Have you been plugging your ears the past few years? Valve came out with Alyx, which was an amazing and first of it’s kind game. CS2 is basically in public beta at this point, and they are actively working on at least one new IP.
Also they have been updating TF2 again, which means a lot to me because I like TF2.
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’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.
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#.
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.
Looks interesting. Shame the editor doesn’t run on Linux and 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 Core Framework for other OSes including Linux, and the Roslyn compiler for C#.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 we can’t even imagine for a quick buck
People 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.
And 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.
This is great news! Can anyone explain me how the engine Managed to get 25k BEFORE the the unity Desaster? It seems like a really high number without mayor Investors
This isn't that strange for a number of open source projects. I don't know Godot's specifics, but lots of folks are willing to toss a few bucks via patreon or other sources. They keep a list of donors who don't mind being named in the source code, and it includes a few companies that make monthly donations. I'm sure they get a number of grants like this one from Epic.
There's a number of mastodon servers where people pay donate monthly to them.
It has corporate investors/sponsors at the gold level one of them being gambling service and the rest being mostly mobile devs. The pateron hasn’t really gone up since last year.
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.
Very 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.
This is really exciting to see. Enshittification is generating increasing backlash against incumbent monopolies, and encouraging more movement toward sustainable open source software.
Honestly, one thing I’m seeing frequently in comments about this is a bit frustrating. That is, people saying that they vow never to buy any games in Unity ever again on principle.
Vendor lock-in is a real thing, and part of the reason they actually tried this play. Many of these developers likely want to switch to a different engine, but don’t have the time or resources to do so. Honestly of all people hit by this situation, they probably need the help most.
Incidentally, if you are one of those devs reading this and feel you don’t know anything other than Unity, go learn something else. Diversify your portfolio. Learning a new engine isn’t hard if you know the fundamentals.
Unity dev here. Will switch on our next game, but don't have the choice for the current game that we've already invested 4 years into.
Also, bevy looks nice code-wise but it desparately needs a proper editor and GUI to make it artist friendly
Hopefully Unity doesn’t disrupt your current project too much.
But yeah, I think this is the most extreme case of a company burning trust with their users overnight in recent years (worse than Twitter IMO). It’s especially bad because many Unity users/devs have their livelihood depending on Unity, so of course they are going to change once they get a chance. The risks of not switching now massively outweigh the risks of switching.
It will just take a lot of devs/teams some time to transition. Unity will probably go under in 2-4 years, they can’t recover from this.
I’ve played around with Godot a bit, and in my view it actually makes more sense than Unity. Probably has more limitations, but hopefully those can be overcome in the next couple of years.
Thanks. We're fortunately still on 2022, so it won't really affect us at this point.
I've been keeping an eye on godot for a while, it seems like a very interesting engine. I'm not sure if it's ready for prime time for the scale and rendering quality we're usually looking for, but it might be a great option for 2D and smaller-scale projects.
There is the blender_bevy_toolkit which aims to serve Blender as an editor for Bevy. I haven’t tried it myself, but definitely will when I get to more artistic phases of my projects.
That looks like an interesting project, but it seems it hasn't been updated in over a year, and is only compatible with bevy 0.6. The current version is 0.11 or something. I've had my ass kicked before by relying on projects that didn't have a lot of support available, so I would stay out of this one.
That’s a valid point. Games released in the next 2-3 years should be probably be given a pass. My admittedly layman’s perspective is that any indie game deep enough into development that switching engines isn’t feasible most likely wouldn’t require another 4 years to ship.
gamingonlinux.com
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