cybereality I think it's the best general purpose engine around, especially for beginners. Low hardware requirements. Easy language. Very good editor.
Talk about anything
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I have to say the adjustments to the forum site have been excellent. Feels as good as the old one, maybe a little better. The wider space between posts is a little so so, but other than that it fits the bill.
Honestly, I have been researching 3D engines and testing stuff for about 20 years. I have evaluated literally every 3D engine that has come out in that time (that was available to download) and most of them fell short. Though there were some good ones here and there, they never got enough attention and disappeared. So when I found Godot I was so happy. Finally a decent interface and an easy to use engine, that still looked pretty good, and was getting popular. This is rare.
As for 3D, many complain about it. I haven't done anything yet with 3D, although I plan to. I also never tried making shaders, it sounds difficult.
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Bimbam Early WIP for next biome/scene (still in Blender atm):
It would be a good demonstration of Godot's capabilities. 
️
Nerdzmasterz I also never tried making shaders, it sounds difficult.
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Nerdzmasterz
I've never done 2D, but reading about the tilesets the other day I had the idea of a train driver running their train down a track and switching switches to chosse the non-dead-end track. Speed increases, at some point it is not visible if a track is dead end or not, so they have to rely on signals. Then, with increasing speed, tracks start to run parallel, with head on traffic. Things may appear on the track, fallen trees, maybe a derailed derelict of another train, and so on, until the terminal station appears -> game won. Running into things or over a dead end -> Game lost. I'd call it "Loco's Breath" :-)
I have a little 3D experience with an own naive render framework, so the render pipeline is not a logical problem for me. But I don't know yet how Godot shaders fit in. They may have serious performance impact, for instance if every shader triggers an internal pipeline switch and a draw call. But I really don't know yet. I'll get to that chapter later.
From what I see there isn't much reason to actually complain. And it is so far only one of two full blown engines (the other being Unity) that runs effortlessly on Linux, and the only one which brings its script editor with help lookup with it. Cool is Godot's easy integration of lower level languages, in case the performance reaches limits. Sure, it is not an engine with a billion bucks budget ...
One thing I'd say may ease the confusion that comes with 3D is, if there is some and school was long ago :-), a little recap in linear algebra, vectors and matrices.
@Bimbam
The scenery is nice !
btw.: Is it pronounced Godot like in "En attendant Godot" or Godot like in cough "Go, dot !" ?
Questions over Questions ...
Edit nevermind, found this: https://godotengine.org/qa/175/what-is-the-proper-way-to-say-godot
So it is French for me :-)
God-oh.
I'm assuming it's not very hard to make 3D games... as long as you don't have any gimbal lock issues. (At least I think that's what it's called.)
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Uh, there's a whole chapter on this I see. Frankly, I believe this can be deleted from the documentation in order to not confuse, and the engine use quaternion rotation per default. This would be totally transparent to the script coder, and performant as well, as long as back and forth conversion to matrices doesn't happen too offen.
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Nerdzmasterz I'm assuming it's not very hard to make 3D games
I'd say the difficulty scales inversely with enthusiasm, like anything else. By that I mean if you're keen to make 2D games, 3D will probably feel harder.
Personally I find making a good looking responsive 2D UI more taxing than whatever I make in 3D.
Objectively 3D does have an extra dimension, but 'more' things to consider doesn't always mean 'harder' things. And also having that extra dimension may make some design decisions easier, like, I never really have to manage z-indices or parrallax layers.
I'd be fairly confident that 3D takes more time though as I feel the end result is far less forgiving (bad 3D stands out more to me than bad 2D).
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Absolutely. Remember, I dabbled in VR before. 
It's probably the best platform to date.
The other dimension isn't what makes it hard, it's filling up the world that takes forever.
3D is harder, not only because of the math, but because assets take longer and require more skill to make. It's fairly easy to make a full 2D game almost by yourself (or with like 3 or 4 people) but 3D can take a whole team if you want high quality. So it's more about time consumption.
I suppose I can offer insight on this. Personally, I prefer working with pre-made, modular, low-poly 3D models as much as possible. They're cheaper and very effective for beginners in 3D.
For those who just want to build in 3D for your first 3D game, start very small and then, if you want to spend more time on it after that, work your way up. Single play games would be the easiest, like one that tells a story in a small few levels- like Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. You will quickly realize how much more you have to add in to make it look good.
