Thoughts about Godot Engine and W4Games

General reflections on funding. Of course, everyone wants to eat… at least sometimes. I would like to have some left over for strong Belgian beer and black caviar.

The founder of MakeHuman abandoned his product because it was not generating income, set up a new project and abandoned it for the same reason.

But an office like Steam doesn't produce anything — it just sells what others have created and is all silk and gold.

Godot and MakeHuman are developer tools — there are very few of them, relative to players.

The idea of the usual revolutionary is to take money from the rich (players) and give it to the poor (developers).

There is no communication and financial transfer channel between engine developers and players.

Megalomaniak And that's how it will continue to be... W4 has nothing to do with that.

Given W4, there's definitely a chance that they may neglect the open-source work in Godot. I imagine that some Godot proposals may get commercialized and prioritized by commercial entities. If you're not aware, Godot proposals are already prioritized by those who donate via Patreon. It doesn't really matter how many thumb-ups you have on Godot proposal, or how much your proposal received user support. If Patrons don't vote on it, a proposal will be mostly likely left in the Limbo.

In order to back up my claim, see Godot's article called Shedding light on Godot's development process. Quote from that article:

Conservancy asks that Patreon rewards can at much affect the priority of tutorials, demos or features that the project is already intending to do. We can't offer rewards unrelated to Godot's goals. This is why we ask the whole community for proposals, then we later approve them, and only Patrons have voting power in the end. [emphasis mine]

You may say that they cannot prioritize something unrelated to Godot's goals due to SFC's mission. The problem is that Godot leadership has not defined those goals publicly in the first place, so Godot leadership starts to wrongly assume what community really wants, or speak for community. See my proposal to document Godot's development philosophy proposal, which is still unresolved. Godot's lead developer says that there's no development philosophy in Godot, which is bizarre, considering the project of this scale. To quote Juan there:

I would say that Godot development extremely pragmatic, with focus solely on solving problems. Because of this, there is not really a "Development philosophy". There is zero dogmatism here and theoretical or philosophical discussions are generally irrelevant in this context.

So, the Problem -> Solution is what best expresses this mindset.

However, many people would still like to know Godot's goals and vision in general, because they are undefined and/or ambiguous (just read the entire proposal). If Godot is only governed by "Problem → Solution" mindset, then this describes commercial companies quite accurately, and the existence of W4 Games company created by Godot leadership is a testament to this approach.

In my opinion, Godot has always been a "garage" game development and consulting company that happens to use open-source due to economical reasons of Godot founders in the past (they're from Argentina, where corruption is likely commonplace), they don't really know how to handle community-driven open-source projects, so they decided to go back to their old corporate approaches. I think that their mistake is that they overpromised too much to the public. Remember that Godot was closed-source, in-house game engine in the past for quite some time. I say this because they had Codenix company for this purpose up to 2014, and they licensed Godot to various clients in the past. Something like this could happen with W4, like premium Godot support, they could provide additional commercial packages, something like heightmap terrain plugin, etc.

Megalomaniak Different approaches, Lone Wolf takes your game an custom ports it, W4 will provide you with an export template for you to use with a devkit you have licensed from the platform owner.

From what I can tell, Ariel (punto-) said that they don't get involved in the development of games, they just sell the export code. See Ariel's post at Reddit. I think those companies that need to port Godot to consoles would be modifying Godot's source code anyways, so having access to export code would be more beneficial than having access to export templates.

In either case, I think Juan and Ariel could definitely team up in W4. I don't think it's reasonable to create different companies to do the same thing slightly differently, other than achieving financial independence. Perhaps this has something to do with money laundering scheme that we're not yet aware of... Note that W4 Games is registered at Ireland, and it's well known as Europe's tax haven.

Why wouldn't Godot leadership decide to name the new company something like "Godot Foundation", just like Blender with its "Blender Foundation"? Why wouldn't Godot leadership announce the creation of W4 Games via Godot's official website and be open about this move?

Mind you, this is just food for thought. Just think about this.

Xrayez Given W4, there's definitely a chance that they may neglect the open-source work in Godot.

So what, the community will keep steamrolling on. Even if the original developers quit the OSS project and go full time with W4 it won't be an issue at all. In fact, it rather sounds like that might be your ideal outcome

Xrayez imagine that some Godot proposals may get commercialized and prioritized by commercial entities.

They'd be free to try and do so irregardless, this still has nothing to do with W4. And anybody in the OSS community is still free to create a competing OSS solution. So this is a nothing burger.

Xrayez If Patrons don't vote on it, a proposal will be mostly likely left in the Limbo.

By the developers that the patreon support pays for? Of course, so what? Any community developer is still free to tackle whatever issue they want and provide a pull request however.

Xrayez Remember that Godot was closed-source, in-house game engine in the past for quite some time.

So was blender, your point?

Xrayez Something like this could happen with W4, like premium Godot support, they could provide additional commercial packages, something like heightmap terrain plugin, etc.

Yeah, so? They can't stop others from developing competing ones(this applies to both: support and plugins), whether OSS or commercial/proprietary. And that's all that matters.

Xrayez In either case, I think Juan and Ariel could definitely team up in W4. I don't think it's reasonable to create different companies to do the same thing slightly differently, other than achieving financial independence.

Then maybe in due time they will. But competition even in this area is not actually a bad thing. Might keep both more honest too.

Xrayez Why wouldn't Godot leadership decide to name the new company something like "Godot Foundation", just like Blender with its "Blender Foundation"?

Because this is not the equivalent of the Blender Foundation, the Software Freedom Concervacy already fulfills that purpose for the godot project. W4 is closer in purpose to the Blender Institute/Blender Animation Studio. Closer, but not the same just as blender and godot are obviously not the same type of thing either.

Megalomaniak So what, the community will keep steamrolling on. Even if the original developers quit the OSS project and go full time with W4 it won't be an issue at all. In fact, it rather sounds like that might be your ideal outcome

Hopefully, yes. But I'm realistic about this.

Megalomaniak They'd be free to try and do so irregardless, this still has nothing to do with W4. And anybody in the OSS community is still free to create a competing OSS solution. So this is a nothing burger.

Which may lead to community division. Do you see division as a bad or good thing? You can already find Godot forks out there, I won't mention them here to avoid advertisement. And with W4, I forecast that we'll see even more Godot forks out there. I think division is inevitable regardless, see the many Linux distributions.

Megalomaniak By the developers that the patreon support pays for? Of course, so what? Any community developer is still free to tackle whatever issue they want and provide a pull request however.

This is not an issue per-se if Godot is community-informed. But Godot gives out an impression that it's community-driven, which is not the case, which is a big difference, according to my experience and research, both as an ex-contributor and an ex-member of Godot project. So we're talking about not meeting expectations of what constitutes community power over decision making.

Even if someone creates a pull request for a popularly requested feature, it may not be merged, and not necessarily because of quality, but due to other reasons, like maintenance. However, Godot leadership could delegate maintenance of a feature to someone who created it, yet they don't delegate such privileges for the most part. And maintenance equals to decision-making power, which Godot leadership won't give up. There's a reason why Akien is the only person who's generally allowed to merge pull requests. In truly community-driven projects, we'd see several people managing and merging pull requests, but even after 8 years of development, we don't see it happening as a common practice in Godot. Even money is not required for this. Just have more trust in developer community to fulfill Godot's vision, whatever it is. Let community define it. That's my vision.

But yeah, nowadays, you can go to Godot's governance page and see it for yourself, but it was added like a year ago. That means Godot has been potentially confusing many users and contributors to think that Godot is community-driven for whopping 7 years since it got open-sourced. Even with Godot's governance documented, many people won't actually read it, unfortunately. Even then, they're still not completely honest about their governance.

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.

Again, you may not see this yourself if you haven't closely interacted within Godot's development community. I'm not the only one who thinks this way, you can read, for instance, LillyByte's feedback on hypocritical leadership in Godot.

Megalomaniak So was blender, your point?

My point is that while Godot is open-source, the mentality behind it is not necessarily open. Unlike Blender and other healthy open-source projects, the discrepancy between words vs actions vs expectations vs reality is quite severe in Godot, that's my core point.

I don't have an issue with commercial companies, and I don't have an issue with open-source either. I just expect to participate in an honest project, where most discussions are open, with little to no hypocrisy and ambiguities. Godot does not inspire confidence in this regard. I've seen some people who got fed up by Godot's decisions in the past, and they left the community without a single word expressing their stance on this, which is sad. More people should talk about this.

I don't see success merely from the perspective of technology. The success is largely determined by human factor.

This is what Godot leadership says (rhetoric):

• To users: "Community is in charge, everything is transparent and democratic"
• To contributors: "Development is solely based on trust, not meritocracy nor democracy"

If Godot's decisions are going to create disappointment by overpromising features, or keep telling that community is in charge, then it will definitely backfire.

If the creation of W4 Games company is going to improve Godot, I don't mind that. But it's equally important to be honest and open about these kind of decisions.

To summarize my thoughts about Godot leadership using popular idioms:

• If you run after two hares, you will catch neither.
• You can't have your cake and eat it.

Xrayez Which may lead to community division.

The community is already highly fractured, so par for the course I suppose. But also, I don't think it's the kind of issue you seem to be making it out to be..?

Xrayez You can already find Godot forks out there, I won't mention them here to avoid advertisement.

The thing is these are more like custom builds rather than truly divergent forks. So, no, I do not perceive these to be an issue.

Xrayez But yeah, nowadays, you can go to Godot's governance page and see it for yourself, but it was added like a year ago. That means Godot has been potentially confusing many users and contributors to think that Godot is community-driven for whopping 7 years since it got open-sourced.

I suspect it's more so the case that they intended for godot to become a community driven project(and it still might yet) but so far the community hasn't yet developed into a driving force, something the developers could never really make forcefully happen anyways. Either the community that develops around a project goes on to take it and run with it or it won't. This isn't really on the original developers.

The source is very liberally licensed, anybody can take it and fork it into whatever kind of project they want. If you want it to become a GPL/"free software"/ideological project then you can go and do so. Just don't expect me to use it., cause that wouldn't serve any positive purpose for me. But you are free to do so and all the power and success to you in it.

Xrayez I'm not the only one who thinks this way, you can read, for instance, LillyByte's feedback on hypocritical leadership in Godot.

While I'm not technical enough to make engine PRs myself, many in voice chat were; and they would make PRs to Godot... and we would tell them how to do it, and look hopefully at the fixes that "would be coming in the future"....
Except those PRs never ever got merged... PRs sat for years, untouched. When people coming in wanting to add feature PRs to Godot asked us how long it takes for things to get merged... we were honest. It could be years, because it could be.

I know I keep bringing up blender as a comparison point a lot, but that's because I've been following it since 2004...and this is no different there either. There's probably more patches that have never made it in than those that have. A common problem even for moderately complex OSS projects.

Remember, every patch/PR need a reviewer. And every potential reviewer is themselves likely a developer with their own ongoing projects. Given that their time is limited and the amount of developers able to review patches/PR's is itself limited too, it's in practical terms, very unreasonable to expect most PRs to get looked at in short order. If you are serious about your PR being worth the effort then you as it's developer will keep it maintained and from going stale until it does get looked at. S' the simple truth of it.

Does it stink that so many PR's go stale? Sure. But unless more developers become reviewers it just can't be helped. And on-boarding developers as new reviewers itself also is a huge time and resource drain. Better funding for the necessary infrastructure as well as some full time managerial positions to actually tackle this problem might very well stem precisely from this new effort involving W4.

Blender also had to go through this growing pain, and it did so, btw, with an Epic Games Megagrant. Something I suspect many godot users wouldn't want to trust, so maybe, just maybe...W4 is actually a better solution, yeah?

Or will you magically pull out the back pocket of your trousers the funds for all of this?

TBH my own assessment of your views on this is that you are perhaps a little too idealistic and ideological for your own good. Those things are not strictly speaking bad things, but as with anything, too much of something, even good or just plain well intended, can become a bad thing. And you might well benefit from perhaps tempering your ideals with a bit of rational pragmatism to counter balance it. But also, taking a step back and a break from godot from time to time might also do you some good, perhaps lower stress a bit? Since a part of it might also be that you've simply gotten a bit too emotionally invested in a software project.

Same might also apply to LillyByte, I sense some burnout which if my assumption about emotional over investment is correct, is of course perfectly understandable. Can't at all blame her for feeling the way she does.

All of this is to say, as an OSS project godot has had a very tumultuous growth, especially in users and their expectations. It's half the age of blender, half the size if even that of blender and it's already hitting similar growth driven issues requiring similar resources to solve them as blender. It's a tough spot to be in, to be sure.

Xrayez Sorry, probably up to my own phrasing being obtuse but you likely are misunderstanding what I mean to say with it.

I mean that you might perhaps want to take a break from projects like godot from time to time, it's not unlike a job, one needs a break once in a while or one gets worn down by it. That is all.

In no way am I trying to antagonize you by saying that however.

In fact I was debating with myself whether to recommend that perhaps if you feel things are as bad as you say with godot it might be perhaps worth forking it, as a divergent fork. I can't say for sure, but while I don't see myself necessarily using the fork I'd still be supportive of the effort, I think that kind of competition might well be good for godot as well.

And I know I'm talking to someone who ought to be capable of managing this too since you have maintained(and might still be maintaining?) a fork of your own before, though not really a divergent one.

As for,

Xrayez I'm sorry but looks like you haven't managed to keep the discussion without going for ad hominem

Appeal to emotion or argumentum ad passiones (meaning the same in Latin) is an informal fallacy characterized by the manipulation of the recipient's emotions in order to win an argument

I wasn't trying to manipulate your emotions per say, rather appeal to your own rationality and point out that you yourself are perhaps arguing from a more emotional point than you intend, which might stem from being a bit burnt out trying to fight for more patches/PRs to be included/accepted. I am not however disagreeing with the mission there, I too would like to see more of them get accepted, I just don't think it's entirely up to what you claim. