I've been messing around with Rust and Godot myself over the past year. I think it's a match made in heaven. Sure, there's an occasional hiccup, but nothing major. Although I'm waiting on Godot 4 before continuing my project because I could really do with the better double precision float support, and I don't mind spending time on other projects while waiting.
Godot really seems to be taking off lately. It would be very exciting to see a true open-source competitor to Unity and Unreal. Unfortunately I think it'll be held back on that front until it supports console builds, but still, it's quite an impressive endeavor considering the size of the team and the funding model.
> Unfortunately I think it'll be held back on that front until it supports console builds
I think the Godot devs have not been clear enough communicating about console support. There are export templates ready to use, up to date and fully working on different consoles. They just can't be offered as part of the open source engine due to legal reasons. That actually applies to other engines too. In the case of Unity, to build for Switch you need to download the required software from the Nintendo Developers portal and it's only accessible to you if you get approved as a developer. If Nintendo wishes to do the same with Godot they can do it know since there are no technical or legal impediments. Since Nintendo hasn't done it so far and the Godot team can't do it for legal reasons, it falls to third parties to do it.
One of those is Lone Worlf Technology LLC, owned by one of the co-founders of the engine, so it's as official as it can get. If you don't want to work with them you now have a second option that's called Pineapple Works.
It's not like you have to pay a company to port your game to switch from scratch. I think many people get that idea.
Edit: orthography
Edit2: Just to clarify even further. If you check the process to build for switch using Unreal you'll see that the process is exactly the same as with Godot, the only difference being that in the case of Unreal it's the same company providing the base engine and the switch export tools.
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/launch-your-game-on-...
> I think it'll be held back on that front until it supports console builds
It likely won't ever directly support consoles. [1]
But yes Godot is awesome and Juan is doing an extremely large public good in terms of education. I've been a gamedev for half a decade and there's still so much to learn, and godot's code base serves as an amazing resource.
NDAs and other factors prohibit a truly open source release with direct support for official console APIs. Companies like http://lonewolftechnology.com/ help developers launch on consoles.
Console development is sickening with all the NDAs and such, so it's hard to combine their dinosaur approach with normal open development model. Console makers really should switch to the new century already and drop all their NDA garbage.
Open source and consoles won't mix unless they remove the licensing (they won't). Which is why the Unreal model keeps platforms modular and has a bot to sync code back to GH.
The reality of open source in games is we need more engine sponsors from the studios running those engines in order to keep development alive.
Console driven development should also come from the studios, and they should partner with GoDot to enable packs/modules/tools.
Blender successfully navigated this with the open movies project. The game engines need a similar model.
It's not just console support, 3d on Godot is bad compare to other engines. I mean it's really not on part for serious games. It's far far behind Unity and Unreal.
It's been really enjoyable to read these progress reports. Juan is a great programmer and I admire his dedication and ability to consistently put out high-quality features and drive the project despite being the only developer working full-time on it for many years now. He really knows his stuff.
I haven't had time for it lately, but I used to participate in the Godot Wild Jam. It's a great way to connect with other Godot users and test out these new engine features. I highly recommend it for any new Godot users: https://godotwildjam.com/
I have started by following "Discovering Godot"[1] video course on Udemy, I still think this is the best place to start.
After that I have watched "Top-down Tank Battle"[2], and I highly recommend it, absolutely brilliant series of tutorials(all of the tutorials on this channel are great). Really helped me to understand all the concepts much better.
For intermediate/advanced tutorials, watch GDQuest. They have a youtube channel[3] and excellent video courses[4]. They are planning to release courses on procedural generation and multiplayer too, I'm really looking forward to watching those.
Finally, a shameless plug - I'm making some tutorials on Godot(alongside with some general Digital Art and Houdini videos). I'm still just getting started, but people seem to like them. The most popular one I've made so far is "Creating Platformer Character Movement in Godot - Wall Jumping/Sliding, Double Jumping, Dashing"[5].
One important thing I had to do to learn Godot. I started with the tutorials, but I had to re-create one of their demo games from scratch before it really clicked.
Now I'm very fluent in it, and it's been a JOY. I've been building a game in it for the last month or so and progress so far is very satisfying.
there's quite a few tutorials on youtube. i just picked up godot and i'm following one by angega studios. it's really well made, albeit a bit outdated now, but the impact of that is minimal. http://kidscancode.org/blog/ seems to be a good resource as well.
In addition to what the others have said, come join us on the discord! People are frequently in voice calls and live streams, there are dedicated channels for various issues with quick response times, and many of the authors of the resources mentioned here are present there as well.
