Choosing Your Godot Programming Language: C#, C++, GDScript,... 

On the state of c# right now: at the time we release this video (January 2024), you can't export c# games to the browser with Godot 4. This was possible in Godot 3 and is probably just a matter of time. Godot depends on .NET releases for some c# platform support. Right now you can make desktop and mobile games with c# in Godot.

You ask 5 gamedevs what language you should use, you'll get 6 different answers.

When it comes to programming languages, as long as any developer knows their fundamentals by heart, the only thing you have to "learn" for a new programming language is the syntax. In the case of C/C++, it would be memory management, caching, and a few other things. But overall, the fundamentals of programming is all you need to "master" any programming language and write good programs with it.

The Zero compile time for gdscript is an absolute killer feature

I wish there was a beginner-friendly interface for C++ developers out of box. I get the idea of using GDNative, but I really don't like the fact that you have to manually download it and do settings you probably won't understand. Solution example: when you wanted to create a script for a node in C++, the Engine would had automatically added both header and code files with presettings of the parent node. It also would have helped a lot in object-oriented programming, providing you more access to nodes and libraries. The libraries themselves could have been added in a specific folder, guaranteing users that the libraries will be available in both debugging and exporting projects

For performance, the bottleneck is actually whether it's CPU (script) or GPU (shader) that does the calculations. This means that the shader language is the 4th language and is the most efficient, especially with compute shaders. It's currently a drag to integrate into your code, but learning it is fairly smooth, results are fast and optimisation is through the roof, especially with complicated marching-cube terrain-generation, for example.

I think you left out a major consideration aspect - long-term sustainability. For projects that last years and involve multiple people at the same time (~3 and more?), I think C# might be the way to go because of the tooling. You mentioned Rider and I cannot stress enough how big of a deal it is to have a full-fledged IDE at your disposal. Namely refactoring is something that's not easy for a GDScript codebase. If you have a long-running project, refactoring is inevitably something you will need to do. When the time comes, you might pay a price for the fast iteration speed of GDScript. Not an issue for me, I have a 1000 unfinished GDScript games so far :) But I think it's important to think about

One thing people should know is that Godot 4 still doesn't support C# for web exports, so if you're targetting the web that's currently not an option.

I'm really enjoying using Godot to build my game. It's a RTS with Survival elements. That said, I needed some specific codes to be really performant. I'm currently building everything in C# (because of the available libraries) and Rust (because it's my "main" language) for the performance-critical code. I really liked using GDScript in the past. That's to say my choices were probably more personal than pratical.

I did NOT know you could debug in real time! I always just closed the game window, make a change in editor, and run the game again!. MY MIND IS BLOWN!!!

Your GDScripting app was what convinced me to Godot over Unity as I started learning Python during the pandemic and the similarities meant I wouldn't have to start learning a brand new language as I'm not a professional programmer. Then a couple of months later the whole Unity debacle happened and I'm glad I decided to go with Godot even though I'll likely never make the amount of money required to have to pay for it, the fact that Unity did that the way they did is a very shady thing to do and I feel they will just slowly make changes to their pay structure anyways.

I was going to use unity but you turned me right around to Godot. Thanks!

A tutorial video on just the big differences between C#/C/C++ and GDScript would be great for someone like me only familiar with the former.

Some upsides that were missed with C# (IMO, the largest ones): 1. It's statically typed and compiled, so fewer runtime errors and basic features like typed dictionaries. 2. Intellisense is orders of magnitude better, noticed that GDScript gets pretty wonky. I still use GDScript, but project is getting large enough that I need more sanity checks, and am willing to add C# boilerplate to avoid the major drawbacks of GDScript.

I came to Godot as a very fresh programmer with some Basic knowledge. GDScript has been amazing to learn, in no small part due to your channel and courses. One of the best things about it is that it is growing as a language and grows with the engine. Though this causes some dramatic changes, like in Godot 4, I am very excited to see what comes out in the future.

My suggestion is to use C++ because it is more flexible (for making custom and unique game mechanics) and have more performance, and also if you use C++, If you will decide to switch to Unreal engine you won't need to learn one more language because the unreal engine uses C++ and it has a big community around the C++ in UE5

The next video should highlight the following: 1- The Godot engine is an open and community-driven project. 2- In addition to GDScript, C#, and C++/C, programming languages such as Rust, Swift, and others are available, thanks to contributions from the community. 3- There are also game engines like RPG in the Box, The Mirror, and Cozy Blanket developed using the Godot Engine. 😁

I believe that GDScript for gameplay in general, and C++ in a C style for algorithms might be a good combo for me. Thanks for the video.

great video, i'll check out the app so i can make the games i wanted!

I'm very comfortable with C#. Glad we've got this option

As someone who just wants to makes little games as a hobby. And doesn't know much about programming. I love gdscript.

