Mystify0771Godot Engine hits over 50K euros per month in funding
Ohathats impressive
All hail FOSS and Godot.
kryllicAwesome! Hope they’ll be able to work on the backlog of promised features more instead of kicking them down the road to the next version.
It should help since they’ll be able to hire more people to work on the project. Something badly needed dwith Godot is a proper testing workflow. They currently rely on the community to report bugs, and that’s just not an efficient workforce. Also doesn’t cover all the possible edge cases.
Playing devil’s advocate, I’d argue the in the wild community testing is more likely to uncover an edge case that the formal testing didn’t envisage…? 🤷🏻♂️
I think we need both. You can never have too much test coverage.
I’m with you on that. I feel like open source is the best possible way to security audit and test issues. As any issue will be out there to see, most proprietary code ends ups being years of duct tape which wouldn’t fly if a large community of different backgrounds took a look at the code
To be fair, every single project regardless of proprietary or open source has a backlog like that. It’s just that open source projects show the backlog and don’t have marketing people telling what is and is not in the backlog.
kingthrillgoreAll software development has issues that are simply left unfixed. Some bugs are hard to fix, and don’t really matter in the long run.
Example: they don’t even bother with memory management on cruise missiles, since eventually its gonna reach its target…
I think the priorities for Godot with the new funding should be:
- Improving Composition performance
- Working to reduce overhead on GDScript to further improve 3D performance
- Enhancements to tooling for content generation
- Documentation and Tutorials
No love for Stride?
What’s stride?
Glad you asked. It’s another open source 3D game engine that may feel a bit more familiar to those who are used to Unity. This is their website.
I’m still just starting to learn it myself, and it can really use some more features, but I think it’s pretty cool. I like the UI more than Godot’s, and I like working in C#.
grayhazeYou can work in C# with Godot too.
You can, but I think I read somewhere that it works better with GDScript.
It depends on what you mean by better. GDScript is better integrated into the IDE, with C# really requiring that you use an external code editor currently, but both languages have very similar capabilities.
I found the thing I read earlier: …bearblog.dev/unity-to-godot-what-to-expect/
It doesn’t sound too bad, really.
Looks interesting. Shame the editor doesn’t run on Linux or the engine doesn’t target Linux at all. Valve is pushing Linux gaming hard and people are hating Windows 11 every day more and more. Anything exclusively C# will always have a Microsoft shackles issue.
I believe it does currently have Linux support. At least that is one of the build options.
I’m not sure what might prevent it from working in Linux, unless the FBX import package isn’t compatible.
The only comment is a marketing text that claims “experimental support” for Linux. There’s no mention of Linux at all in any of the tutorials. And on the manual it looks very finicky, they only support an old LTS version of Ubuntu and reading the GitHub issues, it looks not only experimental but very rough. As barely working, lot of workarounds, rough. On Godot at least, Linux is a first class citizen, not an afterthought to qualify for grants.
I’ll need to play with it some more when I get a chance. In any case, my impression is that it’s still developing and still has some way to go. I’d be kinda shocked if Linux doesn’t get decent support eventually.
Microsoft has wisely moved a lot of C# development into the .NET Foundation which also promotes the .NET Framework for other OSes including Linux.
Yeah, now I’m concerned this might happen with Unreal Engine, even though they’ve given no indication that it will. Once Godot works out the kinks with level and texture streaming, and has a landscape editor I will be going back to Godot.
Proprietary software can never be truly trusted. You are always at their whims.
abbotsburyUnreal is completely open source, you can compile it yourself.
It is source available, under the terms Epic licenses to you. Not Open Source
When did the term “open source” start including specifics about licensing terms? My understanding from the past few decades was that “open source” meant the source was available for people to look at and compile.
WaterSwordOpen source has always meant under a free license. Being able to fork and publish your own versions is integral to the open source philosophy.
Being able to fork and publish your own versions is integral to the open source philosophy
No, that is an enumerated freedom of the free software movement, not open source
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. from Wikipedia
The same article also talks about the difference between open source and source available:
Although the OSI definition of “open-source software” is widely accepted, a small number of people and organizations use the term to refer to software where the source is available for viewing, but which may not legally be modified or redistributed. Such software is more often referred to as source-available, or as shared source, a term coined by Microsoft in 2001
Under that strict definition, software under the GNU GPL would not be “open source” because the license stays with the code, and is not truly “for any purpose,” which is the same deal with the Epic license: you may use, study, change, and distribute the Unreal source code, but it stays under Epic’s license.
If you are talking about the FREEDOM to fork and publish and share and whatever, then you mean Free software.
You are not allowed to distribute unreal source. From their FAQ:
Unreal Engine licensees are permitted to post engine code snippets (up to 30 lines) in a public forum, but only for the purpose of discussing the content of the snippet
But the code is easily visible and you can compile it yourself. If you say “I only run software I 100% knows what it does because I can read it’s source code” then Unreal Engine fits, it’s open source.