Light maps are when you use any lighting algorithm to generate a pre-rendered texture of all the lights and shadows in a scene. The result is a big packed texture and an extra set of texture coords on all the scene geometry that says which bit of the texture corresponds to what. You can use any lighting algorithm to generate the map, but presumably something that's too slow to use in real time, and that's in some way better than your real time shader.
Light maps only work on non-moving lights and non-moving objects, but they're usually combined with light probes, which are samples of what the shadows would be like in a given chunk of empty space if an object were there. Moving objects can shadow themselves using these.
Light maps can be combined with other lighting/shadow algorithms. For example you might leave out the direct lighting from the most important lights in your scene, and use shadow maps for those instead, so dynamic objects can cast shadows.
Note if the post author is here, there is a typo in the sentence "In Godot, different scenes can have their own ligthmaps and you can mix and match them however you like."
If I had to guess, which I do, I'd say it's probably a voxel size constraint. As long as one voxel is bigger than a perceivable pixel, all you can really do is interpolate the GI values within the voxel grid. That's is why lights moving smoothly and linearly will look slightly "choppy". It's probably less obvious in most real-world applications.
Again, just a wild guess based on watching that clip, I'm open to corrections!
I suspect the global illumination is running at a lower refresh rate than the rest of the scene for performance. I've seen other Godot demos that don't have this jerkiness.
I ended up doing a web search.
Found this comment.
“””
Godot's editor is built with Godot's own Control nodes which you can use for your games. In short, there's no external toolkit, Godot's editor is a Godot game.
“””
And from looking at a tutorial it appears to be a retained mode UI.
I believe real-time raytracing will change everything once cheap hardware can do it. It may take a while to get it on mobile, but for PC and consoles, I'm not sure all AAA in 10 years will have old fashioned light maps.
Depends on what you mean with 'lightmap' - if you mean the classic Quake 2-style slapping of colored textures on top of diffuse textures, sure, probably that wont be much of a sight in 10 years. However even nowadays (or years ago, really) most lightmaps contained more than that (e.g. at minimum you'd need directional information) and i doubt raytracing will get rid of the idea of precalculating lighting information per surface, especially as raytracing hardware becomes more programmable.
I bought a new system with RTX 2070 Super and couldn't get any demos with raytracing to work acceptably in either Unreal or unity... The frame rates on super simple levels were maybe 10fps at best...
I was a little dismayed. It seems like AAA games are also not making a huge amount of use of it either. Despite the RTX name I don't know if it's really ready for prime time, at all.
[+] [-] gridspy|5 years ago|reply
Here is my tutorial on using Godot and Rust together - https://medium.com/@recallsingularity/gorgeous-godot-games-i...
Also, I'm making a space factory game. Sporadic updates so far but here is the most recent
https://medium.com/@recallsingularity/space-factory-building...
There is a Discord mentioned in there if you run into any issues with your godot-rust dev, we've got a very active development community there.
Godot also supports GDScript, C#, Python, C++ and more.
[+] [-] ShinTakuya|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] billfruit|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _bxg1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noidexe|5 years ago|reply
I think the Godot devs have not been clear enough communicating about console support. There are export templates ready to use, up to date and fully working on different consoles. They just can't be offered as part of the open source engine due to legal reasons. That actually applies to other engines too. In the case of Unity, to build for Switch you need to download the required software from the Nintendo Developers portal and it's only accessible to you if you get approved as a developer. If Nintendo wishes to do the same with Godot they can do it know since there are no technical or legal impediments. Since Nintendo hasn't done it so far and the Godot team can't do it for legal reasons, it falls to third parties to do it. One of those is Lone Worlf Technology LLC, owned by one of the co-founders of the engine, so it's as official as it can get. If you don't want to work with them you now have a second option that's called Pineapple Works.
It's not like you have to pay a company to port your game to switch from scratch. I think many people get that idea.
Edit: orthography
Edit2: Just to clarify even further. If you check the process to build for switch using Unreal you'll see that the process is exactly the same as with Godot, the only difference being that in the case of Unreal it's the same company providing the base engine and the switch export tools. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/launch-your-game-on-...
[+] [-] nightowl_games|5 years ago|reply
It likely won't ever directly support consoles. [1]
But yes Godot is awesome and Juan is doing an extremely large public good in terms of education. I've been a gamedev for half a decade and there's still so much to learn, and godot's code base serves as an amazing resource.
EDIT: link
(1): https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/co...
