[HN Gopher] Godot Arrives in the Epic Games Store
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Godot Arrives in the Epic Games Store
Author : riidom
Score : 107 points
Date : 2023-03-17 20:33 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (godotengine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (godotengine.org)
| ncallaway wrote:
| > Starting today, you can choose to use EGS to download the
| engine and keep it up to date with every release
|
| Curious the level at which they auto-patch and update the engine.
| Most games that I'm aware of are very sensitive to their engine
| version, and don't update major or minor versions completely
| freely.
| smolgumball wrote:
| I wonder if they patch a base installation of some kind (think:
| a core project selector / launcher) and then individual
| projects contain a copy of the engine at time of creation?
| _manifold wrote:
| While it will inevitable be larger in the future, Godot's
| current executable size is so small something like this could
| actually work.
|
| At the very least I would want something like Unity Hub which
| can manage both projects and engine/editor version
| installations. Being locked into whatever version of Godot
| Epic Store considers to be "current" sounds like a nightmare.
| pacifika wrote:
| Yup and Godot Flatpak upgraded straight to 4.0.
|
| Simple case of direct download fixed it. Godot doesn't even
| need an installer.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| yea a big selling point to me using godot is downloading the
| binary of the exact version im building with and stashing it
| away. i dont want even minor vers to be automatically applied
| and dont really see the gain here other than exposure
| extrememacaroni wrote:
| No one's going to make anything serious with the auto-updating
| version from either Steam or Epic, it's just for advertising
| purposes.
| brundolf wrote:
| Trying to figure out what Epic's incentives are here
| (contributing to a competitor that doesn't make them money in any
| roundabout way I can see)
|
| Edit: Here's a weird theory, maybe Epic doesn't see Godot as a
| competitor to Unreal, but does see it as a competitor to Unity,
| and hopes it'll spell doom for Unity (which is Unreal's only real
| competitor)
| gl-prod wrote:
| Get money from people selling games on the store?
| brundolf wrote:
| This is about them distributing the engine itself on the
| store (and apparently even contributing to it), not just
| allowing games made with the engine on the store. Presumably
| you could already do that
| mhh__ wrote:
| Kill unity
| danbolt wrote:
| I think Godot's workflow and structure is closer to Unity's, so
| this strikes me as Epic trying to commoditize their
| competition.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Just so you know, the original version of this quote was
| "commoditize their complement", not "commoditize their
| competition"
| johnyzee wrote:
| But that's not what they are doing. Godot/Unity are not
| complements to Unreal. Epic are, in fact, commoditizing
| their competition, which is low-end, indie-friendly games
| development platforms.
| colordrops wrote:
| You all have been reading hacker news recently too I see.
| m463 wrote:
| it all goes back to joel on software from 2002:
|
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-
| letter-v/
| danbolt wrote:
| Yeah, I had looked up the term to double-check before
| posting, but I felt that it didn't quite fit as a developer
| picking Unreal was unlikely to also use Unity for a game.
| brundolf wrote:
| Jinx :)
| crazysim wrote:
| Pre-emptively stave off the anti-trust!
| mattlondon wrote:
| Godot is the on-ramp.
|
| I.e. people use Godot to get started and "learn" gamedev. Many
| will stop there and not progress beyond Godot, but some will
| want more/latest features or want to use a "proper" engine and
| so move onto Unreal.
|
| The alternative starter-space is Unity, and that is more of a
| competitor for Unreal since there is a lot of starter materials
| and tutorials, _and_ unity can make commercial quality stuff
| (three Unity games that come to mind are Two Point Hospital,
| the Outer Wilds, and Rust)
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Also: Amplitude (the Endless Series, Humankind), mihoyou
| (Genshin Impact), Developer Digital (Fall Guys, ironically
| published by Epic Games), Paradox (Cities: Skyline).
