
Defold: 2D Game Engine by King.com - winterismute
http://www.defold.com/
======
boondaburrah
Unfortunately it bakes in analytics that feed data back to King, not even you.
Basically they're getting you to do the dirty work of getting them more
entries in their customer tracking databases without them having to even make
another Whale Acquisition Saga.

Also you're not in control of your own source code. It's stored on King's
servers. I'm not trusting them with my shit.

~~~
alanfalcon
"Not even you"

Is contradicted by the marketing copy: "Analytics built in with zero setup
help you keep track of your game."

I'm all for exposing the true motivations at play here, but please keep things
factual.

~~~
boondaburrah
Sorry, I was going based off of what I remember from last year when I swore it
off. Hopefully they'll allow you to disable it completely, but there was no
way when I checked (again, last year).

The fact that it's even there rubs me the wrong way.

~~~
sicher
It is an analytics service that you can choose to use or not to use - it's
totally up to you. If you don't use it no data is gathered from your users.
(Currently it's off by default and you have to explicitly turn it on.)

Check out out FAQ and EULA at [http://www.defold.com](http://www.defold.com)

(I work for Defold)

~~~
a_imho
>Currently it's off by default and you have to explicitly turn it on.

As others have said, the fact that it is included is worrying and a reason I
would not even test drive, however promising it looks, sorry.

Also, opting in for analytics means implicitly opting in for marketing and
promotions per the linked site:

"marketing and promotion of our Services or related products, for example
sending communications (including by email) for these purposes on our, or a
third party's behalf. If you do not want us to use your data in this way
please let us know by contacting us at: info@defold.com; "

shady

I don't know about Defold, but I'm getting lots of emails lately that goes
like, hi customers, we changed our privacy policies and toc, make sure you
read the hundred pages the following link and notice the subtle changes in
wording without us providing a diff or breakdown. It is this easy to change
default behaviour.

~~~
sicher
That passage relates to us reaching out to you as a developer. (Your players
and their data is covered in the separate player privacy policy.) If you don't
want mails about updates etc just tell us and we'll stop sending them.

~~~
a_imho
You are right, I did not read it carefully. Looking through the player privacy
policy is still concerning though. The weasel word reasonably comes up 4
times, including:

3rd party sharing:

"We will only share your data with third parties:

with your consent (including as set out in this Player Privacy Policy);

as reasonably necessary in order to provide the Services to you;"

"as we reasonably believe is permitted by law or regulation; "

Information retaining: "We may retain information about you after you have
deleted a Game or after we have ceased providing services if retention of your
information is reasonably necessary to comply with our legal obligations, meet
regulatory requirements, resolve disputes between members, prevent fraud,
cheating or abuse, or enforce this Player Privacy Policy or any other
agreement we may have with a user. "

Point 5. looks especially bad to me: "5\. Other Information .. We may combine
information that we collect from you with information about you that we obtain
from such third parties and information derived from any other subscription,
product, or service we provide. "

I understand it is not very different from currently accepted practices in
privacy policies, and one could say it is unfair to point out just in this
case, but it does not make it any better.

Disclaimer: I don't think Defold is a bad actor, just my 2 cents when somebody
wants to do the right thing

~~~
sicher
Thanks for your comments. We're trying to gather concerns about our terms so
we can discuss them internally.

------
kartan
Disclaimer: I'm a developer at King. I work with "Fiction Factory" other of
King's internal engines.

We had some weeks ago an internal presentation by the CTO and the Defold team.
They explained their goals for doing it. The goals, as I remember them, to
give Defold for free are:

* To improve Defold. The bigger the user base the more stable, relevant and useful it will be the product.

* To show people that King is a technology company. We do cool stuff.

* To be able to hire developers that already know our tech stack.

The first point is the most important one. What have helped to grow other
engines has been a community of users that have helped to improve them in
features and stability. Some times users help open source engines like Ogre3D,
others they help paid engines like Unity3D. We think that King can offer a
win-win situation with a free (like in free beer) engine with exciting
features in exchange of a community that uses it and makes it relevant.

This ideas are in the box titled "Why are you releasing Defold free?" at the
bottom of the site. If you want to read them from an official source.

~~~
conceit
Aren't king the copy cats doing candy crush, ripping off a lone dev? _" We do
cool stuff"_, yeah, no.

~~~
diskcat
I don't think that 'lone dev' invented 'get things i a line then they explode'
game

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
No, but that lone dev 'invented' a game branded around the word 'candy' with
very similar gameplay elements, graphics, and wording. Candy crush saga is a
ripoff, and 99% of objective observers will confirm that. In king's defence,
that's perfectly legal; whether it's moral or not depends on the compass of
the beholder. CCS also appeals strongly to children and makes heavy use of
IAP; again, you can draw your own moral conclusions from that (and King are
obviously not the only company behaving that way).

