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Two years after the Unity controversy, how are things going with Godot?
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This post did not contain any content.> "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 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.
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This post did not contain any content.Nice to see Godot is still going strong.
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> "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 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."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 then need a big red intro button that says "Click here for realistic lighting!"
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> "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 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.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.
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This post did not contain any content."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)?
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"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 then need a big red intro button that says "Click here for realistic lighting!"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. 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.
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This post did not contain any content.
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"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)?the one I will make in 2–54 years' time
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the one I will make in 2–54 years' time
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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](https://programming.dev/c/godot) 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.
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> "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 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.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 befire you can b3gin 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
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> "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 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.> “But Godot doesn’t assume that, you need to fiddle around to make it look nice." > 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. It's so easy.
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the one I will make in 2–54 years' timeOne day...
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"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 then need a big red intro button that says "Click here for realistic lighting!"Don't worry, 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.
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> “But Godot doesn’t assume that, you need to fiddle around to make it look nice." > 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. It's so easy.I'm following what you're getting at, it just feels the dev quoted makes "fiddling" 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" under this same context.
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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. 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.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.
