Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[rusty_shackleford]

Just spent the weekend porting my game from Godot 3.4 to the Godot 4 Beta. Everything works as intended, now is a great time to get into Godot if you can. In a few years lots of gamedev teams will be asking themselves why they're using Unity when Godot is free and is just as good.

If you're trying to learn Godot and want to refer to the documentation, keep in mind that the you want to change the 'stable' in https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/index.html url to 'latest'. Otherwise you'll get the 3.5 documentation instead of Godot 4 Beta.

godot will never catch on without a proper asset store

and I say this as a massive proponent of FOSS, asset stores are the reality of small to medium game development. Distributing the costs of assets across multiple studios makes games feasible that would otherwise not happen.

 

[Zed]

I think I prefer shop restocks to happen after certain game events. Like, "A new shipment has arrived!" after completing an act/chapter or going past a progression point. Or tie it in with events like saving a trade caravan heading into town or whatever.

 

[Tavernking]

Just spent the weekend porting my game from Godot 3.4 to the Godot 4 Beta. Everything works as intended, now is a great time to get into Godot if you can. In a few years lots of gamedev teams will be asking themselves why they're using Unity when Godot is free and is just as good.

If you're trying to learn Godot and want to refer to the documentation, keep in mind that the you want to change the 'stable' in https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/index.html url to 'latest'. Otherwise you'll get the 3.5 documentation instead of Godot 4 Beta.

godot will never catch on without a proper asset store

and I say this as a massive proponent of FOSS, asset stores are the reality of small to medium game development. Distributing the costs of assets across multiple studios makes games feasible that would otherwise not happen.

A huge appeal of Godot is the free open-sourceness and "sharing to see everyone grow" spirit among the developers. There's a lot of free stuff out there that would otherwise be paid if there was a convenient asset store to sell it on..

There is an asset library with some damn good stuff on it, and all of it is free.

Also, the second Godot developers try to enforce paid assets or licencing feee, the community would immediately take the source code and branch a version where that isn't needed. The benefits of actually having access to the source code as a developer is amazing, and not just that alone. There's been times where an issue was only resolved because I delved into Godot's source code and fixed the problem myself rather than waiting for Unity support to get on it when they obviously don't care less about a small indie dev and are too busy bending over backwards for the military. (Unity signs all kinds of deals with the US army and treat them with top priority). I am hugely in favor of Godot to an irrational degree. I hope, now that unity has to bend over for their shareholders as a publicly traded company, that they don't survive as a serious game engine past 2050 while open source engines flourish. Now give me my butthurt icons

 

[rusty_shackleford]

https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot-godot-4-0-beta-1

Physics and Navigation​

Godot 4 marks a big return of Godot's in-house 3D physics engine, Godot Physics. For years, Godot has relied on the Bullet engine to provide a solid foundation for your 3D projects. We felt, however, that a bespoke solution would give us more flexibility when implementing new features and fixing issues.

No explanation as to why bullet, existing software used by a very large number of existing games, wasn't good enough for Godot?
No considerations for the now BSD-licensed Physx? Just decided to make their own?

To breathe more life into physical bodies, the next major version of Godot also introduces a new navigation system. Previous versions of the navigation were entirely node-based, which limited their usability and performance. Thanks to work initiated by Andrea Catania and continued by smix8, Godot 4 features a server-based approach to navigation.

The new NavigationServer supports fully dynamic environments and on-the-fly navigation mesh baking. You can stream regions, which makes the system applicable to large open spaces. Physics bodies can be marked as obstacles for automatic collision avoidance, and it all works much faster than before thanks to multithreading support. Navigation links are also supported to configure jump points, teleports, etc.

No mention of using Recast & Detour, once again, libraries used by a very large number of existing games? Including Unreal Engine?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

No mention of using Recast & Detour, once again, libraries used by a very large number of existing games? Including Unreal Engine?

curious as to what thesheeep thinks about this btw

 

[thesheeep]

No explanation as to why bullet, existing software used by a very large number of existing games, wasn't good enough for Godot?
No considerations for the now BSD-licensed Physx? Just decided to make their own?

Well, they do explain it.
Bullet works for a game, but it does have limitations and quirks you need to work around.
Which is fine for a game, but for an engine, that can spell trouble. It will pose issues not only to the developers of the engine, but also everyone using that engine.

