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Defold: cross-platform game engine

defold.com

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Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#71

Post by poulpy123 »

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 ?

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#72

Post by [deleted] »

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 ?

[deleted]

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#73

Post by barotalomey »

martinbaun wrote: post #28
popcar2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less featured and has limited 3D support, but Defold is great for making smaller games aimed at the web or mobile. It has a much smaller binary size and it's generally more stable, especially in terms of physics. If you take a look at the showcase it's mostly webgames and a few smaller indies.

Thank you, I started Godot recently and I'll take a look at Defold as this is the exact thing I am doing - and Godot seems a little unstable with the APIs. Every tutorial I find is for Godot 3, and Godot 4 seems quite changed.

google "godot 4 tutorial", not "godot tutorial"

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#74

Post by saejox »

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…

i wish people would stop mentioning W4 Games as a porting option. their lowest revenue tier costs $2000 a year. most indie games sell a few hundred copies.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#75

Post by bee_rider »

ilariel wrote: post #57
echelon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At least they mention that it is source-available, but they still mix "open source" into the mix on their site. It is a really nice and fair source-available license and there should be more of this, but a license like theirs also restricts what kind of software you can make in a rather harsh way. Since you can't commercialise game engine products and they are defined in a broad way. You could land in legal issues. G…

It could be nice if they had some sort of easy approval process for small Patreon users to commercialize the building of tools for their platform.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#76

Post by bee_rider »

rpdillon wrote: post #61
Tepix wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems fair, but sadly not OSS. Which of their license changes makes you feel sad and why? Were you planning to sell their editor?

The current license makes it unclear whether it would be a violation to distribute a commercial game that has a built-in map editor.

For an unusual license, it is sort of impressive that this is the only issue folks can come up with in this thread.

It does seem like a bit of problem, but it also seems like a very specific thing that could be… cleared up, and then it would be all sorted.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#77

Post by LarsDu88 »

cheschire wrote: post #5
zenkey wrote: post #4

After spending time with Cursor/Junie/Copilot etc., game engines are starting to feel slow and behind the curve. I’d love to see faster adoption and deeper LLM integration (as native features, not just some random third-party plugins). Whoever builds the first “Cursor for games” is going to disrupt the market.

If Unity ever wanted to regain market cap, now’s the time. The solution seems obvious from my armchair.

The problem with Unity is not their marketshare of game developers (which they have in spades), but rather their market share of ads which they completely missed out on.

Game developers don't bring nearly as much revenue as ad serving, which is a sad commentary on the reality of software development and the state of of the games industry.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#78

Post by tapoxi »

saejox wrote: post #74
tapoxi wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

i wish people would stop mentioning W4 Games as a porting option. their lowest revenue tier costs $2000 a year. most indie games sell a few hundred copies.

Most indie games sell on Steam/Steam Deck first and port to consoles later, usually after being picked up by an indie publisher.

The $2000 is also to port to all three console platforms, it's $800 per. This makes it feasible to say, only target PlayStation with W4 and use the community Switch port.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#79

Post by frankvdwaal »

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 ?

You'd first have to make proprietary changes, which you are not allowed to release, and so there's nobody to sell those services to.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#80

Post by japhib »

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?

> I wonder where a game with built-in editor ranks

The website-summarized version of the license says:

> You can not commercialise original or modified (derivative) versions of the Defold editor and/or engine

It sounds like this would only be a problem if you're literally shipping a modified version of Defold. No game with any kind of financial incentive does this for a built-in map or mod editor, because it would make it incredibly easy for other people to then sell a modified version of their entire game.

It's kind of like if Apple made the Xcode source available, and then said "hey you can't monetize a modified version of Xcode." No one is going to ship their app's entire Xcode project to players just so the players can make a custom map.

The normal way for games to do this is to implement a brand-new map-editing UI inside Defold (or Xcode, Unity, Godot, etc.) that spits out custom maps in the exact data format that the game can parse.

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