So there are two core issues here:

  • Open source users being averse to any sort of money.
  • Users unhappy with features or the direction or lack of control.

So my point is that any sort of project needs to be sustainable in order to survive and grow. You can't expect talented developers to work full-time on a project with no compensation. Yes, individual developers can work on specific features they need (for their own game) and merge it, but sustaining a large project requires staff, and it's not reasonable to expect to survive with random people donating a weekend here and there to help. Yes, there will be lots of little improvements, and this is the nature of open source, but to have a solid direction and leadership, you really need people getting paid somehow.

Most successful FOSS projects are like this, for example Canonical, Red Hat, Wordpress, Mozilla, etc. Do you think Firefox would still be around, in any popular sense, if Mozilla said, for ethical reasons, they would never make any money? Probably not. It would just be some code on Github that no one uses, like a million other abandoned FOSS projects. Even Linux itself has survived because of corporate interest and commercial use, as well as contributions from Intel, Google, Samsung, IBM, etc. If we said no one could ever make any money from Linux, then it would be dead in the water and no one would have even heard of it, besides computer science historians. It's just really a misguided viewpoint.

The other thing is users being unhappy with the features or direction or lack of control. Well, I submitted a proposal to add my render scaler to Godot 3.x. I think the technology worked, and did improve performance quite a lot. The proposal got hundreds of votes, and we had a long discussion with the maintainers involved, and ultimately decided it wasn't worth it. Mainly due to the fact that this is already resolved in Godot 4.0 (with better quality and performance) and the maintainers did not want to add code or be forced to support it, when a better solution was already in the works. And I agreed with this, I was not upset or butthurt, they were kind and explained the situation and it made sense. I wasn't going to press the issue or start some beef.

In terms of the features, yes Godot is missing a lot. No terrain, for one thing. Poor asset pipeline and animation support. Still lots of issues with the shadows, etc. But no one is forcing you to use Godot. If the features don't work for your project, then you can use Unity or any number of other open source engines. There are actually a lot of engines that are better than Godot, in terms of graphics and features, but they don't have a large community and can be difficult to use. So you weigh your options. Do you want to pay for an engine? Then use Unity or Unreal. Do you want a free engine, or need the source code to modify, well there are other projects to choose from, like Stride or O3DE. Or, if you're really hardcore, then just code the thing in OpenGL or Vulkan yourself. There is really no reason to be unhappy, there is more technology now than ever and most are cheap or free.

Granted, I think Godot is the most promising engine right now, due to the ease of use and productivity. So if you want to stick with it, then contribute. I'm still finishing school, and I have some other personal stuff going on, but I plan to work on the GL support and some of the rendering things that are not working. There is really no use in complaining. It's a FOSS project, so you can either fix it yourself, or use a different software. It's as simple as that, no one owes you anything. Not sure why people are so entitled these days. When I started coding, there weren't even such things as "game engines", you just wrote everything yourself by hand in C++. So I guess I have a different perspective.

Xrayez If you read the Advisors section there, this exactly what describes community-informed development approaches. Community-driven approaches don't require advisory groups, because community-driven approaches are governed using "bottom-up" principles, but with Godot it's more like "top-down". Godot Contributors Chat has a private advisors channel, by the way.

Pure bottom-up development would be Godot not having a roadmap at all (which requires some form of leadership) and no defined release cycle (ie. feature freeze, bugfix period). Instead, users will watch as their engine's toolset and codebase turns into a chaotic mess with everything now done with a design-by-committee approach.

At first glance it might not seem fair that so many pull requests appear ignored, but a healthy project requires all submitted code to adhere to quality standards, not do things with ugly hacks, and if it is a rather big one get approved by way of a PR meeting. If the patch is a new feature, it has to be determined whether the feature, tool, or enhancement is something that will be useful and cannot be done manually with a few lines of GDScript. Also keep in mind the potential issue of a feature being a black box that cannot be easily modified from outside input (which such a case did exist at one point with the interpolated camera node).

In short, committing all pull requests (because of fairness and idealism) would be nothing short of developer anarchy and doing such will cause the project to fall apart quickly.

    Megalomaniak
    It's nothing very interesting. 4.0 won't have html (yet), and it will be another significant wait until that rolls out, and my system runs vulkan slower than opengl. Fortunately, the developers seem to have fixed the menu bug that was my worst issue, though I haven't tried it yet to confirm that. I'll be married to 3.x for a few years, at least.

