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Defold: cross-platform game engine

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Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#31

Post by bentt »

I remember when Unity first appeared and what it felt like to read its materials, its pitch. It was like... whoa, this might actually be something.

This feels similar. Sometimes you can just tell by the communications and the spirit of the language that the team has the goods.

The fact that they have such comprehensive multiplatform export right now is big. One of Godot's biggest hurdles has been console support.

My ONLY beef, from what I saw, was that it was Lua only. If it was C# I would have been more excited. But at least it's not a full C++ recompile like SOME engines. :)

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#32

Post by tapoxi »

bentt wrote: post #31

I remember when Unity first appeared and what it felt like to read its materials, its pitch. It was like... whoa, this might actually be something. This feels similar. Sometimes you can just tell by the communications and the spirit of the language that the team has the goods. The fact that they have such comprehensive multiplatform export right now is big. One of Godot's biggest hurdles has been console support. My…

Godot does support consoles, they just choose to move that to third parties. There's community Switch support if you're a registered Switch developer, and W4 Games licenses export plugins.

One of the reasons for this is because console plugins can't be developed in the open like the rest of the engine, because the console SDKs are behind NDAs. It's a pretty ridiculous holdover from when consoles were more specialized.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#33

Post by noodletheworld »

jbverschoor wrote: post #14
landsman wrote: post #3

Scripting in Lua sounds good.

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 just incompetently done, or mystifyingly deciding that writing your own language is the solution (jai, gdscript), I feel you have to admit it's a reasonably pragmatic choice.

There aren't a lot of other languages that embed as a scripting layer the same way that lua does, with the same performance.

Many candidates are either very hard to work with embedded (python) or simply lack any feasible way to possible embed them as a runtime scripting layer (go, zig, c, etc).

Maybe there's a future for WASM scripting layers in games, but for now, I certainly haven't seen it done well.

I can confidently say: Lua, the language, is not a minefield. Not to me. Not to you. Not to anyone.

Some projects expose a lua scripting API that is a minefield; ...but those two things are not the same thing, and by all accounts (I haven't used it personally, but just idly reading the forums) the defold scripting layer seems fine to most people.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#34

Post by neallindsay »

rowls66 wrote: post #21
auggierose wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they don't want somebody else to sell their game engine? It's pretty clear, isn't it?

Why would anyone buy their game engine when it is available for free? Seems like a solution for a problem that doesn't/won't exist.

If they didn't prevent selling derivative game engines, someone could fork it and add a valuable feature that was only available in the paid fork. This could split the community.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#35

Post by bentt »

tapoxi wrote: post #32
bentt wrote: post #31

I remember when Unity first appeared and what it felt like to read its materials, its pitch. It was like... whoa, this might actually be something. This feels similar. Sometimes you can just tell by the communications and the spirit of the language that the team has the goods. The fact that they have such comprehensive multiplatform export right now is big. One of Godot's biggest hurdles has been console support. My…

Godot does support consoles, they just choose to move that to third parties. There's community Switch support if you're a registered Switch developer, and W4 Games licenses export plugins. One of the reasons for this is because console plugins can't be developed in the open like the rest of the engine, because the console SDKs are behind NDAs. It's a pretty ridiculous holdover from when consoles were more specialized…

Yeah I really like Godot and you're right, the third parties are working hard on that front. It's been a trial for them though.

I guess the roots with King have made things easier for Defold?

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#36

Post by Zacru »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #23
rowls66 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone buy their game engine when it is available for free? Seems like a solution for a problem that doesn't/won't exist.

This was my question to. I suspect they're worried about someone making a paid version with extra features which aren't contributed back to the community. For a moment, I was thinking Defold ought to dual-license their engine under both the current non-OSS modified Apache and the GPL. That way, you'd have the option to either: 1. Commercialise software created using modified versions of Defold, without releasing the…

>dual-license the engine under both their current non-OSS modified Apache and the GPL.

Of course if they do, I hope they will say "either modified Apache or the GPL".

My company's lawyers made a big stink about us using jQuery plugins that said "and" instead of "or".

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#37

Post by Tepix »

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 agree that the license looks fair. Not everything has to be OSI-compliant open source. They even support WASM!

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#38

Post by Tepix »

progbits wrote: post #9
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/

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?

> Seems fair, but sadly not OSS.

Which of their license changes makes you feel sad and why? Were you planning to sell their editor?

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#39

Post by sbarre »

Zambyte wrote: post #22
auggierose wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they don't want somebody else to sell their game engine? It's pretty clear, isn't it?

That doesn't answer the question of why.

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

https://defold.com/foundation/

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#40

Post by echelon »

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 dies.

The company can choose which services to offer for free and which ones to charge a premium for. Cloud CI/builds and hosting seem like good monetization levers while leaving the engine and editor completely free of charge and open for development and modification. You can build a sustainable lifestyle business this way.

Database vendors should use licenses like this to prevent Amazon from stealing their work and bleeding their cash flow.

Redis and Elasticsearch should have done this before Amazon cloned their products, started making bank on managed versions, killed their monetization efforts, and turned their communities against them.

Matt Mullenweg should have done this instead of throwing a fit.

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