Waiting for Godot games? Help game devs find and embrace FOSS game engines and/or development suites!

[Marlock]

There is a new kickstarter up to help create more help material for game devs to be able to use Godot (the free and opensource game engine):
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gdquest/create-your-own-games-with-godot-the-free-game-eng

If I understood correctly:

This is not the first time the dudes behind this kickstarted do it and Godot developers are really supportive of their work.

A lot of the produced material will be released free and example code will be published as opensource on Github, and open to outside contribuition there from the get-go.

This looks like an interesting patronage to join, and at the very least it is nice to look around for the links to other already published material mentioned on the page, as a way to get acquainted with game development and Godot.


It goes without saying that games adopting a FOSS engine are a good thing for Linux as a gaming platform, right?

[Marlock]

update: after the above linked news spreading like wildfire, Epic Games comes public to explicitly say they won't abandon EAC support for Linux and they are actually working on Wine support for it.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/easy-anti-cheat-is-actually-still-supported-for-linux-a-statement-from-epic-games.14077

So in the end it's just that issues with EAC on Linux take longer to get fixed (it's a lower priority for an obvious reason), but support is not being dropped.

[Marlock]

Godot will get help from Valve themselves to create a more complete support for the Index controllers' full finger tracking feature via OpenVR.
https://godotengine.org/article/godot-3-2-arvr-update
(check the "Valve Index" topic)

In other VR news, there is a new Khronos Group (the one behind Vulkan, SPIR-V and glTF) specification being built for unifying AR/VR across all interested platforms:
https://www.khronos.org/openxr

Valve is backing it too as can be seen in the "Companies Publicly Supporting OpenXR" section of the page. Possibly the colaboration with Godot can help Valve establish how to someday better include the feature in that standard.

edit: It is awesome that some shinny new stuff is already being gobbled up by open-standard initiatives instead of becoming entrenched proprietary messes for decades.

[Marlock]

Fun fact: Godot devs seem to have an extreme idea of what an LTS release can mean
https://godotengine.org/article/maintenance-release-godot-2-1-6

Has anyone seen an entire new architecture support being backported before?

Google Play now mandates the support of its two 64-bit architectures, arm64v8 and x86_64. The former was already included in Godot 2.1.5, but x86_64 was missing and added first in Godot 3.1-stable. The templates for this architecture are now also included in Godot 2.1.6, and will be included in an upcoming Godot 3.0.7 for the same reason.

And here is why:

The answer is yes, on a "best effort" basis and focusing on release critical and security issues. What we consider "release critical" are issues which prevent people using Godot 2.1.x in production from releasing or updating their game, such as crash issues and adapting to the changing requirements of distribution platforms (mainly Google Play and Apple Store).

Many users started projects years ago with Godot 2.1 and are still developing them, about to release them or need to ship updates. Upgrading to Godot 3.0 or later is not straightforward due to various compatibility breakages that we did at the time, so these users need long term support.

I like the fact that they clearly state which platforms cause most backwards breakage and that linux isn't on the list.

I am also a bit stunned that this kind of chage isn't an overwhelming challenge for them. Must've done something very right designing their software to be able just add x86 android on a whim like this

[Marlock]

Only now I've found out the devs of the honorable opensource game Battle for Wesnoth have been working on porting the whole game to Godot

This is actually not new info but I missed it completely at the time, and now has been reafirmed via their twitter and mentioned by Gaming on Linux in an article for a new beta release of the old engine:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/foss-fantasy-turn-based-strategy-game-battle-for-wesnoth-has-a-new-beta-still-porting-to-godot-engine.14945

For those that want to keep an eye on the progress, this is their github entry for the prototype:
https://github.com/wesnoth/haldric

[Marlock]

Great news for Godot, and some interesting backstory about another opensource gaming support project (Nakama) by Godot's new sponsor:
https://godotengine.org/article/heroic-labs-supports-godot-development

Nakama is an online social multiplayer backend already available for use integrating in Unity, Unreal and others.

