand where Godot is coming from. Getting involved with the corporate world is a slippery a…

If Monogame can do it, I don't see why Godot couldn't. Godot clearly wants to compete seriously with Unity at least in the indie game dev space, I don't see how you do that without a decent console solution. The more mature Godot becomes, the weirder it's going to seem that they don't support consoles. I think just doing the minimal amount of cooperation to get SDK's or what have you for consoles would be fine, and v…

why is it only when an engine support console do it mean "serious" competition?

An indie game dev may make their game for non-console platforms, and if that game proves to be a hit, a separate development effort could be made to target a console. Or a re-implementation. If console is the first, or only choice, i would argue that the team is not really indie (by which i mean self-funded and small).

And who knows - may be godot's popularity would change the way consoles engineer their legal contracts and not hide behind NDAs and secrecy to become more open.

Re: It’s time to make that indie C# game in Godot

#209

Post by prox »

blt wrote: post #193
prox wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are at leasts two full time devs and a handful of other devs on paid projects (by way of Patreon and a few large donations of companies like Epic)

interesting, what is Epic's stated motivation for funding a "competitor"?

As I understood it reading the news, it is more like a grant for innovation, so just a PR opportunity for Epic. I don’t think they are worried that much.

I think Blender got the same grant as well, and maybe others.

Re: It’s time to make that indie C# game in Godot

#210

Post by giancarlostoro »

devmunchies wrote: post #175
sergiotapia wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't sound like a good VC backed company. Bootstrap it, make healthy profits and grow at a normal pace.

This seems like a good way for Godot to monetize, while keeping core engine development incentives insulated.

It would be good if Godot adopted it into its UI, it technically has the UI for it. Then the company donates a reasonable percentage to Godot. You might see them never need to ask for donations again.
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