7 ms·

Godot 4.0 beta 16: Initial .NET 7 support

81 points by snaileny 4y ago

garbagecoder 4y ago
uhhh, I've been waiting for this. ba-dum-tiss (=
jtode 4y ago
So, my screen had scrolled so that only half of the title was visible. My brain, being the doom-chasing pessimistic wasteland that it is, filled it in as "NFT Support" and oh no
nightowl_games 4y ago
Godot 4.0 is exciting, but I hope that no one ever speaks of Godot 5 for at least 3 years. Godot will benefit from having it's core contributors focused on the small stuff, rather than the 'we will rewrite everything for the next major release' mindset which has been prevalent for the past 3 years. Godot 3 is good. I use it professionally every day for 2 years. AMA.
- javchz 4y ago
  What do you think of using Godot for non game apps? Like learning apps for kids,simulations, or data visualization for business with a lot of interaction?
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    not OP I used it to build a multiplatform (including mobile) radio app similar to nightwave plaza (https://plaza.one/ https://plaza.one/) and it worked remarkably well also Pixelorama was built using Godot https://github.com/Orama-Interactive/Pixelorama https://github.com/Orama-Interactive/Pixelorama
  - nightowl_games 4y ago
    Godot is a pretty good cross platform C++ framework for lots of things. I think it's probably competitive with the heavy hitters (QT, GTK, React Native) for certain application designs. The visual editor for laying out UIs is a pretty killer feature. GDScript is honestly a pretty killer feature (hot reload, super easy to write, the documentation is built into the editor, available offline).
- eatsyourtacos 4y ago
  Hey so I was trying to make a Stick Fight clone with my son. I got a good start but what I was really interested was the skeletal system for physics so I could try to really emulate it. Do you have any thoughts on the skeletal system and has it improved in Godot 4? I sort of got it to eventually work, but it was really tedious. Have you ever used it and do you know if it has improved in 4.0 that makes it more viable to use?
  - beiller 4y ago
    I have a lot of experience messing around with these. It looks unchanged from godot 3.5 to 4.0 for the skeleton things. I actually wound up writing my own, which just copies rigid bodies matrix to each bone manually using gdscript.
  - nightowl_games 4y ago
    Haven't used it. The system itself might be decent but the editor for it is probably bad. Lots of things in Godot like that. We bought a license to Spine from http://esotericsoftware.com/ http://esotericsoftware.com/ It has a godot runtime SDK.
- allmodelsRwrong 4y ago
  What are your thoughts on GDScript? The reason I ask is I do a lot of work with Python these days and I like it most of the time. So I've been curious about a high level dynamic typed language for game dev. I have played around with Unity in the past and picked Unreal for my current project this time but kinda regretting that. I'm not doing anything technically impressive so I thought blueprints would help speed things up but I'm less than impressed.
  - nightowl_games 4y ago
    GDScript is awesome to use from a developer experience perspective. The documentation for everything being built into the editor (F1!) is pretty awesome. The api that is provided to GDScript for everything from strings to file operations to url requests is pretty great. That being said, GDScript has some flaws: it's performance is bad, the typing system needs work, it doesnt allow cyclical references of classes and the coroutine API is not greatly designed. But for prototyping game code it's pretty hard to beat for developer speed. For UI code it's top tier. I think you'll like Godot. I generally find it faster to develop things in than either Unity or Unreal. I've got a pretty huge toolbox of custom modular scripts for adding functionality to UIs, and a pretty solid theming and layout system.
