I'm Switching from Unity to Godot and You Should Consider it as Well 

How is it an overreaction? They opened up a pathway for devs to end up bankrupted by third parties(install/uninstall bots) even if their game was a huge success. It doesn't matter if they're trying to walk it back, their little anchoring plan was too insane this time. And you'd have to be equally nutty to stay with unity if you're not already set to release in the next few months.

it isn't an over-reaction. And specially when you acknowledge that the idiot that runs the entire company is the ex-CEO of EA.

Straw? They dropped the whole fucking barn on the poor camel.

Thanks! Always happy to see support from others about trying something new :)

"This is an overreaction." "My Unity courses just became useless overnight..." "My game pitch just got rejected because it was in Unity..." "My investor just demanded I switch out of Unity..." Yeah just an overreaction.

Thanks so much Matt :) seems like Godot will appreciate the FOSS model much more than Unity. They didn’t even let me put some of my assets on the asset store (for free) because I was using other CC assets in my examples. Hopefully Godot supports this ecosystem much better.

Thanks! I've been reading up on the godot docs about how the engine works and what it can support. seems like there are a lot of open-source examples that do what I need for my projects (like automated github actions for build/testing/addons). I'm looking forward to trying something new :)

Godot's been treating me pretty good so far (for the most part). The learning curve isn't as intense as I had feared.

Thanks! Looking forward to trying out the engine more.

I’ll be sure to share my journey in new videos!

Thanks! Good luck with the move to godot. I think I'll be using this as a chance to explore more tools. Seems like Godot supports C#, GDScript, C/C++, and python so lots of options to explore!

Unity did a great advertisement campaign for Godot. Hopefully I can transfer some of my assets and expertise to Godot as well.

I’ll have to give it a look. One idea I considered was writing some of my libraries as nuget packages so it would be very easy to share to other CLR compatible ecosystems.

Nice to know I was thinking about GODOT but I'll check Flax out also ...

Awesome! I have a new version planned invoking floating capsule collides as well so hopefully I’ll be able to make an iodate with a Godot example!

I'm starting on the new project now. It's just a placeholder repo as I'm learning but I'm sure there will be many opportunities to add to and modify the project. Right now, I just have a big list of stuff to learn.

I’m going to try some other game engines for projects as well. I always looked at it like the right tool for the right job. Seems like Godot is a great tool to check out next.

Thanks! Everyone seems pretty kind here.

Thanks, hopefully I'll have more updates soon.

Haha, I hear you. Good luck with Godot and hopefully I'll have some new content soon about transferring my projects.

I think using visual code is great for some tasks as well. Especially if you want to involve less technical developers in the project too.

Pronouncing projects is always a bit weird. Especially with open source programs that didn’t necessarily have a single source of truth. Seems like the original project developers based it off the play but would have probably pronounced it closer to “guh-doh” but they never confirmed which I respect. Also. I like the analogy of free beer versus freedom! It’s how I like to share and develop my code even if it’s just me putting up random samples online.

I’m happy to contribute my work to Godot. My tutorials and examples aren’t always perfect but I feel like learning tools should be available and shared as everyone can improve them.

​@@NickMaltbieplease consider making tutorials that cover actual game dev concepts related to development with godot, as godot has a lot of super specific tutorials but not many general tutorials

Yep, I'm learning godot now so hopefully will have some fun updates in the next few weeks! @asdfghjkl-jk6mu

I'm not really sure. I haven't worked with those tools in unity much. However, from the docs, it seems like it shoudl be possible. docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/debug/overview_of_debugging_tools.html#deploy-with-remote-debug

Yes debugging in Android mobile with usb cable is possible with Godot, first you have to export android game with debugging check ✅ and after that game install on phone and now you can debug and check changes in game...

I’m gonna make follow up videos. I’m actually planning on using C++, C#, and GDScript for different applications :) seems like they all have their use in different ways.

