To Unity Developers: Will you switch engines?

[MalcolmR]

Recently, Unity announced their new per-install fees and retroactive changes to their ToS forcing developers of all Unity games, including already released games, to pay a tax that they didn't agree to. They've stated that they legally have the power to make any change to the ToS at any time as long as they give three months' notice. To me, the details of the new fee structure are completely irrelevant as Unity can apparently change them at any time. The fact that the additional fees are tied to installations and not sales or revenue makes estimating the cost of using Unity impossible, along with the fact that they have officially stated that they won't release details about the "proprietary system" (i.e. bullshit) they use to track installs. Add to this the fact that they could at any time increase the fees or lower the thresholds, or even start charging for silly things like builds or play time, and we have an engine that can no longer be used by any serious developer.

I know these changes won't happen and will be reversed because they are impossible and the inevitable mass exodus of developers would bankrupt the company. What I'm waiting to see is whether the end result of this whole debacle is a legally robust Terms of Service, perhaps tied to the version of Unity, that can't be altered retroactively by the company. If we don't get that, I will start porting my current game over to another engine, adding an extra six months or so of development time.

The engines I'm considering are Godot (with C#) and UE5. My concern about Godot is that it's not battle tested and, from what I've heard, it still has a long way to go for 3D development. However, it's possible that it will be significantly better by the time I release my game. Never having to pay anyone anything or worry about accounting is also very attractive! My concern about UE5 is that I won't be able to get the same level of performance that I'm getting out of Unity (with engine-specific optimizations) and that the workflow will be clunkier. On the other hand, even though Tower of Nibiru is a stylized game, it might end up looking much better in UE5. I'm also open to other engines, but I haven't seen any so far that have an advantage over Unreal or Godot.

While I might seem a little upset about this, I'm actually kind of excited to learn a new engine and finally be free of the stress of having the Sword of Damocles hanging over me. To all you smug bastards who avoided Unity by using an open source engine or even rolling out your own engine, I'll now tell you what you've always wanted to hear: You were right.

Anyway, is anyone else in the same boat? If so, what engines are you considering and why?

 

[Krice]

I don't use game engines myself, but it's interesting to see what happens in this case. It seems strange to tie the revenue to the amount of installs. Who does that if anyone? Even stranger is that they don't yet even know how to implement the tracking for installs.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

To all you smug bastards who avoided Unity by using an open source engine or even rolling out your own engine, I'll now tell you what you've always wanted to hear: You were right.

Anyway, is anyone else in the same boat? If so, what engines are you considering and why?

Do not use Godot or UE.
Personally I would avoid using an engine if possible and go with an advanced library. Of course that does not always make sense for all projects.

Thesedays Unity3D, UE5 are not that unique, theres actually plenty of options out there where most UI driven engines have a similar amount of functionality for your average desktop developer. E.g. https://falco3d.com/ (no comment on "mobile" games.)

Monogame (C#,XNA) is a reasonable choice. Its actually easier and better than Unity once you get past those first few bumps. Downside is C# which is not everybody cup of tea.

NeoAxis I have used, and prefered it to Unity https://www.neoaxis.com/neoaxis/overview, (for some reason Google tries to hide their website so its not so easy to find).

I have tried a dozen other UI engines and all seemed pretty decent. I would avoid the main players however.

 

[Lord of Riva]

We have started unity on personal projects, this development is certainly a bummer.

Thanks for pointing out alternatives.

 

[Tavernking]

To all you smug bastards who avoided Unity by using an open source engine or even rolling out your own engine, I'll now tell you what you've always wanted to hear: You were right.

Anyway, is anyone else in the same boat? If so, what engines are you considering and why?

Do not use Godot or UE.

What's wrong with Godot?

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

To all you smug bastards who avoided Unity by using an open source engine or even rolling out your own engine, I'll now tell you what you've always wanted to hear: You were right.

Anyway, is anyone else in the same boat? If so, what engines are you considering and why?

Do not use Godot or UE.

What's wrong with Godot?

Its creepy fanbase. Also seems a bit woke. From a technical POV I thought the UI and the way of doing things sucked as well.

 

[MF]

I'm not going to switch engines for TJS, I have enough on my plate as it is. I am however writing as much decoupled code as I can. It's part of the reason development has slowed down. I've been doing that for a while so I can maintain the codebase better, but it also means I can switch engines if I absolutely have to. I'd much rather not, though. For all its flaws, Unity is still a powerful tool and Godot simply isn't there yet.

This move by Unity is inexcusable however. Not just the install fee, which they can't implement anyway, but the new subscription model too. I'm moving from 300 bucks to 2000 bucks, which I can't justify in any way.