    - manchmalscott 4y ago
      Fortunately, those concerns are all, if not fixed, then much improved in Godot 4. Just a couple weeks ago, they increased GDScript 2.0 perf by a lot, the type system is much more present (typed arrays, real enums, exported custom resources), cyclical references got merged in a month or two ago, and they've done some work on coroutines with the new await syntax. I'm looking forward to 4.0 coming out (well, 4.1) when they go back to smaller incremental updates and a higher focus on stability, so I can start using it for more projects. If the web builds weren't so broken I would have used it for ludem dare this month, but I went back to 3.5 and sorely missed the new features.
- wlesieutre 4y ago
  They recently posted a forward looking article about what key features 4 is still missing: https://godotengine.org/article/whats-missing-in-godot-for-aaa/ https://godotengine.org/article/whats-missing-in-godot-for-a... Maybe some of that comes in 4.x work, maybe some has to wait until 5. Most of it sounds like feature additions instead of things that require rewrites of existing 4.0 code.
  - nightowl_games 4y ago
    If I was triple A I'd still consider Godot. It wouldnt be hard for a AAA shop to use Godot for the editor and use GDScript to build UIs, VFX (visual effects) and DSL (domain specific language) type stuff. Writing all your simulation and netcode logic in c++ makes 'godot' pretty unlimited. AAA would want to completely replace Godot's renderer, but that is 100% feasible for a big studio with talented graphics engineers.
runevault 4y ago
I was playing with earlier betas of 4 but got busy. I need to get back to trying it with 16, hopefully their documents/tutorials have been mostly cleaned up at this point.
self_awareness 4y ago
As someone who has no idea about gamedev, I'm wondering about why gamedev in NET is not only possible, but encouraged, while being "nearly impossible" and discouraged on JVM. I mean, both have garbage collection, both are JITed, both have nearly the same feature set. Why is it that C# is that popular for gamedev, and only a few titles use JVM?
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > Why is it that C# is that popular for gamedev Unity. edit: also C# allows precise measurement of memory usage and padding, while in Java one can only guess
  - styx31 4y ago
    XNA?
- cesarb 4y ago
  > I mean, both have garbage collection, both are JITed, both have nearly the same feature set. There's one big difference in the feature set: unless things have changed very recently, the JVM lacks value objects.
  - self_awareness 4y ago
    Value objects (and more) are a part of Project Valhalla: https://openjdk.org/projects/valhalla/ https://openjdk.org/projects/valhalla/, and Kotlin allows using them today, although with some hacky annotations.
    - kroltan 4y ago
      That is very true, but C# has had value types since its inception, so a lot of tooling exists to deal with them, both in the language and in third party code (libraries and engines)
- becquerel 4y ago
bogwog 4y ago
I like Godot but the development process really sucks. Godot 4 has been in development for so long that it feels like vaporware. 3.5 is nice and stable, but has shortcomings that are only being addressed in Godot 4.
WillAdams 4y ago
I am very grateful for Godot v3, since it is used to program: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor What other instances are there of non-game usage?
- manchmalscott 4y ago
  There's Pixelorama[1], a web-based pixel art editor. Haven't really used it but it looks pretty impressive. 1: https://orama-interactive.itch.io/pixelorama https://orama-interactive.itch.io/pixelorama
- solarkraft 4y ago
  Oh damn, that's fascinating. Tesla uses Godot in their mobile apps to do some rendering: https://twitter.com/MFrunker/status/1430922577309011976 https://twitter.com/MFrunker/status/1430922577309011976