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| A lot of top indie games like Cuphead, Hollow Knight, and
| Neon White are all Unity too.
| tpmx wrote:
| What's the risk? Godot is no threat to Unreal Engine.
| brundolf wrote:
| I tend to disagree, Godot's been putting out some really
| impressive graphics improvements lately. But it's possible
| Epic agrees with you
| tpmx wrote:
| Please do realize that according to your own web site
| (https://www.brandons.me/) you're a javascript developer
| having opinions on why Godot is supposedly catching up with
| Unreal Engine to the point that it's becoming a threat.
| [deleted]
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Godot is no threat at all to Unreal, at the high end of AAA
| development you really need the dialed-in horsepower of either
| an in-house engine, or something like Unreal, which has been
| increasingly consolidating market share over the last decade.
|
| Godot competes squarely with mid-market stuff: Indie, so-called
| "Triple-I" (high budget """indie""") and AA development, where
| Unity is the dominant engine. Unity has very little penetration
| share among the big AAA games.
|
| Godot and other open source engines squeeze Unity from the
| bottom, and Unreal squeezes it from the top.
| _hypx wrote:
| That's worryingly close to the same story high-end Unix
| providers told about Linux. If there is an open source engine
| that does 99% of what a proprietary engine does, then it's
| very likely we won't see that proprietary engine last for
| much longer.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Worryingly?
|
| Why would that be a bad thing?
| echelon wrote:
| How long until every tech company pours massive and
| substantial investment into Godot to turn it into the Blender
| of AAA games and film? It's almost to the point now.
|
| Amazon will ditch Lumberyard for Godot. They have deep
| interests in games as a part of their vision. Twitch, Luna,
| in house game studios, prime gaming, etc.
|
| Apple will absolutely do it. They're building their own
| metaverse and VR. Although I'd also gamble on them acquiring
| Epic Games. Apple wants to own the future of content
| creation.
|
| Google's significant investment in WebGPU is going to make
| Godot a more attractive platform. Google is indirectly
| contributing to this.
|
| As Godot gains more and more mindshare and economic activity
| happening atop it, it will achieve the activation energy
| required to take on AAA rendering and workflows.
|
| Companies will see Epic as a tax. And the entire world will
| be submitting patches to Godot. Godot is already spawning an
| ecosystem of support companies and console SDKs.
| riidom wrote:
| The situation is a bit different, because Unreal and Unity
| are by far not so much of a money-milking PITA as Max &
| Maya are.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| >Amazon will ditch Lumberyard for Godot
|
| They are using O3DE now, which actually seems better than
| godot for 3D at first glance. Only issue so far is there
| isn't much of a community.
|
| Edit:
|
| >Although I'd also gamble on them acquiring Epic Games.
|
| That is never happening.
| _hypx wrote:
| O3DE is just open sourced Lumberyard.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| I know, I was just pointing out that they have a
| better(?) open source engine already.
| objclxt wrote:
| > Although I'd also gamble on [Apple] acquiring Epic Games
|
| Given Tim Sweeney holds a controlling stake in Epic this
| seems like the least likely outcome.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Given you seem to know a lot about this, what's the main
| reason why Unreal is great at high end AAA, while Unity is
| not?
| pdntspa wrote:
| Personally I think it is because it has terrible
| performance. Scenes that Unreal seems to be able to render
| at full frame rates run at a fraction of that in Unity.
| Even its vaunted 2D system is slow as balls... load times
| for Graveyard Keeper, as an example, are agonizingly long.
| And for what? A hundred megabytes at most of 2D pixel-art
| assets? What is the engine doing with all that time?
| Certainly not just loading and decompressing shit into RAM.
| cdchn wrote:
| Reminds me of the unnecessarily long GTA Online loading
| times that were a result of parsing a giant JSON file. Is
| it really worth blaming the engine when maybe its the
| game doing something improper?
| pdntspa wrote:
| Maybe, and I don't know the details. I just have a hard
| time seeing how something like Graveyard Keeper doesn't
| load nearly instantly.
| floydnoel wrote:
| Epic has shipped first-party AAA games with Unreal. Unity
| has not done so. They had a planned release (of a high
| quality first party title) but have more recently cancelled
| it.
| dbrueck wrote:
| I'm a daily user of UE but not a game dev, so my
| perspective might be skewed, but nearly everything in UE
| targets high end dev (even the clunky parts, haha). The
| materials and rendering stuff are stellar, but also things
| like their asset pipeline and content workflows all have a
| "big project" vibe.
|
| Sometimes the complexity of UE can be overwhelming. For
| example, if you're just trying to set up an AI-controlled
| actor to animate differently in some different states,
| you'll initially be frustrated by the gazillion bits of
| setup work you have to do. But in every case I've seen,
| that complexity exists to support the flexibility and
| richness needed by top of the line games.
|
| Basically, for better and for worse, UE was written by and
| is used by people who have built, shipped, and supported
| AAA games.