It's not even like that money goes into the product. I'm sure not a dime will go towards improving the developer experience.

Ancient version of Mono? Whatever. I have my own multithreading system.
Abysmal .NET conformity? I don't share Microsoft's boner for injection anyway.
Split rendering pipelines with terrible support? Whatever, I can write HSLS and fix my own issues. Janky pathfinding? A* baby.
We were all willing to put up with an objectively bad product -base is still fine- because the pricing scheme was good and it was still good value in terms of being a productivity multiplier.

With that gone, what's left? What is Unity's draw now?

 

[scytheavatar]

Godot is an open source program, the fact that it is not there yet is a bad excuse for not using it. The more people are using it, the more people work to improve it and the faster it will get there. The matter of fact is that Unity has been a decline while Godot has been on an incline, and it is inevitable that Godot will render Unity obsolete.

At the very least I hope every dev realize that they need to develop a plan for jumping off Unity cause it's a pain they will have to go through eventually.

 

[just]

i took the godot pill long time ago
actually runs on linux
free and open source
40mb total size
simple

only problem is that you cant download 80% of the game from the asset store

 

[RobotSquirrel]

From a technical POV I thought the UI and the way of doing things sucked as well.

Godot 3 yes, Godot 4 no. I Think Godot 4 fixed pretty much every issue I had with doing UI, now I'm able to do very complex UIs in the same way I was able to in Unity.
Godot 3's implementation you were constantly fighting it just to keep everything anchored. The only thing I don't like is the anchor widget is a bit finicky so I just end up typing it in manually most of the time.

I think the only thing that's been a let down is the fact the IDE doesn't fully support C# and C++ yet, you still need a 3rd party compiler for those two, which is a shame because the inbuilt IDE is really good.

I'm going to go with what I've been told by industry veterans. The best engine is the one that offers you the least resistance to you completing your game. No one can tell you that because not everyone will be able to work with each engine the same way as not everyone is using it in the same way. It may be you're like you Sloth who wants to really control things, in which then yeah making your own engine makes sense and its admirable. That said most new developers shouldn't go down that path, cut your teeth on something that has an editor already to get familiar with game engines and their technology first.

I don't see a whole lot wrong with Godot, I think you need to make more compelling arguments than "They're woke". You're talking to people that when Unity said "Game Developers are idiots" they stayed so its probably not as big an issue as you're making it out to be. What people want to know, is the tech good and will it allow them to make games. Yes and yes. You can go to Godot and pretty much lose nothing that you didn't already have in Unity.

 

[Jeff Graw]

DG is basically pure C# at this point with Unity acting as a wrapper for input and output. So, an engine change is theoretically possible and less burdensome than it would be for most other projects. The main draw for Unity is being able to build to a lot of different platforms with relative ease.

Certainly not using Unity for any new commercial projects though. The only way to restore trust at this point is a change in leadership. No reason to ever do business with a partner that operates in bad faith.

 

[MalcolmR]

Do not use Godot or UE.
Personally I would avoid using an engine if possible and go with an advanced library. Of course that does not always make sense for all projects.

Thesedays Unity3D, UE5 are not that unique, theres actually plenty of options out there where most UI driven engines have a similar amount of functionality for your average desktop developer. E.g. https://falco3d.com/ (no comment on "mobile" games.)

Monogame (C#,XNA) is a reasonable choice. Its actually easier and better than Unity once you get past those first few bumps. Downside is C# which is not everybody cup of tea.

NeoAxis I have used, and prefered it to Unity https://www.neoaxis.com/neoaxis/overview, (for some reason Google tries to hide their website so its not so easy to find).

I have tried a dozen other UI engines and all seemed pretty decent. I would avoid the main players however.

I'm considering Godot and UE specifically because they're the main players. Having a huge user base means more resources, tutorials, solved problems, and solidarity if someone tries to screw us over (not an issue for Godot, of course). The insane amount of resources generated by the user base was the main thing that allowed me to reach an advanced level in Unity and Blender without any background in game dev or 3D graphics prior to 2015. I suppose tutorials aren't nearly as important now though, since I can rely on my previous knowledge.

The other engines you posted look pretty cool and I'll check them out if I'm not happy with Godot or UE. Monogame certainly looks interesting.

Its creepy fanbase. Also seems a bit woke. From a technical POV I thought the UI and the way of doing things sucked as well.

Since it's under the rock-solid MIT license, I'm not concerned about any issues regarding the fanbase or developers. The impression I have of the fanbase is that they're optimistic/idealistic, sort of like Blender users back when Blender was an inferior product. And as an introvert, I don't plan to join any Godot community, just like I never joined any Unity community. On the other hand, any workflow-related issue is a big deal to me, so I'll have to test it out to see what it's like.

