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Two years after the Unity controversy, how are things going with Godot? (www.gamesindustry.biz)
submitted 4 days ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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[-] CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 76 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

"When you jump into something like Unreal, it assumes that you are making a photorealistic HD-looking game. So when you drop in some models, they already look great because of the lighting presets and so on," explains Jay Baylis, co-director at Cassette Beasts maker Bytten Studio.

"But Godot doesn't assume that, you need to fiddle around to make it look nice. As a result, people assume you can't do 3D games in Godot. It does still lag behind; if you are making a AAA action game, you probably are better off using Unreal at this point in time, unless you really want to get into the weeds."

This seems like a silly take, especially with all the lighting upgrades shipped in Godot 4. The tools are there, users just need to configure an environment node to suite the needs. I'd even argue Godot's SDGFI is more robust than Unity's Enlighten GI at this point.

While yeah unreal defaults are better for realistic light out of the box, ultimately if someone is making a AAA game they are getting "into the weeds" regardless of engine. I seriously doubt a AAA studio is going to ship a game with the default unreal lighting.

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 102 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

"Easy Presets" are a huge draw for users.

I've seen (non gaming) frameworks live or die by how well they work turnkey, out of the box with zero config edits other than the absolute bare minimum to function. Even if configuration literally takes like half an hour or something and the framework has huge performance gains over another, that first impression is a massive turn off to many.

It's... not that people are lazy, but they're human. Attention is finite. If realistic lighting isn't good in Godot by default, then it needs a big red intro button that says "Click here for realistic lighting!"

[-] mriswith@lemmy.world 32 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

You are very much correct, and don't worry about the other comment. You see that elitist take scarily often in some of these communities. I saw one person try to argue that programs should be intentionally made less user friendly, to force people to become better at computers.

They literally don't understand how most people think and only see things from their own tech perspective.

[-] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 14 points 4 days ago

There is a reason UX is as respected as a soft science :/

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

They literally don’t understand how most people think and only see things from their own tech perspective.

Or that people specialize, have finite time and mental energy and opportunity costs everywhere. How competent are these techies in areas of humanity they haven't taken hundreds of hours to practice?

I know I'm not, heh.

[-] mriswith@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Spending a couple of months in company IT support tends to help people realize better, or make them bitter.

Those TV shows like the IT Crowd aren't joking with their situations. I've literally had to walk across several buildings or go to another town just to plug in the power cable of a monitor, or physically hit the power button, multiple times.

[-] CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 14 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I believe the argument is that not every case needs or desires high fidelity realistic lighting. It is similar effort to take a godot game into a stylized, curated lighting direction, or take to a realistic direction. The trade off to Unreal's approach is significantly more effort to "undo" the realistic lighting and then implement the stylized vision, if that's what the game calls for.

But I do agree, there is value in defaults and it'd be nice to have a "make shit pretty" button that drops in preconfigured hyper real excellence.

[-] grue@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

Okay, but having normal lighting (matching the way light works in the real world) is obviously normal. Realism has always been the main goal of 3D rendering. If you want something different than that, it's because you're making a deliberate stylistic choice.

It should be easy to delete the normal lighting, but a new project should absolutely, obviously, start out with normal lighting.

[-] CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml 32 points 4 days ago

Remember, they built Cassette Beasts in Godot. If anyone has a view on how to make a solid game in Godot, it's them. Trying to push them to sell an engine they know better than either of us is weird. They walked the walk.

[-] rdri@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago

Aims to provide realistic lighting and everything

Named "Unreal"

[-] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 17 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Sensible defaults / presets are extremely important

You learn much better by fiddling with a single part of the engine while the others "just work" than by having to learn a little bit of everything before you can begin making a game.

It's much better to implement the core mechanics, the levels etc... And only change the lighting, the physics, etc... when really needed

[-] darkkite@lemmy.ml 9 points 4 days ago

Hard to say for sure when there aren't any AAA games on godot to compare and gather testimonials for. Whereas we know potential GOTY expedition 33 used UE5 and praised it interviews https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/developer-interviews/inside-the-development-journey-of-clair-obscur-expedition-33 granted they're more AA, but they have a suite of tools to allow developers at all sizes to benefit and with source available they can still make whatever modifications they want.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 7 points 4 days ago

Probably not, but you're underestimating the value of presets and standards, I think. It's less about shipping Unreal defaults and probably more about working with a bunch of outsourcing studios or even buying assets from a storefront with some confidence that everything is going to work.

