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Unity Engine to Godot Engine Exporter (github.com/zylann)
142 points by stuckinhell on Sept 13, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 34 comments


12 years ago I was accepted in 2nd year of a game programming school, and they taught unity. It really was a disappointment. I went to do other things.

I expressed the lemon squeeze theory for reddit, where companies kills the lemon to extract its juice instead of keeping the lemon tree alive. It seems like it's such an universal rule in proprietary software.

Godot feels really really good and intuitive. GDScript is not really perfect, but it's pythonic which makes it quite good, and it integrates very well with the engine itself, which is awesome, I really really hope they improve it. They really followed the dual system of "script for high level plumbing, C++ for the rest", and they allow developers to do gdextension and to play with the engine code.

They managed to add a loooooot of features on a tiny budget, for such a light footprint, they support vulkan and next gen API, and since indie gaming has a trend of staying light, godot will be a big success, there is no doubt about it.

And even if 3D isn't good enough with godot, who cares, really? It's not like small studios will attempt to achieve high end 3D graphics, they really should not, and honestly AAA games are starting to gain more and more criticism so they're not really popular.

The gamedev era is entering an age of minimal games, with games that have gameplay, that are played, games SHOULD NOT try to be on the bleeding edge of graphics, it's a big waste of money and developer work.

I like 3D games, I really do, but with the climate, you want games to remove the fat and aim for essential features, and stop with pointless glitter.


>The gamedev era is entering an age of minimal games, with games that have gameplay, that are played, games SHOULD NOT try to be on the bleeding edge of graphics, it's a big waste of money and developer work.

Preach it. Games like Battlebit and the resurgence of Boomer-Shooters (originals, remakes and clones) are proving this, and it's the perfect timing too, considering the GPU prices since the pandemic.


> Preach it.

Yeah man, I want "bad graphics" too :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yVs2E4aldg


Nice, a Jacob Geller video, my absolute favorite essayist on YouTube.

In fact, he might be the one content creator to convince me to get Nebula, his essays are so good, but are often censored to avoid being demonetised.


I guess people in the 90 also somehow fought against 3D games as being pointless compared to 2D games, but 3D games did bring cool things to gaming.

I am not against good content, good looking textures, good level design, something that looks pretty, but 3D games cant be pretty without millions of triangle and gigabytes of textures.

Even 144hz sounds pointless to me, since you need a very good eye notice the difference between 30 and 60hz.

It's already quite expensive to make 3D games, it would be nice for game developers to stop the GPU frenzy.


> Even 144hz sounds pointless to me, since you need a very good eye notice the difference between 30 and 60hz.

This is false by demonstration. I can tell the difference between 60hz and 144hz. The idea that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 30hz and 60hz is preposterous.


I can say that from 144/165 to 240 or higher is barely noticeable.

Back when 240hz monitors were still gaining traction, I visited the Dell booth at ESL One 2018 and they had 2 monitors, side by side, one 144hz and one 240hz. The difference was barely noticeable, if any.

Maybe it was an old model and not as good as today's models, but I really don't think it's worth the premium price tag.

The jump from 60>75 is already very noticeable, from 60 to 144 is a big difference, unfortunately from 144 to 240 doesn't seem to be the case as the former example.


Yeaaah, the whole "you cannot tell" thing is demonstrably false and a mere rationalisation. The correct argument is: does not having this meaningfully detract from the experience. Does having 60hz instead of 144hz ruin Stardew Valley? Or Baldur's Gate 3? Probably not. It's only once you get into fast-paced and first-person games that it starts to become a disadvantage to not have these things.


For me it's the opposite. In fast paced games I have to concentrate more on gameplay and have no attention left to adore graphics, so my perception of graphics becomes schematic: enemies look like featureless hitboxes. In slow paced games I sometimes can allocate some attention to account for graphic details.


I think the reference was to the fact that with 144hz is possible to hit your target more easily as "demonstrated" by ltt. The experiment was pretty good though, so if you are playing competitive it might makes sense.

For single player, go with whatever you want!


You went off the rails at the end. 30hz to 60hz is huge in terms of smoothness and 120hz is much the same. It doesn't take special eyesight to notice.


Tell me you've only ever played on consoles without telling me youve only ever played on consoles lol


This isn't a matter of 3D vs 2D, just of graphical quality in general. The comment you're replying to mentions only 3D games, they just happen to be low-poly rather than attempt photorealism.


