Reasons to choose Godot over Unity or Unreal (or not!)

Liblast is an open-source multiplayer FPS game created with Godot 4 game engine and a completely open-source toolset.

We're always looking for contributors!

[liblast]

I find it quite strange, almost funny how many extremely unpleasant comments I see about Godot. And these seem to come from people who never have made a single game in it.

Why are you here guys? Do something that makes you happy instead! Your favorite game engine isn't going to go away or suffer because of Godot, you know? Keep using what you like!

Godot has it's niche, I don't claim it's the *best* engine or anything. It works for Liblast, and could be great for small or medium indie games, but it may not be the best pick for you, so don't feel attacked by this video :)

- unfa

[TheSunnySundberg]

Hello everyone here after the Unity apocalypse

[That_ne_Dev]

Why would you ever want to use Godot over unity?
Because Godot doesn't charge per install

[NuttachaiTipprasert]

One word: 2D.
I have been working with both Unity and Unreal professionally and Godot as a hobby. I found Godot offers a better 2D games development experience than both of the big two. For Godot, 2D is the first class feature and not some mashed-up mess that was in Unity and Unreal. If you are making 2D games, Godot is the way to go.

And having a lightweight editor is a big plus. Try to open Unreal or Unity compare to Godot and you see what I mean; especially Unreal which crashes quite often, restarting the engine every 10 or so minutes has become a huge pain point to me.

[marcusfanning]

As someone who uses unity I think it's really strange that unity developers can be so snarky towards godot as if unity wasn't also at one point that niche game engine that apparently couldn't keep up with the competition. Personally I see a lot of advantages to godot that at times even leave me envious such as the UI which is definitely far more intuitive. As a matter of fact I'd have to say the main thing godot has decisively over unity is how intuitive it is, even for me as someone who is atleast at an "intermediate" level of competency in unity godot just looks easier to read.

Nothing is more asinine than trying to open the unity animation controller editor or the shadergraph in an entirely different tab and awkwardly fiddling around with what feels like an unfinished API. Fun fact, a lot of things in Unity like the shadergraph editor etc are outsourced to smaller companies which is why they feel so out of place with the rest of the engine. Recently I had to completely reconfigure how I generate terrain in my current main project because of how awful unity's terrain tools are, I eventually just decided to mish mash together a procedural generation script from the internet but still, godot reminds me a lot of the advantages older versions of unity had where the company didn't have to awkwardly sellotape on new features to impress their executives, something godot doesn't have to concern itself with because it's open source.

And I'm personally not sold on the "there's a huge wealth of resources available through tutorials" shtick. In my experience if a tutorial is more than 2 years old you may aswell just close the video and save yourself the 20 minutes of watching and half an hour of fiddling with the engine that you can spend looking elsewhere.

Unity is still great, but it's simply foolish to scoff at Godot for being new or lacking features when half of unity's "features" it has over Godot are semi functional and when unity was once also that "new" open source engine no one liked.

[lapusanmirel]

Well you were totally right. Unity engine wont suffer because of Godot. They are perfectly capable of killing their game engine by themselves :))

[amishhousewife]

Solid, no bs video. Thanks for the work man

[Gamepro]

I feel more involved when I program with Godot. With other engines, I feel like my intelligence is insulted because they hold my hand and make me code with little blocks. Godot being free and open sourced is also great, but for me it's really just that I prefer using Godot.

[MrSanemon]

Not having to have unity crash and then waiting 20 minutes for my project to load back up is definitely a perk. Even Godot 4RC2 seems to crash less often than the LTS Unity install.

[oromain]

When you said "But it's not just a meme." I gasped cause I thought you were about to show us you literally making a game in the time you were waiting for Unity or Unreal to load lmfao

[lumeronswift]

It's such a light, easy, quick IDE... I build tools in Godot, not just games, and it's so quick and neat in comparison with those other tools.

[eyeemotion]

I think the last Godot I worked with, was 3.3 or something. I actually liked Godot and it was easy to get into. But as easy as it was to get into, it was just as easy to come to a halt. Designing a level in it was very cumbersome. Had to manually add (in Blender) collisions for the ground and roads. And got strange collisions/physics at certain spots for no reason.
Also, although initial car setup was straightforward and with a bit of tinkering, got the car to behave like I wanted, I "hit a brick wall" when it came to more advanced controls for it (like being able to drift). And biggest problem was, you couldn't really find much help in those regards.
In contrast, in Unreal I am able to create ground and roads, which automatically have collisions and I can easily edit on the fly. Even Materials adjust accordingly. The Chaos Vehicle is also easy to setup (although here also again, things like drifting is hard to find a solution to) and camera setup is even easier. And since I'm a visual learner, Blueprints are welcome addition. Also since I'm more a designer than a coder.