We were all willing to put up with an objectively bad product -base is still fine- because the pricing scheme was good and it was still good value in terms of being a productivity multiplier.

With that gone, what's left? What is Unity's draw now?

For me, the engine has been at a dead end for years because I have no intention of "upgrading" to URP or HDRP and I'm not interested in any of Unity's planned features. In fact, the last improvement that actually helped me was the linked scale button in the transform inspector, which is something I could have done myself with an editor script. I've accepted that I'll be locked into a deprecated pipeline, and that doesn't bother me as long as I can make games with a comfortable workflow and super fast iteration times. Now, there's an added stress to using the engine and a sense that you don't get to own the game you make.

The only way to restore trust at this point is a change in leadership. No reason to ever do business with a partner that operates in bad faith.

As much as I'd like to see that, I don't think it will be nearly enough. There would have to be some very heavy ToS protections in place, such as a perpetual and irrevocable license that's outside the control of Unity Technologies. That's the only thing that would convince me to tie my livelihood to Unity at this point since my working assumption is that they hate me and want to steal my game.

Some nice bonuses to rebuild good will would be restructuring the company to focus on game development, making the engine source-available at all tiers and removing the "Made in Unity" splash screen once and for all.

Godot is an open source program, the fact that it is not there yet is a bad excuse for not using it. The more people are using it, the more people work to improve it and the faster it will get there. The matter of fact is that Unity has been a decline while Godot has been on an incline, and it is inevitable that Godot will render Unity obsolete.

At the very least I hope every dev realize that they need to develop a plan for jumping off Unity cause it's a pain they will have to go through eventually.

I completely agree with your point about the direction of Godot and the inevitability of having to leave Unity. That being said, if Godot is several years away from being able to do what Unity can do in 3D, it might not be the right engine for me right now as I want to get my game out as soon as possible. I guess I really need to see what it can do first hand.

So, here's my plan:

I'm going to halt all production of my game in Unity for two weeks or until the situation is resolved and spend all my time learning Godot and UE5. I'll start with one week in Godot 4.1 using C# and one week in UE5.3 using C++ and some blueprints. Rather than trying to port my game, I'll just make a demo using the same grid-based movement system with the 3D assets I've already made. I won't bother with collisions, battles, characters/stats or UI menu systems. Then, I'll try to get it to look as much like my Unity game as possible. I think I'll be in a good position to make an informed decision after that.

 

[Jeff Graw]

As much as I'd like to see that, I don't think it will be nearly enough. There would have to be some very heavy ToS protections in place, such as a perpetual and irrevocable license that's outside the control of Unity Technologies. That's the only thing that would convince me to tie my livelihood to Unity at this point since my working assumption is that they hate me and want to steal my game.

I believe that goes without saying. My point is that TOS protections were already ostensibly in place yet that didn't stop the current regime from trying to circumvent them. It hardly matters at all if new protections are put in place with this leadership. Regardless of what a new TOS might say, Riccitiello and his confederates cannot be trusted not to renege again (or to come up with some other terrible angle).

 

[Delterius]

including already released games, to pay a tax that they didn't agree to.

pillars of eternity is gonna retroactively bankrupt obsidian oh wow

 

[Trithne]

including already released games, to pay a tax that they didn't agree to.

pillars of eternity is gonna retroactively bankrupt obsidian oh wow

That would require people to install Pillows again.

 

[Jaesun]

including already released games, to pay a tax that they didn't agree to.

pillars of eternity is gonna retroactively bankrupt obsidian oh wow

That would require people to install Pillows again.

Re-Installs do not count.

 

[Trithne]

Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game, will that count as multiple installs?
A: We are not going to charge a fee for reinstalls. The spirit of this program is and has always been to charge for the first install and we have no desire to charge for the same person doing ongoing installs.
(Updated, Sep 14)

That's not what they said before:

I got some clarifications from Unity regarding their plan to charge developers per game install (after clearing thresholds)
- If a player deletes a game and re-installs it, that's 2 installs, 2 charges
- Same if they install on 2 devices

So basically they're cutting back as damage control.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Do not use Godot or UE.
Personally I would avoid using an engine if possible and go with an advanced library. Of course that does not always make sense for all projects.

Thesedays Unity3D, UE5 are not that unique, theres actually plenty of options out there where most UI driven engines have a similar amount of functionality for your average desktop developer. E.g. https://falco3d.com/ (no comment on "mobile" games.)