That’s not why people want an open source game engine though, they want it to be open source so that they can’t do a unity
they want it to be open source so that they can’t do a unity
That has nothing to do with open source, that has to to with licensing, which I’m pretty sure isn’t an issue anyway since I think Unreal versions are tied to specific license versions, i.e. if you download the engine under one term, thats the only one you have to use
Like the 80s…
It is source available
Yes, open source.
Not Open Source
You mean free/libre? Open source literally just means you can see the source.
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code,[1] design documents,[2] or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration.
And then later on…
Generally, open source refers to a computer program in which the source code is available to the general public for use or modification from its original design.
Unreal Engine is technically open source, because it’s source code is made available to the general public. But it is licensed under a restrictive EULA instead of any of the normal licenses you’d expect for an open source project (MIT, Apache, GPL3, etc).
This is definitely pedantic, but “open source” is a colloquial term, not a technical one. Most people mean FOSS when they say open source, but the terms aren’t exactly equivalent. The license that governs the code is really the only part that actually matters.
AnamanaLet’s just call it OpenSource+ at this point ;)
Nice, it’s been 6-7 months since I used Godot. Glad they got a terrain editor ported over.
Long-term I think corporate tech as we know it is screwed. Their explosive growth from the pandemic making everyone terminally online is drying up as more and more people go back to touching grass, so now the bill’s coming due and it’s only a matter of time now before Unreal also does something stupid for a quick buck
elscallrPeople were terminally online well before 2019. It exacerbated the problem but we’re not going back. I don’t really think that’s a problem, technologically it pushed us further ahead which is always a good thing.
You’re right in that we are starting to rediscover what it means to be physically social again. I think that’s a good thing, too. People that got away with shit before aren’t getting away with it any more.
The problem is that interest rates have gone up after being extremely low ever since the 2008 crash, so investors lost their endless supply of debt-fuelled free money. They can’t pump money into companies operating at a loss anymore, so suddenly those companies have to find a way to turn a profit.
Captain AggravatedAnd some of them realistically can’t. Every other commercial game engine is developed for the studio first; Cry, Source, Unreal etc. These engines were made for, well, Far Cry, Half-Life 2, Unreal Tournament. The studio saw returns for engine development in the sales of games, then they said “We could probably further monetize the work we’ve already done if we license the engine and SDK out to third parties.”
Unity on the other hand is trying to have the Autodesk/Adobe business model of “We have a free student or hobbyist tier, and then a commercial license that’s $100,000 per minute per seat.” The thing is, Autodesk and Adobe really don’t have realistic competitors in their market sectors. Unity very much does. Unity competes directly with GameMaker Studio, Godot, Unreal, Source 2 among others, the development of which are either directly supported by the sales of first party titles (or are outright FOSS projects in the case of Godot). So Unity has to set their prices to compete in that market, without the support of first party game sales.
You can see how that’s working out for them.
The biggest thing about Epic is that it is NOT a publicly traded company.
It doesn’t mean that it’s not subject to the “Infinite Growth Disease” but look at their biggest investor: Sony and Tencent.
Both Game companies that SHOULD be more interested in having access to a good game engine than to make every dollar’s possible.
dopesharkVery nice!
My wife has a few things on YouTube she made with Godot, and she has noticed a significant increase in traffic, since Unity made their blunder.
Godot really deserves their increased popularity and donations, it’s absolutely amazing what they have achieved as a true Open Source project that is absolutely 100% free to use, and gives 100% control to game developers.
froggersVery nice. This money will enable them to make it better. One day when I might start learning how to make games I hope that Godot will be one of the best choices out there.
I really hope Godot will become as good for games like blender is for 3D modeling
Oh god. Please aim higher than that. Not saying that Blender ain’t powerful, because it clearly is, but it’s UI is just plain shit. (Unless there have been some massive improvements over the last few years.)
Most certainly have been. Worth another look.
I might have to one of these days, but man do I doubt it’s UI is usable after being such hot garbage over so many years. Such a shame too because fuck everything about Autodesk and I know Blender has some incredibly powerful tools.
Blender used to be basically unusable for me, the UI made no sense and attempting to use it after learning 3d through maya and 3ds it just made no sense. Then they made it good, I spent a few weeks learning it a few years ago and it’s great now. What you’re describing is exactly what they went and did
I don’t think anyone would be able to comprehend how much the UI has improved without seeing it themselves. Please take a look sooner than later.
So you’re not gonna try it like everyone is telling you to. I have no idea what they’re talking about because I don’t use blender but uh…me thinks you should try it instead of being stubborn and not. Seems kinda dumb.
dunestormGo and troll somewhere else, it’s clear you won’t change your opinion even though you’re wrong.
Altima NEOI mean I’m coming from Mary’s 3 and Max, I taught myself blender last year, UI seemed pretty nice.
OtakuAltairThe intuitive UI is the best part of Blender for me so that’s weird