81 points by snaileny 4y ago

uhhh, I've been waiting for this. ba-dum-tiss (=

So, my screen had scrolled so that only half of the title was visible. My brain, being the doom-chasing pessimistic wasteland that it is, filled it in as "NFT Support" and oh no

nightowl_games 4y ago

Godot 4.0 is exciting, but I hope that no one ever speaks of Godot 5 for at least 3 years. Godot will benefit from having it's core contributors focused on the small stuff, rather than the 'we will rewrite everything for the next major release' mindset which has been prevalent for the past 3 years. Godot 3 is good. I use it professionally every day for 2 years. AMA.

javchz 4y ago
What do you think of using Godot for non game apps? Like learning apps for kids,simulations, or data visualization for business with a lot of interaction?
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  not OP I used it to build a multiplatform (including mobile) radio app similar to nightwave plaza (https://plaza.one/ https://plaza.one/) and it worked remarkably well also Pixelorama was built using Godot https://github.com/Orama-Interactive/Pixelorama https://github.com/Orama-Interactive/Pixelorama
- nightowl_games 4y ago
  Godot is a pretty good cross platform C++ framework for lots of things. I think it's probably competitive with the heavy hitters (QT, GTK, React Native) for certain application designs. The visual editor for laying out UIs is a pretty killer feature. GDScript is honestly a pretty killer feature (hot reload, super easy to write, the documentation is built into the editor, available offline).
eatsyourtacos 4y ago
Hey so I was trying to make a Stick Fight clone with my son. I got a good start but what I was really interested was the skeletal system for physics so I could try to really emulate it. Do you have any thoughts on the skeletal system and has it improved in Godot 4? I sort of got it to eventually work, but it was really tedious. Have you ever used it and do you know if it has improved in 4.0 that makes it more viable to use?
- beiller 4y ago
  I have a lot of experience messing around with these. It looks unchanged from godot 3.5 to 4.0 for the skeleton things. I actually wound up writing my own, which just copies rigid bodies matrix to each bone manually using gdscript.
- nightowl_games 4y ago
  Haven't used it. The system itself might be decent but the editor for it is probably bad. Lots of things in Godot like that. We bought a license to Spine from http://esotericsoftware.com/ http://esotericsoftware.com/ It has a godot runtime SDK.
allmodelsRwrong 4y ago
What are your thoughts on GDScript? The reason I ask is I do a lot of work with Python these days and I like it most of the time. So I've been curious about a high level dynamic typed language for game dev. I have played around with Unity in the past and picked Unreal for my current project this time but kinda regretting that. I'm not doing anything technically impressive so I thought blueprints would help speed things up but I'm less than impressed.
- nightowl_games 4y ago
  GDScript is awesome to use from a developer experience perspective. The documentation for everything being built into the editor (F1!) is pretty awesome. The api that is provided to GDScript for everything from strings to file operations to url requests is pretty great. That being said, GDScript has some flaws: it's performance is bad, the typing system needs work, it doesnt allow cyclical references of classes and the coroutine API is not greatly designed. But for prototyping game code it's pretty hard to beat for developer speed. For UI code it's top tier. I think you'll like Godot. I generally find it faster to develop things in than either Unity or Unreal. I've got a pretty huge toolbox of custom modular scripts for adding functionality to UIs, and a pretty solid theming and layout system.
  - manchmalscott 4y ago
    Fortunately, those concerns are all, if not fixed, then much improved in Godot 4. Just a couple weeks ago, they increased GDScript 2.0 perf by a lot, the type system is much more present (typed arrays, real enums, exported custom resources), cyclical references got merged in a month or two ago, and they've done some work on coroutines with the new await syntax. I'm looking forward to 4.0 coming out (well, 4.1) when they go back to smaller incremental updates and a higher focus on stability, so I can start using it for more projects. If the web builds weren't so broken I would have used it for ludem dare this month, but I went back to 3.5 and sorely missed the new features.
wlesieutre 4y ago
They recently posted a forward looking article about what key features 4 is still missing: https://godotengine.org/article/whats-missing-in-godot-for-aaa/ https://godotengine.org/article/whats-missing-in-godot-for-a... Maybe some of that comes in 4.x work, maybe some has to wait until 5. Most of it sounds like feature additions instead of things that require rewrites of existing 4.0 code.
- nightowl_games 4y ago
  If I was triple A I'd still consider Godot. It wouldnt be hard for a AAA shop to use Godot for the editor and use GDScript to build UIs, VFX (visual effects) and DSL (domain specific language) type stuff. Writing all your simulation and netcode logic in c++ makes 'godot' pretty unlimited. AAA would want to completely replace Godot's renderer, but that is 100% feasible for a big studio with talented graphics engineers.

runevault 4y ago

I was playing with earlier betas of 4 but got busy. I need to get back to trying it with 16, hopefully their documents/tutorials have been mostly cleaned up at this point.

self_awareness 4y ago

As someone who has no idea about gamedev, I'm wondering about why gamedev in NET is not only possible, but encouraged, while being "nearly impossible" and discouraged on JVM. I mean, both have garbage collection, both are JITed, both have nearly the same feature set. Why is it that C# is that popular for gamedev, and only a few titles use JVM?

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> Why is it that C# is that popular for gamedev Unity. edit: also C# allows precise measurement of memory usage and padding, while in Java one can only guess
- styx31 4y ago
  XNA?
cesarb 4y ago
> I mean, both have garbage collection, both are JITed, both have nearly the same feature set. There's one big difference in the feature set: unless things have changed very recently, the JVM lacks value objects.
- self_awareness 4y ago
  Value objects (and more) are a part of Project Valhalla: https://openjdk.org/projects/valhalla/ https://openjdk.org/projects/valhalla/, and Kotlin allows using them today, although with some hacky annotations.
  - kroltan 4y ago
    That is very true, but C# has had value types since its inception, so a lot of tooling exists to deal with them, both in the language and in third party code (libraries and engines)
becquerel 4y ago

bogwog 4y ago

I like Godot but the development process really sucks. Godot 4 has been in development for so long that it feels like vaporware. 3.5 is nice and stable, but has shortcomings that are only being addressed in Godot 4.

WillAdams 4y ago

I am very grateful for Godot v3, since it is used to program: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor What other instances are there of non-game usage?

manchmalscott 4y ago
There's Pixelorama[1], a web-based pixel art editor. Haven't really used it but it looks pretty impressive. 1: https://orama-interactive.itch.io/pixelorama https://orama-interactive.itch.io/pixelorama
solarkraft 4y ago
Oh damn, that's fascinating. Tesla uses Godot in their mobile apps to do some rendering: https://twitter.com/MFrunker/status/1430922577309011976 https://twitter.com/MFrunker/status/1430922577309011976