Monogame (C#,XNA) is a reasonable choice. Its actually easier and better than Unity once you get past those first few bumps. Downside is C# which is not everybody cup of tea.

NeoAxis I have used, and prefered it to Unity https://www.neoaxis.com/neoaxis/overview, (for some reason Google tries to hide their website so its not so easy to find).

I have tried a dozen other UI engines and all seemed pretty decent. I would avoid the main players however.

I'm considering Godot and UE specifically because they're the main players. Having a huge user base means more resources, tutorials, solved problems, and solidarity if someone tries to screw us over (not an issue for Godot, of course). The insane amount of resources generated by the user base was the main thing that allowed me to reach an advanced level in Unity and Blender without any background in game dev or 3D graphics prior to 2015. I suppose tutorials aren't nearly as important now though, since I can rely on my previous knowledge.

The other engines you posted look pretty cool and I'll check them out if I'm not happy with Godot or UE. Monogame certainly looks interesting.

Its creepy fanbase. Also seems a bit woke. From a technical POV I thought the UI and the way of doing things sucked as well.

Since it's under the rock-solid MIT license, I'm not concerned about any issues regarding the fanbase or developers. The impression I have of the fanbase is that they're optimistic/idealistic, sort of like Blender users back when Blender was an inferior product. And as an introvert, I don't plan to join any Godot community, just like I never joined any Unity community. On the other hand, any workflow-related issue is a big deal to me, so I'll have to test it out to see what it's like.

We were all willing to put up with an objectively bad product -base is still fine- because the pricing scheme was good and it was still good value in terms of being a productivity multiplier.

With that gone, what's left? What is Unity's draw now?

For me, the engine has been at a dead end for years because I have no intention of "upgrading" to URP or HDRP and I'm not interested in any of Unity's planned features. In fact, the last improvement that actually helped me was the linked scale button in the transform inspector, which is something I could have done myself with an editor script. I've accepted that I'll be locked into a deprecated pipeline, and that doesn't bother me as long as I can make games with a comfortable workflow and super fast iteration times. Now, there's an added stress to using the engine and a sense that you don't get to own the game you make.

The only way to restore trust at this point is a change in leadership. No reason to ever do business with a partner that operates in bad faith.

As much as I'd like to see that, I don't think it will be nearly enough. There would have to be some very heavy ToS protections in place, such as a perpetual and irrevocable license that's outside the control of Unity Technologies. That's the only thing that would convince me to tie my livelihood to Unity at this point since my working assumption is that they hate me and want to steal my game.

Some nice bonuses to rebuild good will would be restructuring the company to focus on game development, making the engine source-available at all tiers and removing the "Made in Unity" splash screen once and for all.

Godot is an open source program, the fact that it is not there yet is a bad excuse for not using it. The more people are using it, the more people work to improve it and the faster it will get there. The matter of fact is that Unity has been a decline while Godot has been on an incline, and it is inevitable that Godot will render Unity obsolete.

At the very least I hope every dev realize that they need to develop a plan for jumping off Unity cause it's a pain they will have to go through eventually.

I completely agree with your point about the direction of Godot and the inevitability of having to leave Unity. That being said, if Godot is several years away from being able to do what Unity can do in 3D, it might not be the right engine for me right now as I want to get my game out as soon as possible. I guess I really need to see what it can do first hand.

So, here's my plan:

I'm going to halt all production of my game in Unity for two weeks or until the situation is resolved and spend all my time learning Godot and UE5. I'll start with one week in Godot 4.1 using C# and one week in UE5.3 using C++ and some blueprints. Rather than trying to port my game, I'll just make a demo using the same grid-based movement system with the 3D assets I've already made. I won't bother with collisions, battles, characters/stats or UI menu systems. Then, I'll try to get it to look as much like my Unity game as possible. I think I'll be in a good position to make an informed decision after that.

I would certainly avoid UE as they are on the same trajectory as Unity. Bloated, corrupt and declining every day.

What puts me off these main players are the sneaky pricing methods. What I prefer about the other engines that you pay a fee up front and thats that! No more to pay! No lies, no Adobe/Microsoft/Google style subscription style tricksters.

Do not use Godot or UE.
Personally I would avoid using an engine if possible and go with an advanced library. Of course that does not always make sense for all projects.

Thesedays Unity3D, UE5 are not that unique, theres actually plenty of options out there where most UI driven engines have a similar amount of functionality for your average desktop developer. E.g. https://falco3d.com/ (no comment on "mobile" games.)

Monogame (C#,XNA) is a reasonable choice. Its actually easier and better than Unity once you get past those first few bumps. Downside is C# which is not everybody cup of tea.

