Game Developers of Kiwi Farms

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Grub said:
Sounds like you need to read the docs better for the tools you use.

So you're perfectly happy to reinvent the wheel but looking over a bit of source code is too much?
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Documentation can be extremely vague these days. Epic's has improved since I first started, but they were sued back during the early part of UE3's lifespan for much the same reason and the developers won.
 
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Anyone here have any experience with the Wicked Engine? Looking for stuff to stack up whether or not to switch from Godot. I've made my own list and I guess im not sure of how it really stacks up. Did some googling and the info is sparse.
 
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Tiggie_Tiger said:
You should check out Casey Muratori and Jonathan Blow (who are legendary developers), they're notorious for writing everything from scratch, and it's insane how much they get done compared to other developers. Casey does a lot of educational videos on this sort of things and he's pretty entertaining to watch. Jonathan Blow streams a lot and he's pretty good also. Speaking of Jonathan, he's the developer of the game 'The Witness" and is currently developing a new game while simultaneously working on a new programming language (which those games are written in). If you care about that sort of thing, I highly, highly recommend checking them out.
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Also neither of them have released a product in a decade.
Tiggie_Tiger said:
Vulkan is a massive clusterfuck and I don't recommend it for most things.
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Allegedly it's closer to what actually happens on a graphics card which is disturbing to think about.
Seriously though. The amount of code required to render a single triangle is beyond a joke.

Judge Dredd said:
But the real benefit is knowing how the sausage is made. Every node in Godot is a black box unless you dig into source code I guess. It also helps curb perfectionism and scope creep.
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This confuses me. What more could you want?
A value inspector? A realtime debug value inspector? In-engine documentation?
What nodes are grinding your gears? Outside of the aforementioned GUI Size Flags shitshow*, I haven't really seen anything that obtuse.

*and I'm speaking as someone who HAS browsed Godot's GUI source code. Buttons are very strangely implemented with a dummy BaseButton class and I'm not sure why. It just hides the useful code.
Involuntary Celebrity said:
Does anyone have any pushback on the Godot shit-talking?
I've been meaning to get off of Unity for a while (primarily because of criticisms of the software and corporation I've held for years before the licencing controversy) and while I think Unreal is a better choice, Godot seemed like it might be chill to do a single project in from the dabbling I've done.
But if it's just inviting more pain I'd be glad to drop it before it has a chance to piss me off and I end up with another piece of software I need to compulsively rant about.
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It's still probably the most solid option for 2D out there and it being free goes a long way at sweetening the deal.
One thing that can't be sniffed at is its vertical integration. It feels like a cohesive editing suite instead of a bunch of disparate programs communicating via tin cans. There's a lot of tools for creating and working with custom data formats and that's one of the most important tools a game developer can have.
I also like its nodetree design and scene inheritance but that's just my opinion.
Zero MK 2 said:
Documentation can be extremely vague these days. Epic's has improved since I first started, but they were sued back during the early part of UE3's lifespan for much the same reason and the developers won.
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Was this the Silicon Knights suit? I'm not finding any other UE3 suit but Silicon Knights lost and the company was shuttered due to it.
 
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Coolio55 said:
Also neither of them have released a product in a decade.
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I'll be honest, that's not really a good argument to make here. The truth is, they've made products, and they're still actively working on things now. The number of products made over time is irrelevant imo. Casey is working on a game, but he's using it more for education.

Coolio55 said:
Allegedly it's closer to what actually happens on a graphics card which is disturbing to think about.
Seriously though. The amount of code required to render a single triangle is beyond a joke.
https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan/blob/master/examples/triangle/triangle.cpp
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Yeah, it's pretty shit. I've heard countless devs complain about it also. Some even refuse to ditch OpenGL for it.

Coolio55 said:
It's still probably the most solid option for 2D out there and it being free goes a long way at sweetening the deal.
One thing that can't be sniffed at is its vertical integration. It feels like a cohesive editing suite instead of a bunch of disparate programs communicating via tin cans. There's a lot of tools for creating and working with custom data formats and that's one of the most important tools a game developer can have.
I also like its nodetree design and scene inheritance but that's just my opinion.
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This is fair. Godot is ok for most 2D stuff. A lot of the people using it aren't trying to do anything major. But that's all it's really good for.
 
