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[Dacvak]

With Unity shitting the bed on all fronts, a lot of smaller devs are looking for alternative game engines, specifically with overlapping features of Unity. Currently, there are two major paths to travel down, those being Unreal Engine and Godot.

While UE5 has a vast, insanely powerful, and versatile functionality set with some of the most forward-thinking tech available in the industry, there are still a few issues for newer and indie devs. The first being that it’s SO robust and complex that it can absolutely be overwhelming even for seasoned devs. The second is that, being owned by a mega corp like Epic, there’s no guarantee that they won’t ever pull similar Unity policy nonsense in the future.

On the flip side of things, Godot is completely open source, lightweight, and very easy to learn. That comes at the cost of polish, cutting-edge functionality, and some versatility, though. But, from what I can tell, a lot of indie devs are already flocking to Godot, warts and all.

Being an open source engine, it sort of reminds me of the earlier days of Blender, and how janky it once was. Now it’s an industry standard.

So, what does DevGAF think of Godot? Does anyone here have any significant experience?

 

[Topher]

G Godot25 is ok.

 

[Dacvak]

G Godot25 is ok.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

I'll be doing some stuff in unreal soon, but I'm def gonna take a look at Godot as well down the line, it looks interesting.

 

[Holammer]

Interesting thought, if more developers adopt Godot and contribute code & tools to the project it could very well become the next Blender.
Here are two excellent games using the engine.



Just got HoT myself, because everyone and their dog recommends it AND it's a Godot title. It's a perfect mix of Diablo and Vampire Survivors. Art even looks like it was rendered in early versions of 3D Studio.

 

[ReBurn]

After playing a couple of indies built with Godot I am impressed with what people have been able to do with it. The Unity stuff had me wondering.

 

[64bitmodels]

I like Godot because it's so simple to just get working. There's no launchers or installation. You download the EXE and then you have a working game engine. Why can't others be like that?

 

[RoboFu]

It's alright but its not port friendly and there is no official way to export to the consoles. You have to go through 3rd parties.
the NODE aspect can be weird as well.

But if all you want to do is make a PC game. you could do worse.

 

[Sephimoth]

I do plan to check it out sometime, but I've just got comfy with Unity- annoying how that worked out.

 

[64bitmodels]

On the flip side of things, Godot is completely open source, lightweight, and very easy to learn. That comes at the cost of polish, cutting-edge functionality, and some versatility, though. But, from what I can tell, a lot of indie devs are already flocking to Godot, warts and all.

That's cuz Godot is 9 years old. Unity is 9 years older than it, and Unreal has been around since the 90s.

It's a (relatively) new project and as the years go by and demand for it increases, the engine will improve to get on the level of (or even surpass) Unity. Being open source means literally anyone can contribute and improve it, so I can imagine it'll improve quite quickly.

 

[midnightAI]

I'll just stick with Unity, best solution for my game and their new financial model shouldnt affect me too much if at all.

 

[EviLore]

Godot is cool.

Generally speaking, though, free open source tools rarely replace commercial ones. If Unity is replaced it'll be by another commercial product with the resources to build out features competitively.

 

[ShadowLag]

I started getting into Godot semi-seriously a few months ago, before all this Unity junk started happening. My goal was to make the same game I had already made in Unity, from scratch, in Godot - to see how comparable they are.

Godot is better than Unity in practically every single way that matters to me. No installation, everything you actually need is built-in and yet there's zero bloat, there's no "choose your graphics pipeline addon" - it's all one core system; graphics are more than good enough for indie purposes in both 2D and 3D, GDScript is so much better than C# for writing game code that it feels like cheating, and more.

The only downsides currently would be the occasional re-occurrence of bugs that've already been fixed (due to the open source nature of things), and at times it can be a little wonky with your GPU drivers. I'd like them to improve the audio engine too, but that's just me being picky with a half-finished game.

Good riddance to Unity IMHO, they lost their way a long time ago (the user posts on their own forums are evidence of that).

TLDR; Godot is not missing anything from Unity that I personally need, it's all there, and it's easier and faster.

 

[rofif]

 

[64bitmodels]

Godot is cool.

Generally speaking, though, free open source tools rarely replace commercial ones. If Unity is replaced it'll be by another commercial product with the resources to build out features competitively.

I think there's an opportunity, here. This isn't an AA/AAA dev problem: they have the resources to keep using Unreal without hassle. These are indie devs we're talking here, & after an event like this, they're more likely to think twice about proprietary engines.

Not to mention how much "decentralization" and "open source" as terms have blown up in the tech space: advertising your engine like that is sure to get attention

 

[Dacvak]

I think there's an opportunity, here. This isn't an AA/AAA dev problem: they have the resources to keep using Unreal without hassle. These are indie devs we're talking here, & after an event like this, they're more likely to think twice about proprietary engines.

Not to mention how much "decentralization" and "open source" as terms have blown up in the tech space: advertising your engine like that is sure to get attention

I keep drawing parallels to Blender. It was a long, long road, but it’s now reasonably competent, even for most commercial use. That space is a little different than IDEs, but I think it’s wild how popular and useful it’d become.

Of course, then there’s something like GIMP, which has existed for 400 years and is still ass. So…

 

[The Cockatrice]

At least future boomer shooters from New Blood will stop using Unity, maybe. Obviously already in development games are prolly not going to drop it, but I think anyone starting a project now wont risk it. Will they use godot? Who knows, it's been increasing in popularity and its far better than most assume it is

 

[MAtgS]

He's got good taste in coffee.

 

[NanaMiku]

 

[DemonGamerTTT]

Long Live open source. I really really really hope Godot gain more market share with this.

 

[RoboFu]

Well another thing is people are waiting for Godot to go 4.0 in LTS.
Right now it’s 3.0 and it’s old OpenGL only. 4.0 is using Vulkan but it doesnt yet have all the features of 3.0. But supposedly soon.

 

[64bitmodels]

I keep drawing parallels to Blender. It was a long, long road, but it’s now reasonably competent, even for most commercial use.

I was thinking of Blender myself. While it won't overtake 3DS Max in the corporate space, basically everywhere else everyone uses it because it just works, and it's really powerful when you put in the effort.

There's also Krita & Notepad++ which is decently popular and used, and is also open source.

 

[64bitmodels]

At least future boomer shooters from New Blood will stop using Unity, maybe. Obviously already in development games are prolly not going to drop it, but I think anyone starting a project now wont risk it. Will they use godot? Who knows, it's been increasing in popularity and its far better than most assume it is

That video looks insane. Most indies don't need more than that level of 3D capability. And it's only gonna improve with time.

 

[Holammer]

Re-logic, the creators of Terraria are not fans of Unity's latest shenanigans and decided to sponsor Godot and FNA with 100k each and 1k dollar every month moving forward.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

Worth a read

Godot: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Impressions after one week in the engine

web.archive.org

 

[Deerock71]

The One True Godot.

 

[Spukc]

why are all these nerds talking about an engine?

only gadot engine that counts