NeoAxis I have used, and prefered it to Unity https://www.neoaxis.com/neoaxis/overview, (for some reason Google tries to hide their website so its not so easy to find).

I have tried a dozen other UI engines and all seemed pretty decent. I would avoid the main players however.

I'm considering Godot and UE specifically because they're the main players. Having a huge user base means more resources, tutorials, solved problems, and solidarity if someone tries to screw us over (not an issue for Godot, of course). The insane amount of resources generated by the user base was the main thing that allowed me to reach an advanced level in Unity and Blender without any background in game dev or 3D graphics prior to 2015. I suppose tutorials aren't nearly as important now though, since I can rely on my previous knowledge.

The other engines you posted look pretty cool and I'll check them out if I'm not happy with Godot or UE. Monogame certainly looks interesting.

Its creepy fanbase. Also seems a bit woke. From a technical POV I thought the UI and the way of doing things sucked as well.

Since it's under the rock-solid MIT license, I'm not concerned about any issues regarding the fanbase or developers. The impression I have of the fanbase is that they're optimistic/idealistic, sort of like Blender users back when Blender was an inferior product. And as an introvert, I don't plan to join any Godot community, just like I never joined any Unity community. On the other hand, any workflow-related issue is a big deal to me, so I'll have to test it out to see what it's like.

We were all willing to put up with an objectively bad product -base is still fine- because the pricing scheme was good and it was still good value in terms of being a productivity multiplier.

With that gone, what's left? What is Unity's draw now?

For me, the engine has been at a dead end for years because I have no intention of "upgrading" to URP or HDRP and I'm not interested in any of Unity's planned features. In fact, the last improvement that actually helped me was the linked scale button in the transform inspector, which is something I could have done myself with an editor script. I've accepted that I'll be locked into a deprecated pipeline, and that doesn't bother me as long as I can make games with a comfortable workflow and super fast iteration times. Now, there's an added stress to using the engine and a sense that you don't get to own the game you make.

The only way to restore trust at this point is a change in leadership. No reason to ever do business with a partner that operates in bad faith.

As much as I'd like to see that, I don't think it will be nearly enough. There would have to be some very heavy ToS protections in place, such as a perpetual and irrevocable license that's outside the control of Unity Technologies. That's the only thing that would convince me to tie my livelihood to Unity at this point since my working assumption is that they hate me and want to steal my game.

Some nice bonuses to rebuild good will would be restructuring the company to focus on game development, making the engine source-available at all tiers and removing the "Made in Unity" splash screen once and for all.

Godot is an open source program, the fact that it is not there yet is a bad excuse for not using it. The more people are using it, the more people work to improve it and the faster it will get there. The matter of fact is that Unity has been a decline while Godot has been on an incline, and it is inevitable that Godot will render Unity obsolete.

At the very least I hope every dev realize that they need to develop a plan for jumping off Unity cause it's a pain they will have to go through eventually.

I completely agree with your point about the direction of Godot and the inevitability of having to leave Unity. That being said, if Godot is several years away from being able to do what Unity can do in 3D, it might not be the right engine for me right now as I want to get my game out as soon as possible. I guess I really need to see what it can do first hand.

So, here's my plan:

I'm going to halt all production of my game in Unity for two weeks or until the situation is resolved and spend all my time learning Godot and UE5. I'll start with one week in Godot 4.1 using C# and one week in UE5.3 using C++ and some blueprints. Rather than trying to port my game, I'll just make a demo using the same grid-based movement system with the 3D assets I've already made. I won't bother with collisions, battles, characters/stats or UI menu systems. Then, I'll try to get it to look as much like my Unity game as possible. I think I'll be in a good position to make an informed decision after that.

UE is on the same trajectory as Unity. Corrupt, bloated, and declining by the day. Avoid at all costs.

I just got a bad vibe off Godot, things were not clicking technically. Nothing worked as advertised, and the community was so far up their own backside I did not have the stomach to hang around there. But at least its free (supposedly), so that side of risk is not there.

What I like is to buy an engine up front. No other costs. Thats why I liked Neoaxis. No Adobe/Google/Microsoft/Netflix mafia rort subscriptions. I really hate subscriptions. Most come with hidden costs and implications.

 

[MalcolmR]

I would certainly avoid UE as they are on the same trajectory as Unity. Bloated, corrupt and declining every day.

