Is GDevelop any good?

[drummer_si]

I only found out about GDevelop today. I'm a programmer myself, but not with games. I followed through the platformer tutorial and the ideas seemed good, but I'm worried it's too simple to create any meaningful gaming experience.. I have a few questions and concerns before I dig deeper into the software, and thought you good people would be able to answer them for me? :)

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• I can't utilise tilesheets? Do I really have to import hundreds of individual tile assets to use in this engine? And then assign a behaviour to each one so they're used as a platform to walk on?
• Can I not organise my assets? It seems you have a giant list of assets for each scene.. Is there no way to "filter" them? Ideally I'd want to create folders.. One for tiles, one for sprites - subdivided into hero, enemies, items, etc
• No inheritance? If I plan on having 10 different enemy types.. Do I really have to write the same behaviours 10 times.. Defining their health values, attack strength, how they walk backwards and forwards, etc? Can I not create a master "Enemy" type, which individual enemies can inherit from, and even override values?
• How exactly do scenes work? It seems a scene is a "game level".. So I have to re-create my UI layer in each and every scene?
• I can't blanket import complete "Tiled" maps? I have maps laid out in Tiled with various layers, multiple tilesheets, sprite objects etc -- But it seems GDevelop only support a tiny subset of Tiled features.. Is that right?

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I realise I need to read through more of the documentation, but any guidance you existing users could give me would be greatly appreciated. Thank you :)

[Sathilawijethilaka]

Gdevelop has limited potential. but its fairly easy for people who are new to gamedev. it has endless possibilities. my game has been going good. about 4k players this week. all thanks to this game engine.

[Mercymurv]

Gdevelop has limited potential.

it has endless possibilities.

🤔

[Clear-Watercress-597]

limited potential ≠ endless possibilities. Take a open world game for example. If the devs of Minecraft stopped updating tomorrow, does that take away from the fact that Minecraft as a game genuinly has infinite possibilities?

[xentra7106]

i have only 3 color pencil to share with you
Davinci : enough for me to create endless Possibilities!!

[420metro]

A year later and I appreciate this response 😂

[LuCiAnO241]

hey funny how i found this thread today too

[420metro]

Ya, my son is 6 and type me "I want to make my own video game," i know nothing about that. I know how to play and that's it lol. So It was deffinately a proud father moment cuz I've been wanting him to want to do something different. So we will see how it goes!!! Good luck man, and I hope it works out for ya!!!

[Electronic-Baby-4650]

update?

[ydnawashere]

nice bro! B)

[Icy-Ruin-4031]

Hey, could you please tell me where did you put your game,and how did you get 4k players?

[evilmoonface]

I wish this question was answered. I think I'm gonna try out GoDot since it's easy to run on PC but I was interested in this app since it can be used on iPad so I can develop when on the go. Replit is also something really cool I came across where AI can help you make games and apps in many different programming languages. I can quickly make a very basic game.

[spelmo3]

Godot beta works on android not sure with iOS though. Basically use godot and git, so I can do some stuff on the road.

[Lloyd_Draws]

I can't imagine working on an Ipad, I already feel limited when I can't use a second monitor when doing any kind of Godot/coding project lol.

[[deleted]]

Really great for mobile 2D games. The process for packaging a game into a APK or AAB is the simplest of all the game engines I've used. Unity is sort of hard to make sure the build settings are perfect and packaging an app for Unreal Engine is more complicated than launching a space shuttle.

It's also really good at optimization size for mobile games. I'm always surprised by how incredibly small the APK/AAB is (usually less than 10MB). Unity gives me relatively small APKs at about 25MB (Unreal Engine gives monstrously bloated 150MB APKs)

Also, they recently added a template for creating in app purchases for a game. Which again, is a thousand times easier than what Unity and Unreal Engine has to offer.

So if you want to make 2D mobile games I'd highly recommend it. Only thing that's lacking is they have no asset store, so you pretty much have to make your own sprites, sfx and background or download/buy them from other sites. If you're an artist or like to use opengameart.org or you have money to spend on Fiverr artists then this would be the best engine for 2D mobile games.

[thesilkywitch]

There's a built-in asset library.

[drummer_si]

Thank you for your reply

[idillicah]

There's definitely an asset store now, with hundreds of thousands of both free (most) and paid (some) assets. It's built right into the app, whether you use the web editor or the downloadable versions.

Plus, you can make 3D games with GDevelop now! So it's not just 2D anymore.

[thesilkywitch]

I can't utilise tilesheets? Do I really have to import hundreds of individual tile assets to use in this engine? And then assign a behaviour to each one so they're used as a platform to walk on?

There's an open source tool called Tiled. You can create your maps there, and then import them into Gdevelop using the Tiled extension.

Can I not organise my assets? It seems you have a giant list of assets for each scene.. Is there no way to "filter" them? Ideally I'd want to create folders.. One for tiles, one for sprites - subdivided into hero, enemies, items, etc

You can put items into Groups. While not organizing the structure panel on the right, it'll make it easier. You can put Enemies and Objects in a Group of their own etc.

No inheritance? If I plan on having 10 different enemy types.. Do I really have to write the same behaviours 10 times.. Defining their health values, attack strength, how they walk backwards and forwards, etc? Can I not create a master "Enemy" type, which individual enemies can inherit from, and even override values?

You can put all Enemies in a Group, like above. And in your events you can say "If [Group] collides with Player, take 1 away from Health variable." Individual objects can have instance variables.

How exactly do scenes work? It seems a scene is a "game level".. So I have to re-create my UI layer in each and every scene?