In the end, nothing will ever be better than a "bespoke" solution for any project, just like they wrote.
It's more work initially, but for a project like Godot, a well-made custom solution can't really be surpassed.
Especially for something as integral to everything as physics.

No mention of using Recast & Detour, once again, libraries used by a very large number of existing games? Including Unreal Engine?

curious as to what thesheeep thinks about this btw

Godot actually does use Recast (at least it did for 3.X, not totally sure about 4.X but I don't see why they'd change it).
Recast is only the navmesh creation and surrounding features, though.
It doesn't do any navigation.

Detour can be used for navigation, but it has many issues and lacking features. I'd know, since I made a plugin for Godot 3 using detour (not working on that anymore, but it does function well IMO).
It's definitely better than the default navigation for Godot 3.X, but it's much easier for them to add features to their own custom navigation than it would be to try and add features to Detour (which is what Unreal Engine probably does and what I would've done if I went ahead with my project).

I don't know all the details about their new navigation, though and what features exactly it provides that Detour doesn't and vice versa.
Been a bit out of the loop since I got a new job about a year ago that doesn't really leave me with time or desire to code in my free time as well.

Detour also has the problem that the main maintainer stopped working on it and now it's kinda having some issues fixed from time to time by volunteers.
But no more work is being done on it, no new features added, no rework of old code, etc.
It's not dead, but it's also nowhere near as actively developed as e.g. Godot.

 

[Bad Sector]

No explanation as to why bullet, existing software used by a very large number of existing games, wasn't good enough for Godot?
No considerations for the now BSD-licensed Physx? Just decided to make their own?

I've worked on projects using both Bullet and PhysX and they're both far from "fire and forget" with a bunch of issues on their own - for Bullet there was a programmer whose job was basically to get it working good enough and for PhysX the developer who integrated it also worked in other stuff, though still physics was a major task for them. Also IIRC PhysX was not reliable and deterministic enough for implementing gameplay around it beyond very simple stuff. As thesheeep mention this is fine for games that can work around it, but a more generic engine may want to provide something more stable.

Also FWIW a friend of mine worked on an engine with PhysX at the past and they replaced it with Bullet, though i don't know details.

TBH physics engines in games are always a matter of compromises, so chances are even Godot Physics will not be perfect - however since it'd be their own codebase they'd have more control over it and its evolution alongside the rest of the engine.

Also one thing to keep in mind is that despite the engine being used in commercial projects and having some donations towards its development, it is largely a passion project for the people working on it - so there are high chances that Godot has features only because one of its developers simply wanted to work on such a feature themselves. This is very common in FLOSS projects after all (and also common in proprietary projects too - remember how until Carmack left id Software they always implemented everything themselves instead of using middleware).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

No explanation as to why bullet, existing software used by a very large number of existing games, wasn't good enough for Godot?
No considerations for the now BSD-licensed Physx? Just decided to make their own?

I've worked on projects using both Bullet and PhysX and they're both far from "fire and forget" with a bunch of issues on their own - for Bullet there was a programmer whose job was basically to get it working good enough and for PhysX the developer who integrated it also worked in other stuff, though still physics was a major task for them. Also IIRC PhysX was not reliable and deterministic enough for implementing gameplay around it beyond very simple stuff. As thesheeep mention this is fine for games that can work around it, but a more generic engine may want to provide something more stable.

Also FWIW a friend of mine worked on an engine with PhysX at the past and they replaced it with Bullet, though i don't know details.

TBH physics engines in games are always a matter of compromises, so chances are even Godot Physics will not be perfect - however since it'd be their own codebase they'd have more control over it and its evolution alongside the rest of the engine.

Also one thing to keep in mind is that despite the engine being used in commercial projects and having some donations towards its development, it is largely a passion project for the people working on it - so there are high chances that Godot has features only because one of its developers simply wanted to work on such a feature themselves. This is very common in FLOSS projects after all (and also common in proprietary projects too - remember how until Carmack left id Software they always implemented everything themselves instead of using middleware).

All of this is overlooking that they're missing major features present in other engines while focusing on NIH issues. Compare 3D character animation tools in Unity and Unreal to Godot's ... nothing. At best you have some half-baked abandoned repos on github. Hope you're happy to recreate everything from scratch because at least you got a physics engine that will be abandoned by its original developer and eventually dumped for something maintained -- you know, the thing they did with the original godot physics engine.