I don't think it's as much a AAA problem, where people will have dedicated engine teams, systems engineers and a whole team managing outsourcing and more about smaller AA and indies where people are wearing multiple hats and less willing to deal with anything they don't have to. AAA will use Unreal for other reasons.

Ultimately it's the old open source chestnut of someone going "who cares if the UX isn't as good, it does everything you need it to do with a bit of effort" and proceeding to win that argument into everybody still using the proprietary alternative.

FWIW, Unity struggled a lot to shed the "multiplatform indie engine for phones" stuff and it took a hell of a bunch of active proselytism to start presenting themselves as competitive for other types of things before they decided to poop all over that effort. There's no reason it'd be any easier for Godot.

[-] Poopfeast420@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

“But Godot doesn’t assume that, you need to fiddle around to make it look nice.
[...]
you probably are better off using Unreal at this point in time, unless you really want to get into the weeds.”

This seems like a silly take, especially with all the lighting upgrades shipped in Godot 4. The tools are there, users just need to configure an environment node to suite the needs.

Truly silly, you just have to do, what he said you need to do. Why didn't he think of that?

[-] CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I'm following what you're getting at, it just feels the dev quoted makes "fiddling around" sound like an undertaking - users need to build custom lighting or change the engine in some way to get similar results. The real extent of fiddling in this case is dropping a node into a scene and making a few pointed selections.

Users preform this action a lot in godot. Everything rendered starts as a node, dropped into a scene, and making selections. Making a game would be "fiddling around" under this same context.

[-] warm@kbin.earth 0 points 4 days ago

Ugh, I hate reading endorsements for Unreal Engine. I wish that engine would be abandoned.

[-] pennomi@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

A ton of their tech has been an important reference for other engines. I don’t think there’s any reason to hate UE if it’s basically pioneering different techniques for everyone else to copy.

[-] warm@kbin.earth 5 points 3 days ago

Cool, but it's also ruining games by "pioneering" shit technologies, such as temporal AA, making every game look like a blurry mess.

It's also a bad thing to have everyone using one engine, especially UE given how Epic likes to exert it's control over developers through it.

We should stop endorsing it, instead we should highlight and praise devs using alternate engines.

Engines like Unity and Unreal have been great, offered indie devs an easy way to create some fantastic games, but we should push smaller devs to try engines like Godot now for that as Unity and UE got too big for their boots.

[-] pory@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Indie games on shoestring budgets are also the games that can least afford to pay employees to learn the "better" tool set on the job. Hiring devs that are experienced in Unreal or Unity means your onboarding is just about teaching them your studio's stuff, and the demands of your game. Budget is a zero sum game - if something like Expedition 33 (UE5) did it "right" instead of doing it "easy", they might not have been able to afford or produce the phenomenal mocap/VA/soundtrack/environments in the game.

Godot continues to mature, and some relatively big names in the indie space are publicly dumping Unity for it (like Mega Crit with Slay the Spire 2). But "pushing" smaller devs to ignore the onboarding problem isn't the way. It's the smaller devs that benefit most from engines with "good enough" defaults - bigger studios can afford to pay someone to "do the lighting".

Picking an engine (including the option of rolling your own shit) has to be a decision made very early in the game development cycle, like "before you hire anybody" early, and it's a really hard one to change your mind on later. For a lot of studios, the right decision isn't the "best, most capable, free-est" one. Hell, for Balatro the dev chose LOVE, which is usually used for VNs, because he didn't need all the other features he'd get out of something like Unity or Godot.

[-] warm@kbin.earth 1 points 2 days ago

I have less issue with smaller devs doing it, for reasons you mentioned. Sometimes their creative idea is best getting out there on any engine than it not getting out at all. We just need to stop normalising the use of Unreal Engine, before it is too late. Balatro is a good example we should be highlighting instead of something like Expedition 33 (which I am not saying shouldn't have released at all, we just shouldnt be praising it for it's use of UE, but rather for it's other features/standouts, like as you mentioned).