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| Particularly when it comes to 2D games development!
| Fracturing that space is far more beneficial for Unreal than
| it is for Unity. Unreal, at least from my understanding, is
| awful for 2D. I'm playing around with 2D game development in
| Unity now and it's insanely easy to get started. I think the
| same goes for Godot where 2D dev work is a first-class
| citizen.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Godot is (becoming) a very good competitor to Unity. Godot
| pre-4 was not ready for prime time, but Godot 4 is almost
| there. I'm pleasantly surprised by the leaps-and-bounds they've
| made over Godot 3/3.5, and Godot 4 has surpassed Unity in a
| number of areas (though in some cases, they've been assisted by
| Unity shooting itself in the foot, such as with Unity's non-
| existent networking functionality and chaotic approach to
| render pipeline development).
|
| However, Godot 4 still has a ways to go before it's competitive
| with Unity in the AA space (meaning, for example, games by
| studios like Paradox, Amplitude, or miHoYo). Mostly, the asset
| pipeline still needs a great deal of work. Hopefully the Epic
| investment will let them reach parity (or exceed) Unity on that
| front.
| b33j0r wrote:
| Hey, more people installing the Epic Games Launcher is probably
| the win. Platform neutrality, or its specter, probably wins for
| us.
|
| It'd be much more offensive to our sensibilities if it were
| like the situation on iOS where Amazon is available, but "no
| way will we let you buy a Kindle book unless you reopen the
| store in a web browser."
|
| (Because yeah... apple sells all the books I want to read, in
| their very cool bookstore that I haven't seen in more than half
| a decade.)
|
| At any rate. Anyone serious about godot is probably compiling
| it or getting the official release artifacts. This seems like
| something Epic probably couldn't justify turning down as window
| dressing for the unreal store. I'm for it anyway.
|
| Edit: more optimistically, if the GUI framework were slightly
| easier to use, Godot is a very attractive tools development
| platform. Maybe that factors in.
|
| Perhaps for end-user tooling, like map editors. Obviously Epic
| is motivated to keep devs inside Unreal for as many internal
| dev tasks as are feasible.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Embrace, extend, and extinguish
| andybak wrote:
| Doesn't really make sense in this case unless you have any
| specific insight?
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| I think it also sends a message to Godot users to publish their
| games in Epic's store.
| waboremo wrote:
| Important to note: the contributions in question are a $250k
| megagrant. Throwaway money for Epic, but major for the small
| Godot team.
|
| $250k for good PR and not being viewed as anti-competitive is
| an exceptional deal when you consider Google is doing the same
| to the tune of $400 million for Firefox.
|
| Also in the short term Unreal's dominance matters, but in the
| long term it really doesn't. Epic has spent the absurd levels
| of Fortnite money trying to establish itself as additional
| integral layers for developers/creators so that even if Unreal
| stops generating any revenue it'll be fine.
| zuluonezero wrote:
| Every time I open Unity these days it I hate it a little bit
| more. Everytimy I open Godot I love it a little bit more. The
| bloat vs the transparency. The frustration vs speed of
| development. Godots catch phrase should be: Godot gets out of
| your way! Unity may have democratised game dev but Godot made it
| fun again.
| enlyth wrote:
| I feel the same way. I haven't actually completed a full game
| with Godot but it was a joy to use when playing around with it
| and making some simple proof of concepts.
| thrillgore wrote:
| A better slogan would be "Stop Waiting. Start Creating."
| because it's a clever nod to the Beckett play, and how abysmal
| using Unity is.
| waboremo wrote:
| Godot and Blender share the same space I feel in regards to
| getting a tremendous amount done within such a contested space,
| all without falling prey to the usual open source traps.
| Exceptional projects
| moffkalast wrote:
| Is this just Epic Games looking at Godot like "hmmm yeah,
| definitely not even close to being a threat to UE" hah. I suppose
| they're right, with how buggy 4.0 still is.
| waboremo wrote:
| No this is Godot publishing on the store because they recently
| released self publishing tools on the store. EGS already has
| non-game apps like Spotify and Opera available so they're
| really open to whatever that isn't adult rated or abusive.
|
| Godot is also available on Itch and Steam.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| > with how buggy 4.0 still is.
