Why Godot made me RUN back to Unity

Unity Dev tries another engine, what happens next will shock you! Nah but screw unity atm, wanted to check out some other engines.

About me -
Hi I'm TJ, a developer who is passionate about learning gamedev. I primarily develop games on the unity platform using C# but any code is fair game. I’m still learning a lot but hope you’ll enjoy my

Software Used -
Unity Version: 2021.1.22f1

PC Specs -
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080
AMD Ryzen 7 2700x
32GB RAM
Way too much caffeine

00:00 - Intro
00:27 - Unity Debacle
02:20 - What is Godot
02:55 - Initial Thoughts on Godot
04:48 - Why I went back to Unity
06:10 - Godot issues
08:05 - Why I'm Rooting for Godot
09:52 - How to Pivot from Unity

#godot #godotengine #unityengine #unity3d #indiedev #gamedev #indiegame #gamedevelopment #devlog #madewithunity #unity

[ExpensivePizza]

I think the backlash against Unity was very healthy for the industry as a whole. It reminded the big guys that they can't get away with shenanigans. It highlighted to the other engines what their weaknesses are. It made game developers rethink some of their decisions hopefully for the better.
That said, all of these things take time to shake out. In the short term I wouldn't be surprised to see many people go back to Unity but in the longer term it will bring more options and competition between engines which is a great thing.

[JH-pero]

As Godot users have noted, it was only a few years back that Godot was primarily being compared to Game Maker, but now it's far surpassed Game Maker in terms of activity. The momentum behind the project is quickly reaching the kind of critical mass Blender got a few years back.

The audience most likely to switch right now is mobile devs, and that is a pretty big deal. Mobile is still Unity's biggest market, and gaming's biggest market by revenue. Godot's earliest proprietary versions shipped small projects for low-end platforms(Wii, PSP, older Android versions), and so it has had, from very early on, a good grounding for what most mobile games need - the performance profile for typical scenes, the types of assets(UI, animations, etc.), and the specifics of how behaviors and interactions are added. Historically, Unity has just been slightly better for time-to-market than everyone else in that space, but not because of performance - it's because of the additional platform API support, asset store, and other conveniences. And while Godot is not yet ready to pull off something at the scope of Genshin Impact, if it gets more devs that push in the direction of higher performance, better platform support, more scripts and plugins, it could start to be a very close alternative in the next year or two.

[beeshings]

Completely understandable. It's hard to drop multiple years of experience with one engine to move to another and suddenly you're back to square one. Unity still messed up big time. I'm definitely moving to Godot.

[wolwox]

I've been working in Unreal for quite a while and switched to Godot to see what the fuss was about. While it's current 3D workflow is unintuitive in many regards (especially coming from an engine so catered towards artists) it felt very snappy and satisfying to iterate and poke around in the engine itself. I found GDscript easier and quite a bit more satisfying to use than all the visual scripting I've done in Unreal. There are definitely rough edges and mainly in the 3D workspace, shaders and post processing in particular, and there could be a lot of ease-of-use improvements regarding asset work. But that's also what really pulls me towards Godot, and is a bit of a silver lining in this whole mess. The fact it's unfinished and rough means anyone can dig in and contribute to its improvement, especially now that so many new eyes have tried switching over. I personally have my hopes up for the little engine that could. Great video, great presentation, great points, definitely subscribing for future shenanigans.

[xX-DogSama-Xx]

Godot's biggest strength is it's accessibility, it's super easy and super quick to get your project going and iterating on it, but if you're already aquainted with another workflow the change will most likely slow you down

[shinonkagura]

We have been working with Unity for YEARS, when the Unity debacle started we decided to change the engine! And you know what? It was the best decision ever!

[romulosendoromulo]

I'm a big fan of Godot and I plan on using it for years to come. Yet, I think it is important to point out the things it's not great at just yet.

[Midrule]

Two of my favorite things about Godot so far is its direct integration with Blender, you never need to export anything. It will directly sync with the project and update godot in real time with any changes. And the very powerful animation player, being able to run code from it is super useful when it comes to timing anything

[joshuamorris]

Solid game plan at the end there. Being as engine agnostic as possible will provide stability that's fully based on your own ability rather than anyone's C Suite.

[RonMar]

I 100% agree with you switching back to Unity if it better suits your project's needs, and the TOS is acceptable to you.
I'm also a Unity dev and did annual engine evals in the past but stopped about 4-5 years ago because I became complacent and too comfortable in Unity. No longer.
After all this blew up and I started looking at Godot, I also started a donation subscription to them. Even if I ultimately don't use Godot, It's my hope that Godot can become the Blender of GameDev in terms of quality and ease-of-use. I think we really need a viable Open Source option for commercial work.
Godot Preview: It looks like you don't have a Camera 3D in the scene. If you add one, you should see a (Camera) preview tick box in each of the scene windows.