[+] [-] TAForObvReasons|5 years ago|reply
On the unofficial side, https://github.com/Stary2001/godot is a godot port that runs on the standard nintendo switch homebrew stack
[+] [-] shmerl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vkaku|5 years ago|reply
The reality of open source in games is we need more engine sponsors from the studios running those engines in order to keep development alive.
Console driven development should also come from the studios, and they should partner with GoDot to enable packs/modules/tools.
Blender successfully navigated this with the open movies project. The game engines need a similar model.
[+] [-] Thaxll|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hanoz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cycloptic|5 years ago|reply
I haven't had time for it lately, but I used to participate in the Godot Wild Jam. It's a great way to connect with other Godot users and test out these new engine features. I highly recommend it for any new Godot users: https://godotwildjam.com/
[+] [-] MarcellusDrum|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] borellvi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayalez|5 years ago|reply
After that I have watched "Top-down Tank Battle"[2], and I highly recommend it, absolutely brilliant series of tutorials(all of the tutorials on this channel are great). Really helped me to understand all the concepts much better.
For intermediate/advanced tutorials, watch GDQuest. They have a youtube channel[3] and excellent video courses[4]. They are planning to release courses on procedural generation and multiplayer too, I'm really looking forward to watching those.
Finally, a shameless plug - I'm making some tutorials on Godot(alongside with some general Digital Art and Houdini videos). I'm still just getting started, but people seem to like them. The most popular one I've made so far is "Creating Platformer Character Movement in Godot - Wall Jumping/Sliding, Double Jumping, Dashing"[5].
[1] https://www.udemy.com/course/godot/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsk-HSGFjnaFC8kEv6MaL...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxboW7x0jZqFdvMdCFKTMsQ
[4] https://gdquest.mavenseed.com/p/home
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8pC8n4s-_I
[+] [-] worble|5 years ago|reply
I'm also a fan of HeartBeast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrHQNOyU1q6BFEfkNq2CYMA
[+] [-] nightowl_games|5 years ago|reply
Then you'll have a great basis to start soaking in GDQuest's youtube channel. GDQuest on youtube is THE place to go to for Godot video tutorials. [2]
(1): https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/getting_started/step_... (2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc13Z2gboEk
[+] [-] bkanber|5 years ago|reply
Now I'm very fluent in it, and it's been a JOY. I've been building a game in it for the last month or so and progress so far is very satisfying.
[+] [-] rmvt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Malp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaysea|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtolmar|5 years ago|reply
Light maps only work on non-moving lights and non-moving objects, but they're usually combined with light probes, which are samples of what the shadows would be like in a given chunk of empty space if an object were there. Moving objects can shadow themselves using these.
Light maps can be combined with other lighting/shadow algorithms. For example you might leave out the direct lighting from the most important lights in your scene, and use shadow maps for those instead, so dynamic objects can cast shadows.
[+] [-] TaylorAlexander|5 years ago|reply
Note if the post author is here, there is a typo in the sentence "In Godot, different scenes can have their own ligthmaps and you can mix and match them however you like."
[+] [-] shafyy|5 years ago|reply
I'm not affiliated with Godot, just love using it :-)
[+] [-] noir-york|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokoon|5 years ago|reply
I think it's exactly why I don't like godot for the same reason I dislike unity, unreal, etc: they're frameworks.
[+] [-] joejoint|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PunksATawnyFill|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jnnnik|5 years ago|reply
Again, just a wild guess based on watching that clip, I'm open to corrections!
[+] [-] Miraste|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbritton|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbritton|5 years ago|reply
And from looking at a tutorial it appears to be a retained mode UI.
[+] [-] pojntfx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qubex|5 years ago|reply
(runs and hides)
[+] [-] speedgoose|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badsectoracula|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfkebwjsbx|5 years ago|reply
Considering they don't have enough manpower to compete with UE/Unity in raster, would it make sense going for full raytracing now?
That way, when next-next-gen hardware arrives in 2-3 years, they could be on the forefront of editors specialized in fully raytraced games.
[+] [-] nightowl_games|5 years ago|reply
I dont know how this makes sense.
Considering they have less manpower, they should make a more cutting edge renderer on unproven, unstable tech?
Full ray tracing is not going be any where near ubiquitous in 2-3 years, mark my words.
[+] [-] etaioinshrdlu|5 years ago|reply
I was a little dismayed. It seems like AAA games are also not making a huge amount of use of it either. Despite the RTX name I don't know if it's really ready for prime time, at all.