Overall a pretty good video and did a good job explaining the tradeoffs. Minor nits: Strange that you didn't mention that the #1 reason to use C# and the why developers want it is because that's the language Unity uses, and developers simply want to be able to re-use their code; so if you're coming over from Unity, it's probably easiest & best to use C#. Similarly, another reason to use C/C++ is that the code you write can be re-used, often without modification, on pretty much *any* other computer / engine / OS; unless it's a Godot-specific interface; which you should minimize. Have code from an old game that runs on Windows or native Android or possibly even iOS (if you were smart & didn't use Obj-C / Swift); it can just be reused as is.

as almost exclusively C# user, i absolutely love gdscript just for existing and would recommend it for anyone who doesn't have prior experience with the engine or programming

Great video any chance for more videos of c++ and godot?

Awesome video! Really informative and gives a good overview of what each language does well in. Something I might disagree with is that it is slower to iterate with C# due to long compilation times. On small to medium sized projects, .NET compilation times are extremely short to non-existent. Also, it would also be good to highlight C#'s language features that allow for better development; such as the type system, source-generation, reflections, pattern matching, and strong integration with most IDEs for fast development.

This is crazy. I was just wondering what language to use and I get this vid recommended to me.

Thank you so much for this video! I am but an artist and not knowing where to start language wise when I want to work with Godot is a lil tricky.

Personally I find dynamic/gradual typing syntax less intuitive to read than static typing. I think being able to know exactly what a variable is is really handy for whenever you go back to edit code that you wrote long enough ago that you've forgotten the fine details of how you made it, even when you have commented it.

I know a bit about c# but decided to use gdscript. I'm happy with that choice. I think it's harder to learn all the functions and how they work than a new logic syntax, you can fit it onto one pages. Maybe I'll miss the c# library one day but not yet.

Thank you. Do you have, or plan to have, a tutorial going through the processes involved in creating a gdextension, one or two worked examples?

coming from Unity I know C#, but, I do game jams and like to submit with WebGL so that put me to learning GDScript so I can use the newest Godot version. "Projects written in C# using Godot 4 currently cannot be exported to the web. To use C# on web platforms, use Godot 3 instead." - Godot docs

I think another thing about GDScript is it's a really nice language syntactically. It has so any nice things about it which make it really nice, fun and friendly to work with

The amount of hard work on these videos is outstanding. I jumped into the 2D/3D/NodeEssentials bundle after watching the Vampire Survivors-esque tutorial, can’t wait for them to start coming out! Cheers.

gdscript - actually main reason why I avoid godot it's a poprietary language that's designed for only one engine its dynamic nature is even more repulsive, every time I encounter dynamic languages on projects a little bigger than a match, I feel like I'm wading through a swamp, it slows down the dynamic language. You can't write code properly and be sure that it works correctly until you run it and get to the place where it is called. GDScript has no infrastructure - no package manager, no easy import and export of code, it looks like a toy language

Got to try Godot in C#. I've participated in some Unity projects in university before.

You should mention one major region people would not consider C#. Target build platforms. Godot 4.2 recently gained support for Android and iOS builds with .Net 8 I believe, but Web is still not working, so you'd have to use Godot 3.5 instead if you want to build for web using C# I believe. I would argue Web is an important build medium for play testing and easily sharing with others to prototype especially, even if you don't intend to release a final build for web.

Great video as always :) I was wondering what's your VS Code color theme is, any chance to have the name?

What language or certain skills in coding do i need to learn to be ready for conversion into gdscript? Currently lesrning cpp and judt reached switched when i saw this video and decided to reflect on what I've learnt and some of the things i saw on the video wouldn't make sense to me (like using namespace godot:) but after learning a bit of cpp i found out certain skills can still benefit me. But what i would like to know is what certain skills are the basics? GDquest wasn't bad, just the problem was i was overwhelmed with Vectors and dropped it right there and decided to learn cpp for more comfort the move back and give it a second attempt.

Hello, thank your for your video. What do you do consider performance-critical parts? online for example? or what? and Rust is worth it use it for games? Will they be faster? Greetings!

I know C# a good bit from transferring from Unity but I think Ill give GDScript a go anyways. I dont think itll be too different, especially since Im not an expert familiar with the in-depth functions yet.

If you want an idea for a tutorial, you can teach people how to write models in C# and then use them to create GDScript Proxies/ViewModels.

I hope they add support for the Basic programming language!

Great Video! I recently picked up Godot recently and wanted to know if i had to learn all 3 or just learn gdscript. I started coding with python and only have basic knowledge of C and java. Is it alright to use gdscript completely for building my games? am i setting myself back by not learning and using all 3?