Nothing wrong with finishing your current project in unity, especially if your project already has a lot of progress. I just wanted to switch because I don't want to promote the platform and have been frustrated by their decisions for the past few years.

I was an utter beginner in unity and if i'm honest I'd much rather loose the progress I've made in this project than continue supporting a company that actively makes the lives of it's users worse while there are better competitors in the market, in addition I started remaking the project in godot as a little experiment and i found it a lot easier to use@@NickMaltbie

Shhh, schedules don’t exist. I’ve been learning a lot about godot including basic project structure, gdscript, documentation, github automation for godot… lots of fun ideas but still working on porting the project to godot. You can see the github repo for the current progress here - github.com/nicholas-maltbie/Godot-OpenKCC It’s pretty much a 1:1 port of the project from Unity to godot but still working on adding a lot of features. I actually have been busy with getting married last month so haven’t had as much time.

@@NickMaltbie that's awesome! thanks

Glad you enjoyed it :)

I believe they are privately owned for now so less of a risk (despite tencent heavily investing in them). But with any proprietary software you run this kind of risk.

I think C# should work fine, although with Godot 4 C# support seems to only work on specific platforms (works for all platforms on Godot 3 and seems like support will be added in Godot 4.2 as well). As with most coding and performance questions, I think C# should run just fine for most source code. If you need things to be really efficient you can always import or write a C/C++ lib for lower level memory controls but that is probably not needed unless you have a huge requirement for performance.

Haha, didn't mean to call anyone out. It's very true that snapping isn't the best solution to stairs but I'm still working on that follow up video (so many ideas so little time). There is a bit more experimenting that I want to add into the project before making a full stairs 2.0 video. I'll make sure to post devlogs and updates about the progress of porting the project to godot. Good luck on your projects as well.

Can always try both and see which one feels better. I don’t really use high end graphics so using an open source engine is probably the best for my use case.

Skills transfer easily to new environments. I'm sure if you could pick up unity that learning Godot, unreal. or any other engine! And there is nothing wrong with sticking with unity for just personal projects especially if you have already started work on a project.

Always use the right tool for the right job. Game maker is a fine tool for other applications too :)

Need to learn a bit more but will definitely make some dev logs and tutorials!

Tool is nice, company not so much.

It's important to use the right tool for the right project :)

Yeah, it's been feeling that way for a few years of updates. Hopefully learning godot will at least give me a good opportunity to expand my skillset.

it IS bad tho Imagine being a supermarket, you buy milk in bulk and pay a standard fee for it, but then you also pay that same distributor extra 0.20 cents per sale of 1 milk carton It's robbery, plain and simple It's also not legal, as Unity does not have a license agreement with the player, only with the developer, so is not legally allowed to scrape data off players their PCs to track if they installed a game or not Some of y'all defend this bullshit way too much and it's sickening. Stop defending multi-billion dollar corporations that make shitty decisions

​@@blinkachu5275Your analogy is off. What unity was/is planning is more akin to the producers of the milk being charged $0.20 by the distributor everytime the consumer takes the carton of milk out of the fridge. But yeah, I don't get how people are still out here claiming there was an overreaction lol

While it's only somewhat different from the deal that Epic has with regards to Unreal, the lack of clarity in their language led many to assume the worst and even if they refine the language to be more inline with what Epic uses, it'll still be at least as bad as theirs. Neither Unreal nor Unity are open source, as in freedom respecting. They're both source-available, and that's fine if you want to pay them a percentage of your profits for each user, but I personally abhor the subscription model, no matter how it's implemented. I would argue for using Godot for anyone who's even considering getting into game development and "donating" some money to their foundation if you earn anything off of your games.

Happy to try out Godot. I didn’t even use most of the Unity features and my projects should work well in Godot regardless? :)

Good luck with the switch!

Check my GitHub repos if you want to see what I'm tinkering with. Been working on setting up my build environment and automated CI/CD last weekend. Will definitely make some devlogs and basics videos!

