Ask HN: Why not use Godot for cross platform apps. Proof of concept in comments - Shared404
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cercatrova
There is no reason, really. People just don't think about using game engines
to write applications. This is part of why Flutter instead turned this around,
making apps act more like they're in a game engine, with the Skia renderer.
Cross platform in this case is just using the renderer for each platform and
it works super well. If you like Godot, therefore, you should definitely check
out Flutter as it's custom built for writing apps.

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Shared404
It seems like Godot provides many of the advantages of Electron with few of
the downsides. Why is it or similar tools not used more often?

POC is here: [https://git.sr.ht/~evan-
hoose/BadTextEditor](https://git.sr.ht/~evan-hoose/BadTextEditor)

~~~
gunibert
The problem in a framework like GoDot is, that it is meant for Games. A game
renders screens in 30/60 fps. A Desktop application like a Gtk application
does exactly nothing if you dont interact with the application. If you click a
button only the button gets re-rendered. This is more efficient then using
something like a game engine which has no concept about damaged regions and so
on.

Also, people like to have something like "native" look and feel. This would be
possible with Java-SWT as it abstracts away the toolkit. This is possible but
in the case of SWT it is just broken (think about margins, text, scroll
behaviour).

The other option is to use electron as it is just plain simple, works even in
the web (you can basically make a webapp and repackage that as an electron
app)

Or you package a toolkit with your application and avoid native libraries.
This happens in the world of Qt for example. Gtk is cross-platform too but not
statically linkable.

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Shared404
> A game renders screens in 30/60 fps.

This is an extremely good reason, thank you for pointing that out.

> People like to have something like "native" look and feel.

While this is true, I mostly disregarded it because most cross platform
frameworks I know of have the non-native look and feel. The only two that I
know of that do have it are wxWidgets and now Java-SWT.

> The other option is to use electron as it is just plain simple, works even
> in the web

I thought Godot was fairly simple as well, and it has the ability to compile
to web assembly.

> Or you package a toolkit with your application and avoid native libraries.
> This happens in the world of Qt for example. Gtk is cross-platform too but
> not statically linkable.

Before reading your comment I thought that this, Electron, and something like
Godot were the only options. I believed that Godot was a nice middle ground
between the simplicity of Electron and performance of QT/GTK.

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cellularmitosis
Any chance you can take some screenshots or a short video? I'd be curious to
see it but don't want to install anything.

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Shared404
Sure thing, give me a couple minutes.

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Shared404
Also, the git repo includes binaries for Linux, Windows, and Mac.

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cellularmitosis
Very interested in your project, but running binaries from strangers is never
a good idea :)

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Shared404
True. I actually just finished adding the video to the git repo.

I don't have/don't plan on getting a youtube channel, and I haven't bought a
domain yet, so this will have to do for now.

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msie
I had the same idea too. It's sorta like Visual Basic in feel.

~~~
Shared404
I haven't used Visual Basic before, so I can't comment on that.

But it was definitely basic enough I could (re)teach it to myself, and then
get a POC out in threeish afternoons.