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Coolio55 said:
Was this the Silicon Knights suit? I'm not finding any other UE3 suit but Silicon Knights lost and the company was shuttered due to it.
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Yes that was the suit. That company was shuttered because Too Human flopped and apparently they tried to create their own engine using plagiarized code from the provided UE3 developer kits. Which is why they lost the suit.
 
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Coolio55 said:
Allegedly it's closer to what actually happens on a graphics card which is disturbing to think about.
Seriously though. The amount of code required to render a single triangle is beyond a joke.
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DumbDude43 said:
how much code would it take to do the equivalent in opengl or dx11?
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Judge Dredd said:
I left Blender a while ago, and I'm not coming back. Every time there was a major update, the atrocious user experience was fixed. I'd reinstall it only to find it to be as bad, or worse. I remember a feature was for it to save a texture that wasn't a material, you had to click a little F next to the texture name. This marked it as a "fake texture" and knew not to delete it from a save file. Complete random bullshit like that.
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blender is the kind of software you need to know what you're doing. this isn't good or bad, it is what it is. if you get better/faster results with another software that's fine.
that being said just because there's a lot in it, you don't need to know everything. removing options and features doesn't necessarily make a software more accessible, it just looks less imposing. ironically that's where "how do I do X" guides actually work better since they focus on the steps, not "learn by tinkering with it", especially if someone can't or doesn't want to spend the time.

Zero MK 2 said:
Yes that was the suit. That company was shuttered because Too Human flopped and apparently they tried to create their own engine using plagiarized code from the provided UE3 developer kits. Which is why they lost the suit.
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don't forget epic countersued, which lead to them having to trash all the existing copies. at that point it's easy to think "yeah well, they were dumb" - till the pubg thing happened, timmy tencents general antics and now the "coding language" shit...

Involuntary Celebrity said:
Does anyone have any pushback on the Godot shit-talking?
I've been meaning to get off of Unity for a while (primarily because of criticisms of the software and corporation I've held for years before the licencing controversy) and while I think Unreal is a better choice, Godot seemed like it might be chill to do a single project in from the dabbling I've done.
But if it's just inviting more pain I'd be glad to drop it before it has a chance to piss me off and I end up with another piece of software I need to compulsively rant about.
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if you have reasons to hate unity you probably gonna hate godot too. and not to look like a hater, there's a lot of shit in unreal too, no engine is perfect. but that's just the price you pay for not having to spend time writing your own.
people completed projects with it, so it probably does it's job. can't say how much nerves it gonna cost you tho.
 
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ZMOT said:
blender is the kind of software you need to know what you're doing. this isn't good or bad, it is what it is. if you get better/faster results with another software that's fine.
that being said just because there's a lot in it, you don't need to know everything. removing options and features doesn't necessarily make a software more accessible, it just looks less imposing. ironically that's where "how do I do X" guides actually work better since they focus on the steps, not "learn by tinkering with it", especially if someone can't or doesn't want to spend the time.
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Blender is one of the few open-source softwares I actually like. Once you get used to it, it's not so bad. In some ways, it's more powerful compared to proprietary alternatives.
 
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Grub said:
So you're perfectly happy to reinvent the wheel but looking over a bit of source code is too much?
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Yes.

Involuntary Celebrity said:
Does anyone have any pushback on the Godot shit-talking?
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Me. I like it. I use it a lot. People say it's shit for 3D, but I think 3D works fine and I'm working on at least one 3D game right now. It's the engine I've done my best 3D work in.

My main demand a lot of the time is that things just work. And Godot is very good at that. The fact the code editor is built in and robust means I don't have to worry about a point of failure elsewhere. I like the scripting language too. I know most people swear by C or C++, but I'm fine with scripting and have never had a performance bottleneck yet.

My complaints about it are from using it a lot. The engine has some weird idiosyncratic things about it. Like moving an object being done one of several different ways, and which work on which nodes can be a bit of trial and error. Which movement types have to multiplied by delta, and which don't. Things like that. Most of this is just nit-picks and can be brute forced or worked around eventually. My only real complaint is getting the UI to work "as intended".


