My issue is not the resolution, but the physical size of the screen. I've got a 14" walmart laptop, and my games are mostly aimed at android, so that should be fine. I can run firefox, vim, xterm, etc. with large text. Godot's 3.x ide fits reasonably well -- I have to use mouseover to see some of the debug values -- but running the fonts at 24/26 causes 4.x menus to expand to the point that they force the right sidebar completely off the screen. Godot's interface is designed in godot, and it suffers in some areas because of it, though I'd say it's an overall advantage.

I imagine they'll fix it before I want to move up. But you can see why a plain text-editor still appeals to me, although (ironically) the 2D/3D parts of 4.x are the ones most affected.

cybereality

Thanks, I think I want to actually turn this into a minigame, unlike previous projects that are largely just static scenarios.

Something like Pokemon Snap where you can explore a small area around the oasis to try and get money shots of animals without startling them. Will mean needing to find/make animated HQ saharan animals though, but then any new 3D scenario I make just becomes a new 'level'.

    Someone mentioned being interested in game development, so I suggested Godot to them for its simplicity. Honestly I hope more beginner friendly tuts start popping up soon.

    Yeah, I always recommend Godot. Like if you don't know what to choose, then you should be using Godot.

      cybereality I think it's the best general purpose engine around, especially for beginners. Low hardware requirements. Easy language. Very good editor.

        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.

          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.

          The Book of Shaders.

              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 :-)

                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.)

                  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.

                  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).

                    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.