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Defold: cross-platform game engine

defold.com

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Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#91

Post by croes »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #29
tunaoftheland wrote: post #24

I've had a soft spot for defold, partly because they're unique in the gamedev space. For example, the GUI editor that is built-in is done in Clojure! https://github.com/defold/defold/tree/dev/editor (cljfx for the GUI, I am rooting for seesaw though :)) From what I understand it emerged from a gamedev studio from Sweden (King or something?) so there's commercial release pedigree there. I believe their console platfor…

If it is King, then it's got a huge (financial) backer; King is one of the most profitable game publishers thanks to e.g. Candy Crush that made their revenue jump from $62 million in 2011 to $1.88 billion in 2013. It was bought in 2016 by Activision Blizzard, which in turn was acquired by Microsoft in 2023. Ah, the wiki page also mentions the Defold engine, which was first developed in 2007 and acquired by King in 20…

Given the addictive nature of Candy Crush it’s a little bit like a drug lord building a hospital.

Candy Crush is less deadly than drugs, but a game engine is less useful than a hospital

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#92

Post by neonsunset »

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…

That third party is owned by Godot's leadership and management. Your Godot contributions go towards their pockets.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#93

Post by croes »

rockyj wrote: post #56

Defold has been there for a while, not sure of why this in on the front page right now. Anyways, Defold is good, the community, docs etc. are on the lower side as compared to Godot. The other options include MonoGame https://monogame.net/ (Stardew Valley was written in it) and of-course the biggies like Unity or Unreal. A lot depends on how much investment in learning one wants to make, what is the feature set one is…

Because this story about Lua made the front page and they use Defold

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43723088

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#94

Post by graemep »

echelon wrote: post #40
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 di…

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

Not a choice he had. You cannot relicense GPL code line that. He would have had to write a new system from scratch instead of forking an existing one.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#96

Post by sarchertech »

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.

You wouldn’t ship your game with built in editing tools from the engine. Those editing tools are not restrictive enough to just hand out to the general player base. They’re too powerful and too hard to use.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#97

Post by sarchertech »

bee_rider wrote: post #76
rpdillon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s not an actual problem. Games don’t ship with the editing tools from the engine because engine editing tools aren’t suitable for that purpose.

That would be like shipping photoshop with your game to allow people to customize their character’s hair color.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#98

Post by sarchertech »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #45
neallindsay wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, just look at how fractured the Godot community is. (it's not)

That’s because the user base isn’t big enough yet for Amazon to make a paid version. Or no one at Amazon has figured out a way to monetize a game engine yet.

If they do, look out.

Re: Defold: cross-platform game engine

#99

Post by RandallBrown »

frankvdwaal wrote: post #79
poulpy123 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You are free to distribute original or modified (derivative) versions of Defold

You just don't have to release the code if you do change it.

Although I'm unsure if selling services on your modified game engine, that you released the source of, counts as commercialization.

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