I've only seen good things from Unreal Engine over the years, but I guess I'll find out what it's really like next week. I did use UE4 several years ago and felt it was cumbersome and that iteration times were ridiculously high, but I'm on a much more powerful system now, so we'll see. One thing I remember very well is that when your game crashes in play mode, the entire editor closes! Let's hope that's not still a thing. I'm not interested in all the AAA features or hyper-realistic graphics, but I am interested in Nanite because I absolutely hate LODs and I hope I never have to use them in any game. Nanite could also potentially speed up my workflow, but I imagine there are some drawbacks too.

What I like is to buy an engine up front. No other costs. Thats why I liked Neoaxis. No Adobe/Google/Microsoft/Netflix mafia rort subscriptions. I really hate subscriptions. Most come with hidden costs and implications.

Totally agree! I don't use any Adobe products for that reason, except Substance Painter/Designer which I bought before they were acquired by Adobe. In fact, I have a general ban on any subscription software. I would have been willing to pay Unity's subscription fee because I thought of it as a release fee rather than a subscription. That is, pay the minimum $400 for a year of Unity Plus and you can release your game in that window without the splash screen. I was planning to get it when I released my game in early access. Until this week, it seemed like a reasonable deal, but now it feels like I dodged a bullet. Not only is the price now $2000 to get rid of the splash screen (+some random "services" that I will never use), but they will now basically own my game for the rest of its lifetime and decide how much of my revenue I get to keep.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

I would certainly avoid UE as they are on the same trajectory as Unity. Bloated, corrupt and declining every day.

I've only seen good things from Unreal Engine over the years, but I guess I'll find out what it's really like next week. I did use UE4 several years ago and felt it was cumbersome and that iteration times were ridiculously high, but I'm on a much more powerful system now, so we'll see. One thing I remember very well is that when your game crashes in play mode, the entire editor closes! Let's hope that's not still a thing. I'm not interested in all the AAA features or hyper-realistic graphics, but I am interested in Nanite because I absolutely hate LODs and I hope I never have to use them in any game. Nanite could also potentially speed up my workflow, but I imagine there are some drawbacks too.

What I like is to buy an engine up front. No other costs. Thats why I liked Neoaxis. No Adobe/Google/Microsoft/Netflix mafia rort subscriptions. I really hate subscriptions. Most come with hidden costs and implications.

Totally agree! I don't use any Adobe products for that reason, except Substance Painter/Designer which I bought before they were acquired by Adobe. In fact, I have a general ban on any subscription software. I would have been willing to pay Unity's subscription fee because I thought of it as a release fee rather than a subscription. That is, pay the minimum $400 for a year of Unity Plus and you can release your game in that window without the splash screen. I was planning to get it when I released my game in early access. Until this week, it seemed like a reasonable deal, but now it feels like I dodged a bullet. Not only is the price now $2000 to get rid of the splash screen (+some random "services" that I will never use), but they will now basically own my game for the rest of its lifetime and decide how much of my revenue I get to keep.

I used to be a semi-fan of UE4 actually several years back. It wiped the floor with Unity in every way, except that it was more of a learning curve. Then things went a bit pear shaped.

I started seeing people complaining about exactly the same problems Unity had earlier on. Also the subscription model is rather sneaky. For the game you are working on I question the value of UE considering you don't need bleeding edge graphics. A simple, free, open source engine should be better right?

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

I would certainly avoid UE as they are on the same trajectory as Unity. Bloated, corrupt and declining every day.

I've only seen good things from Unreal Engine over the years, but I guess I'll find out what it's really like next week. I did use UE4 several years ago and felt it was cumbersome and that iteration times were ridiculously high, but I'm on a much more powerful system now, so we'll see. One thing I remember very well is that when your game crashes in play mode, the entire editor closes! Let's hope that's not still a thing. I'm not interested in all the AAA features or hyper-realistic graphics, but I am interested in Nanite because I absolutely hate LODs and I hope I never have to use them in any game. Nanite could also potentially speed up my workflow, but I imagine there are some drawbacks too.

What I like is to buy an engine up front. No other costs. Thats why I liked Neoaxis. No Adobe/Google/Microsoft/Netflix mafia rort subscriptions. I really hate subscriptions. Most come with hidden costs and implications.

Totally agree! I don't use any Adobe products for that reason, except Substance Painter/Designer which I bought before they were acquired by Adobe. In fact, I have a general ban on any subscription software. I would have been willing to pay Unity's subscription fee because I thought of it as a release fee rather than a subscription. That is, pay the minimum $400 for a year of Unity Plus and you can release your game in that window without the splash screen. I was planning to get it when I released my game in early access. Until this week, it seemed like a reasonable deal, but now it feels like I dodged a bullet. Not only is the price now $2000 to get rid of the splash screen (+some random "services" that I will never use), but they will now basically own my game for the rest of its lifetime and decide how much of my revenue I get to keep.