I hear you. Thanks for the encouragement! I definitely will keep this in mind in the future. That's one of the great things about Godot though, if I have a patch or fix that I write, I can simply submit it to the repo and add it as an open source repo.

Yeah, making a decision to switch platforms is difficult. I don't think I'll fully abandon unity but definitely have an excuse to port my projects to godot. The character controller demo is a nice example of lots of basic operations (animations, physics, materials, input, sound, etc...) so it's a great learning project for any engine!

money

They’ve been doing this for a while. Seems like it’s time for something new :)

I’m sure I’ll make a follow up when they get a non preview version of the ECS physics working. Otherwise gonna keep working on learning new engines as the underlying reasons for trying something new are the same.

Yep. I don’t want to blame others who may still want to use unity though. But my game development tutorials and samples can be made without unity so no reason to promote their practices if I can avoid it.

@@NickMaltbie that's fair, there are plenty of reasons why someone could justify using Unity even now. For example, if someone has a game basically ready to come out, I can understand if they don't want to refactor it to another engine. However, in most cases I would encourage people to start learning and using another engine as soon as they can, especially if they hope to make money with their games.

I’ve seen some discussion about godot’s shortcomings. I think I’ll consider each engine for the right job it needs. I’ll be sure to checkout stride and see how it works but I also want my open KCC library to be useful for developers so there is no reason to avoid porting it to multiple platforms :)

It seams like you tried to do Unity stuff in Godot and gave up when it obviously didn't work. 🤨 Godot uses AnimationPlayer instead of time line to initiate properties, launch scripts, call functions...

It seems like they support C/C++ as well so I might be doing some combination of the C++, C#, and gscript for my porting process.

​@@NickMaltbieMaybe you know that several architectural styles exists to create software: monolith, microservice and etc. Game as a program created with monolith arch style. Monolith code base can grow to very large size as you adding more features. To handle complexity of large code base developed and used specific languages as Java / C#. Language design and compiler helps you to fix bug in compile time. Tests helps to prevent logic bug which could happen in runtime. If game become popular new programmers come and start to add new features which can introduce new bugs. In this environment languages with dynamic typing play against you and you need huge amount of tests + linter! Unfortunately only Unity have powerful UI editor and use C# as main language. In Java world I didn't find any UI editor only engine( Others competitors who have game UI editors use languages with dynamic types: Lua, GScript which suitable for small games only or you get a lot of headache. New version of Godot insists to use GScript because all new features added there first and other languages only then their have time( Unreal Engine use C++ which is harder then Java / C#. So, in Reality, there are no any alternative to Unity+C# for games which want to grow in future. Designers love to use Unity UI editor. Large team of developers can work together much better with C#. If only Godot will make a decision to use C# as their main language, focus on main features instead of support GScript. Then it will be real competitor to Unity and community can say smth. against Unity management. I have a dream where Unity is not a monopolist!

Bad in what way?

@@kevinscales To manage large code base in Python, JS, Lua is much harder then in Java or C#. Compiled languages with types helps you to handle complexity. Huge amount of bugs never appears in runtime. Your code base become more solid! Large group of people can work in one code bas. Language contracts don't let new developers to ruin the whole project. Even for single developer it hard manage his code base then it become large. For group of developers it's even harder. Games are not microservices. It's monolith. And for monolith suitable languages are Java, C#.

Hey @RomanTchekashov The toolchain for godot is definitely different that than of unity or unreal. I'm planning on discussing this in my next video. But the fact that it's open source opens up so many more options. If I find a bug, I can fix it and share that fix with everyone. As opposed to unity where it just sits there... sometimes for months. I feel like godot is not a replacement, but I definitely favor the open-source environment more!

Yes, people can still use unity and there are many reasons people should still use unity especially if they are mid-way through a project. I just would rather use my platform to promote an open-source community as opposed the Unity Technologies' attitude toward their game developers. But regardless it's best not to be aggressive towards people even if they are using unity.

Good luck in your game dev! I’ve trekked unreal and it seems like a powerful piece of software.