I'm a lifelong C++ dev, but so far I still prefer to stick to GDScript, but I'm glad that C++ is on the menu if I ever need it.

Good tip that I think you should know is to use a random language test it, done, that's it. Since you didn't see anything else about other engines the engine you randomly choose will adapt with you and you won't see any disadvantages. I tried this with gdscript and I didn't care about the advantages and disadvantages. You're a beginner you don't need to know everything wrong with a language. Just choose a language with no further thought and comparison and have fun.

I'm still fresh to programming overall, currently learning C# & it's great :) I'm wondering if Godot could be used as a UI Framework + C#? Or it's much better to use others like AvaloniaUI/.NET MAUI?

I dislike that they said that the language being weakly typed was an important advantage as well as it being an interpreted language. Both of those make your final product more prone to errors / bugs. I do C# development as a career but i started in PHP and those two things are exactly what made me hate PHP and the reason i moved to looking for a C# job

My opinion: GDScript must be your default choice if you don't have good reason to use C# or C++. Use C# when you want to migrate existing Unity codebases and refactor it into Godot based code. The .NET features are very niche for game development. You will rarely use them. The only thing I can think of the top of my head is for Machine Learning/Deep Learning with game environments. But that's just me. For C/C++, this is the best option, but only if you have strong low-level fundamentals and a good understanding of memory management. Everybody should definitely touch and learn these languages at somepoint in their developer lives. But for beginners, just stick to GDScript to build solid fundamentals. Start with small C/C++ projects then build your way up. Modify the source code for the engine a bit. Maybe even build your own engine to understand what's going on under the hood in game engines.

I want to see about using C++, because I'm trying to learn it to make my own engine. As a Unity Refugee, I know some C# already, and and I know a bit of python from ML & Chatbot stuff. Idk what I'll use more, but want to lean heavily on C++ if I can.

C# allows much deeper tooling and enables for complex services. Thanks to it, developing games take less time the more games you make. Each respectable company have their own (Unity) framework for a reason. GDScript is limited to what the name implies: logic scripting.

I highly doubt ill ever be in a position where performance would be a deciding factor. Im pretty self-choncious about minimizing on screen calculations. So im heavily into whatever helps iterate the esiest.

What about using C++ for algorithms? You mentioned using C++ for changing the engine itself, but I would suppose this would be a use case too since it would be faster than C#. I want to make a game with maybe 100 moving objects (traders in player proximity) and some cities (maybe also like 100 active on the whole map) that would calculate data and I don't know if GDScript would be performant enough.

Can you make video on cpp extension work flow.

I dunno about C#. It feels like a second-class citizen in Godot with how little documentation there is.

I prototype in GDScript (well actually outside of Engine in Python), then port some stuff to C# when there's clear benefits

i saw in the french video "Rencontre en terre indé (04)" you say that godot itself is an application made with godot tools. I assumed it was made with gdscript, but i was wrong, here you explain it was made with C++. So, is it possible to create extension for godot in gdscript ? i actually learn gdscript with the website "learn to code from zero" it's really interesting but i am wondering at what level i can use godot and gdscript. (for exemple, i saw a youtuber working on a montage application with godot, but i don't remember which language he uses and if gdscript allow this) Thank you for all your work and helping infos !

Omg what a nice video

Can you customize game engine easily?, turn it into your level editor in a way. This is often overlooked Unity's strong points. Game logic is fine with script, even visual scripting works in UE, but in a real game you are extending the engine, extending the editor constantly to make something.

GDScript is literally just Python with a different name.

Hello..My dream is to be the best game designer in the world..godot looks like the way to do it..great videos, amazing channel,pls dont stop

So I've been wondering. I have enough of a base in C++ to probably code fully in it and I'm probably most comfortable there, but zero compile time and similiarity to Python is really attracting me towards trying out GDScript. Would it make sense for someone like me to learn GDScript or should I just jump head first with C++? What I took away from the video is that C++ is more used towards the development of the Godot engine and extensions rather than the games themselves.

I tried the tutorial, instead of drawing a corner I made a Dragon Curve 😅 #Generates a list of turns for a Dragon Curve func dragon_array(it): if(it = 0) if(turns[curr_index] == 'r'): turns += ['l'] else: turns += ['r'] curr_index -= 1 return turns #Draws a dragoncurve func dragon_curve(it): var turns = dragon_array(it) #magic number to size curve var dist = 900/(it*it) move_forward(dist) for turns in turns: if(turn == 'r'): turn_right(90) else: turn_left(90) move_forward(dist) func draw_corner(): dragon_curve(6) #Dragon Curve Algorithm Explination #Usually you start with an 'R' #Append an R # 'RR' #Copy the original list 'R' # Reverse the order of the copy # so R -> R Better example, LLR to RLL #Flip the directions in the reverse #So R -> L #Append the Copy #RRL #Next RRL -> RRLR -> RRLR + RLL -> RRLRRLL # +R Add the reverse flipped #So RRLRRLL is the next Iteration. #We can get the same results without #copying the original list. #To do that, note everything before #The appended R is the original. #So we can read it back to front #And append the opposite of what #we read #So Store list Size #Append an R #Read the list from index Size - 1 # to 0 #While Reading Append the opposite to #The end of the array.

