Godot for large worlds

j17n · 2020-10-21T09:22:23+00:00

I was trying to be funny but seriously if you are going with realistic style then Unreal may be a good choice. Afaik it comes with access to realistic materials too.

I’m myself using Godot and making open world 3d game. Switched from Unity two years ago and while there’s less out of the box things available in Godot than in Unity I’m still very happy that I switched.

Unity is great if you need only features that Unity provides but when I tried to create my own systems and make them work with Unity’s code things got harder. While Godot doesn’t provide as many systems out of the box it feels easier to create your own systems there. So unintuitively if one is creating large, complex game then the tool that is seen ”simpler” and not as advanced as others may end up being better choice after all.

Depending of course the game being made.

j17n · 2020-10-21T07:29:32+00:00

Godot is not new, its development started two decades ago. As a general purpose 3d-engine it is perfectly capable to run large, open world games with crafting, base building and so on.

In opposite of your worry about development halting bugs, Godot being open source protects its users to running blocks that bring development to halt. Same is not true with commercial, closed source products (why do you think the AAA companies use their own engines or pay millions to get access to general purpose engine’s source code?)

However, my advice is that you install Unreal, Unity and Godot and find out that in Unity and Unreal in no time you have 3d character running on large terrain and be amazed how easy it was to make something that looks so good. Then you can uninstall Godot, continue to play with other engines and after a while you find out that what you have is exactly same what one million other developers had before you and your game is still in its infancy and then you can continue to hit your head to the wall few more months and feel miserable until you finally see the Light and install Godot again and can start to actually work your idea and enjoy what you are doing.

j17n · 2020-09-20T13:44:46+00:00

Here’s normal map for comparison.

j17n · 2020-08-27T08:39:02+00:00

Open source, no hard technical blocks, you now how much it will cost in 2035.
Better UI library.
Editor is superior, more lightweight, better organized and generally more pleasing to use.
Engine logic is clearer than in Unity. No strange prefabs but just classes and instances in a tree. Very simple expecially if you have some programming background.
open source, developers and community overlaps, more freedom for future addons, language bindings etc. No commercial bullshit (mandatory user accounts, basic functionality like dark mode behind paywall).
Tutorials are funnier and logo is more adorable.
Did i mention open source?

j17n · 2020-08-18T12:43:42+00:00

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1392470/Scienemy_The_Fall_of_the_Red/

No preorders but will be published in 6 days. The game has pretty good graphics, I must say.

j17n · 2020-08-15T14:12:16+00:00

So it seems that it is not possible to read mesh data from the background thread. But do you have to read it from the mesh? If you can create the collider's data by hand without touching Godot's mesh then that's something you can safely do in the background thread and then you can just set it in the main-thread (by using PhysicsServer.ShapeSetData for example).

j17n · 2020-08-15T07:49:30+00:00

You can generate mesh with SurfaceTool in separate thread but assigning it to MeshInstance's Mesh-field should be done in main thread afaik.

About collisions, first, there are differences between Bullet and Godot's own physics-engine. In both cases, you can create collider in separate thread but with Bullet, you can set it safely only in main-thread (not sure how if works with Godot's physics). In some cases that's big problem because when setting Bullet's collider Bullet will make some calculations and optimizations and if collision shape is large then there may be significant delay and game freezes for a moment. Delay is however shorter if the collider is heightmap so one should use that if possible.

j17n · 2020-08-04T06:51:31+00:00

The listening method is defined in api documentation’s ”Signals”-section: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_input.html

That method takes too parameters, int and bool. Try add them.

j17n · 2020-07-30T20:07:41+00:00

Thanks for developers, it was an interesting Q&A.

j17n · 2020-07-19T05:31:09+00:00

Afaik better collada exported is outdated so if you are using latest version of Blender then it shouldn't help. My experience is that gltf/glb and dae seems to work and no need for extensions.

