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Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

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Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#81

Post by circuit10 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #76
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with that though, home-brew games are almost nonexistent on the Switch, or extremely minimal. Having the ability to launch a game with a modded Switch, doesn't mean you have access to the SDK, or the documentation. Without those things, you really can't write any useful programs. It's like gaining access to the cockpit of a plane, and having no manual or labels on what all the buttons do. If you truly want to de…

> Even with that though, home-brew games are almost nonexistent on the Switch, or extremely minimal. One major reason for that is that Nintendo aggressively permabans Switch devices that appear to be modded, preventing them from ever being used online.

This usually won’t happen if you don’t pirate anything, cheat or do anything that looks like either of those, but there’s always a risk

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#82

Post by LarsDu88 »

tombert wrote: post #78

I know "asymptotically close to zero" about game development and the like, so if someone who works in this space could answer this I'd be appreciative: what, if anything, would make you use Unity or Unreal instead of Godot for making a game today? This isn't meant as a passive aggressive question to push some kind of open source narrative, but a genuine curiosity. Since I know basically nothing about the industry, I'…

I've done game jams with both Godot and Unity.

Mainly the plug-ins, particularly third party plug-ins for unity are better.

One of them being cinemachine.

Another example would be a tool call technique collider creator that let's you paint collider primitives. That tool alone saved about 300 hours of work.

For many developers the Cinemachine tool is very useful as well.

The other feature is the ability to edit game objects while the game is running in editor mode for debugging. This is the sole major feature Godot currently lacks compared to unreal and Unity imo

Beyond that Unity has a better overall design IMO encouraging users towards composition over inheritance and NOT encouraging use of some one shot interpreted scripting language (GDscript)

Does this justify the 100x greater size of Unity as an organization over Godot? Probably not

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#83

Post by crysin »

weinzierl wrote: post #46
Aissen wrote: post #14

It's interesting that they did not keep this a paid product, and use that as a lever: 1. to either get more customers 2. or to get Nintendo to remove the terms forbidding the open source release of software built on their platform I am guessing that 1. will happen anyway, and 2. isn't needed since they have found a middle ground with Nintendo hosting details on their developer portal.

What does 2. mean exactly? That I am not allowed to publish the source code of my Switch game as open source? What if my Switch port shared code (for example all the GDScript) with other ports. Does Nintendo also forbid me to publish this as open source? Can you use open source assets in a Switch game?

I'm not a licensed Nintendo developer but off of my knowledge from the Wii U era...

The Godot game engine cannot include any of the Nintendo Switch SDK nor can your game include any of the Nintendo Switch SDK or APIs unless you are a registered Nintendo developer and have signed their NDA. You cannot share any of Nintendos proprietary code or information.

So you could share your source code for a Switch game, minus any code or SDKs specific to the Switch.

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#85

Post by pfist »

tombert wrote: post #78

I know "asymptotically close to zero" about game development and the like, so if someone who works in this space could answer this I'd be appreciative: what, if anything, would make you use Unity or Unreal instead of Godot for making a game today? This isn't meant as a passive aggressive question to push some kind of open source narrative, but a genuine curiosity. Since I know basically nothing about the industry, I'…

I have over ten years experience with Unreal, so the cost of switching engines would be very high, and must offer something irresistible in return.

Regarding your second question: Unreal effectively has no licensing fee for most developers. The engine is free, you get access to the full source code, and you pay a 5% royalty only after you have made $1 million gross revenue.

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#86

Post by mschuster91 »

ammar2 wrote: post #43
troupo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the insanity I don't understand. Developing for desktop systems is essentially free. Developing for iOS devices is $99 a year (plus store commission) for literally anyone. Developing for consoles? Oh, you have to be a business entity, you have to pass approval process, you have to buy a dev kit, you have to... And then also pay a commission.

> Developing for iOS devices is $99 a year (plus store commission) for literally anyone. Don't forget having to buy a MacOS device in this equation.

Develop on a Hackintosh (either bare metal or VM, there's more than enough guides for both), build using Github Actions, and that's it. If you want to stay fully legit, rent a Mac instance from AWS or the myriad "Mac-as-a-Service" companies and be done with it.

