[HN Gopher] W4 Games formed to strengthen Godot ecosystem
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W4 Games formed to strengthen Godot ecosystem
Author : larsiusprime
Score : 103 points
Date : 2022-08-09 15:00 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (w4games.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (w4games.com)
| jacooper wrote:
| Great!, I hope this won't turn Godot into an open core model in
| the long run.
| hlship wrote:
| Read the FAQ; they are pretty clear that Godot stays MIT
| license as today. My read of all this is that they are
| intending to provide similar porting services as some of the
| others (who they mention and link to) BUT because they are core
| contributors to Godot as well, this yields the proper
| impression that they are here to stay whereas we don't know the
| plans of the other groups that incidentally provide Godot
| porting services.
|
| In addition, being able to check the "enterprise support
| available" box on any kind of evaluation matrix could be a very
| big deal to larger developers.
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| Enterprise support is huge. When something is going wrong on
| platform X and you have a month before launch, you need
| access to engine experts with an SLA.
| d13 wrote:
| What does this mean?
| xyproto wrote:
| By reading the article I see that it means that a company has
| been started.
| 202206241203 wrote:
| Monetisation phase starts.
| madrox wrote:
| I'm really excited to learn Godot. With the way Unity has
| changed, it increasingly feels like the right engine for hobby
| projects. I hope they avoid the missteps Unity made, but the
| approach they're taking here feels great to me.
| rychco wrote:
| Great news, I'm very excited for the future of Godot. Once Godot
| 4.0 reaches beta, I'll hopefully have some time to play around
| with it for hobby projects.
| yrgulation wrote:
| As soon as godot offers better support for 3d and matches at
| least unity's hdrp i am switching to it. Had enough of unity's
| crappy asset store and "engine".
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| The 4.0 release is supposed to be much better for 3D games.
| It's about to go from alpha releases to beta ones.
| k__ wrote:
| Does Godot have a better asset store?
| yrgulation wrote:
| Rather than the scam / low quality filled unity asset store,
| having none is better.
|
| Edit: It may be an interesting idea to build one for godot
| tho.
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| "Having none is better"... but there are some incredibly
| useful assets on the Unity Asset store? Here are three off
| the top of my head that I've used for a while now and
| they're worth every penny:
|
| Shapes - https://acegikmo.com/shapes/docs/
|
| Easy Save 3 - https://moodkie.com/easysave/
|
| InControl -
| https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/input-
| management... (but I've also heard Rewired is excellent.)
|
| Unity would be far poorer for missing them.
| noidexe wrote:
| In the case of Godot a lot of functionality is available
| out of the box. Biggest example is input management. You
| have an InputMap section where you define actions and can
| assign keys/buttons to it. Gamepad layout is
| automatically handled for thousands of controllers so
| that "right face button" is the same input event whether
| the user is using an xbox gamepad, a pro controller or
| generic.
|
| There is an official Asset Library but only for free, MIT
| licensed assets. There's nothing stopping someone from
| creating a paid one, though.
| yrgulation wrote:
| "In the case of Godot a lot of functionality is available
| out of the box."
|
| Indeed. Most assets listed by OP (and are rightfully high
| quality) are essentially "patches" for unity's crappy
| engine.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Most are patches for unity's crappy engine. Indeed those
| listed are cool.
|
| Also, cool game screenshots and idea listed on your about
| (sorry, had to look for some reason - perhaps to switch
| my mind from unity's shit documentation, which I am
| reading at the moment).
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| I really wish there was a Shapes-like library but in C++
| and not Unity, in the style of Dear IMGUI. It would make
| game development in general much easier... (Though it
| would have to be tied to render APIs like DX/GL/Vulkan
| because of the sheer amount of customized shaders that
| you need to write for it.)
| Sakos wrote:
| > This will be achieved by W4 providing commercial products and
| services offering such as enterprise support plans and the
| possibility to access markets that were previously unreached by
| Godot, such as console platforms.
|
| This is the most detail I could find on their site about what
| they're actually planning.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| A common complaint about Godot has been the lack of an official
| path to console ports, and the Godot team have asserted that
| it's not possible for Godot itself to directly support this,
| due to being open source and non-profit. Looks like this is the
| workaround.