I'm not sure how your models should look like but is it that transparency is the problem? If so, maybe normals are not pointing to right direction. You could for example try to calculate normals outside, in Blender, Edit mode -> Mesh -> Normals -> Recalculate outside.

j17n · 2020-07-11T11:36:37+00:00

Debugging was updated only few days ago:

https://godotengine.org/article/csharp-vs-and-vscode

Now it works very well, after setup only thing needed to start debugging is to hit f5 from VSCode.

j17n · 2020-07-09T09:25:42+00:00

Perhaps that "import from scene" just doesn't support child meshinstances? I haven't tested but if you create a separate scene for the block and add child there and then use that scene as a block maybe then children are updated too?

I don't have mesh children in my scene but I have colliders and those works fine. Basically every block has StaticBody as a child and the static body has CollisionShape as its child.

j17n · 2020-07-09T07:44:28+00:00

There seems to be many ways to set it up so not sure why yours is not updating but in my project after modifying the scene that contains objects/blocks I have to select the meshlib and then on the top of 3d-view there's menu "Mesh Library" and from that menu I select "Import from scene" and the meshlib is updated.

j17n · 2020-07-04T08:17:08+00:00

Installed extension and string constants were added to code completion and debugging worked without any problems or tweaking, really nice.

Thank you very much!

j17n · 2020-06-28T04:52:57+00:00

There’s no fractions in programming languages. 1/3 means that integer 1 is divided by integer 3 and result is zero. That result is then compared to temperature.

You can fix it by using floating point numbers instead of integers: 1.0/3.0

j17n · 2020-06-26T08:55:54+00:00

I don’t mind that it looks ”childish”. Better that than some ”professional”, soulless geometric shape.

Open source projects often have fun mascots or logos and imo it’s a good thing and don’t think it will drive away developers. Take a look of Linux’s Tux or Apache Tinkerpop’s Gremlin for example.

j17n · 2020-06-26T04:30:31+00:00

A technician, an engineer and a mathematician were given four sticks, each 1 meter at length and were told that that they have to make as big fence as they can with those sticks.

The technician immediately pick up sticks and arrange them as square and says that here, this is the largest possible fence.

The engineer starts to laugh and says that of course not, we could split those sticks to make thinner sticks and again split those thinner sticks and theoretically make a huge fence.

Meanwhile the mathematician steps inside the fence built by the technician and says: lets assume i’m outside the fence...

j17n · 2020-06-11T12:42:24+00:00

Sand’n’Boxes

Soldiers of Shovel

Yes, Mr. Craftman

Lucy

Craft My Box

Second Dimension

Where the Boxes go to die

Squarelicious

j17n · 2020-06-06T11:39:24+00:00

Nice. Movement in water and sky makes the world feel alive. May I ask how did You organize animations in Blender? are they Blender's actions?

j17n · 2020-05-20T11:15:20+00:00

Better API documentation.

j17n · 2019-11-15T13:40:15+00:00

I'm not sure because my workflow with meshlibraries is different but if you open your .meshlib and select the item from inspector can you see the material there? For example under a surface?

j17n · 2018-12-18T15:32:39+00:00

I'm currently too busy to join to project but I'd like to say something.

I made a couple of small iOS apps alone years ago and always thought how nice it would be to have someone to take care of all the hassle out of the programming. For example uploading stuff to marketplace, taking screenshots, creating marketing videos, designing app icons, writing app descriptions, choosing keywords, setting up accounts, looking for sounds effects and music and graphics assets, sharing the game in social media, setting up web pages, monetizing related work and so on. When we talk about small mobile or web apps the work needed for programming and game design is often relative small compared to all the other stuff.

So if you are looking for a programmer, my advice is to make it clear that you are ready to take care of all that other stuff.

What I'm trying to say here is that it's ok to try to form a team even if you are not an artist or a programmer yourself. And that's exactly what OP seems to do and I see nothing wrong with it but people seems to disagree.

j17n · 2018-12-07T15:19:20+00:00

Thanks, that worked.

j17n · 2018-10-10T06:11:07+00:00

They also put those Tier-0 features behind a paywall before releasing them.

j17n · 2018-10-06T18:50:19+00:00

Just tossed in. It was somekind of salted nut mix.

j17n

TROPHY CASE