Godot 4.2
Ive tried out both Godot and Unity before and have enjoyed both. Im just wondering will I be able to do the same things in both engines? Im just worried that if im making a bigger project in godot ill get stuck with something thats super difficult to do in godot.
Caution: I am a fanboy.
For both, it is possible that you run into an issue that is very difficult and involved to solve. How responsive will Unity be with helping you if the issue is in their engine?
“I don’t want to pay Unity $500k every year so I can then pay my own staff to optimize and fix their engine,” writes Newman
It’s a bit of “pick your poison”. But I think that an open source project with this much momentum is a better option.
Also watch the very thoughtful, very informative dev blog from the “road to vostok” dev where he methodically outlines why he left Unity and why he chose Godot over other options.
He isn’t a fanboy and has a very reasonable, measured opinion.
Also check out his game and the his latest videos seeing what he has been able to get out of Godot.
Im worried that Godot could die off. I dont see many big hits in godot and when looking through mgtk game jam submissions most of them were godot. Im worried that Godot just wont be as popular as unity in the future.
What did you think about the arguments made in the YouTube video?
Why is that relevant? Game engine choice is a not a popularity contest. You look at what needs your games has, then see if the engine fits those needs.
Technically, you can do the same things with different engines. Different engines have different advantages. Even some “basic” engines can do many good works, like RPGMaker or XNA. Godot as a general-purpose engine is worth to study, although sometimes you need to do some C++ stuff.
It’s growing in popularity, in leaps and bounds. And even if the Godot Foundation should fail (and I doubt it will), because it is open source, someone else could take over.
Also, look at the success of Blender, another high-quality open-source piece of software.
The thing with Godot being open source is that you can always go in and make adjustments to it if you need to. You’d probably need some good knowledge of how it works to delve into that, but it opens the possibility for you to customize it if something doesn’t work the way you want it to.
You’re probably fine with either, though. I just love the idea of it being open source.
Welcome to game development. Here’s a universal game development truth: all game engines are ultimately terrible (including Godot and Unity.) Making a game is 50% using the engine and 50% fighting it.
Edit (for increased depth and constructivity): all game engines typically have two jobs:
Where engines differ is mainly in the selection of native SDKs etc. that they support (this largely informs the overall capabilities of the engine), and how that scaffolding is set up. The latter is where engines are typically extremely opinionated; Unity provides a scene graph with GameObjects that have MonoBehaviors, Godot has a similar scene graph composed of nodes that have no specific distinction between a “scene object” and its functionality. Other engines will have their own ideas of how you’re expected to structure your game.
So, first and foremost, the choice of engine will inform how you will build your game, and how far you can push things in terms of performance and capabilities. On paper, any type of game can be made with with any of the available engines. In practice, certain types of games will be much more difficult to make with one engine than with another.
Examples: 2D games are much easier to make with Godot than eg. Unreal, because Godot provides excellent primitives for 2D games while Unreal’s are a little meh.
At the same time, AAA 3D games will be much easier to pull off with Unreal than with Godot, simply because Unreal provides much stronger primitives for them than Godot does. Does this mean making a AAA 3D game with Godot is impossible? Probably not, but you will have a much, much harder time than with Unreal.
(Since you asked about Unity: it pretty much sits in the middle between Unreal and Godot in terms of capabilities and breadth of provided primitives; there’s a reason why it’s been the most popular indie engine.)
Personally, I believe that unless you’re a big studio with plans for a big title that has an obvious engine choice, you should stop worrying about what kind of game can be made with which engine, and instead focus on simply which of the engines clicks best with you. Unreal’s extreme graphics capabilities won’t mean much if you hate working in it.
This is very true. All engines like these try to do a bit of everything and can’t quite do what a specialized engine can do for a specific genre of game. But at least the boring part is coded for you… you just have to bang on it a few times to make it work how you want.