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| By forming a company they can finally provide "official" (though
| guarded by NDA) console support for Godot. This is by far my
| biggest issue with the engine and why it's a complete non-starter
| for any serious game development.
|
| It also means they could provide paid support when Bad Stuff
| happens with the engine. For a similar reason I have enterprise
| support with Unity, and it's been worth it's weight in gold.
| echelon wrote:
| This is all so smart. Commercial support and premium features
| are huge.
|
| Over time Godot will eat into both Unity and Unreal. No indie
| developer will want to hitch themselves to these locked down
| commercial engines. Only big gaming firms will do it, because
| they want the support and maturity. Or niche businesses, such
| as ArchViz. They have teams to do license negotiation.
|
| For indie devs, this is the first time you can "own your entire
| codebase" while including a technically capable and
| sophisticated engine that wasn't written in-house. This gives
| them free reign over how to distribute their games and code.
| They can even give their players full access to the code
| itself, which is a game changer for preservation and modding.
|
| As Unity and Unreal mindshare drains, Godot will pick up
| serious steam. An entire ecosystem will form. Godot will catch
| up, feature for feature.
|
| Epic Games is currently chasing {games, film, archviz,
| automotive, Geo/GIS, etc.} with Unreal Engine, meanwhile small
| and nimble startups will leverage open source Godot to fully
| throw themselves at each of those markets. They'll do a better
| job than Epic could ever do with their divided attention.
|
| Godot is going to change the future of several industries. It
| may slay the game engine giants.
|
| Google, Amazon, and Apple will begin contributing to Godot. If
| the writing isn't on the wall for Unity and Unreal by that
| time, FAANG support will make it crystal clear.
|
| W4 Games needs to make sure it protects itself from AWS Luna,
| Google Stadia, etc. so that it can set terms for those
| platforms favorably in the future. That way it can continue
| making money from building up this incredible platform.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Wait... so PC-only game development isn't serious?
| no_wizard wrote:
| For a _Game Studio_ no, I don 't think it is.
|
| For a _Game Engine_ yes, it relegates you to an (albeit still
| quite large but inevitably an order of magnitude smaller)
| niche and hinders adoption significantly
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| Picking a game engine that subtracts hundreds of millions of
| potential players from your game without huge engineering
| effort to support a single console? Yea, that's a problem.
|
| Thankfully, Godot is solving it!
| TillE wrote:
| There are many successful game genres which are
| functionally PC-only, because you cannot reasonably play
| them with a gamepad. See Paradox grand strategy games, for
| example. Those "potential buyers" never existed.
| sorry_outta_gas wrote:
| I play some paradox games on xbox with no problem, they
| are included with gamepass now
| the_only_law wrote:
| I'm not touching CK3 on Xbox until I get the northern
| lords DLC.
| codingcodingboy wrote:
| cpeterso wrote:
| I've read that Godot doesn't support consoles (out of the box)
| because it can't integrate NDA'd console SDKs and tools. But
| why can't the Godot IDE use a plugin architecture that
| delegates to console SDKs and tools that the game developer has
| installed on their own machine?
| Kyrio wrote:
| One of the creators of Godot, Ariel Manzur, already has a
| company that provides signed developers access to NDA'd console
| ports of the engine. It's not official in any capacity, and
| isn't advertised by Godot more than the other companies that
| offer the same services (Pineapple Works, gotm.io, etc.)
|
| I assume it's going to be the same if W4 ever moves into
| porting.
| ouraf wrote:
| Anyone found info on how much seed capital they got? The company
| itself has been dormant for 10 months, so I'm curious to see how
| much they needed to make this a reality
|
| https://www.solocheck.ie/Irish-Company/W4-Games-Limited-7050...
| j_4 wrote:
| Well, to be perfectly frank I'm wholly negative about this. The
| corporate gobbledygook in the FAQ doesn't include anything to
| assuage my fears about the obvious conflict of interests for the
| core Godot developers. I'm a full time indie dev. I just started
| donating to Godot's Patreon after the recent Unity / IronSource
| kerfuffle and wanted to pick up the engine for my next title. I
| guess I'll be cancelling that subscription much sooner than I
| expected, and I don't know what I'll be doing now, tool wise.
| [deleted]
| Kyrio wrote:
| The interests of Godot as a free software project are protected
| by the Software Freedom Conservancy. Some of the original
| authors or maintainers forming a company doesn't affect that.
| j_4 wrote:
| I understand that there are failsafes in place to protect
| against the conflict of interests, but it doesn't mean the
| conflict of interests isn't there, otoh it's extremely
| blatant. I am almost certain that it will affect things. I
| trust the devs mean well, but the incentives here are
| directly aligned for things to get ugly at some point.
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| Absolutely, since venture capital can potentially steer the
| current engine developers (with money) towards a direction
| that isn't aligned to FOSS or indie game development. I
| hope that they can withstand any pressure from investors if
| it has potential to damage the integrity of the project.
| (They have already gotten donations/sponsors from some
| online casinos and shady blockchain/metaverse companies
| before, although I think it was with minimal strings
| attached.)
|
| Since Godot is MIT other devs can always fork the engine
| and start developing from there if this ever happens, but
| the expertise from the original devs would still be lost.
| ehnto wrote:
| Yes I am a bit more optimistic than the original
| commentor on the issue, but I have to agree that it's
| clear outside pressure is appearing. I don't necessarily
| mean W4, I can see the need for a company to serve the
| commercial interests of the community and I think this is
| a good way to do it. Perhaps W4 might even shield Godot
| from some of the negative incentives of influential
| donors.