I have yet to see a well made Unreal Engine 5 game, but every studio is seemingly jumping to it. It's become like a buzzword almost (you never used to hear about the engine much, but now it's all "yeah our game is on Unreal Engine 5!!!"). But for some, me included, it's like putting a "rotten" sticker on a box of food. I just want to see more devs try other options, so we don't stagnate and allow Epic full control over the industry essentially. We used to get lots of custom built engines, but we have been slowly consolidating over the last decade, which I know at the root of it, is down to good ol' capitalism. It just sucks for games and by extension, the consumers, us.

[-] pory@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I have yet to see a well made Unreal Engine 5 game

Do you not consider Expedition 33 a well-made game?

I have less issue with smaller devs doing it

The comment I replied to says "we should push smaller devs to try engines like Godot now for that as Unity and UE got too big for their boots."

[-] warm@kbin.earth 1 points 1 day ago

It still suffers from temporal AA (or "AI" upscaling), which has lots of blur and ghosting.

Yes... smaller devs should be encouraged to try alternate engines, but that's not always possible or feasible for some.

[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 31 points 3 days ago

Anecdotal but I've switch from Unity to Godot and am quite happy with it. The main things I was originally worried about (performance and feature support) haven't shown up in any of my games (although I will caveat I make games for fun now, whereas I used to make them for profit).

Similarly, the Google Trends for Godot has been steadily increasing year over year, and decreasing for Unity. I much prefer to be in a rising tide ecosystem, rather than a falling one.

[-] Olgratin_Magmatoe@slrpnk.net 23 points 3 days ago

I switched over about a year ago. I've made far more progress with godot than I ever have with unity. It's a solid tool, and I have very few complaints.

[-] TeddE@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago

I'd say well - they just released a collaboration with Blender Studio: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-showcase-dogwalk/

[-] Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 24 points 3 days ago

still waiting for the bastard

[-] slimerancher@lemmy.world 28 points 4 days ago

Nice to see Godot is still going strong.

[-] match@pawb.social 13 points 4 days ago

godoting strong

[-] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago

Godot is the goat!

[-] MehBlah@lemmy.world 23 points 4 days ago

They just dropped a demo game called dogwalk.

[-] Cricket@lemmy.zip 12 points 4 days ago

Made by the Blender Studio!

[-] MehBlah@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago

Yeah it was using the godot engine.

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 10 points 4 days ago

And to think, Blender use to have the basics of a Game Engine built in.

I’m glad they moved away from that.

[-] Mist101@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

Godot fucking rocks. Brand new to designing, a few tutorials in and it feels accessible and easy to understand.

[-] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 15 points 4 days ago

"The Roottrees are dead" was a very pleasant surprise as a game made with Godot.

Do you know any other heavy hitter made with this engine that's not the usual suspects (e.g. Cassette Beasts)?

[-] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 23 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

the one I will make in 2–54 years' time

[-] Cricket@lemmy.zip 9 points 4 days ago

2–54 years’ time

lol, the truth!

[-] RobotZap10000@feddit.nl 2 points 4 days ago

One day...

[-] v01dworks@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago

Road to Vostok looks absolutely insane and it’s being made in Godot. I’ve played demos of it a bit and it definitely still is in development but there’s serious potential in my opinion

It performs insanely well, too

[-] deus@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago

I believe Slay the Spire 2 is being made with Godot.

[-] makeitwonderful@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 3 days ago

You're correct! One of the devs wrote an article about why they made the change.

[-] Cricket@lemmy.zip 9 points 4 days ago

I don't know about heavy hitters, but I just noticed a couple days ago that someone has been regularly posting on !godot@programming.dev the links to the weekly videos that StayAtHomeDev posts highlighting 5 new Godot games at a time. Here's the YouTube channel if you want to go directly to the source: https://www.youtube.com/@stayathomedev

Some of the games look great.

[-] mat@jlai.lu 7 points 4 days ago

Nice read. Thanks for the share

this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
241 points (99.2% liked)

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