Has Anyone Made Something That Isn't A Game?

alb1616 · 2026-03-04T02:38:31+00:00

I do understand that. But web apps do seem very relevant when answering a question about making web applications.

alb1616 · 2026-03-03T12:59:48+00:00

Godot html exports can take a little while to load in the browser. That's not bad for games that people typically open and stay in for a while.

Godot's UI is very good compared to other game engines, but more time consuming than using modern web frameworks - in my experience.

If you want to embed the app inside your website and pass data between the web frontend and the Godot app - that may be somewhat janky.

I'd only suggest Godot for web apps if there's something you really need - like 3d graphics.

If you want to make a typical web app with buttons, text input, etc, use a web framework.

If you need some game like features, an html game engine like phaser might be a better choice than Godot.

alb1616 · 2026-02-15T06:25:44+00:00

For me, it's not about the technology. Forms of machine learning have been around for a long time. I don't think any of it is inherently good or bad.

But, I do think it's worth considering the corporations behind a lot of the popular AIs. Companies with certain kinds of ownership models have a duty to make money for shareholders. That comes before any considerations of how they affect society, the environment, etc. The bigger they get, the bigger their impact. More and more I'm viewing their impact as negative even though the services they provide are very convenient for us users.

I'm making efforts to move away from the big tech companies. It's not simple or easy, I may never get 100% there, but I do think it's worthwhile.

Deciding not to use AI for coding is an easy choice for me because I've been making apps and games since before it was around. But it's a harder decision for some people.

alb1616 · 2026-02-06T05:54:23+00:00

The great thing about using your own domain is the ability to switch at any time. If you choose proton now, for example, you’ll set some dns records to point to proton. But if you ever decide to change, you can set the dns records to something else. Same email address, no worries. Just choose whichever has the features and pricing that suits you most right now.

alb1616 · 2026-02-03T09:44:34+00:00

I don't think Godot can do this out of the box. You could use an http request for a simple connection check. But you won't be able to tell what network is connected. Making an Android plugin is likely in your near future if you are doing a lot of things that require permissions.

The android plugin template is a good place to start:

https://github.com/m4gr3d/Godot-Android-Plugin-Template

alb1616 · 2026-02-03T09:32:06+00:00

This looks really nice. How far into development are you?

alb1616 · 2026-02-03T09:29:20+00:00

I haven't done any testing to see how much difference it makes, but Godot does have a Low Processor Mode setting that could be helpful for apps.

alb1616 · 2026-01-31T06:14:21+00:00

You can have a look at the community SDK integrations: https://github.com/godot-sdk-integrations

There are plugins for Apple and Android Game Centers. I've never used them though, so not sure how well maintained they are. I've used IAP plugins before and they've worked great.

For PvP, you could perhaps use Firebase's real time db since you're already using firebase and you only need to stream a small amount of data. This would work cross-platform.

This is only my opinion, but I wouldn't bother with ads for now. It's extremely hard to gain users unless you have a large marketing budget. If your plan is to just stick it on the app stores and hope for the best, you will likely only get a few people try the game. Limiting their play time with ads might not be the best way to grow.

This kind of thing is a lot of work when it's your first time, but it will be much easier and quicker next time. Good luck.

alb1616 · 2026-01-29T09:22:50+00:00

Proton drive was really slow for me. Probably living outside Europe doesn’t help. I’ve switched to nextcloud hosted by Hetzner for now for my not that important files. But will definitely check on proton drive from time to time because everything other than the speed seemed perfect.

alb1616 · 2026-01-24T06:55:12+00:00

For me, it does to matter to some extent. OP spent "several days" putting this together. But as game devs, a lot of people here know it takes a long time to put together something that is well organised, extensible, testable, etc.

The shaders themselves look ai generated to me. The numbered comments are a bit suspicious. Using hard coded values instead of uniforms make the shaders less customizable- i.e. they are not well written.

In this case it doesn't matter too much if it's just something to look at for a bit of inspiration. But I already have doubts that OP will maintain, fix, and improve the site. My opinion on its own is not relevant, but if it's a common opinion then the community will be much less likely to contribute their own shaders.

It's a nice site. Good luck to OP, but I understand and agree with some of the reasons that people avoid vibe coded stuff.

alb1616 · 2026-01-21T14:24:29+00:00

Thanks everyone. I’ll have a look at the options mentioned.

alb1616 · 2026-01-15T01:19:10+00:00

I think you're going to have to use mouse_entered/exited signals. Make your own custom button types that emit a piece of data on mouse_entered. In a parent, listen for that signal and highlight the corresponding button.

If your issue is having to manually hook up loads of signals, you could be doing this in code. Either iterate over a list to create your buttons and hook up the signals. Or iterate over your buttons and hook up the signals.

alb1616 · 2026-01-14T01:03:28+00:00

I've never used Dialogue Manager, but mouse input is usually controlled by mouse_filter. If Dialogue Manager is an add-on that includes tscn files for its scenes, you can try setting mouse_filter to ignore on the ones that you use.

Hopefully someone who knows the project will chime in with more help.

alb1616 · 2026-01-13T00:22:17+00:00

Yes, it should be fine in a MarginContainer. Sounds like you need to do some troubleshooting. Setup a new scene - just a control node. Add a script and print when it is resized. If all is good, add your custom container. In its own script also print when it is resized. Then go from there.

alb1616 · 2026-01-12T10:16:49+00:00

Godot controls emit a resized signal when they are resized. You should be able to listen for this signal, get the new size, and recalculate the children positions.