| jcronenberg wrote:
| A TL;DR from one of the founders on godot's subreddit:
|
| New company independent from Godot, funded by venture capital (so
| has enough money to build products until it can actually make
| money).
|
| This company will build products and propose services which are
| yet to be announced - there's a hint that one product will be
| console ports.
|
| This company will provide funding to the Godot project so more
| contributors can be hired, and will also donate its own
| employees' work time for significant contributions to Godot
| (we'll soon announce some).
|
| But as importantly, it will provide the level of commercial
| support that bigger studios need to be able to switch to Godot.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/wk5ji6/hello_world_w...
| throwgaway29 wrote:
| > funded by venture capital (so has enough money to build
| products until it can actually make money)
|
| What a dumb move.
|
| > more contributors can be hired
|
| Game development is in the dictionary definition of the
| mythical man month.
|
| > But as importantly, it will provide the level of commercial
| support that bigger studios need to be able to switch to Godot.
|
| Nobody is going to do that.
|
| You know how Hacker News is really negative about stuff that
| turns out to be a huge success? There should be a name for the
| opposite, where a bunch of nerds get really excited about
| something that will definitely remain insignificant.
| carlosdp wrote:
| You could have said the same thing about Blender (open-source
| 3D modeling/animation software) a few years ago, and you
| would look like an idiot today.
| _manifold wrote:
| It's actually surprising to see the amount of negativity
| surrounding Godot on HN. The top comment in the thread
| about Godot's 3.5 release was someone talking about how
| Godot's feature set is "below average" compared to Unreal.
| I think you would be hard pressed to find any Godot user
| that thinks it is in the same class with a product
| developed by hundreds of engineers at a billion dollar
| company. Yet, because it has an enthusiastic user base
| (which is a good sign for a FOSS project), that somehow it
| has to compete with all solutions in its category. To your
| point, it would be like comparing Blender to 3DS Max or
| Maya in the mid 2000s.
| outworlder wrote:
| Hacker News can be a pretty negative eco-chamber at
| times. The same post can either generate very positive or
| very negative comments, just months apart. Not a new
| phenomenon (remember the post by the Dropbox founder?
| "Why do I need this when I can rsync").
|
| That said, if all the non-constructive negativity is
| filtered, there are often gems buried in the comment
| section, with genuine constructive criticism. As a
| neutral observer it's relatively easy to find them. If I
| was emotionally involved with a project, however, I'm not
| sure I'd read the threads.
| slezyr wrote:
| > > But as importantly, it will provide the level of
| commercial support that bigger studios need to be able to
| switch to Godot.
|
| > Nobody is going to do that.
|
| > You know how Hacker News is really negative about stuff
| that turns out to be a huge success? There should be a name
| for the opposite, where a bunch of nerds get really excited
| about something that will definitely remain insignificant.
|
| Let's call it trolling.
|
| I work with B2B software(software library) and...
| professional support sells well, and companies are ready to
| pay a lot for it. Many customers won't even buy the software
| without support.
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| Only good can come from this. Any additional real competitors
| in the game engine space is a welcome effort.
| moomin wrote:
| If I were then I'd be working on an asset store. But I'm sure
| they've already done the math on this.
| mathnode wrote:
| That's great to hear. Most commenters are focusing on the issue
| with console development.
|
| Godot themselves wrote about it in July:
|
| https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-need-...
|
| It's a fickle beast indeed. But what many people gloss over is
| the fact the option is there! Make your full game now or just a
| PoC, happy with the knowledge there is already help available.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| For all the talk about Godot on HN, it doesn't appear to have any
| actual uptake in the gamedev community...
|
| Does anyone know of any AA or successful indie games that were
| made with Godot?
| lazlee wrote:
| Baba is You
| j_4 wrote:
| Not Godot.
| lazlee wrote:
| Oh. I was sure I saw a talk by it's creator saying he used
| Godot. Pardon me, if that was wrong
| lazlee wrote:
| Yup, just googled. My bad. Ill show myself out - no need
| to call security. :-)
| sempron64 wrote:
| Wrought Flesh
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1762010/Wrought_Flesh/
| j_4 wrote:
| Cruelty Squad. Probably not the best poster child for engine
| capabilities on the tech and graphics side, haha. Unarguably
| successful though.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388770/Cruelty_Squad/
| Chris660 wrote:
| I know of Resolutiion, but no idea how successful it's been:
| https://resolutiion.monolithofminds.com/
| robotnikman wrote:
| If you browse /r/godot on reddit you will see plenty of people
| who show their finished games or games still in progress.
| csense wrote:
| Sonic Colors: Ultimate
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Colors#Sonic_Colors:_Ult...
| thrillgore wrote:
| This is great news for Godot. I know this has been bandied about
| for a while but to have a proper SLA offering partner for Godot
| legitimatizes it as 4 approaches.
| codingcodingboy wrote:
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