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Do you guys know about a good Blender >3.0 Book ?
I love books. Browsing amazon I mostly find outdated books, and the one or 2 labelled 3.0 have reviews like "save your money and use the online documentation".
The math is... not that bad, really. Instead of moving up down, left, and right, you will often move forwards and backwards, and rotate left and right. Up and down is mostly for jumping or camera movement- hence the dreaded gimbal lock.
Pixophir Not that I'm aware of, but Blender changes so often, it's difficult for me to even try to keep up. I would rather look for something more stable. IDK, is Rhino 3D any good?
This is a good book, I read a previous edition. It's for Blender 2.8, but the basics have not changed.
This one is also good, but I haven't finished reading it yet.
Thanks all. I probably try with the documentation first.
Need a second monitor ...
... and a larger desk.
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Pixophir Check out Grant Abbits website. He's got courses that I think are cheap plus a lot of free ones and he's really good. You don't have to worry about 3.0 because the basics have been the same since about 2.8 or so. You don't need a second monitor. A pen tablet might be nice for some painting tasks. A desktop computer is probably a little better, but even if it's a 13 inch, I would get started right now. Start with his beginner courses.
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I've been studying game development for years, and not once have I really needed a second monitor. Heck, I can run Godot on a laptop if my graphics don't have to be superior. I would like a second monitor for certain things, but otherwise it's not a bad setup if you need to export to the desktop and import from the desktop straight to your Godot project.
If you're working with 3D, and you ever do need superior graphics, top-notch characters, and excellent rigging, you could try to save up for grabbing Daz Studio as well. It's free, but it can get expensive when you use it for real projects. However, if you can afford it, the results are stellar- and they have buildings/props/locations you can use as well.
These are characters from the 3D game called Psychotic, which I've been itching to get done some day. In the last character in the list, a closer shot of my icon, I did some editing in Unity- added the brain and light bulb-hat, and the lights, and whatever, but it still gets my point across. You can tell from this that he is actually a light source with glowing, alien skin.
The main character:
Extra:
Some villains
Speaking of, I am on the lookout for 3D horror assets to match the characters. I can easily find 2D assets, but 3D is another matter. Anyone know a good place with such models? I won't spoil the game, though.
Speaking of tutorials, I've got a better idea. Instead of written or video tutorials, we just need someone to embed the godot IDE into a game. The game sets you tasks to accomplish, then you use the embedded IDE to finish them. If you get too frustrated, the game pulls up a copy of the ideal project to compare with, but doesn't let you edit it -- you have to make the changes in your project.
That ought to be easy to do.
duane Instead of written or video tutorials, we just need someone to embed the godot IDE into a game.
They did this.
https://gdquest.mavenseed.com/courses/learn-to-code-from-zero-with-godot
Nerdzmasterz Anyone know a good place with such models? I won't spoil the game, though.
I get all my art from here:
https://www.cgtrader.com/
Nerdzmasterz If you haven't already, check out Blend Swap for free models. It's kind of hit and miss, but you might find something useful, however you have to check the license.
https://www.blendswap.com/
cybereality Apparently that game is poorly advertised, I've never seen it before but would not have been opposed to trying it back when.
I wouldn't mind giving a go at a programming game, as I like stuff like that. Then I could post it free somewhere. I have to work on a few projects that pay first, though.
It's not a game. It's an interactive tutorial app. They had a Kickstarter last year I think, and it's in beta, I don't believe they finished it yet. So maybe that is why it wasn't advertised much.
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I'm thinking they should have a hacker game on it. Program a robot to retrieve objects, hack into security systems, and stopping a psycho from destroying the world as we know it.
Here's my thing- so many times, I have heard about "how hard it is to code".
Um...
What's so hard about print(6 + 8), or get_node("Button").show()? 
Boy the tab key is kind of strange when entering code. You press it and the cursor disappears and the code doesn't appear to indent, but then when you post it, it's indented. Just have to get used to it I guess.
I don't even indent. I just hit enter to make new lines as needed, and then select the whole code and use the insert code button. It indents automatically.
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Got the solar panels for my new place today. 3 out of 26 were broken. Hope i get a replacement without having to seek legal advice. Will see tomorrow.