I don't know how much and how Godot has improved in the mean-time. I do miss it in some way, because indeed, the lack of options actually made it easier to focus. But Godot still seems more for programmers than for designers. And I don't think my coding-skills in webdesign and databases is enough to make any meaningfull progress, as game development, solo, is already a daunting task.
Who knows, I'll probably one day revisit Godot.

[pipeliner]

I hope Godot will grow more and that more specialized tools, templates etc will be available. Many years ago (when Unreal and Godot weren't that big) the main thing people told me that is good about Unity is the huge marketplace. We need this for Godot.

[AndyAndrewEntertaiment]

My dude, now you need only one reason for switching to godot and that is beacause :
1. Is similar to Unity
2.Unity added fees per installs on 12 September 2023

So as a dev that used Unity for 3 years, I will be switching to godot.

[Digildon]

me: starting to get bored
video : screams with reverberation
me: ok, I'm here

[Barnaclebeard]

I find it surprising that over several of these videos, I have not seen anyone present what I consider to be the most important and defining differences.

Godot's main advantage is that you own it. It's yours! You can do anything you want with it. Today, and forever; it will never be taken from you. You can predicate your entire business on it, and no one is going to yank it out from under you or milk your future success. The engine is never going to take a change of direction under new ownership. It's never going to be leveraged to force you to consume other commercial products. If you don't understand how it works, you just look at the source code. If you don't like what you see, you change it! There are no secrets, no limits, no traps laid by capitalists and scammers, no onerous licenses, no annual fees, no revenue limit, no seat limit, etc etc etc etc.

Unity or Unreal are not yous. You can only borrow them. Maybe. If their owners feel like letting you use it this year and you jump through the right hoops. If you're important enough, they might make the changes to the engine your project needs. If you're not, too bad, you can't do it yourself. Maybe next year Meta, buys Unreal. Maybe Autocad does, and starts charging you a subscription. Maybe in a few years you find out that your games have all been sending telemetry back to some other corporation you never even knew existed because you are not permitted to security audit your own software releases. Maybe if you make money at all this, they let you keep most of it. But maybe that changes tomorrow.

A developer using one of the major commercial development packages is a pawn of capital. The software exists to get your money and the money of your customers. All other functions are secondary to that. This philosophy permeates ever aspect of design. And so does the alternative philosophy, where software is written to solve technical problems and empower developers to create games. THAT is Godot's primary purpose, in stark contrast to Unreal and Unity. And I despair that people don't even give a fuck.

[sanketvaria]

thanks to unity, this video needs no explanation as to why godot is better than unity. lol

[ClokworkGremlin]

I don't mind GDScript, i just wish the sytax was a bit more similar to C instead of Python. There are a fair number of land mines in the more esoteric syntax that GDScript uses that trade off being able to code things up fast initially at the cost of spending unnecessary amounts of time tracking down a bug that, with a more conventional syntax, would have refused to compile in the first place.

[skorne]

Late to the party, but the reasons I love Godot are it's open source nature and lack of bloat. The engine is tiny loads quickly and makes small executables. It feels extremely efficient compared to the other engines out there. It's amazing really that almost everything you could need is included in that tiny download. Then there is the node and scene system, which the more you use it the more it makes sense, it's simply the best way of doing things unless you want to go into pure ECS programming.

Another plus for me is that the devs of Godot don't seem afraid to take apart the engine and rewrite parts of it that need it, removing and replacing where necessary. While that sucks for backwards compatibility it's so much better for the engine's overall health in the long run and truly, I believe why it's still so lightweight even in its 4th version.

If you look at Unity and especially Unreal, while they have more features they also have a metric ton of bloat that comes with it. I mean a UE5 install takes over 100GB for the engine alone wtf! Tell me how Godot can have 80-90% of that functionality in less than 200kb.

Should I also mention, the speed Godot gets updates. It's catching up with the big boys fast in terms of features.

[pietrusbauerus]

Why not explain an engine like a musical instrument?! People like to listen to music (play games) so other people who can play an instrument (able to use the given engine) make music (the game they are developing). So in this case, some people play piano and some like the guitar. Some like to listen to classical music and others hate it and listen to metal and rock.

The same goes for game engines as I mentioned. Someone may want to make a multiplayer FPS or an RPG with ultra-realistic graphics and someone else wants a farm sim with large story elements and in a pixel art style like Stardew Valley.

If unity is great for your fits, then use it! If you are stunned by UE 5's graphics and capabilities like Nanite and you have dreams and ideas you want to make real with those tools? Then just use it!
And if you want to use Godot (or actually any other game engine) 'cause it fits your workflow and doesn't cut you off, then just continue using it! There is no reason and no logic behind saying: "You just can't use engine X, because it can't handle topic X well. It is terrible!" As long as it feels good to use and serve your creativity and fantasy of making a game, it is good enough. Also saying "It is a bad tool/engine/whatever" isn't right. A good artist can make a masterpiece out of one simple pen.

So, please, just use the engine you like! :)