
Godot game engine reaches 2.0 - nunodonato
http://www.godotengine.org/article/godot-engine-reaches-2-0-stable
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zubspace
Godot is awesome. It's a great alternative to Unity. It has a friendly
community (IRC). The all-in-one editor is nice. The scripting language is easy
to get into and if you need to, you can extend the engine and scripting
language with C++. And the export to windows, linux, mac, ios, android and web
works actually quite well.

What's really nice is the notion of scenes which I prefer to the way scenes
are handled in Unity. Scenes in Godot are are simply node-trees which you can
instantiate in existing scenes. For example you create a character in a single
scene which you instantiate in a level scene. I always had the impression that
this favored encapsulation compared to highly interdependent components in
unity.

What brought me back to unity was 3D, scripting and debugging. 3D in Godot
feels limited. Shader graphs are not really usable, yet. It's a lot simpler to
create something nice in Unity with the standard shader and some assets. And
well, the debugger, it's simply not comparable to Visual Studio. Variables are
sometimes not inspectable. I missed refactoring alot. And sometimes you need
to dig very deep to understand how stuff works because many things are not yet
documented.

All-in-all, I love Godot. It's a nice cross-platform development environment.
I simply hope that I can come back later when all rough edges are gone.

~~~
EwanG
My problem with it (and many of the other alternatives) is not having an
associated Asset Store. Not that I have an overarching need to buy stuff, but
because there is a curated place where I can find a model or prop I need that
will (almost always) import properly and work and scale the way I expect. Yes,
you can scour the internet for "free" 3d stuff, but as often as not it's worth
what you paid for it, and unless you're running the program it was created in
you will spend more than a little time getting it to behave.

My .02 worth as a casual indie developer.

~~~
Hrundi
Looks like it is going to happen next.

From the post:

> Godot community keeps growing and users keep producing more assets, scripts,
> modules, etc. we are in need of an unified platform for sharing them. As
> such, we will be working towards having an asset sharing platform (website +
> REST API + Godot integration) for 2.1. The built-in platform will be free
> (it will be integrated with GitHub), but we will make sure that the REST API
> is well defined so anyone can make a commercial asset sharing platform and
> integrate it with Godot.

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Cyph0n
One thing I don't get with game engines: why do they feel the need to make a
X-like scripting language, where X=Python in this case, and X=JavaScript in
Unity's case?

Why do they make people re-learn the specifics and slight differences of a
language that has been around for more than a decade? On top of this, they are
making their engines more difficult to maintain: bug fixes, new features,
deprecation and backwards compat., keeping docs up to date, writing tutorials
for the language, etc. etc.

I just don't see why these engines want to re-invent the wheel, even though
what they end up with is simply a slightly modified wheel. /endrant

The engine looks cool however, and the fact that it's FOSS makes it a better
option for budding game devs. I might give a go when I decide to make a simple
game.

~~~
oolongCat
This should answer your question,
[http://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/reference/gdscript.htm...](http://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/reference/gdscript.html?highlight=gdscript)

As for my personal experience with GDScript, I used to experiment with Godot a
while back, and honestly I never felt like GDScript was some sort of hindrance
never felt it was in the way. It was really, really easy to pick up if you
know another programming language already.

~~~
hrnnnnnn
Totally agree. I made the same small game in Unity and Godot about a year ago
to compare them. Learning and using Godot script was no big deal.

The main difference was that I could use VS for Unity and it had a vim plugin,
but if I wanted to edit text in-editor I was stuck with Godot's own one.

~~~
adolson
Why didn't you just set the external editor options in Godot and use whatever
editor you wanted?

~~~
hrnnnnnn
It was a while ago, so I can't remember exactly. It was either that the option
didn't exist at that point, or the pain of using the built-in editor was
offset by something else, like the ability to debug or syntax highlighting or
autocompletion.

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chris_wot
So we are no longer waiting for Godot. Don't you think this puts them in a bit
of an existential crisis?

~~~
GoodOldNe
Came in wanting to make this joke, was surprised when I didn't see it already
in top comments. Good for you, sir.

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laumars
The features page looks well presented but has anyone actually used Godot?
What are their experiences with it compared to writing your own games from
scratch?

~~~
PostOnce
"From scratch" isn't the right metric, you'd compare it to unity or unreal.
The key difference is this is actually open source so you have 100% control
over your own distribution and licensing.

I haven't looked at it in 6mo but back then on the 1.x branch there were many,
many thoroughly polished example games ranging from 2D (platform / isometric /
tile) to 3D (third person, others i forget).

Normally you get 1 incomplete mechanic as an example, not an actually playable
"game" with more polish than most app store stuff.

I was pleasantly surprised with these polished examples, but at that time the
docs were not that thorough (cursory look tells me they've improved), but the
examples pretty much made up for it. Almost any game you'd want to make you
could start with their example and build out.

I'm excited it's growing. I'll probably play with it for 7DRL.org in a couple
weeks.

~~~
kriro
I don't see the sample games listed on their site but found some googling. I'd
be very interested in a good sample point&click adventure game especially for
a FLOSS-engine. Creating one has always been in my "neat project" pile but I
suck too much at drawing to motivate myself. Last time I tried (with no
engine, just pygame) I got stuck figuring out a good way to do
paths/movement/blocking areas and it sort of fizzled :D

~~~
PostOnce
Yeah like I said the docs could be improved, the website could be improved
(although I checked yesterday and the whole site is new).

The examples are in godot/examples or something after you extract it I think.

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justincc
Anybody know if Godot has a business model behind it or is it co-ordinated
purely by volunteers? Perhaps it's enough that improving the game engine via
open source could help Okam Studio produce games more quickly?

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some_guy1234
Atomic Game Engine is also pretty sweet. I actually like it a bit more.

[http://atomicgameengine.com/](http://atomicgameengine.com/)

~~~
bobwaycott
Kind of a bummer that it cannot build for Linux.

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irremediable
I really need to get around to trying Godot. I've had it installed since 1.0,
but I've been too busy/lazy to try any (amateur!) gamedev lately.

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revanx_
As someone who just wants to try it out, really wish the site had https and
hashes with the supplied binaries.

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Mithaldu
Some meta discussion: "xyz reaches/releases version number 234234.324234" is
entirely meaningless and the best way to ensure that nobody will care about
your release announcement. Your project may internally have a very well
defined and entirely logical policy as to how exactly to change version
numbers based on internal project changes, but from the outside this is 100%
untrustable and invisible, meaning your 2.0 release could mean anything from
"we rewrote the entire thing" or "a set amount of time went by" (see
Firefox/Perl/probably others).

If you actually care at all about your release announcement being read,
include in the title line the actual benefit the new version provides to
people.

~~~
chris_wot
I have to disagree. Announcing a major new release by version number is enough
to be most people to click on the link.

Now a lack of release notes and a major features/what's new document - that's
a release promotion fail.