Is it hard to code ? I am not a good coder nor have I ever officially learned or studied this, all self studying. I am currently porting an opengl renderer of mine (terrain lod stuff) to vulkan. Want to see if I can ever combine this with Godot, since Godot makes integration so easy (from what I read). With deferred rendering and Vulkan this should not be too impossible, though there are some things to solve. Deferred because there is no spoon .. errr mesh in the LOD version I have, so not much lighting and effects can be done in the geometry stage where positions are calculated, just vertex normals.
Apart from that it is trivial stuff, no abstraction, no platform indenpendent things, just straight plain C++, I even can look up some Vulkan recipes on the web, but yet, I find Vulkan to be an incomprehensible mess of lose ends. Did you know that because they run out of identifier names or realized that certain functionality needs a new internal treatment for things like structures of functions they start to enumerate them, like "vkVeryLongAndObfuscatedFunctionName2". Does "industry forged" mean "fy indy developers" ?
Just realized that I am a bit on the negative side today. Nevermind ... :-)
Think I go out for a couple of cold ones in a bar by the harbour.
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We all have bad days.
I taught myself to code as well, so I know a thing or two about it.
The catch is that it is possibly not the learning that gets you. It happened to me, it happened to Thomas Brush, and that means it could easily happen to anyone.
I'm not saying this to scare you, but to warn you to never quit, no matter how things get.
What causes the problem?
When you start off, you are unsure about anything. After that, you learn more and more and get excited- and it feels amazing. Once you reach the peak of learning to program, however- not understanding everything but knowing enough to program with little help- the excitement fades, and you sort of plunge into this... depressive state, I guess? It's awful.
If you manage to endure that, however, the downward spiral eventually flattens. It won't be like it was, but you won't hate your game engine anymore.
At least that's how I would explain it.
Other than that really bad state, coding is surprisingly simple. 
Coding is actually not difficult. It takes a long time to learn, but conceptually it is simple. You ask the computer to do something, and it does precisely what you ask. The issue is that most people don't understand the question they are asking. If you know exactly what you are asking, then translating that to a computer is straight forward.
Another factor is to decide what programming language you want to learn, and that would influence what you can program later on. C++ is incredible in its power, but also used more in lower-level game engine building. There's nothing wrong with it, of course, in AAA companies, they most likely use C++ to build their own game engines or whatever. Other companies prefer Python or C#. The medical field, for instance, uses Python- most likely because it's simpler to understand and it gets the job done so they can focus on more- or more important- things than one certain program.
I guess another question is, how much time are you willing to spend learning? IMO, GDScript would be the easiest, followed by C#, and then C++ is the hardest. It simply doesn't use words that are... English? A lot of it seems to involve symbols rather than words.
Programming is a lot like filling out tax forms. There's some simple math involved. You're encouraged to do things the "right" way, but it can be very rewarding to be innovative... unless you screw up. And, most of it is boilerplate that shouldn't be necessary, but you're dealing with a big, dumb machine, so you have to fill it in.
And, like filing your taxes, all you have to do is read the documentation and follow the directions.
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Nerdzmasterz Another factor is to decide what programming language you want to learn
Programming languages are for humans, not computers. This is another misunderstanding. The computer only understands binary, but there is almost no human that can write anything even mildly complex in binary. So the programming language is for us to understand. So pick the one you are most comfortable with. It also depends what you are doing. The language to write a shell script, or a GUI app, or a 3D game, or browser plug-in, will obviously be different. But it ultimately doesn't matter. I just pick the best tool for the job. As I've been coding for so long, I can start a project in a language I've never seen before and it's not an issue. I already have the program designed in my head, so learning the syntax for a new language can be done in like 2 or 3 days.
Another nice thing about coding is that the basics will pretty much be the same for each language, just with different syntaxes. For python, Hello World is print("Hello, World!"). For C#, console.WriteLine("Hello World!"), and C++ is cout << "Hello World!" << endl;.
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Nerdzmasterz Another nice thing about coding is that the basics will pretty much be the same for each language, just with different syntaxes. For python, Hello World is print("Hello, World!"). For C#, console.WriteLine("Hello World!"), and C++ is cout << "Hello World!" << endl;.
Don't think this is a great example, as the first two are using pre-existing functions to print console output, while the last introduces the concept of streaming operators with the potential prerequisite knowledge of overloading.
C++ just never easy.
Your point is largely true though for most high level languages which abstract a lot of the fluff.