Bit of a rant and a power level, but I was denied a place at university. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Back around 2008, I knew a bunch of people who went to university for game dev degrees. They'd laugh at me for using non-industry tools. GIMP, Game Maker, and Blender. The "industry standard" was C++, Photoshop, Maya, and 3DSMax. These universities would often have famous devs speak at them. The real prize was going to DigiPen, ie. The university the Portal guys came from. These people got their degrees, and then worked retail job while they waited for Gabe Newell to call them while I toyed around with dumb "babies first game engine". They were still waiting for that call last I saw them.

My point is, these people never made anything. Meanwhile these non-industry-standard tools would get vindicated later. Game Maker was just a babies toy until Hotline Miami. Unity was for asset flips until Harthstone and Cities Skylines. Nobody uses Photoshop to make textures any more. These days I get mocked for coding things instead of using plug ins, while at the same time getting shit talked for not building my own engine in assembly or C.

I don't make the best stuff, but at least it's something. And while there's a lot of shit-talking of Godot in this thread (some of it for good reason) it reminds me of the same attitude people had back then.
 
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I don't know too much about rendering so I could be wrong, but:

The difference between Vulkan and OpenGL is mainly explicitness and a difference between high-level and low-level. With OpenGL you call a few magic functions that do everything, and the GPU firmware might do spooky implementation-defined crazy shit to fuck you up. Vulkan is explicit about everything, which means you need to send 900 calls to the driver to render a triangle, but you can also do a few things to your pipeline that OpenGL simply can't.

Definitely a good idea to have Vulkan behind a high-level layer of abstraction specifically designed for your game engine and keep initialization boilerplate cleanly separated. If you do it right you can allow your engine to use non-Vulkan APIs too, in case you need to target WebGL or ancient devices.
 
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Here's something not programming-based for once:

I find this video very relatable as I am currently designing a town for my current main game.
 
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Judge Dredd said:
Nobody uses Photoshop to make textures any more.
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When you say textures, I assume you mean all the components of a material? Normal, metal, detail etc.? Which program do you use for this? I'm trying to find something that can make all this while not being a 3d modelling program.
 
Dull Pencil said:
When you say textures, I assume you mean all the components of a material? Normal, metal, detail etc.?
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And the textures themselves for things that aren't covered in the sculpt.

I still use GIMP for most things, though I rarely do any artistic work using it. I keep it because it does what I need it to do, and is flawless for technical stuff. My games have a low poly PS1 look to them and I haven't used a tablet for years.

Coolio55 said:
Also, the Cyclops Level Builder is a huge boon to Godot users. Hopefully Vincent Kalle won't have to awkwardly import BSP maps anymore.
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This led me down a rabbit hole of Godot add-ons I never knew existed. The camera add on in particular looks great. There's also add ons to fix the UI system. I never really bothered with add ons, but there's so much stuff there. Hopefully I don't become dependent on plug ins.


Unrelated. Where do you guys get sound effects from? I have a few from Kenney and OpenGameArt, but going beyond basics is tricky.
 
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Judge Dredd said:
This led me down a rabbit hole of Godot add-ons I never knew existed. The camera add on in particular looks great. There's also add ons to fix the UI system. I never really bothered with add ons, but there's so much stuff there. Hopefully I don't become dependent on plug ins.
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Can you name/link some of those? I usually just use vanilla Godot. I'm especially interested in the UI ones.
 
Coolio55 said:
Can you name/link some of those? I usually just use vanilla Godot. I'm especially interested in the UI ones.
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Phantom Camera is the camera one. I've not tried any yet, want to play with Cyclops Level Builder today.

As for the UI, I'm not sure yet. I've mainly been watching "Top X best add ons for godot" type videos on YouTube.

Edit: One I completely forgot about as I've not used it for a while. Not really an add on but just a gd script. DrawLine3D. You set 2 Vector 3s and a colour, and it draws a line between them. Super simple, and invaluable for debugging problems with rays. Especially when it comes to things like calculating line of sight.
 
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