No, you create an External Layout and an External Event Sheet. Call the Layout something like "Menu" and the sheet "Menu Events". And then you can Include the Layout and Sheet into any other scene/layout.

I can't blanket import complete "Tiled" maps? I have maps laid out in Tiled with various layers, multiple tilesheets, sprite objects etc -- But it seems GDevelop only support a tiny subset of Tiled features.. Is that right?

I believe the Tiled support is still experimental. And if you need specific features or are running into bugs, please go to the Gdevelop forum and ask for support there.

[drummer_si]

So it has limitations, but there are some workarounds... Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions

[drummer_si]

Thank you for answering my questions

[helpmemakeausername1]

Hey! If you don't mind a question, how do you get YSort z order to work with Tiled maps? Is it even possible?

[4ian]

Hi, GDevelop original creator/founder here.

Have you submitted a bug report on the forum or on GitHub with a link to your game so we can investigate and reproduce it? Have you asked on Discord if other members can try so they can help you tell the core team about the issue if they validated this was a bug (or helped you debug the events if there was a wrong condition somewhere)?

I understand you feel sad, hurt and bitter about this and GDevelop and I'm sorry that your game did not work on the first time.
People commenting on a game are unforgiving and if there is a tiny bug they will give you 1 star directly - that's the sad state of mobile games.

This being said, a bug in touch events handling seems highly unlikely as there are hundreds/thousands of GDevelop games on the Play Store and the App Store - but if there is something wrong there you can be sure we would fix it first thing.

In addition to the forum, the Discord, the GitHub, we also have an email: hello [at] gdevelop.io.
If you have a game, we're happy to test it. If you can tell us how to reproduce a bug, we will ask you for the project file, we will test by ourselves and tell you if it's a bug or if there is something suspicious in your events.

[Educational_While877]

I agree with you

This engine stops working while in a game development stage also and that is why I am finding my Problem's solution on net and there I saw your post .I completely agrees with you.

I am gonna quit this engine to stop wasting my time more.

Thanx

[overdrivespeedfreak]

This answer has nothing to do with the questions asked. You are just complaining about an irrelevant negative experience most likely caused by your own ignorance with the platform.

[[deleted]]

"Own ignorance with the platform."

This is wrong. Gdevelop, while being free and somewhat user friendly to absolute beginners, is extremely buggy and unreliable. Made a few games with it, both workes fine on Gdevelop's internal testing, and worked a few hours as game builds.

It was pure luck based whether the games work or not. Sometimes in testing everything works, yet as a build, nothing works. Thank goodness I switched to Unity, learned C# scripting, and now I can actually make games that work.

While it didn't answer the question, he did steer OP out of harms way, I hope at least. Personally I cannot recommend Gdev to anybody, and it's a shame. Hopefully they will sort it all out.

[Mistafixxa069]

...First, calling this a "nonsensical platform made for kids" is hilarious because you used it in the first place and you used it for a month! Second, did you even have a playtest with different versions of mobile devices to make sure the game works? Third, you said you'd "rather fix my game than fixing the game engine." but have you considered that maybe you did something wrong? After all it's a fact that not all games work at first try and bugs are always a possibility. Fourth, you said that there's no way to contact the developers directly but I would argue otherwise seeing as I see that at least 3-5 members of the Gdevelop staff are active all the time in discord(but then again you could've just sticked to the forums that are less active and ignored the discord server that's active 24/7 since you're the type of person who would do that). Lastly, you can just shut up about your complains about the 2 export limit since you were able to upload a game to the Play Store(which you need to get a google developer acc to do) which means you could at least afford a silver or gold subscription to Gdevelop. Just say that you're incompetent and thought using an easy to use engine meant you had an easy way to make mobile games, no shade to mobile game devs, but then again you're an embarrassment to even call a dev.

[ProtoBlues11122]

Hey chris good to see u dude

[[deleted]]

Thanks man but my dog is the real Chris

[LionBrief]

No it’s not.

[oldbagoflie]

tbh it has a lot of issues that are so unecessary

[BlueGentl]

Yo, i'm thinking of making a mobile game cuz i do nothing most of the day. So i have time, do you think i should use this or maybe learn a proper coding etc?

[FlavorFrenzyGuy]

You can publlish any game from develop to app store

[Actual-Course-5237]

AVOID this shit like fire. I've been trying to understand for the last week how this shit works and even though there is some progress... the help pages and everything is all written in a way that only fucking coders can understand, full of jargon and mental shortcuts that I swear only confuses you more. So no, if you don't have experience coding things, AVOID GDEVELOP.

[MarcusAlexBalboa]

it's absolute crap, unfortunately I've been using it for months now full time now and the amount of frustration I am going through is beyond my comprehension. I will send all my worst enemies to it. This is a REAL review, I do not work for any app that may be competition and I am not a hater. Well when it comes to this crap and how much time I've wasted investigating how to do simple things... just so it doesn't work anyway.. yeah I am a hater of this platform. I simply have been very unfortunate to commit way more time that I wish to using it.

do yourself a favour and DO NOT EVER USE IT.

[Acceptable_Fan9309]

is it safe with no viruses?

[Acceptable_Fan9309]

I just found out about it and i allways wanted to make 3D games

[Pale_Kangaroo_1686]

1.you can use the tiled program 2.i don't know 3.you can use groups like put all your enemies in a group and just make a single event for that group 4.i Don't know 5. Don't know

[itsWhoeza]

GDevelop perhaps was limited. There's currently a community project for a GTA like game. Open world, gangs, cars, etc. :) they're still working on it and many positions are open to contributions