This is very common in FLOSS projects after all

It's only common when it's a hobby project, which is all Godot is. It's why they focus on everything except tools that actually let game developers make games, because none of them are actually doing it professionally and there's no real leadership steering the project.
Being an open source project does not excuse this whatsoever, and I'm tired of people using it as a defense. It's like they're happy being treated as the retarded kid who managed to not shit himself at school.

Godot is the GNU Hurd of game engines. Imagine the state computing would be in right now without Linus calling retards out on retarded behavior, thank god for that autistic man.

and having some donations towards its development,

They get $16k a month in patreon alone
https://www.patreon.com/godotengine

 

[Galdred]

Just spent the weekend porting my game from Godot 3.4 to the Godot 4 Beta. Everything works as intended, now is a great time to get into Godot if you can. In a few years lots of gamedev teams will be asking themselves why they're using Unity when Godot is free and is just as good.

If you're trying to learn Godot and want to refer to the documentation, keep in mind that the you want to change the 'stable' in https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/index.html url to 'latest'. Otherwise you'll get the 3.5 documentation instead of Godot 4 Beta.

godot will never catch on without a proper asset store

and I say this as a massive proponent of FOSS, asset stores are the reality of small to medium game development. Distributing the costs of assets across multiple studios makes games feasible that would otherwise not happen.

Indeed, the asset store is one of the things I missed the most in moai.

Just spent the weekend porting my game from Godot 3.4 to the Godot 4 Beta. Everything works as intended, now is a great time to get into Godot if you can. In a few years lots of gamedev teams will be asking themselves why they're using Unity when Godot is free and is just as good.

If you're trying to learn Godot and want to refer to the documentation, keep in mind that the you want to change the 'stable' in https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/index.html url to 'latest'. Otherwise you'll get the 3.5 documentation instead of Godot 4 Beta.

godot will never catch on without a proper asset store

and I say this as a massive proponent of FOSS, asset stores are the reality of small to medium game development. Distributing the costs of assets across multiple studios makes games feasible that would otherwise not happen.

A huge appeal of Godot is the free open-sourceness and "sharing to see everyone grow" spirit among the developers. There's a lot of free stuff out there that would otherwise be paid if there was a convenient asset store to sell it on..

There is an asset library with some damn good stuff on it, and all of it is free.

Also, the second Godot developers try to enforce paid assets or licencing feee, the community would immediately take the source code and branch a version where that isn't needed. The benefits of actually having access to the source code as a developer is amazing, and not just that alone. There's been times where an issue was only resolved because I delved into Godot's source code and fixed the problem myself rather than waiting for Unity support to get on it when they obviously don't care less about a small indie dev and are too busy bending over backwards for the military. (Unity signs all kinds of deals with the US army and treat them with top priority). I am hugely in favor of Godot to an irrational degree. I hope, now that unity has to bend over for their shareholders as a publicly traded company, that they don't survive as a serious game engine past 2050 while open source engines flourish. Now give me my butthurt icons

But you could still have an asset store with an open source engine.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

The key for choosing an engine, or if you should use an engine, should align to your motivation.

If you motivation is a business goal of releasing mobile games every two months with ads monetization, then it makes a lot of sense to use an Engine like Unity.

If you are writing an old school isometric RPG as a labour of love, it makes almost no sense to use Unity. About as little as RPGMaker.
Godot, I'm sure has its own justifications but I get an awful whiff of something smelling of wild tulips, and although I can't exactly my finger on and so I will never use it.

Basically, these engines would never ever make my list because quite simply I am not in the business of producing the games these engines are targeting. I am never going to be their target customer.

However, if I was going to make a 3D game, I would use:

https://www.neoaxis.com/

EDIT* ah WTF he changed his business model recently to be pretty scammy looking. NVM. Was a good engine though.

 

[Bad Sector]

All of this is overlooking that they're missing major features present in other engines while focusing on NIH issues.

Feel free to contribute...

Being an open source project does not excuse this whatsoever, and I'm tired of people using it as a defense.

...or to request a refund.

