Will Godot do the job that I want it to do? (Turn based modular war game engine)

zircher

I decided to go with a discussion since the answer might be a solid 'maybe'. :-)

I want to build a turn based war game engine that can be easily modded to an extreme level as in all the labels, UI elements, game pieces (ideally in 3d), can all be defined by an external config file (say XML, for example.) The war game engine knows the rules, but doesn't care if it is playing with medieval soldiers, grav-tanks, or space fighters. Perhaps something that supports single player and two player gaming with the ability to read in custom maps, unit definitions, scenarios, and campaign files.

Is something possible or does Godot insist that all the audio and visual resources have to packaged with the game logic?

Megalomaniak

It's a definite maybe, yes. Note that the godot editor is itself a product of godot engine. If you are willing to put in the time you should be able to achieve what you are looking to do. It will overall be a more complex project than your average game however.

kryzmak

I would say YES (but maybe partially).

For anything regarding Text and Descriptions (Label description, Tooltips, ingame text), you can provide via JSON files, which Godot Engine reads at runtime. This file can then be modified by any user with a text editor.

For anything regarding textures, pictures, UI elements (jpg, png), the same may be true as long as the relative path and naming is not changing (not 100% sure about this).

For anything regarding 3D models, I can unfortunately give no answer about.

Disclaimer: I have not yet created a game with modding abilities. My answers depend just on my experience with Godot so far (about 1 year).

zircher

Thanks for the info, so at least it isn't a solid No. I have not played with the JSON format, but that does sound like a good direction for me to research. If anyone still has more info and ideas, I would like to hear it.

TwistedTwigleg

I would say it is definitely doable. I imagine it will take a lot of testing and time to make sure everything works, almost certainly more than the 'average' game.

I imagine one of the hardest parts will be parsing all of it and making it compatible with your scripts. Other than that, right now I cannot think of anything that would be necessarily impossible to do with Godot. All of the other parts are, more or less, doable so long as you have lots of time (and potentially do not mind using GDNative if GDScript/C# does not work)

If you want to use Godot to save/load custom scenes at runtime, then you could try to use something like the DSCN plugin I made. It is not very efficient, not at all secure, and creates pretty large files because it stores everything the scene needs in the file, but it might give you an idea on how to save and load custom scenes to and from binary files.

The plugin allows you to save and load meshes, sprites, labels, fonts, scripts, and pretty much everything else a normal scene can store. There are some issues and I wouldn't suggest using it in production, but maybe it will be of some help :smile:

zircher

Good to know. I imagine that since I'm planning on a turn based game, I can get by with saving the game state data rather than the kitchen sink and the scene it is rendered in. I know the project goals are rather ambitious, but I have written similar monstrosities before. (The Fire on the Suns Battle Engine I wrote in VB98 could handle 32,000 complex units per side in a 'spread sheet wars' PBEM game.) Fortunately, turn based gaming allows me to take some performance hits if user expectations are managed. :-)