      It occurs to me that there is a major difference between godot and other projects, like blender or opengl -- godot users tend not to be useful godot programmers. Anyone who works with 3D will have a use for blender, even the developers of the project. Someone who works on firefox will probably use firefox.

      On the other hand, someone qualified to develop godot could easily use any number of other game engines with higher technical requirements (or no engine). I've been programming for four decades, but while I could do maintenance work on this project, I doubt I could do anything new with it. So, comparing the project with blender (for example) isn't necessarily useful. Python might be a better comparison.

      Yes, all projects are different, but I think this point is more fundamental than most, and will drive the relationship between the developers and users more. For one thing, it limits the number of developers and their personal investment in godot.

      Yes, that is kind of a related point to something I brought up in another thread. Epic Games were originally a game development studio, and still make one of the world's most popular games, Fortnite. They built the engine for use in their work, not as some abstract tool for others. So the direction of the engine directly follows what real developers will need, because they are real AAA developers with a millions of user game. Same thing with Valve and Source, though they never chose to pursue licensing, the engine was still good (and Source 2 is very good). And then you take Unity, who aren't game developers, and the direction is all over the place, cause they don't know what they are doing. Yes, I'm sure the employees have all worked on games before, but the company direction is not guided by what they are doing today.

      I see Godot in a similar boat. If the core maintainers were actually working on high quality professional games themselves, they might realize that much of the work they've been doing is theoretical and not actually supporting what developers need. Well 2D is pretty good, but 3D is pretty far behind, specifically because there is a disconnect between what is needed for game developers and what the maintainers focus on. Granted, there are many users contributing, and many of them do so because of projects they are working on. But it's the idea of the focus and direction of the company. Which is why I think W4 is the right move.

        cybereality If the core maintainers were actually working on high quality professional games themselves, they might realize that much of the work they've been doing is theoretical and not actually supporting what developers need.

        This can be understood to mean that a project showcase of the engine is needed. It would demonstrate the capabilities of the engine and give feedback on what needs to be implemented first. It would also act as a fundraiser (can be on a donation basis) for both the engine and itself. For it is much easier to get revenue from players than from game developers and it will be much higher.

          5 days later

          I'd recommend reading the whole article, as there is new information. The most important point is that W4 got $8.5 million in funding, which is quite a lot for something like this. So we should have no worries about Godot for the foreseeable future.

          I think that is a fantastic announcement, even this one convinced me to switch from Unity to Godot

          I come from the WordPress world (I'm actively yet in that world, I'm just trying to make a switch to videogames world since it's my passion) and I only can say that is a excellent environment (not WordPress itself, the whole open-source/business environment around it) and we need to keep in mind that this model make WordPress the #1 website engine in the world with around 47% usage

          If Godot follows the WordPress way and W4 is the Automattic (the company made by the WordPress author) of Godot, then will become the greatest game editor

          For those with open-source only in mind, just want to let you know the benefits if Godot gets established as a serious contender in the game dev world:
          1 - Godot will still as open-source, W4 will make the required business work like open the closed gates to the consoles SDK
          2 - If Godot grows in a similar way than it's competitors, you will have a double win, since you will become an expert in an open-source software while it open job positions or freelance ways
          3 - The Asset Store managed by W4 will open also a freelance way where everyone could make money, I know that money + open-source could not sound fine, but trust me that I established a company in WordPress releasing plugins open-source with paid features and until today our earnings are just growing up and I was able to contract people (yes, I'm not the only one earning money, I'm giving job positions with open-source software! A win-to-win) and also give me the possibility to embark myself and my team and new members to the game dev world
          4 - More ways to earn money with Godot ends in more contributors in all areas, WordPress has made an excellent job here, where contributing to the engine, forums, community, localization, etc, is just a plus to anyone, because contributors are considered truly experts and contributing gives them more job offers (I contracted WordPress contributors as devs for my teams, which ensures me that this person has real experience)

          So if anyone is worry about a company behind a open-source software, I just can say that is positive for everyone since it could turn all non-profits proyectos into projects with profits that empowers independent author's to continue working in the world the want!

          If no one ever makes any money, then the project dies. That's just how it works.

            cybereality there is always a place for free and indie projects, much more, it's recommended to anyone who wants to grow to release first free content to get feedback and experience

            I released around 40 add-ons in WordPress for free around 1 year before release my first commercial project, all the free stuff was awesome to learn and get real experience

            But if true that if you want to keep in a sector, yes or yes you may need some kind of monetary benefits, thanks to them you can grow and reach impossible goals by contracting new team members with different perspectives, something vital while creating an interactive experience like a game is