But you are just whining for the sake of whining, i doubt you are even actually using the engine for anything.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Feel free to contribute...

why would I when I could contribute to Lumberyard(O3DE), a proven FOSS engine that was used as the basis for one of the best-selling games of 2021(and previously as CryEngine, many many titles)? The 2021 game will receive continual updates for years to come ensuring the engine will be well maintained by a financial giant.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

From the guy who made Hard West and Phantom Doctrine, now working on Homicidal Allstars:

 

[Bad Sector]

why would I when I could contribute to Lumberyard(O3DE), a proven FOSS engine that was used as the basis for one of the best-selling games of 2021(and previously as CryEngine, many many titles)? The 2021 game will receive continual updates for years to come ensuring the engine will be well maintained by a financial giant.

Then do that, it is better than complaining about something given to everyone for free with no strings attached and i'm certain said financial giant will be glad to have your unpaid work and appreciate your effort way more than a community of enthusiasts who develops their engine on their own time :-P

 

[rusty_shackleford]

why would I when I could contribute to Lumberyard(O3DE), a proven FOSS engine that was used as the basis for one of the best-selling games of 2021(and previously as CryEngine, many many titles)? The 2021 game will receive continual updates for years to come ensuring the engine will be well maintained by a financial giant.

Then do that, it is better than complaining about something given to everyone for free with no strings attached and i'm certain said financial giant will be glad to have your unpaid work and appreciate your effort way more than a community of enthusiasts who develops their engine on their own time :-P

Again, "it's open source!" is not an excuse and the point of FOSS isn't to be lesser software relegated to hobby-tier projects.

 

[Bad Sector]

Again, "it's open source!" is not an excuse

This has nothing with the post you replied to on which i didn't wrote "it's open source" nor any "excuse", these are things you came up yourself. Read what i wrote more carefully instead of writing kneejerk reaction responses.

the point of FOSS isn't to be lesser software relegated to hobby-tier projects.

There is no point for FOSS beyond licensing, the developers of each project decide what the point of their projects is, not bystanders. This, BTW, applies to both FOSS and non-FOSS projects - the main difference is that with FOSS projects if you don't like what a project is doing you have the freedom to contribute or - if the original developers do not share your goals - fork the project, if you feel up to the task.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Which of these 3D engines are the easiest to learn from the perspective of someone who doesn't know how to code in C or JavaScript (real code) but does know how to code in several game engines?

 

[Not.AI]

Godot & GDScript is very easy to learn, once you guess or write down the couple dozen special functions.

Been playing around with it lately in free time as a break from Unreal-related stuff.

4.0.2 is quite a lot better than previous versions IMO.

They also now have their own Q&A site like SE.

 

[Tavernking]

Godot, I'm sure has its own justifications but I get an awful whiff of something smelling of wild tulips, and although I can't exactly my finger on and so I will never use it.

 

[Tavernking]

Which of these 3D engines are the easiest to learn from the perspective of someone who doesn't know how to code in C or JavaScript (real code) but does know how to code in several game engines?

What languages/engines do you know?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Godot, I'm sure has its own justifications but I get an awful whiff of something smelling of wild tulips, and although I can't exactly my finger on and so I will never use it.

It's the cultists "evangelists".

He's not the first person to mention this either, go search this: godot cultists

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Godot, I'm sure has its own justifications but I get an awful whiff of something smelling of wild tulips, and although I can't exactly my finger on and so I will never use it.

It's the cultists "evangelists".

He's not the first person to mention this either, go search this: godot cultists

 

[Immortal]

why they're using Unity when Godot is free and is just as good.

My time isn't free.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Godot, I'm sure has its own justifications but I get an awful whiff of something smelling of wild tulips, and although I can't exactly my finger on and so I will never use it.

It's the cultists "evangelists".

He's not the first person to mention this either, go search this: godot cultists

I was kicked pretty swiftly from the Godot discord.

 

[Twiglard]

Why isn't anyone doing render() and update() in parallel through triple buffering? For Fallout-like games, there are very few kinds of entities (critter, floor, wall, roof, scenery, bullet, light, etc.) and isolating the parts that are needed for rendering isn't too difficult. Then it can run two threads in parallel:

update loop:
- process input
- do entities
- copy render state to shared buffer

render loop:
- get render state from shared buffer
- push triangles

Then both loops can individually take 15 ms and still push 60 Hz to the display.