Hi there,

I like Godot 3, it's very easy to pick up and create any game; but i find it is too unpolished about 3D.

There is many bugs, a common one is a physic capsule getting stuck on a cube corner, or KinematicBody can become buggy and it's function move_and_slide() not reliable. The navmesh does not perform good path calculations, it is too primitive. GI probes looks good but there is no blending between them. There is many other problems encountered, but also the lack of tutorials, many things are not explained and not available on documentation but on other sites.

I wish there was less features announced (CSG tool), instead priority should to get better engine fundation. Hopefully should get better.

There are some rough spots, but pull requests are being made daily (once the core team gets back around to merging them in waves as in the past, that alone should bring improvements).

GI probes do blend though, but to do that requires multiple probes that are overlapping (the way they work is a little different compared to reflection probes).

Documentation and tutorials are a matter of building a community, which requires time and prestige. It's happening though, Godot is becoming one of the names people put out there when talking about "games engines you should try". It being free (and open-source, but let's be honest, the general public cares more about "free" than "open-source") is one of its best selling points. There are a couple of tutorials out there, too, so it's not like Godot 3D is a blind wasteland here.

Remember, Godot has only been on the public market for around half a decade, and 3.0 only hit market a couple months ago. Unity and Unreal have been around for AGES, and have both been used to create games everyone knows. Godot will get there, it just needs time.

And, not to toot a horn or anything, but a strong community is a community that caters to people of all kinds. The live-chat crowd, and the wait-to-chat crowd that prefers forums to chatrooms. On that note, the forum might need a beefing up.

Godot 3 is a little behind the starting line......so polish needs some time :)

I have no doubt that the polish will come. There are some good tutorials out there with a little bit of searching. Especially if you look in the tutorials section of this forum.

I've actually been considering putting together a few tutorials myself, but we'll see if I have time :smile:

But overall, this engine is already solid, and only getting better. It's not perfect, but none are. I suspect that 2018 will show way more growth.

-emo

What Emo said.

Godot right now has a lot of developers working on the code, and many of them are also creating games and making patches based on what they need (which includes a lot of stuff that improves on existing functionality). Godot's development rate has increased massively since the first year when you look at the github page and the number of contributors (it used to mainly be Reduz and a handful of other people).

You should see the early versions of Godot and how easy it is to do various things now compared to back then. Back then, it was a bit more difficult to do things like changing scenes and getting objects to look at each other (which GDscript now has dedicated functions for). Godot also didn't have any API documentation (it's not complete yet, but the 3.1 development builds even have significantly improved docs. in some areas).

I guess the developer of a feature should be the more appropriate person to fix a bug on his code. Of course, I do not exclude that other people can help too.

What you do when your character capsule is stuck on a corner ? I tried some work around but nothing good enough so i give up on the 2.5D platformer. Navmesh returns more than 30 path points to move along a very small distance, and sometimes path calculated was way longer going around obstacles when there was a very short path with no obstacle, i also gave up on another project using it. This is very few examples of problems i encountered.

You can make very simple 3D games, but once you go further you'll face those type of issues. Godot on 3D is not there yet. This is what i mean about working on the fundation and let features for later instead.

@MagicLord said: This is what i mean about working on the fundation and let features for later instead.

It's a valid point. We definitely want to see a healthy balance of "making sure the core basics work well and are intuitive" verses "new and shiny feature to help compete with [insert big-time game engine here]!"

But I think that will happen.

-emo

@emo10001 said:

@MagicLord said: This is what i mean about working on the fundation and let features for later instead.

It's a valid point. We definitely want to see a healthy balance of "making sure the core basics work well and are intuitive" verses "new and shiny feature to help compete with [insert big-time game engine here]!"

But I think that will happen.

-emo

Exactly, before trying to race against [big game engine], first get fundation right.

@MagicLord said: What you do when your character capsule is stuck on a corner ? I tried some work around but nothing good enough so i give up on the 2.5D platformer. Navmesh returns more than 30 path points to move along a very small distance, and sometimes path calculated was way longer going around obstacles when there was a very short path with no obstacle, i also gave up on another project using it. This is very few examples of problems i encountered.

You can make very simple 3D games, but once you go further you'll face those type of issues. Godot on 3D is not there yet. This is what i mean about working on the fundation and let features for later instead.

Don't forget to report genuine issues to the Github issue tracker (providing it is not already there).

Also about the physics/collision problems. Godot has an option to switch the physics engine to Bullet now (which should be far better in almost all cases compared to the original one). It's not set by default, but anyone experience such issues should try the switch before reporting.

I hope godot will continue to have their own built in physics, not become dependent.

@"Ace Dragon" said: Godot has an option to switch the physics engine to Bullet now (which should be far better in almost all cases compared to the original one). It's not set by default, but anyone experience such issues should try the switch before reporting.

I think Bullet is the default physics engine for Godot 3, at least that is the impression I get from this article back when it was announced. Also, according to that same article, it appears Godot's built in 3D physics will be removed in Godot 3.1.

@newmodels said: I hope godot will continue to have their own built in physics, not become dependent.

Personally, I'm glad Bullet is (likely) replacing the built in physics. Having worked with the built in physics in several projects, I can confidently say that Bullet is much better than the built in physics and much better for performance too. Using Bullet will also reduce the work load for those contributing to Godot, since they no longer also have to write a physics engine as well as all of the other stuff in Godot.

That said, I do get what you are saying. I think replacing systems internally (like the physics) is a slippery slope and should be carefully considered before replacing internal/built-in systems.

@MagicLord said: Exactly, before trying to race against [big game engine], first get fundation right.