~~~
kartan
> "CCS also appeals strongly to children"

This is nonsense. Nor King, nor other "big" companies do that. Look at the
numbers "[https://www.enolalabs.com/blog/archives/grossing-and-
gaming-...](https://www.enolalabs.com/blog/archives/grossing-and-gaming-a-
demographic-breakdown-of-mobile-games").

Companies also need to do games for kids like Nintendo, that does it in the
most awesome possible way. But King does not do that.

If any marketing person is reading this. Please, take a look at King
advertising, take a look at our branding and our merchandise products. King
doesn't market casual games to children nor you should you do it.

------
Doolwind
I've spent some time prototyping with Defold and found it a joy to work with.
The write once run anywhere is great but the real power comes from live
changes. You can edit code while the game is running and see live changes.
Iterations taking a few seconds (even on target platform) is a huge win for
game devs.

I'd recommend checking it out as an alternative to Unity if you are making a
2D game.

~~~
Drinkandcode
This is an ambitious statement =] But yes, the engine at the current state may
be decent for certain use cases. We're working to make it better, obviously.
Give it a try at a game jam neat you. Or at the upcoming Ludum Dare.

------
brudgers
I found the previous discussion interesting because it shows how far this
project has come over the last few years:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4791284](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4791284)

------
xedarius
Feels like King come up against a significant wall of resentment when they do
anything, perhaps some of it justified some of it not so much.

Defold seems like a nice idea. As with any games engine it's never about the
quality of the engine but the asset pipeline you put in front of it (see
Unreal engine for a grade A example of this). I didn't see much talk about the
asset pipeline, I see people from King are around, anyone care to comment?

~~~
SvenAndersson
Ooops, missed this question, sorry for the late reply. :)

The asset pipeline is not as customizable as one could wish for in it's
current form, but something that will change with the upcoming new editor. In
honesty, we haven't had a lot of requests in this regard in-house yet, but if
this is something that is highly requested by indie users we will surely look
into this.

(Hold tight, going into a bit of a tangent below.)

We put a lot of effort into performance, keeping the binaries small and having
fast development iteration.

One very nifty thing is that the build/pipeline can be run as command line
command, without even opening the editor, which enables you to setup your own
build command in Sublime Text or on a build bot for example... (I have
something like this at home where I can code in Sublime, hit Ctrl+B and it
will build with the same code as the editor and automatically launch the game,
all from inside my favorite code editor. Just imagine how sweet this will be
when the pipeline/engine is a bit more extendable. :))

Yet another cool thing of course is being able to hot reloading resources
while the game is running, also tying into the fast development iterations.

Hope this at least answers some of your questions. :)

~~~
xedarius
Yes, thank you for taking the time to reply.

------
noamsml
Where's the redirect to some app store bullshit after 5 seconds?

Never buying or using anything from those sleazeballs, and you should follow
suit.

~~~
smaili
What's with the animosity? There seems to have been a lot of effort put into
Defold, the least you could do is appreciate the fact it's been made available
free of charge and royalties.

~~~
boondaburrah
It's not free. The currency is your users' data.

Currently, your projects can only be stored on King's servers, not even
github. When you finally publish your game, it will automatically include
analytics that phone home to King, not you.

~~~
simplify
Interesting, can you provide a link to the source code that supports your
claim?

~~~
TranquilMarmot
Closest I could find to boondaburrah's claim was:
[http://www.defold.com/about-privacy/](http://www.defold.com/about-privacy/)

"We provide data collection and statistics of your players, if you want it –
In order to provide Player Analytics, we need to collect data on your Players
such as how they play Games and what device they used. If you choose not to
use Player Analytics, we won’t collect any data relating to Players (except
for errors directly related to the Defold Engine). Please see our Privacy
Policy for Players [http://www.defold.com/about-player-
privacy/](http://www.defold.com/about-player-privacy/) for more information
about what Player data we collect and what we do with it."

~~~
boondaburrah
Interesting. There wasn't any way to turn it off when I last checked, but that
was last year (during beta). Hopefully they'll allow you to get rid of it
completely, but it still feels too much like my game would be tied up with
King in some way, and I'd never want that.

~~~
sicher
Currently you have to explicitly turn analytics on, so it it opt-in.

(I work for Defold)

~~~
conceit
Doesn't mean it doesn't collect data server-side, now does it? And even if,
there's still a blatant amount of scheming involved.

~~~
sicher
No, we collect no data about your users unless you use our analytics service.
If you need analytics and does not want to use ours you can roll your own.

What kind of scheming do you believe we are up to? I'm asking because we
really want to do the right thing and be open about Defold. Maybe you have
questions we have failed to answer properly?

------
svisser
You need a Google account to use Defold?

Right off the bat things are heading in the wrong direction.

------
ebbv
Considering these guys tried to trademark the word Candy, among other
questionable actions, I don't think I'd use/trust anything they offer.

