Two years after the Unity controversy, how are things going with Godot?
Two years after the Unity controversy, how are things going with Godot?
www.gamesindustry.biz
Two years after the Unity controversy, how are things going with Godot?
43 comments
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Anecdotal but I've switch from Unity to Godot and am quite happy with it. The main things I was originally worried about (performance and feature support) haven't shown up in any of my games (although I will caveat I make games for fun now, whereas I used to make them for profit).
Similarly, the Google Trends for Godot has been steadily increasing year over year, and decreasing for Unity. I much prefer to be in a rising tide ecosystem, rather than a falling one.
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Nice to see Godot is still going strong.
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godoting strong
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Godot is the goat!
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still waiting for the bastard
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I switched over about a year ago. I've made far more progress with godot than I ever have with unity. It's a solid tool, and I have very few complaints.
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I'd say well - they just released a collaboration with Blender Studio: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-showcase-dogwalk/
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"The Roottrees are dead" was a very pleasant surprise as a game made with Godot.
Do you know any other heavy hitter made with this engine that's not the usual suspects (e.g. Cassette Beasts)?
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the one I will make in 2–54 years' time
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2–54 years’ time
lol, the truth!
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One day...
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Road to Vostok looks absolutely insane and it’s being made in Godot. I’ve played demos of it a bit and it definitely still is in development but there’s serious potential in my opinion
It performs insanely well, too
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I don't know about heavy hitters, but I just noticed a couple days ago that someone has been regularly posting on !godot@programming.dev the links to the weekly videos that StayAtHomeDev posts highlighting 5 new Godot games at a time. Here's the YouTube channel if you want to go directly to the source: https://www.youtube.com/@stayathomedev
Some of the games look great.
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I believe Slay the Spire 2 is being made with Godot.
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You're correct! One of the devs wrote an article about why they made the change.
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Godot fucking rocks. Brand new to designing, a few tutorials in and it feels accessible and easy to understand.
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Nice read. Thanks for the share
43 comments
This seems like a silly take, especially with all the lighting upgrades shipped in Godot 4. The tools are there, users just need to configure an environment node to suite the needs. I'd even argue Godot's SDGFI is more robust than Unity's Enlighten GI at this point.
While yeah unreal defaults are better for realistic light out of the box, ultimately if someone is making a AAA game they are getting "into the weeds" regardless of engine. I seriously doubt a AAA studio is going to ship a game with the default unreal lighting.
"Easy Presets" are a huge draw for users.
I've seen (non gaming) frameworks live or die by how well they work turnkey, out of the box with zero config edits other than the absolute bare minimum to function. Even if configuration literally takes like half an hour or something and the framework has huge performance gains over another, that first impression is a massive turn off to many.
It's... not that people are lazy, but they're human. Attention is finite. If realistic lighting isn't good in Godot by default, then it needs a big red intro button that says "Click here for realistic lighting!"
You are very much correct, and don't worry about the other comment. You see that elitist take scarily often in some of these communities. I saw one person try to argue that programs should be intentionally made less user friendly, to force people to become better at computers.
They literally don't understand how most people think and only see things from their own tech perspective.
I believe the argument is that not every case needs or desires high fidelity realistic lighting. It is similar effort to take a godot game into a stylized, curated lighting direction, or take to a realistic direction. The trade off to Unreal's approach is significantly more effort to "undo" the realistic lighting and then implement the stylized vision, if that's what the game calls for.
But I do agree, there is value in defaults and it'd be nice to have a "make shit pretty" button that drops in preconfigured hyper real excellence.
Remember, they built Cassette Beasts in Godot. If anyone has a view on how to make a solid game in Godot, it's them. Trying to push them to sell an engine they know better than either of us is weird. They walked the walk.
Aims to provide realistic lighting and everything
Named "Unreal"
Sensible defaults / presets are extremely important
You learn much better by fiddling with a single part of the engine while the others "just work" than by having to learn a little bit of everything before you can begin making a game.
It's much better to implement the core mechanics, the levels etc... And only change the lighting, the physics, etc... when really needed
Hard to say for sure when there aren't any AAA games on godot to compare and gather testimonials for. Whereas we know potential GOTY expedition 33 used UE5 and praised it interviews https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/developer-interviews/inside-the-development-journey-of-clair-obscur-expedition-33 granted they're more AA, but they have a suite of tools to allow developers at all sizes to benefit and with source available they can still make whatever modifications they want.
Probably not, but you're underestimating the value of presets and standards, I think. It's less about shipping Unreal defaults and probably more about working with a bunch of outsourcing studios or even buying assets from a storefront with some confidence that everything is going to work.
I don't think it's as much a AAA problem, where people will have dedicated engine teams, systems engineers and a whole team managing outsourcing and more about smaller AA and indies where people are wearing multiple hats and less willing to deal with anything they don't have to. AAA will use Unreal for other reasons.
Ultimately it's the old open source chestnut of someone going "who cares if the UX isn't as good, it does everything you need it to do with a bit of effort" and proceeding to win that argument into everybody still using the proprietary alternative.
FWIW, Unity struggled a lot to shed the "multiplatform indie engine for phones" stuff and it took a hell of a bunch of active proselytism to start presenting themselves as competitive for other types of things before they decided to poop all over that effort. There's no reason it'd be any easier for Godot.
Truly silly, you just have to do, what he said you need to do. Why didn't he think of that?
I'm following what you're getting at, it just feels the dev quoted makes "fiddling around" sound like an undertaking - users need to build custom lighting or change the engine in some way to get similar results. The real extent of fiddling in this case is dropping a node into a scene and making a few pointed selections.
Users preform this action a lot in godot. Everything rendered starts as a node, dropped into a scene, and making selections. Making a game would be "fiddling around" under this same context.
Ugh, I hate reading endorsements for Unreal Engine. I wish that engine would be abandoned.
A ton of their tech has been an important reference for other engines. I don’t think there’s any reason to hate UE if it’s basically pioneering different techniques for everyone else to copy.