I totally agree! Without getting the foundation right, you end up in a situation like Unity, where you have to backpedal and focus (almost) entirely on performance, but with a huge code base instead of a small one. I'd much rather have to code 'fancy' features myself but have a solid foundation to build on, then have a bunch of 'cool features' but a shaky/ill-performing foundation.

(That said, I have nothing against Unity, I'm just using it as an example. Unity has its faults, but honestly all game engines have their quirks/faults)

@Ace Dragon said: Also about the physics/collision problems. Godot has an option to switch the physics engine to Bullet now (which should be far better in almost all cases compared to the original one). It's not set by default, but anyone experience such issues should try the switch before reporting.

I always use Bullet physics.

@TwistedTwigleg said:

Exactly, before trying to race against [big game engine], first get fundation right.

I totally agree! Without getting the foundation right, you end up in a situation like Unity, where you have to backpedal and focus (almost) entirely on performance, but with a huge code base instead of a small one. I'd much rather have to code 'fancy' features myself but have a solid foundation to build on, then have a bunch of 'cool features' but a shaky/ill-performing foundation.

(That said, I have nothing against Unity, I'm just using it as an example. Unity has its faults, but honestly all game engines have their quirks/faults)

This is what i also think, Unity have bad fundations for ambitious games with unoptimized features, they finally are working on it and bringing changes. I wish Godot would stop bringing new features for some time and work on critical bugs and polish features like the navmesh, work on good culling options, or work on the animation blending graph among others.

You can have a GIprobe looking cool, but if the gameplay is broken shiny graphics doesn't matter.

For the record, I do agree on not chasing a massive accumulation of features over a short period of time (at the expense on making sure people can make their games without battling bugs, regressions, unpolished features, or worse). Unity Tech. and Epic do place priority on the feature race and their communities are filled with comments about crippling bugs, major regressions, and slow performance.

At that point, Godot can gain a lot of ground (among indie devs. especially) if it just polishes its existing feature-set to a crazy level that work as advertised (as many users have resigned to the possibility that game engines are just buggy monoliths and battling issues is just part of being a game creator). That's not say Godot doesn't have issue now (there are various bugs in the area of graphics for instance and particles are limited).

@Ace Dragon said: At that point, Godot can gain a lot of ground (among indie devs. especially) if it just polishes its existing feature-set to a crazy level that work as advertised

Exactly.....they'll win a ton of indie developers if they go slow and get the core right. They'll certainly keep me :smile:

-emo

We do need to keep in mind that we can't compare all of Godot's features and/or shortcomings to Unity 2017-2018. Unity's initial 1.0 release was 12 years ago and it's 3.0 release was over 5 years later. Godot's initial 1.0 release was a little over 3 years ago with it's 3.0 release about 56 days ago. I didn't use Unity in 2010, but I'm going to bet that, at best, it was about as polished then as Godot is now.

Comparing Godot 3.0 to Unity 2017-2018 isn't really a fair comparison.

Just my 2 copper pieces

-emo

@Ace Dragon said: For the record, I do agree on not chasing a massive accumulation of features over a short period of time (at the expense on making sure people can make their games without battling bugs, regressions, unpolished features, or worse). Unity Tech. and Epic do place priority on the feature race and their communities are filled with comments about crippling bugs, major regressions, and slow performance.

At that point, Godot can gain a lot of ground (among indie devs. especially) if it just polishes its existing feature-set to a crazy level that work as advertised (as many users have resigned to the possibility that game engines are just buggy monoliths and battling issues is just part of being a game creator). That's not say Godot doesn't have issue now (there are various bugs in the area of graphics for instance and particles are limited).

Unity do racing but it's not comparable to any level. Lot of games complex gameplay and physics games have always been possible with it and have been made because the fundation is good. But Godot is bad on 3D fondation.

@emo10001 said: We do need to keep in mind that we can't compare all of Godot's features and/or shortcomings to Unity 2017-2018. Unity's initial 1.0 release was 12 years ago and it's 3.0 release was over 5 years later. Godot's initial 1.0 release was a little over 3 years ago with it's 3.0 release about 56 days ago. I didn't use Unity in 2010, but I'm going to bet that, at best, it was about as polished then as Godot is now.

Comparing Godot 3.0 to Unity 2017-2018 isn't really a fair comparison.

Just my 2 copper pieces

-emo

Some features are available from Godot 2 when i tried it, but they never got adressed. Most people didn't used it for 3D games and i think not enough people are pushing enough Godot 3 for 3D. Another bug i encountered was about a capsule collider unable to move on top of a plane surface, the answer was to make a cube; while [name your game engine] have no issues with planes collision. Or the car physics that are not stable and buggy. Those are only few examples among many; Godot fundation has never been adressed.

Hopefully more people will use it for 3D pushing 3D and perhaps it will get a better fundation.

@MagicLord said:

Some features are available from Godot 2 when i tried it, but they never got adressed. Most people didn't used it for 3D games and i think not enough people are pushing enough Godot 3 for 3D. Another bug i encountered was about a capsule collider unable to move on top of a plane surface, the answer was to make a cube; while [name your game engine] have no issues with planes collision. Or the car physics that are not stable and buggy. Those are only few examples among many; Godot fundation has never been adressed.

Hopefully more people will use it for 3D pushing 3D and perhaps it will get a better fundation.

I certainly hope so too. My main focus is definitely 3D. I know you say you reported bugs and that will definitely fall on us as the users, making sure we report bugs on Git, and really, on all the forums (to make sure it's seen).

I just feel this engine has so much potential and momentum right now, so I'm all in :smile:

-emo

To that point, and just fyi for everyone, this is a quote from the Github page:

"To get in touch with the developers, the best way is to join the #godotengine IRC channel on Freenode."