Thnx

Would you happen to know if someone made an add-on for Godot 4.0 to export .bmp. I really need this for a tool I am making and was bummed when I didn't see a save to bmp format image option.

I've used GDScript for my first game on Godot. It's pretty awesome but if you want to be employable in the future, you gotta use C# or C++. Using GDScript for a long time shifts your thinking. Your best language will be GDScript and there are not a whole lot of game jobs for it. Basically you'll stuck with Godot since GDScript is only good for Godot. Yeah underlying algorithms you write will basically be the same for all languages. But syntax is massively different. You don't want to be stuck at an interview thinking of what's the correct syntax for the language you're applying. That's my opinion anyway 😄

thanks

yea but how do i use C++ with gadot, it doesn't seem like an easy task like it is with gdscript or C# where I just pick it from a option.

I love GDScript!

Please tell me more about the mascot characters in the thumbnail! Where did the C# one come from?

bro your outro reminds me ALOT about rodamrix

how close to python is GDscript? i hear people say it is similar but its not clear how similar.

3:24 it’s that interoperable. Dang.

As an ex unity developer, I started with c#, as I liked the idea of not having to learn a new language. However, Godot's current integration with c# is not exactly seamless. The connection between the c# editor and Godot breaks constantly, with very little in the way of explanation as to why, and having to recompile to see changes becomes tiresome very quickly.

I'm Japanese beginner in programming. Some parts of Godot have already been localized into Japanese, but it's not complete yet. Especially, since all the help is in English, it takes a lot of time to understand. I know it's audacious to ask for more when using free software. I've also considered using a different game engine. However, I want to continue game development with Godot, so I kindly request a swift implementation of multi-language support. And also, what is the current specification of the 'connectr()' function?

How's the support for rust?

Just rewrite godot in rust :^)

Imagine how wild it would have been if Godot had Haskel as its first class supported language, lol.

Can u guys make a tutorial in using multiple languages with Godot 4? I'm kinda of a very very very beginner (the only almost complete project til now is pong and the enemy's ai sucks lol), but the projects I'm planning to do would require c++ (I think, Idk if there's any native form of doing the entirely of 2d procedural animation just with nodes), and I really don't know how to use multiple languages in only one project Sorry for the bad English

i pesonly don't like gd script for one very important reason, the don't let my organized the code in the way i wand to in C you can put the line in whatever order you wand as long you add semicolon in the end that mean you able to organize the code and put this line on whatever order you want. in GD script you have errors because you have add single space before the line even starts this very anoying i hope to fix this on Godot.

Wait. Is support for C++ new? I dont remember it having it back in 2022.

C++? Will it work here? I learned basics on w3schools now what to do?

i use bevy :D

just use bevy if you want a performant engine

Totally understandable the language choices but what I don’t understand is why not lua? It’s great for game development and easy for beginners aswell as having a similar syntax to cpp

Bruh Unity c# Unreal c++ and their own lang Godot gdscript c++ and c# god level suiiiii

C# is an awful choice if you need to build game-specific plugins, as Godot can only restore Variant and Signal state when recompiling the assembly. You can make your tools work in-game, sure, but why do that when you can have a smoother workflow by making an editor plugin? Furthermore, interfacing between strings and stringnames creates tons of garbage, problematic for custom _set/_get behavior, shaders, and input polling.

I was literally just wondering if Godot had C++ support.

No rust?

Thank you. I have always wondered why gdscript was used instead of python. I hope you get the From Zero course ported over to version 4 soon for those of us who bought that course.

i am started to learn gdscript for 5 minutes with your free course it's awesome.thanks

Well there is rust lang but where that? Since they have module.

No cpp?

I would really like to be able to use rust to code games 🤔

if you know C# you know OOP and can get job. If you know gdScript you know nothing - only Godot, it's like visual scripting in UE.

I cannot comprehend why would anyone want to use Godot with python? GDScript itself looks like python 90 percent of the time and zero compile time...

GDscript is god like if someone like me woth 0 experience is making slow and steady progress

"People wanted it" more like One is fundamental Microsoft paid for the other Creators of Godot wanted something simple I don't see the value of C# since gdscript exist if you want something very easy or C++ if you want performance.

lets goooooo

4:03 Audio balance bruh

Crablang!