|
| Unreal is pretty notoriously buggy as well
| [deleted]
| RektBoy wrote:
| Most useless piece of software in the world? Epic Games Store.
| Also most successful piece of malware.
| smolgumball wrote:
| I truly cannot describe the amount of confusion that courses
| through me each time I open the Epic Launcher. I know that Epic
| decided to create it using the Unreal Engine UMG technology,
| but it truly shines as one of the most sluggish applications on
| my entire PC.
|
| At this point, I would _gladly_ accept an Electron application
| in it's place. Just wild to me that UX teams at Epic seem happy
| to deliver this to users.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| I find that Steam can also be quite sluggish, but Steam has
| the excuse of possessing an enormous number of features.
| zwirbl wrote:
| Steam still feels orders of magnitude more responsive
| Semaphor wrote:
| Huh, the only time it's sluggish, is from internet delay
| for me. What parts are slow for you?
| KronisLV wrote:
| > What parts are slow for you?
|
| Not OP, personally the Steam UI seems to freeze in the
| following cases for me: - when opening or
| scrolling my library, as the icons load in (~400 games)
| - when trying to install a game (delay until the install
| dialog pops up)
|
| The other slowness feels inconsequential, like when
| opening a store page or launching a game - on par with
| what you'd get when an average web app is loading or an
| Electron app is being launched.
|
| Pretty much every other store out there has been worse in
| comparison, GOG Galaxy seems to be reasonably close to me
| though, Origin and Epic are both slower in my experience.
| Semaphor wrote:
| OS? I don't have freezes, with more games (though most
| are in closed categories). Galaxy is second best for me
| as well, but it's also the only other app trying.
|
| I don't remember any install freezes, but I wouldn't bet
| on that one.
| ladberg wrote:
| Not OP but on Mac at least I find it wayyy faster to
| browse the steam marketplace and community sites in
| Safari or Chrome than in-app. Everything about it is slow
| from loading pages to scrolling to clicking buttons.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Huh. Not an issue for me, but I use windows, maybe their
| Mac app sucks?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Legendary's frontends are great cross-platform, but
| especially if you're on Linux:
| https://github.com/Dummerle/Rare
|
| This one uses the native Qt library and less resources than
| Steam.
| iamcreasy wrote:
| Is there any command line launcher for both Steam and Epic
| Store games?
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| > Uses the native Qt library
|
| It's described as a CLI in the readme you linked, so how
| does it use Qt?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Thanks for catching that, I updated it to link to Rare
| (the Legendary frontend I use)
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Also an excellent alternative (also for Linux initially,
| but now on Windows and MacOS too) is Heroic Games Launcher:
| https://heroicgameslauncher.com/
|
| I started using it instead of Lutris for most of my non-
| Steam installs and it _just works_ for the most part, which
| is fantastic. Even auto-updates my GOG and EGS games.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Heroic is built with electron. Gross!
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Still faster than using the Epic Store app. The GUI is
| incredibly responsive
| rickstanley wrote:
| Lutris is also an alternative. They use GTK if I'm not
| mistaken.
|
| https://lutris.net/games/epic-games-store/
| ryandvm wrote:
| Also what kind of shitty launcher requires admin privileges
| every time it runs?
| andybak wrote:
| Not denying it's shittiness but it doesn't do that for me.
| m463 wrote:
| maybe it's not just a launcher
| Semaphor wrote:
| I think they use the same devs as the Amazon prime twitch
| gaming thing. It's just as slow.
| Kiro wrote:
| > Amazon prime twitch gaming thing
|
| What are you referring to?
| Semaphor wrote:
| They have this free gaming app with Amazon prime that
| changed names several times.
| gramie wrote:
| I use the GOG launcher, which centralizes my Steam, Epic, and
| GOG games.
| standardUser wrote:
| You can play games you bought in the Epic store, and are
| usually launched with the Epic launcher, without having the
| Epic launcher installed??
| standardUser wrote:
| It's the pop up ads that irk me the most. Pop-up ads on a
| Windows PC what in the actual fuck? Great way to make someone
| truly and deeply hate you brand.
| smolgumball wrote:
| Happy to see Godot continuing it's climb as a viable engine. What
| a journey it's been for the creators!
| every wrote:
| I've been waiting for this...
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(page generated 2023-03-17 23:01 UTC)