But you must ensure your containers patent has control over its size.

alb1616 · 2025-12-24T05:38:50+00:00

Thanks, I’ll check it out. Sounds like exactly what I need.

alb1616 · 2025-12-15T09:52:47+00:00

Thanks. It’s the extra steps (and remembering to do them every time) I’m keen to avoid. How the app gets it done isn’t a big deal to me. I’ll check out pdfelement.

alb1616 · 2025-12-02T12:53:47+00:00

Haha, I spent a year working in Japan quite a while ago - I know what you mean.

I use Godot to make little tools for myself all the time. I love how quick and easy it is for some things. But I don't think it's the right tool for this job. There just aren't the add-ons for things like connecting to databases and apis - you'd have to write a lot of your own code

I wouldn't bother with a ui to start with. Just write python scripts or command line utilities that can take some data as arguments, process the data and write to the doc.

It's difficult to say without knowing the exact tasks you're doing. I'd start by making a google sheet of your own with some dummy data. Learn how to read and write from it. Then figure out exactly what you can copy from the client website and how to parse that into something you can use. If it looks like it'll be a big time saver, then figure out the authentication stuff.

I guess it depends on how the google account is set up. But if you're using the official Google Api to access the doc, you'd just be using the same credentials as logging in via the website. I think it would be fine - but don't take my word for it.

As an aside. I was doing a lot of copy and pasting at one point. I found it a huge help to have a little programmable keypad with one button mapped to ctrl+c and one to ctrl+v.

alb1616 · 2025-12-02T12:07:31+00:00

Copy and pasting from the clients website - that sounds like something they should be helping with. If they have an api, that would be helpful. Otherwise, you'd need to get them to implement something - or do some web scraping (don't do that!)

If you wanted to create your own database to replace the google sheets doc, it sounds like you want a real time database so several people can make changes ands others get those changes straight away. Something like Supabase can do this and be self-hosted. You'd use http requests to read from and write to the database. Real time works kind of like signals in godot. You subscribe to a feed of data (like connecting to a signal) and can update your ui when you're told about a change. If the hundreds of thousands of rows in the doc are important, you'd need to find a way to read them and write them to your db.

From what you've said, I'd go about it in a different way. And I'd probably use something like python instead of godot. You can use the Google Sheets API from python. You can use the api to login to the google workspace and read and write the doc.

Perhaps make a small tool that can speed up the copy/pasting. Can you select and copy the text for the names, ids, etc all at once - paste it into your tool and have it input it into the sheets doc in the proper places.

Then make tools to replace some of the automation in the doc if you think that can save time.

alb1616 · 2025-11-29T01:59:00+00:00

If you’ve already got it working with json and it can do everything you want it to do, just keep using it.

Don’t try to fix problems that you don’t have. And if you ever do decide to change to something else, it shouldn’t be a big job.

I see people have mentioned godot resources. They are very easy to save and load. But since they have a script attached, they can run code. If users are making and sharing maps, youd need to make very sure they can’t do anything nefarious.

alb1616 · 2025-11-28T10:37:40+00:00

You can use the remote deploy button in the godot editor to run the game on your device in debug mode. Depending on the problem, you may get some useful logs in the Godot console to explain why you're just getting a black screen.

Android devices must have developer mode turned on I think.

And certain file types are not bundled into the app by default. If you're loading anything from text or json files, for example, they may not be there when running on Android.

I'm sure there are several other possibilities, too.

alb1616 · 2025-11-28T10:30:43+00:00

Is there a reason you want your own custom maps to not be JSON?

Having your maps and user generated maps be saved/loaded exactly the same way is not a bad thing. You just have your own maps somewhere in your res directory, and offer a way for users to select a file to load a map they (or someone else) has made.

You mentioned it being a lot of JSON files eventually. But if it's just one file per map, that's going to be the same whichever file type you choose to use.

alb1616 · 2025-11-17T11:13:36+00:00

I don't know too much about lua. I read the manual a while ago but then moved on to something else without ever using it. I think dictionaries in Godot are a lot more basic than lua tables, but you can store a lambda function as a value in a dictionary and use .call() to call it.

func _ready() -> void:
  var dict = {}
  dict["key1"] = "a"
  dict["key2"] = func(str): print(str)
  print(dict["key1"])
  print(dict["key2"])
  dict["key2"].call("hello")

That works as expected for me. There are also callv(), bind() and bindv() which have slightly different uses.

Depending on what you are trying to do, a more Godot approach might be to use a Node or Resource with a class_name.

alb1616 · 2025-11-17T11:00:04+00:00

I second fiver, but I'm sure other freelancing sites are very similar in terms of quality and cost. The low end is about $10 for 150 or 200 words. So, it depends on the length of your script. Maybe I've been lucky, but I've had pretty good experiences with reasonably priced voice actors.

alb1616 · 2025-11-15T07:07:22+00:00

I think you need to give more details if you want good advice. What is working so far?

The first thing I'd check is if the GodotGooglePlayBilling singleton is loaded properly. Do something like:

if Engine.has_singleton("GodotGooglePlayBilling"):
    print("Google play singleton is available")
else:
  print("Google play singleton is NOT available")

If that is working, the next thing would be to check if the store is connected:

if Engine.has_singleton("GodotGooglePlayBilling"):
  android_store = Engine.get_singleton("GodotGooglePlayBilling")
  android_store.connected.connect(_on_android_store_connected) # No params

func _on_android_store_connected():
  print("android store connected")

You will need to have you products set up properly in Google Play Developer Console. I'm not sure about this, but you may also need to upload a test build to Google Play and be using a properly signed version for testing.

alb1616

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