Tomi on 13/9/2023 at 15:11
Unity really has done their best lately to scare the developers away to other platforms. The Godot Engine is also one option, I've only heard good things about it since Godot 4 was launched. :)
I spent quite a lot of time learning Unity last year and managed to make a little mobile game for my kids that I was actually rather pleased with. It's not exactly a great game, more of a training project really where I've experimented with different kind of game mechanics, but I was still positively surprised that it wasn't that hard to make a fairly complicated 3D game that runs smoothly even on older mobile devices. Yeah, I'm still a beginner in gamedev of course, and this year I haven't had much time to work on anything, but I'd still like to finish this little game of mine. However, I think this might be a good time to jump aboard the Godot train, so I don't know. :erg:
If anyone has already switched to Godot from Unity, I'd like to know how hard it was to adapt to a new engine. I'm not looking forward to starting all over again, so I hope that my experience with Unity helps at least a little. And then there's the whole GDScript vs C# thing... The basic stuff in C# seems simple enough for me, but everyone seems to recommend GDScript which also looks quite simple but different. There also doesn't seem to be that many tutorials for Godot 4 yet, which will make the learning process a bit more complicated.
Then again, I might also just stay with Unity since I'm already a bit familiar to it. I somehow doubt that the $1m barrier will ever be a problem for me, but who knows what else they'll come up in the future.
Yakoob on 13/9/2023 at 19:09
Quote:
If anyone has already switched to Godot from Unity, I'd like to know how hard it was to adapt to a new engine.
Honestly, the problem isn't just recreating your project in a new engine (which for me would be undoing over 6mo of work), but the fact that we'd be losing years of accrued knowledge, custom codebase I kept reusing, learned best practices, purchased assets and tools, our framework for console ports, etc.
So aside from time lost re-creating stuff in a new engine, that's months/years of extra work due to having to catch up to the same knowledge level and recreate custom tools and frameworks we built or bought for Unity. Then there's also re-training / re-hiring the people I hired specifically for their deeper knowledge of Unity.
It's not unfeasible of course, and if push come to shove will happen, but it's a lot more complicated than just re-creating all your assets and code in a new engine.
edit: also my layman understanding is that Godot isn't nearly as feature-rich and doesn't quite have the console support as Unity. It's definitely getting there and has good trajectory, but it's not quite there yet. So it would be a lot of extra time and cost to get a Godot game to the same level as a Unity game right now
heywood on 13/9/2023 at 20:44
Quote Posted by Shadowcat
Well I clearly don't understand this business. How do they have operating expenses over over 2 billion dollars in a year? (or anything even
remotely on that scale...)
Unity is much bigger than I thought. Around 7700 employees according to Wikipedia.
Pyrian on 13/9/2023 at 22:17
They bought a ton of companies they probably shouldn't have bought.
EvaUnit02 on 14/9/2023 at 03:29
Enforcing this will probably require DRM/phone home malware to be installed with the end-users' PCs to track their installs. This is crazy.
We recently had RPGmaker Unite release, based on Unity engine. This is a big kick in the shins for so many Japanese indie developers.
Quote Posted by theabyss
If I wanted all of our customers/developers to switch to the Unreal engine, this is how I would do it.
If this anti-customer move by Unity is successful then you bet your ass everyone will jump aboard the bandwagon, including Unreal. Eg Soyny and Nintendo starting to charge for console online play last gen (2013/2017) after MS getting away with it for so many years.
Yakoob on 16/9/2023 at 22:25
Here's an article I found that actually lines up with a lot of my (unfortunate) thoughts on this whole kerfuffle:
(
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/blogs/unity-s-just-not-into-you-indie-developer) Unity's Just Not Into You, Indie Developer
Quote:
When looking at these numbers, looking at the direction of Unity over the past few years, and looking at Unity's management, it is quite clear that this is just the next step on the path Unity has been on for some time.
It is a F2P services company that also provides a game engine as a service, and it is going to continue to develop in that direction.It is also trying to develop its branches for VFX production and enterprise purposes such as architecture displays, but those goals are not particularly congruent with producing a good game engine.
The many indie developers who will be left by the roadside are completely incidental to Unity's goals, and are not going to be a significant factor in its future decision making.
demagogue on 17/9/2023 at 05:25
Talk about pissing away your own brand. Everything Unity has been branding itself to be for the last 20 odd years has looked like it's been about indie development. And Unreal was supposed to be the AAA tailored engine.
That's quite the flip both of them have pulled off, or anyway that Unreal has pulled off. I'm not convinced Unity is going to be the AAA darling I guess it's hoping to be now.
Yakoob on 17/9/2023 at 05:31
Yea, it's really baffling given how much they invested into 3 different render pipelines, HD quality, console support, new input systems, advanced multicore processing (ECS), lots of high fidelity features etc. You really don't need 90% of that if you're only targeting mobile / casual games.
(Unless this is a start of them gutting those 90% of features.....)
Starker on 17/9/2023 at 19:16
And the plot thickens:
[video=youtube;ZOCTSp_U-KI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOCTSp_U-KI[/video]
