Metal Mutton 🤖🐏 @SteelWool@computerfairi.es

There's a lot of interest in #GodotEngine today, so here's my perspective & advice, as the tech lead on Cassette Beasts, a 2.5D open world RPG that shipped this year on Steam, Switch and Xbox, using Godot 3.5. 🧵

First: I've not used Unity (or Unreal) for more than just trivial experiments, so I can't provide direct comparisons. But there are still a few general points I can make.

Also: I will never recommend switching engine mid-project. If you're gonna switch, do it between projects.

Managed to get Hellgineers up on Steam! It will go live next week so I guess it is time to ask you to wishlist it?

Thanks! <3

Things just got (more!) serious... @kenney has renounced their support for #Unity and will no longer endorse it. Kenney has had a profound effect on the indie community by giving many aspiring devs assets and tools to get them started, so this is pretty major IMHO. The next gen of gamedevs will be wanting access to those assets so they can just MAKE something, and Unity will no longer get that traffic. This must have been a tough decision, but I for one support it 100%.

#gamedev #indiedev

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One other thing is that developers are rightly mad at Unity.

However, all gamers should also be *extremely* mad at Unity because the only way they can enforce their proposed license is carefully tracking user behavior in a deeply invasive way.

A park bench is public cisport

The worst part of this Unity thing is devs feeling pressure to abandon their projects which they put their love and hard work into, just because some people made a poor decision in order to make more money or whatever. I don't think that's fair, and I don't think anyone would blame you if you can and decide to stick with Unity, at least until you're done with your current projects and only then maybe you consider learning a new engine.

Reminder that availability & porting of any open-source engine to consoles is only less evident because consoles manufacturers decided their _API_ was sacred & unique & under NDA. First console manufacturer who opens up will see 100+ custom engines avail within a month.

I do not envy the #Godot devs right now.

I used to be heavily invested in GNU #Octave, a free #Matlab replacement. That was a bit of a more ambitious goal, because Godot isn't trying to be exactly like Unity, but Octave is trying to be exactly like Matlab. The overall problem, however, is similar.

It's a difficult, mostly thankless task. Users don't care what it takes to make it look exactly like what it's supposed to be replacing. Photoshop users going to the GNU IMP, Matlab users going to Octave, Maya users going to Blender, Chrome users going to Firefox... they all want the same thing: basically the same software, but without the fees and restrictions. It is extremely draining to continuously disappoint people who aren't getting exactly the same software but without paying for it.

A few users will offer donations, but never enough to rival the budget of the software they're fleeing from. Nowadays there's better infrastructure to collect from these benevolent donors and get a steady income than when I was working on Octave.

All this to say: if you're migrating to better, less enshittified software, try to be kind and considerate of the smaller, more grassroots organisation and individuals that are trying to give you a comparable experience with no strings attached. :)

Wrote about Myst parodies

https://virtualmoose.org/2023/09/13/myst-parodies/

#adventuregames

So, big news yesterday. I'm appalled at the impact this will have on the #Unity ecosystem, and #gamedev at large. There's just no way this can lead to anything good for anyone.

#GodotEngine is getting a lot of positive attention in reaction, so I want to address a few things. 🧵

If you have been using #Unity and you wanna jump ship to the nearest competitor, #GodotEngine is gonna be your best bet. The structure of a project isn't exactly the same, but it's similar enough that it won't take long to adjust.
Below, I'll give a few tips and talk about pain points you might run into, to help you try it out properly, and make an evaluation. #GameDev

Unity won't have to pay the fee themselves because they never actually use their own engine to make any games internally.

Maybe it's time for another round of #stopwaitingforgodot...