[HN Gopher] 2022: A Retrospective
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       2022: A Retrospective
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 96 points
       Date   : 2022-12-31 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (godotengine.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (godotengine.org)
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | Something I learned in 2022 through Godot is why these engines
       | often seem to write their own scripting language. It frustrated
       | me for years: I don't want to learn your custom language. Just
       | use something that exists!
       | 
       | But after spending time making some games for fun and learning, I
       | realised: 90% of making a game isn't coding. The code is usually
       | just glue, and you aren't hiring software engineers at crazy tech
       | salaries to do that. You're empowering your game devs to do it.
       | 
       | (Of course there's a lot of more complex coding in many games,
       | and there's bindings for other languages when you need that).
        
         | jayd16 wrote:
         | The goal is usually to have a scripting language for quick
         | iteration to go along with something with better perf but needs
         | a longer compile.
         | 
         | As you said, it's about empowering the devs, artists and
         | designers, not about perfect code.
        
         | jeremyjh wrote:
         | Also the scripting language is tightly integrated with the C++
         | object model without a lot of binding code because they can
         | rely on conventions in defining C++ classes and native
         | facilities built into the scripting language. You don't really
         | need to develop native C++ extensions anymore but it's a really
         | neat system to work with when you do.
        
         | m3Lith wrote:
         | So you exclusively used GDScript? I find myself kind of on the
         | edge of trying it out. I have experience with C#, so just
         | wondering if it would be worth it.
        
           | Waterluvian wrote:
           | I use it for 95% of the code I write. But then I have the
           | occasional CPU intensive code and I drop into (attempting at
           | the moment) Rust.
           | 
           | Note that I make toy games for myself. I can't speak to games
           | targeted for release.
        
         | jpswade wrote:
         | The code is not the value.
        
         | reassembled wrote:
         | GDScript seems very similar to a simple Python syntax. I really
         | had no problem picking it up when working through some Godot
         | tutorials. The syntax is so simple that if you ever needed to
         | port it to another language it should be quite trivial to do
         | so. I would be interested to hear the experiences and opinions
         | of anyone who's written a considerable amount of GDScript
         | though.
        
         | johnfn wrote:
         | Agree with this. I'm a huge proponent of static typing systems
         | and good languages, so seeing Godot create their own language
         | was a huge sticking point for me - I even created a typescript
         | to gdscript compiler! But after a while, I realized that
         | GDScript was remarkably productive, even though it lacks a lot
         | of the bells and whistles that I'm accustomed to.
        
       | drpossum wrote:
       | I want to give some kudos to the author at being classy and not
       | mentioning Unity's missteps and focusing on the good stuff they
       | did internally. I've been impressed by how relatively coherent
       | Godot has been and fostering the community around it.
        
       | dopeboy wrote:
       | Very much an aside and downvote if too much of a tangent - if I
       | wanted to create a command and conquer like game (ideally like
       | generals where it is 3d) - how would I go about doing that? Is
       | Godot an appropriate engine for that?
        
         | amitmathew wrote:
         | Very possible! I'm in the process of building a C&C-like
         | prototype, except 2D. I'm hoping to post a tutorial + code in a
         | couple of weeks on our site (link in profile). If you want some
         | assets to get started, you can use a free asset pack we
         | released and the one I'm prototyping with:
         | https://quiver.dev/assets/art-assets/outpost-assault-
         | tower-d.... You'll definitely want to read up on the navigation
         | system in the Godot and I imagine fine-tuning that will be a
         | bulk of the work. If you have any questions, feel free to send
         | an email (in my profile).
         | 
         | If you are looking for a 3D tutorial, this one seems pretty
         | good: https://www.godotrts.com/courses/rts-game-development-
         | course... (but I haven't used it myself).
        
         | brainzap wrote:
         | love generals, would also want to play it
        
         | karpierz wrote:
         | Any engine is fine; the hard part is getting familiar enough
         | with the framework to execute you vision on it. And developing
         | the ancillary skills (broadly artistic talent/vision, and
         | familiarity with art tooling) to do so. Or having someone else
         | to outsource that to.
         | 
         | Unity has a much larger community and will have much more in
         | the way of intro tutorials, so I started there.
         | 
         | But regardless of the engine you choose, you'll probably spend
         | the better part of a year building tiny games (like tic-tac-toe
         | -> pong -> breakout -> Tetris -> etc) before you can execute on
         | anything more complicated (like a 3d RTS).
        
           | vvanders wrote:
           | Any engine can work, there are advantages with choosing
           | engines that people build similar games with. I spent ~6mo
           | "adding" core engine features(LoD streaming, etc) to a UE3
           | open-world title because most of the games on UE3 at the time
           | were very on-rails shooters.
           | 
           | That said I agree 100% with building tiny games in an
           | iterative fashion to understand the engine you're using, or
           | taking a very narrow "vertical slice" to help flush out where
           | the technical or game mechanic issues will be.
           | 
           | There's a wealth of good engines out there today where you're
           | building on in some cases literally decades worth of
           | development that can accelerate a lot of the work involved in
           | building a game(and there is a _lot_ of work there).
        
       | nassimsoftware wrote:
       | Really glad to see successful games made using Godot like Dome
       | Keeper. This helps signal to others that Godot is viable for
       | gamedev and will probably have an added effect in its adoption.
       | 
       | I however still prefer to use Love2D as I found the code first
       | approach works well with how I like to code games. The cool thing
       | with Love2D is that there are a lot of libraries that you can use
       | that help you save time.
       | 
       | It's analogus to Django VS Flask where Django is Godot and Flask
       | is Love2d where you have to hand pick libs you want to use.
        
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