~~~
biot
Why is that questionable? They made a very popular game and, as happens with
profitable apps, a ton of developers fire up their clone factories and start
creating Candy Crash, Candy Mush, Candy Squeeze, Candy Crush HD, and any other
name they can think of in order to cause confusion in the market and cash in
on their efforts. Isn't this kind of thing exactly what trademark law was
designed to protect against? Keep in mind that to trademark something you need
to narrowly define the scope in which the trademark applies. So places selling
actual candy or those using the word candy not in a computer game would be
completely unaffected.

~~~
joosters
Are you suggesting that no other games used the word 'candy' in their title
prior to Candy Crush?

All those developers would suddenly be hit by this trademark, and would be
forced to rename their pre-existing games, unless they can afford to lose
money on some expensive lawyers.

~~~
biot
Prior use is a defense against a trademark claim. Yes, it may involve lawyers
to enforce that right, but the reality of the business world is that if you
have a name you want protected, then you register for a trademark of that name
(and if you don't get it, pick another name). Otherwise, be prepared to have
to fight for it if someone registers the name you're using after you had the
opportunity to do so but didn't.

------
nixarn
I got a couple questions for the devs behind it. We've also looked a bit to at
it, we're a cocos2d studio, but thinking of moving to cocos2dx or unity for
future projects, and ofcourse Defold is an interesting alternative as well.

My questions are

1\. Can you extend the engine with any missing features. Two example cases: If
we want to use some iOS specific feature that Defold my default doesn't
support. Or if we'd wanted to implement Spriter support (instead of Spine).

2\. Can you write your own shaders? Only thing I could find on it, is some
tinting stuff, but that's not enough.

Thanks for releasing the engine for free and keeping it 2D focused!

~~~
sicher
Here's a demo written in Defold. Lots of shaders! :)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ij7louE670](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ij7louE670)

------
garid0s
A very cool talk on the Clojure tech behind the tooling of the engine
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajX09xQ_UEg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajX09xQ_UEg)

~~~
SvenAndersson
This is the new upcoming editor, but still very interesting!

------
keypusher
Seems nice. Apparently the scripting is in Lua.

~~~
vvanders
That's pretty standard in most game engines, Lua is a nice intersection of
fast + memory efficient.

~~~
weaksauce
Also, trivially embedable into game engines and a modern(mostly well thought
out) language make it an obvious choice.

------
_jmar777
Surprised by all the vitriol in this thread. Defold looks awesome. Maybe I
just haven't tracked King closely enough in the past to have developed the
community knee jerk reaction here, but this seems like a cool move.

------
kin
Build once deploy anywhere to six different platforms sounds too good to be
true. Code existing on King servers sounds super sketchy. I do like that you
script in Lua, which is pretty standard in gaming. Still, I'm probably going
to stay away from early adopting this.

~~~
Drinkandcode
Or give it a try (hey, a free software with decent tutorials that doesn't
require install/deploy) and return with a facts-based feedback ;-)

------
aplummer
I'm really interested if anyone has advice on the best cross platform 2d
focused game engine?

~~~
Mikeb85
Godot is great. Full editor, it has it's own 2D bone animation system(!), own
scripting language (very easy to pick up - Python-esque with simple semantics
- you can program in it without really knowing it because there's not much to
know) and it deploys to pretty much every target you can think of (it's
written in C++ with very few dependencies).

------
stevebmark
The demo on the first tutorial page
([http://dashboard.defold.com/projects/16850/tutorial/0](http://dashboard.defold.com/projects/16850/tutorial/0))
is majorly broken, including styles and with dozens of console errors.
Interesting project to keep an eye on, not ready for the spotlight yet though.

~~~
SvenAndersson
I heard that there were problems with the tutorial on the dashboard, the one
on the main site should work better;

[http://www.defold.com/tutorials/getting-
started/](http://www.defold.com/tutorials/getting-started/)

------
jbverschoor
How does this compare to cocos?

~~~
Drinkandcode
We've (we=some of the Defold core team) spent a good time with a bunch of
Cocos2D core devs at GDC. Each tech has strong sides and features in
development. Currently Defold is a young free tech mostly used at King. But
this improves at a pace of a solid couple of hundreds per day.

------
Ace17
It's marketed as "free". Is it like "free beer", or "free speech"?

~~~
SolarNet
Free beer. They even try a switch-a-roo by putting a super positive spin on
"free" and then doing a "(as in free beer!)".

------
ingenieros
@SvenAndersson Are there any plans to make the GUI feel and look more native
on OS X?

~~~
SvenAndersson
We are working on a new editor, a total rebuild (dropping Eclipse), which will
also have a much better GUI/look. It will also enable extendability of the
editor and pipeline.

It will have a unified look across all platforms though, but I would believe
it's a bit more "OS X like" compared to the old Eclipse stuff.

In short, it will look a bit more modern than the current one. :)

~~~
nacs
Does this mean you'll be using QT for your cross-platform GUI?

~~~
SvenAndersson
For the new editor we are using JavaFX i believe.

------
grogenaut
wtf is with the huge terms and conditions?