[coobbyo]

Lol, as someone who has lost all interest in the short term for using Unity and has completely jumped into the Godot ship, the title of this video gave me a good chuckle. Loved the video loved your decision. With that said, having switched to Godot myself, I would love to see Godot content in the future. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you to do what makes you happy though 😉

[unfa]

Thanks for this video.

Professionally I work in Unity, but as an indie game dev I work in Godot. I have started porting my (at the time) Godot -based 3 game to 4.0 since it stopped crashing every five minutes (it was not even in alpha at the time) and I have worked way more hours than I'd want to admit to help nail various bugs in the engine (sometimes absolutely insane bugs that I couldn't make up).

So I can tell you that the dev team (and contributors!) have done absolutely incredible work over the past couple years, pretty much rewriting the whole engine from scratch, to fix some core design limitations and build a new Vulkan-based renderer. The fact that Godot 4 is already pretty usable and you can make and publish games with it - is amazing, however - in my opinion it shouldn't be considered rock-solid or truly production-ready for around 2 years still (now maybe18 months, IDK).

It's not a fault of the Godot developers, it's just nature of software development. After a near complete rewrite you have so many bugs big and small, that finding and squashing them all will take more work than Godot 4 had available. Hopefully the team will be able to hire some new people to work full -time thanks to the new donations.

[hoaxygen]

Regardless of which game engine you choose for your games, Godot's dev experience is quite comfortable. There are some things you need to get used to and some things that are a bit rough, but it's honestly a neat piece of software with huge potential. It kind of takes me back to the Blender 2.8 days waiting for 2.9 to drop that made it amazing and hasn't stopped being amazing.

[Ankh.of.Gaming]

A very reasonable take, especially given the type of games you're making. Godot's fairly recent 4.0 release should be considered its first major attempt to make inroads into the 3D space. With many gamedevs fleeing from Unity now, I'm excitedly hopeful that Godot will only accelerate its development into 3D.

For anything 2D, I'd argue that Godot has been unrivaled for quite some time now.

[liolyne]

Its nice to list all the shortcomings of godot right now. But I feel like it has some really nice advantages over unity. I did started godot after unity debacle and im amaze how polish it is for an open source engine. Signals are awesome. It is lightweight, good integration with vcs, script that doesnt take 30 second to build everytime you save a change (which drive me crazy on Unity). I port my 6 month old project from unity in a week and will not look back.

[herbert]

Very good take TJ!

Regarding your project (first of your videos I watched):
The whole working on a multiplayer game as a solo dev is bound to be a pain in the ass imho, but I only say this because I also have been there. Biggest pain point is that you need extra people for testing whether things are fun, as it is a multiplayer game.

My take on doing game dev as a hobby (completely unrelated, just felt like sharing):
- Having fun is the goal and the best indicator for whether we should change our approach. So even if I would never finish a single project in my life, it's fine if I had fun along the way.
- Don't overstress, it's a hobby
- Only ignore advice that is aimed at full time devs, if your goals don't align with full time devs.
- The obvious thing is, that it doesn't have to be profitable monetarily, so advice regarding this can be ignored
- BUT it still has to be mentally sustainable, which in my experience won't be the case for overscoped things like 3d multiplayer games.
- You CAN have bloated technical scope, but you HAVE TO balance this with tiny scope of the gameplay (ie MMO is possible, as long as the gameplay is ultra simplistic 2d stuff).
- I'm certain that more than 99.99% of game devs at some point abandon an overscoped project. The pain it induces is a valuable, necessary and apparently unavoidable lesson :D

[TerenceCole]

As a software dev, I appreciate you sharing your experiences with both engines.

[UsmanDev]

Yeah this makes the most logical sense, everyone needs to look at their own situation. Also bro looking good with the lean cut

[SleepyMatt-zzz]

Coming from an art background, I spent a good deal of time on Unreal using visual scripting, but found it limiting because I lack proper understanding in programming. I moved to Unity and still had difficulty grasping fundamentals, then I started using Godot and suddenly things started connecting more easily.

While it's shortcomings are easy to spot, I just find the application much more accessible to use so far. I'll probably pick a better engine when I grasp the fundamentals better, but for now I like what Godot has to offer. I think the lack of bloat just makes the program easier to work with for a beginner.

[Standbackforscience]

I'm all-in on Godot for my projects, but I 100% agree with your approach to moving the bulk of your work outside any engine and keeping all options open. I'm also doing the bulk of my work in Blender, and then using Godot to "preview" my assets.