$12256 / $11500
Hi, im thinking of making my own game in 3D, i have basic programming knowledge though; so ill need to use a really easy engine, so far unity and godot seem my best choices.
i have already used unity and its prefab and scripting are very easy and confortable to use, there are lot of example code on web, ways to internally create a GUI was finally added. I dont care about its license , its a mean to an end not an expresion of ideology. The bad is that unity is a honey trap, and mostly everything you find around is trying to milk newbies into buying their scripts, also im more interested into turn based strategy and rpg while FPS are Unity main products.
What are the adventages of godot over unity from the perpective of a novice hobbyist?
General easiness of use, community, performance, code samples...
This website's content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
I only heard about godot yesterday - read up on it and got excited.
Today I downloaded and tried it, although it successfully downloaded and ran it had problems (windows 7).
e.g. textures all showing green in the 3d examples and other scene glitches.
I also downloaded Unity5 today and tried their examples. The full samples worked and look far more polished (the 3d objects are grey but this is intentional - to show that it is an example I guess).
I love what godot is and is trying to be. I will monitor it closely.
As a hobbiest I would be happy to dump time into Godot - but if I was trying to produce commericial products - I would go with Unity.
------------------
As far as honey trap goes - I may not have read into it as much as you, but my understanding is this:
Unity is free - you get to distribute on all devices that it supports until you earn more than 100k a year.
If you earn more than 100k a year, you either need to pay a monthly fee (based on modules) or a fixed price (based on modules).
I am going to interpret this like this:
For an individual developer - a decent amount of the 100k should be earnings from Unity related creations (not your normal day job).
The maximum price for Unity is $4500 (1500 base + Android + IOS) - but you get to use the $4500 software free until you earn a certain amount.
I think this sounds fair. If I make a substantial amount from Unity product(s) I sell (e.g. > 20k) - I will pay the once off $4500 and be done with it.
Disclaimer: Other than downloading and testing their examples - I have not used either godot* or Unity5.
I also do not intend to at the moment as I am enjoying the much more light weight Tululoo Game Maker (HTML5/Canvas/Javascript).
*Ok, I edited the 3d vehicles example in godot so that they could reverse (not just stop) when you use the down arrow - just commented out the existing line and copied the up arrow code line and put a - in front of the power variable). lol
UPDATE: honey trap - You may be referring to the Unity Store items. There are certainly a lot of things for sale on the Store - but I am pretty sure these are items that you won't find equivilant replacements in godot. i.e. They are pre-written libraries/games or sprite/texture packs etc that save you time - i.e you don't have to do it all yourself.
I still think that Unity has a fair pricing model - in that you can use it until making decent money from Unity products - at which point you really shouldn't be shy about parting some money on the thing that allowed you to make that money.
I really also like open source engines/products. Both have there place. I use both paid and open source software for different things/reasons.
I have never ever used Unity (and never even heard of Gdot). But, as far as I see at gamedev, most people successfully use Unity for a vast majority of projects from Snake/Tetris to FPS or strategies. It is also recommended game engine for beginners. Usually a specific 'game creator' for the genere is easier, but speaking of engines overall, Unity is considered the most universal.
I myself discovered godot just recently, it looks like its still in half of it development with lots of functions to be added in the future.
I just realized that there many engines out there, someone knows of a dedicated one for turn based 3D games?
Godot is pretty nice, but, since it's still relatively new, the documentation is kinda lacking. I've only checked out the 2D features of the engine and it was pretty easy to use, however, sometimes you have to search on the forum and experiment till you figure out how it works.
According to one of the developers, the 3D capabilities are not really up-to-date, but I guess if you stylize your graphics and don't go for realism, you can still make something decent.
For scripting, Godot uses a own language, Godotscript, which is almost like a stripped down version of Python, so very easy to learn. I would've preferred real Python for scripting, but you can't have everything. You can also just program in C++, if you don't mind the extra effort.
And since Godot is open source you'll never have to pay anything, unless you want to support the devs, and you have access to the source code.
However, I'm not sure if I would use Godot for a 3D game, because Unreal looks so tempting. Or maybe I would give Panda3D a try, because it uses Python for scripting and that's actually the only language in which I'm confident.
Yeah Godot is lacking documentation, especially for the 3D stuff.
But I am planning on trying it soon for a 3D game. The features seem modern enough for me, and I want to support an open source engine rather than a commercially focussed engine.
Addition to my first comment.
Why not try godot? You already tried unity and it is a large download.
Godot is only a 23mb standalone file - i.e. No install required. I REALLY love this kind of program, totally self contained and you can try the thing knowing that nothing is being installed on the system to clean up later if you need.
Also - the examples file with a good selection of examples is only 8.6mb.
So quick to download - just click on the file to run it with a small examples download to extract to try the examples.
You only need the export pack if you actually decide you like it and want to package your creation (you can play/debug the game via IDE without this pack). So don't get the export download (113mb) until you try out the program.
I really do like Godot in that it's layout is simple to understand, the script is very easy to understand and comes in a nice small package with lots of export options.
I really recommend trying godot and playing with it - even if you decide to go with a different engine for your game - I think there is a very good chance Godot will go onto much bigger things - why not be part of that?
How about Torque3D?
Torque3D seems pretty mature as well, has anyone had any experience with it?
Me
Because you mentioned godot and Unity - I was thinking you were after a cross-platform engine.
Torque3D for instance cannot compile for Android.
If you only want to target particular platforms - perhaps research your game engines using a list like this (that shows targetted platforms and engine type for the open source ones):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines
New versions of both Godot (Beta 1.1) and Panda3D have been released recently. I think the Panda3D version had been in development for a pretty long time and offers some cool new features like tesselation. BTW it's open source, too.
https://www.panda3d.org/blog/the-new-opengl-features-in-panda3d-1-9/
https://www.panda3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17770
Godot has some cool new features as well like auto-completion, shaders, 2D lights and 2D normal mapping.
http://www.godotengine.org/wp/godot-1-1-beta-is-out/
Some videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/reduzio
I'm checking out both engines at the moment.
Godot is probably slower than Unity, because it was designed to be portable and higher level overall. Nothing prevents you from writing game logic in C++ though, you do not have to use GDScript (which is a quite good language by the way).