I hate to call it too early and jinx it but I think at this point its safe to say we got a Blender moment about to happen in Game Engines. I know these are all indie games. But the momentum is astonishing and with Battlefield using Godot as their Level Editor and more recognition on the professional level there is no sign of stopping it.
Whats next on the chopping block? Wouldn't mind it to be Photoshop, but I guess for that, GIMP would really need a grounds up redesign, UI and UX wise.
It helps that it's also a good engine. Unity dominated not just due to familiarity, but because for a long time it was just plain accessible and feature rich.
Godot and Blender are two applications that have been on a very long journey to build not just advanced features but also something that's intuitive to use. The advancements in UX are the single strongest thing there is in replacing long-standing creative tools.
The recent redesign made a big jump for that. It went from and ugly and user hostile experience to something that actually feels ok after some learning. It definitely has a ways to go but it's so much better than before.
Eventually. It's a long slow arc. But there's definitely a history of it. From its Inception the modern smartphone has been built almost exclusively on top of Linux or BSD. Even if proprietary presentation layers above it don't always make it perfectly clear. Similar can be said for any modern gaming console or hand held. With the exception of Microsoft's products.
Most of the modern internet, your home consumer router and maybe even some of your appliances. Built on open source code. And finally, many are switching to own their PC again. There isn't a lot of hype or fan fair publicly. But open source has been quietly putting in the work and showing up for decades.
Realistically, we're actually just returning to a pre Microsoft state. Granted before the explosion of the personal computer most computers were massive devices an individual couldn't own. And there wasn't a lot of money to be made in selling the software itself. So there was a lot of collaboration and sharing. Even if proprietary layers were built on top. The base was vital. We're finally getting back there.
I love Godot, and this is great, but it's also probably inflated a bit because game jams are a great time to try things. New code, short time frame, low commitment.
That's not to say that it doesn't count, it totally does, and it's not to say that it's not great advertising, and some people were likely impressed and will start using it in their day jobs. But it isn't necessarily representative of the industry, even the indie industry. For some people it will unfortunately have been a summer fling...
But I bet in a few weeks there'll be a ton of videos called like "I used this FREE engine and you wouldn't believe what I thought!!!" 😛
This was apparently based on fields filled out during game submission. "Other" was just a selectable option among common engines, so there's no specific data to look through. I imagine it might be hard to parse every text response that might type the name of the engine used ever so slightly, but it would be nice data to have.
I have an idea to make a purposely shitty 90s live action digitized FMV point and click adventure game with an ugly UI, poor aliasing, and cheesy dialogue. I know Unreal and Unity enough to do this; but maybe I should fuck around with Godot. I have only heard about it for 2D games, so this should be workable.
For someone who's never done any programming in their lives, but knows a bit about PowerShell and Bash/Command Line scripting - how difficult is Godot to get into, just for some unserious playing around?
I have like 10 years unreal exp, but I really want to use godot for its free open nature. But man I miss the quality for artist, vfx etc. Its just not that polished in godot yet.
Obviously I don't know your life and how much your livelihood might depend on it, but if it impacts your decision any, I think you should at least start dabbling in it. You can look at any rough edges you need to smooth over as investing in the ecosystem and, for any added effort that's still too much to justify, drop any requirement for parity. Simple stylized graphics never go out of fashion, and the hardware crisis (which I think will last closer to a decade or more than a couple years) means the market will be even slower than usual to adopt the visual quality Unreal pushes for anyway.
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