I used to be a semi-fan of UE4 actually several years back. It wiped the floor with Unity in every way, except that it was more of a learning curve. Then things went a bit pear shaped.

I started seeing people complaining about exactly the same problems Unity had earlier on. Also the subscription model is rather sneaky. For the game you are working on I question the value of UE considering you don't need bleeding edge graphics. A simple, free, open source engine should be better right?

I guess since I use Monogame, I will pass a comment about it. Its XNA basically. So its done the rounds already. While I would not say I am a fan of it, I like it well enough.

It has no editor, but it does have UI libraries (e.g. Neobit, Myra), Physics, particles, scene graphs (Monogame extended). Nez (and others) are toolkits built on top of Monogame (e.g. tiled importers, sprite sheet importers etc etc), so in truth the heavy lifting is mostly done for you. You can make your own game editor and of course you don't have all the fluff of Unity.

I have found it more productive than Unity, say after a couple weeks of getting setup the way you like it.

The community is mainly in the forum. I have no real opinion of them but I have found enough info for what I need from their forums.

The downside is that its C#, and probably not a high performance library. It has it quirks, a crappy pipeline but I like that if theres a problem you can usually roll your own solution or use someone elses. It should be ample for most single dev games though.

 

[Edward Doyle]

Invested too much time already but will make sure to decouple as much as possible just in case, you never know how worse it could get at this point.

 

[MalcolmR]

Day 1 Impressions of Godot

Just throught I'd share what my experience has been like in Godot so far. It has only been a day and a bit, so my impressions shouldn't be taken too seriously, but it might still be helpful for someone out there who is considering switching to it. If you're a Godot developer, feel free to clarify/correct any of my points.

I'm using Godot 4.1 with C# only (not GDScript) and the Forward+ renderer.

1. Installation (GOOD)

No account/login, no real installation other than extracting a zip file and running an exe. There are, however, addition things you might have to install such as the .NET SDK, the Godot Visual Studio plugin, build templates, and an fbx converter to actually import fbx files. Overall, I'm very happy with the installation process.

2. Editor Performance (GOOD)

Extremely performant and light-weight editor. Unthinkably fast iteration times, even with C#. I can't say how it will scale with bigger projects/scenes, but for a small projects, especially 2D projects, this will be a really big draw.

3. C# Integration (MIXED)

At first, I didn't have any problems with C# in Godot. The GDScript functions in the documentation and tutorials are exactly the same in C#, except that they use a different case. This means it's possible to follow tutorials that use GDScript without any issue. I was also pleasantly surprised at how fast it compiles. There are some things I haven't been able to figure out so far, like how to get coroutines working, but I'm sure it won't be a big deal.

Unfortunately, I encountered a bug several times that erases your c# script, or rather reverts it back to a default empty script. This happened two or three times, causing me to lose work. I found several threads discussing this bug dating back years! No one knows the cause, but one user suggested that it happens when you make a new script with the "Attach Script" context menu command and then edit it in an external IDE. Apparently, the internal IDE still holds the default new script that eventually overwrites the version you've been working on. I don't know if this is the real cause, but I'd at least be able to overlook the issue if there's a reliable way to avoid it.

4. Editor UI/UX (MOSTLY GOOD)

By default, the editor has a friendly but "casual" look. The font size is a little big, which assumes you'll be making a small project without too much stuff in your scene hierarchy. I immediately moved the panels around to match my familiar Unity layout, set the UI scale to 0.7 to fit more stuff on the screen, increased to the editor font size from 14 to 18 to compensate for the UI scaling, and disabled font subpixel positioning to make the editor font less blurry. It now feels a lot more like Unity.

Spoiler

I also changed the navigation system to "Modo," which makes it function like blender. In fact, I changed all my 3D software to this navigation system years ago so that I wouldn't have any friction when switching programs throughout the day. It's one of the best decisions I've ever made. In many cases, it requires some hacky AutoHotkey scripting, but in the case of Godot, all I had to do was choose "Modo" from a list. One issue I'm having is that ctrl+alt click and drag is zooming in the opposite direction and there doesn't seem to be any way to flip it without going to the source code.

Dragging around nodes in the hierarchy feels pretty good. It's certainly easier than adding and removing components in Unity, especially if you want to transfer a component from one object to another. While I appreciate the flexibility I get with this approach, it also makes the scene hierarchy less readable in some ways. I'll need more time with it to make a proper evaluation, but so far, I like it.

The inspector panels are very cluttered and unintuitive. There are tons of collapsed foldout menus that present super important stuff and useless stuff with the same degree of presence. For example, the transform section is somewhere in the middle, or sometimes even at the bottom, and collapsed by default!

