• Godot HelpGUI

  • Why is the editor built on top of the engine's GUI framework?

New to Godot, sorry for my ignorance, and in my career I've never worked on GUI, so doubly ignorant.

An editor's needs are not necessarily a game's needs. Editors are usually more tabulated systems whereas a game can be freeform. Making something that does everything under the sun must have compromises. At least in efficiency and flexibility. As well as collaboration - if you used QT (just to throw a random example), there would be thousands of people around the world that could help make the editor better. Having it be both means people have to know issues in both and exponentially limits how many people can or want to help.

There are numerous GUI frameworks for PC/MAC/Linux applications already built and mature.

What's the reasoning behind it?

That is a very good question.

Honestly, I don't know, but as a Godot user I love the idea of using an engine that is really used by its core developpers. Knowing that the features are "field tested" is like a guarantee of quality for me.

There are several reasons Godot is dogfooding its editor interface — in fact, it's pretty much a Godot "game" written in C++. One of them is library size: libraries such as Qt are huge (both in terms of file size and scope), which would impact the final size of the editor binary (and also make it harder to build from source, especially on Windows and macOS).

Making something that does everything under the sun must have compromises. At least in efficiency and flexibility.

I think the Godot editor is pretty snappy as it is. You can try disabling V-Sync in the Project Settings to make it even snappier (this will work only if your graphics driver doesn't force V-Sync).

As well as collaboration - if you used QT (just to throw a random example), there would be thousands of people around the world that could help make the editor better.

In my experience, it doesn't work like that; using a popular technology does not mean you'll get more contributors. For instance, there are many open source projects with very active development such as Blender which use an in-house GUI toolkit, much like Godot.

@Rantrod said: New to Godot, sorry for my ignorance, and in my career I've never worked on GUI, so doubly ignorant.

An editor's needs are not necessarily a game's needs. Editors are usually more tabulated systems whereas a game can be freeform. Making something that does everything under the sun must have compromises. At least in efficiency and flexibility. As well as collaboration - if you used QT (just to throw a random example), there would be thousands of people around the world that could help make the editor better. Having it be both means people have to know issues in both and exponentially limits how many people can or want to help.

There are numerous GUI frameworks for PC/MAC/Linux applications already built and mature.

What's the reasoning behind it?

Perhaps because i's multi platform, with a very good conception behind , optimized ? I don't think the Godot GUI is specific to the editor, i think it's a general GUI system that can be used for anything like editor or in game. The good is when a GUI bug is fixed for a game it benefits the editor, or a GUI bug fixed for the editor also automatically benefits games using the GUI. Tabulated systems is optional , you can use Godot GUI without using tabulation.

Some people working on Godot source might have better answers than mine.

4 years later