Also Godot devs are working towards version 4, which will finally implement Vulkan support (of ultimate importance for futureproofing the engine and games made with it). More on that in the GoL news:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/foss-game-engine-godot-engine-just-gained-a-new-platinum-sponsor-.15138

[Marlock]

Godot being used to write a pixel-art drawing tool called Pixelorama:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/need-to-make-some-pixel-art-pixelorama-is-a-cross-platform-foss-tool-worth-looking-at.15610

[Aoi Blue]

引用自 Marlock：

Godot being used to write a pixel-art drawing tool called Pixelorama:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/need-to-make-some-pixel-art-pixelorama-is-a-cross-platform-foss-tool-worth-looking-at.15610

Yep, Godot is designed specifically to be the base engine of an ecosystem of development tools as was as an engine for the games that those tools target.

It is part of why they keep the engine so small. Their intent is for third party tools and plugins to fill in the gap. I'm surprised this program isn't available as a plugin for the GoDot IDE as well.

[Marlock]

Adding support for developing VR games (from Linux if desired) for a stand-alone VR set (Oculus Quest) based on Android:
https://godotengine.org/article/godot-oculus-quest-support

Bonus: how easy it is to test-deploy to Android when using Godot.

[Marlock]

The good thing about new year celebrations (besides everybody happy, eating and drinking) is the retrospective posts many enjoy doing.

Godot is no exception as one of its founders and main developers decided to go full out and tell us the short but adventurous story of the software since its inception up to current developments and a bit into the future:
https://godotengine.org/article/retrospective-and-future

[Marlock]

Godot devs have been busy organizing a game devs convention, aptly named GodotCon, happening in Brussels along with FOSSDEM:
https://godotengine.org/article/schedule-godotcon-2020-brussels

The talking points for each part of their event are up now, and a quick look around them makes me even more respectful and in awe for the amout of work and know-how involved in creating games

[Marlock]

Godot 3.2 is out now!
https://godotengine.org/article/here-comes-godot-3-2

Nearly 2000 issues got fixed, lots of these being longstanding bugs and usability improvements, so it's likely to be a good version for devs to use for a good while as we wait for the 4.0 version (the one with Vulkan) now going in full tilt development

ps: I'm fascinated by how careful and detailed their posts about version changes are, most notably how they document changes that may break game projects and how they handle support for old versions to avoid forcing the bigger breakages on the game devs too soon

[i_nive]

I're recently found "Godot-made games on Steam" https://steamcommunity.com/app/404790/discussions/0/412448792354265655/

TBH, only "Fatastic Creatures" rings a bell...

[Marlock]

Gaming on Linux brought in great news!

Godot has received an eEpic Megagrant and is quickly gaining popularity*:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/godot-engine-was-approved-for-an-epic-megagrant.15913

*= that based on engines used on the Global Game Jam, which likely is biased in its favour, due to being FOSS it has been specially popular among indie studios and freelancers, but still significant as it is still an order of magnitude behind Unity but already 3rd place and half the way to Unreal in that segment.

引用自 i_nive：

I're recently found "Godot-made games on Steam" https://steamcommunity.com/app/404790/discussions/0/412448792354265655/

TBH, only "Fatastic Creatures" rings a bell...

It is steadily gaining traction, but still really used only by smaller indie studios and light games.

This is in part due to not being so well known, but also because it has a ling way to go to perform well for heavier games.

From what the devs themselves said recently, Godot's graphics engine itself is not very robust yet, but hopefully will be in better shape for bigger games on 4.0 with the Vulkan overhaul.

It's no coincidence that it is going crazy well on Itch.io:
https://itch.io/games/tag-godot

[Marlock]

Does your Godot-made game or tool (published or work in progress) fill you with joy? Would you like to proudly showcase it in the upcoming 2020 showreel? Please send them a short video of it!
https://godotengine.org/article/submissions-open-godot-2020-showreel

Making a showreel seems like such a sweet idea.

[Marlock]

New one and it's quite cool!
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-fantastic-deck-builder-dicey-dungeons-has-a-big-bug-fix-update-plus-a-new-modding-tool-is-out.15912

Despite Dicey Dungeon not having been developed in Godot, they have recently released Dicey Modgeons (their set of modding tools for the game) and it turns out this is another non-gaming tool developed inside Godot
(also the tool is FOSS and, as expected of Godot's offspring, utterly crossplatform)