I was very confused by the shader/material system. There's obviously some kind of logic behind it, but it's certainly not as simple as Unity's system where a material is simply an instance of a shader and you choose the shader from a list in the inspector of the material. Also, both shaders and materials have the same file extension. The visual shader editor was not enjoyable to use. Instead of having a generic multiply node like every other visual shader editor, they have a specific multiply node for each type. Terrible!

There's a separate "Import" panel which I hate. It should really be in the inspector panel for the asset. So now I have two inspectors that I have to switch between for no reason at all, and having the wrong one selected adds extra confusion when I then select a scene object and nothing shows up. If I could change anything in the source code, I would embed this import panel into the inspector.

Clicking on an asset doesn't automatically show the inspector window but clicking on a scene object does. For assets, you need to double click! I know someone thought this was a good idea because it lets you click on multiple assets and drag them onto another inspector (Unity had the lock icon for this purpose), but in my opinion, consistency is more important.

It's possible that the new influx of Unity developers in Godot will improve this, but at the same time, I imagine existing Godot developers would be defensive of the current system and resist change. We'll see. Overall, all the UX issues seem like they're solvable by either changing the source code, overriding the inspector windows, or adapting to the Godot way.

5. 3D Graphics (GOOD)

At first, my assets looked pretty bad in Godot, but with enough experimentation and by messing around with the rendering settings, I managed to get it to look pretty good. I think my scenes/assets in Godot have the potential to look almost as good as they do in Unity. Of course, I have years of experience tweaking every little aspect of lighting, shading, and post-processing in Unity, so it's not really a fair comparison.

6. Audio (GOOD)

I haven't had time to properly test the audio system, but what I've noticed to far is that sounds play with very low latency. Unity games on some Windows systems, including mine, have very high audio latency (sometimes up to 150ms). This has been a source of frustration for me over the years, so I was quite happy to get near-instant sound effects in Godot.

7. Stability (BAD)

Aside from the absolute nightmare of losing scripts that I outlined above, there was one other very serious bug I encountered. In fact, it's the worst bug possible and it immediately disqualifies Godot as a production-ready game engine. When I moved some files into a new folder in the "FileSystem" panel (the equivalent of the "Project View" in Unity), the editor crashed, and then when I reopened it, my scenes were corrupted and couldn't be opened. Fortunately, I had made a backup and only lost about an hour of work, but the fact that it happened, along with the script-deleting bug mentioned above, means that Godot 4 with C# is probably still several years away from being production-ready. It's possible that Godot 3.x with GDScript might be stable and fully production-ready for 2D, but that's not what I need for my current game.

TL;DR

Using Godot is an amazing experience. The editor feels smooth and responsive and there are lots of good customization options. The node-based compositional approach is awesome and enjoyable to work with. The renderer is also decent and capable of producing good enough results. Most importantly, the lightning-fast iteration times potentially mean you could develop a game faster than in Unity.

Unfortunately, the fatal bugs also make development stressful and require you to constantly back up your project and check to make sure nothing has disappeared. In my opinion, using Godot in this state would be even more dangerous than trusting Unity's new fee structure.

 

[MF]

Godot is an open source program, the fact that it is not there yet is a bad excuse for not using it.

It's a valid enough excuse. If I have to build everything I need myself, my game would take ten more years. Now that there is C# support it's starting to become feasible, but I still can't use it.

I think Stride might outpace it and be useful earlier. Its full stack C# architecture is really cool and it's even faster than UE. When I'm done with TJS or Unity forces my hand, I'll start to seriously explore that one.

Disclaimer: I hate cpp. Programming in C++ feels like going back in time and not in a good way like with C.

The_Sloth_Sleeps how is C# a downside? It's not inherently less performant than C++, in fact quite the opposite. .NET is pretty sleek and the cpp header hydra is infamously bloated and convoluted.

Out of the box Unity isn't fast, but if you reach a level where you have to manually optimize it doesn't really matter what engine you use. If you want to talk to the GPU, you still need to juggle buffers of float4s in good old C anyway. HSLS, GLS, Shaderlab, all the same. Doesn't matter if you do the rest in cpp or c#. At least C# is programmer-friendly.

 

[Trithne]

I think Stride might outpace it and be useful earlier. Its full stack C# architecture is really cool and it's even faster than UE. When I'm done with TJS or Unity forces my hand, I'll start to seriously explore that one.

Oh, that looks neat. Hadn't heard of it before now. Also that silicon graphics logo is triggering some ancient memory in my brain but I cannot for the life of me recall what.