We're approaching our Pointillism phase, where making photorealistic art just isn't an accomplishment in itself anymore. This will only get more true as scanned resources get easier to use, and the AI generative tools have an increasingly good handle on photorealism/rigging/anim cycles/etc. So what, it looks real. So what. The art's the thing. How does it make people feel, think, dream? Hnnh. This was sentimental. Anyway, just me talking out loud as a Blender hobbyist since 1998 or so - never did it for money, so what do I know?


>And even if 3D isn't good enough with godot, who cares, really?

I do, as someone wanting to make a 3d game. And I'm not exactly a fan of "just use unreal" as a dismissal. Improving engine performance improves 2d games as well. Why not be able to make a game like Noita if you so fancy

>It's not like small studios will attempt to achieve high end 3D graphics, they really should not,

1. Not with that attitude

2. The last thing I want to do is tell devs what they should or shouldn't do with their creativity. If Godot wants to market itself as a 3d engine it should support, well, 3d stuff. And if an engine can struggle in slightly intensive 2d it doesn't stand a ghost of a chance of any reasonable 3d performance.

Forget "high end 3d graphics", we'd be struggling to make PS2 games running on hardware 100x more powerful. And this community complains enough about Electron as is.


Gamedev schools seems to be mostly about teaching some company sponsored middle-ware


> it's a big waste of money and developer work.

Not to mention a big waste on the environment. It's good if we can use old computers to run new games, less waste generated.


I switched to Godot expecting some pain but it was great. Way more depth of searchable stuff on the net to help figure things out than I expected.

If you're thinking of starting a new project and you're experienced with unity, don't be put off making the switch. It won't put you back as much as you think and it's a lot better in many ways, but more importantly it's momentum is going in the right direction


Only one commit and it's from 5 years ago, in which time both engines have changed quite a lot, so probably useless in its current state

Neat idea, but impossible to do perfectly. There's potential I'm sure to do imperfect conversions of scenes and assets, but game logic and custom data is going to be pretty much out of reach

At best, this kind of tool could be a jumping-off point for someone who was otherwise planning to do a fully manual port


Hey, it doesn't have to work perfectly.. it just has to work good enough, to make it clear that enshitification seppuku is not a option to even make one last buck. Its a mexican stand-off, with suddenly a alternatives-exist-"gun" drawn at every engine companies CEO. My regards to the shareholders who wanted to cash out- and ended the game with a bad hand.

Its like valves alternatives to the windows eco-system, always ready to bloom, keeping microsoft honest. Same goes for uplay and origin.. they don't have to make money, they just have to be there.


I'm only a wannabe/hobby game developer, so take my opinion with a spoon of salt, but this is:

1. Desperately needed;

2. Even if it's completely hands-off and works perfectly, still just step 1 of many, and a huge cost for any studio: retooling, lost expertise/experience, loss of momentum.

In any circumstance any company that can swallow the change of the pricing model, or that wasn't locked into Unity in the first place, will come out way ahead. A project like this gives the rest a fighting chance.


A little off-topic, but how are Godot web/HTML5 exports nowadays (if anybody has recent experience)? I recall having quite a number of issues with them in earlier versions of Godot 4. Fingers crossed, Godot looks really nice!


There's currently an issue in Godot 4 where web exports on macOS just cause the browser to hang.

Their advice seems to be use Godot 3 or wait until it gets fixed in the browsers.

See https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/70691 for details.


Doesn't support C#(this is being worked on but possible waiting for .NET 8 with AOT but then it still needs work).

Doesn't support the new 4.0 renderer, this is being worked on too. Webgpu support: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/6646 .

Main issues right now that I'm aware of.


I'm excited for when this is out of Beta and ready for production.

https://editor.godotengine.org/releases/4.2.dev4/


It'll be funny if a flash exporter gets created and starts working in the meantime.

That Ruffle project (for playing flash animations) seems to have developed good traction and is going well too.

Might be a good future possibility for Godot web playback. :)


Version 4 doesn’t have it.



Doesn’t work On iOS and Mac and when written in c#. So that’s more like a Preview version.


C# in Godot is generally a second-class citizen. GDScript is the primary way to write "userspace" code.


Alternatives to this exist, such as: https://github.com/barcoderdev/unitypackage_godot


I switched from Unity to Godot a few years ago and it's been great. My new (2D) game - Cirrus Business - was an absolute joy to create. I'll still probably keep using Unreal for 3D games, but anything 2D will definitely use Godot.


I'm surprised we're not seeing much about the Unity announcement in here


Same. I thought there’d be at least /some/ discussion about the implications of this change




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