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Godot game engine reaches 2.0

godotengine.org

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Re: Godot game engine reaches 2.0

#51

Post by chris_wot »

Cyph0n wrote: post #37
SeanDav wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your one-size-fits-all-possible-use-cases scripting language they should all use instead? Lua? Counterpoint: https://julien.danjou.info/blog/2011/why-not-lua Any scripting language will have issues. It is far easier to reason about and deal with issues created by your own DSL than some other 3rd party language that you have minimal or no control over.

Why not extend an existing language? Python's meta programming capabilities are excellent. Keep the syntax the same, but introduce new features as you see fit. Wouldn't that work?

They already tried:

Initially, Godot was designed to support multiple scripting languages (this ability still exists today). However, only GDScript is in use right now. There is a little history behind this.

In the early days, the engine used the Lua scripting language. Lua is fast, but creating bindings to an object oriented system (by using fallbacks) was complex and slow and took an enormous amount of code. After some experiments with Python, it also proved difficult to embed.

The last third party scripting language that was used for shipped games was Squirrel, but it was dropped as well. At that point, it became evident that Godot would work more optimally by using a built-in scripting language...

http://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/reference/gdscript.htm...

Re: Godot game engine reaches 2.0

#52

Post by chris_wot »

chris_wot wrote: post #9
Cyph0n wrote: post #8

One thing I don't get with game engines: why do they feel the need to make a X-like scripting language, where X=Python in this case, and X=JavaScript in Unity's case? Why do they make people re-learn the specifics and slight differences of a language that has been around for more than a decade? On top of this, they are making their engines more difficult to maintain: bug fixes, new features, deprecation and backwards…

Do they have a document detailing their scripting language? And can they expose bindings for other scripting languages? Is so, maybe this is something they can move to.

Ah. They can!

Initially, Godot was designed to support multiple scripting languages (this ability still exists today). However, only GDScript is in use right now. There is a little history behind this.

Re: Godot game engine reaches 2.0

#54

Post by PostOnce »

kriro wrote: post #22
PostOnce wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"From scratch" isn't the right metric, you'd compare it to unity or unreal. The key difference is this is actually open source so you have 100% control over your own distribution and licensing. I haven't looked at it in 6mo but back then on the 1.x branch there were many, many thoroughly polished example games ranging from 2D (platform / isometric / tile) to 3D (third person, others i forget). Normally you get 1 inco…

I don't see the sample games listed on their site but found some googling. I'd be very interested in a good sample point&click adventure game especially for a FLOSS-engine. Creating one has always been in my "neat project" pile but I suck too much at drawing to motivate myself. Last time I tried (with no engine, just pygame) I got stuck figuring out a good way to do paths/movement/blocking areas and it sort of fizzle…

Yeah like I said the docs could be improved, the website could be improved (although I checked yesterday and the whole site is new).

The examples are in godot/examples or something after you extract it I think.

Re: Godot game engine reaches 2.0

#55

Post by eru »

AimHere wrote: post #50
eru wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until Unity became popular, everybody was doing their own game engine for their own game. The very first Half-Life was already using one of the Quake engines. As was Hexen. The first Deus Ex was using the Unreal engine. That was all probably ten years before Unity.

Not that it alters your point in any way whatsoever (except to date third party engine-reuse even further), but Hexen used a variant Doom engine, not quake. Hexen 2 was the one that used the Quake Engine.

Thanks!

Re: Godot game engine reaches 2.0

#56

Post by eru »

scrollaway wrote: post #18
eru wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until Unity became popular, everybody was doing their own game engine for their own game. The very first Half-Life was already using one of the Quake engines. As was Hexen. The first Deus Ex was using the Unreal engine. That was all probably ten years before Unity.

Yes, I'm aware of the AAA exceptions. Source, CryEngine and Unreal Engine were around since long before Unity. They represent an extreme minority of games. Obviously the concept of game engines is older than Unity, I didn't think I needed to explain that here... And even then, CryEngine, Unreal and Source are all engines centered on a very specific kind of game (fps style). There was no serious general-purpose game e…

Together with your grandparent post, this paints a fuller picture. Thanks!

Re: Godot game engine reaches 2.0

#57

Post by adolson »

hrnnnnnn wrote: post #21
oolongCat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should answer your question, http://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/reference/gdscript.htm... As for my personal experience with GDScript, I used to experiment with Godot a while back, and honestly I never felt like GDScript was some sort of hindrance never felt it was in the way. It was really, really easy to pick up if you know another programming language already.

Totally agree. I made the same small game in Unity and Godot about a year ago to compare them. Learning and using Godot script was no big deal. The main difference was that I could use VS for Unity and it had a vim plugin, but if I wanted to edit text in-editor I was stuck with Godot's own one.

Why didn't you just set the external editor options in Godot and use whatever editor you wanted?

Re: Godot game engine reaches 2.0

#58

Post by hrnnnnnn »

adolson wrote: post #57
hrnnnnnn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. I made the same small game in Unity and Godot about a year ago to compare them. Learning and using Godot script was no big deal. The main difference was that I could use VS for Unity and it had a vim plugin, but if I wanted to edit text in-editor I was stuck with Godot's own one.

Why didn't you just set the external editor options in Godot and use whatever editor you wanted?

It was a while ago, so I can't remember exactly. It was either that the option didn't exist at that point, or the pain of using the built-in editor was offset by something else, like the ability to debug or syntax highlighting or autocompletion.

Re: Godot game engine reaches 2.0

#59

Post by bananaboy »

anglebracket wrote: post #25
bananaboy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an over generalisation. Unity uses JavaScript, Boo, and C#. Cryengine and Stingray use Lua. They are those exact languages, not "like" those languages.

As far as I'm aware, Unity does not have JavaScript. It has the superficially similar "UnityScript" [0]. [0]: http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/UnityScript_versus_JavaScr...

Thanks, sorry, you're right about UnityScript! I try to avoid it if I can help it ;)
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