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#87

Post by beardedmoose »

tombert wrote: post #78

I know "asymptotically close to zero" about game development and the like, so if someone who works in this space could answer this I'd be appreciative: what, if anything, would make you use Unity or Unreal instead of Godot for making a game today? This isn't meant as a passive aggressive question to push some kind of open source narrative, but a genuine curiosity. Since I know basically nothing about the industry, I'…

A few years ago I started messing with Unity and for the most part it was a decent engine with many platforms you can target which is a huge plus. Their whole licensing issue of late made me think though, do I really want to put years of my life into building a game when the owner of the engine can make changes which negatively impact my project?

Now, this could happen with any engine that you don't own but Epic uses their engine to create games themselves so they have an interest in further development which also benefits the users of the engine.

Godot is a newer kid on the block but has gained a lot of interest, especially after the Unity stunt. Now that it can target a Nintendo Switch there is even more reason to choose this engine as coding for game consoles can be pretty tricky as they usually have a lot of restrictions and tests they have to pass before you can launch on the platform.

Unreal and Unity offer maturity and vast knowledge available on the web for both if you want to learn the engine. Unreal has a visual scripting language which some love, both engines have storefronts where you can buy plugins, code, objects, all sorts of things to help make your game.

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#88

Post by [deleted] »

tombert wrote: post #78

I know "asymptotically close to zero" about game development and the like, so if someone who works in this space could answer this I'd be appreciative: what, if anything, would make you use Unity or Unreal instead of Godot for making a game today? This isn't meant as a passive aggressive question to push some kind of open source narrative, but a genuine curiosity. Since I know basically nothing about the industry, I'…

[deleted]

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#89

Post by SXX »

tombert wrote: post #78

I know "asymptotically close to zero" about game development and the like, so if someone who works in this space could answer this I'd be appreciative: what, if anything, would make you use Unity or Unreal instead of Godot for making a game today? This isn't meant as a passive aggressive question to push some kind of open source narrative, but a genuine curiosity. Since I know basically nothing about the industry, I'…

Indie gamedev company co-founder here: 14 people team, 2 games released + next in progress and signed with publisher. There are few big reasons why you can't just go and use Godot.

Publishers. Basically 3 years ago when we made our first game together using Godot it was main reason why we were rejected by some publishers. Now situation can be slightly different, but many publishers still have in-house pipeline that only work for Unity and Unreal: QA, localization and console porting.

Asset Stores. Majority of modern games are not built from scratch and selection of ready-to-use components and assets available commercially would be like 1000x for two major commercial engines.

Hiring. It's take years and several commercial projects of experience to actually become effective at using specific game engine. There are just far less Godot experts arounds especially those with experience of making commercial game while working in team.

These reasons can sound like inertia, but it took decades for Unreal and Unity to conquer their market share and build their moat. I myself big open source and Linux nerd, but sadly it's will take another decade for Godot to make sensible dent in this market.

PS: We released first game on Godot and our following projects are built on Unity.

Re: Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch

#90

Post by johnnyjeans »

tombert wrote: post #78

I know "asymptotically close to zero" about game development and the like, so if someone who works in this space could answer this I'd be appreciative: what, if anything, would make you use Unity or Unreal instead of Godot for making a game today? This isn't meant as a passive aggressive question to push some kind of open source narrative, but a genuine curiosity. Since I know basically nothing about the industry, I'…

My opinion as a gamedev who doesn't work with engines like this:

-Unity and Unreal both offer better performance guarantees and more featureful runtimes than Godot

-Both represent much more mature ecosystems, with tooling that's again, more powerful than Godot

-Both have more robust communities and larger talent pools

All of this said, I'd be more likely to use Godot for a quick personal project than either Unity or Unreal. But then I'd be more likely to choose Raylib over any of these options to begin with. Other people's choices might be influenced by the above, or they might choose Unity/Unreal out of familiarity, or possibly even something as simple as marketing hype/market perception. I'm not really sure the current state of Godot, but last I toyed around with it, I got the impression of something that was in-between Gamemaker and Unity and that dominates my perception of it today.

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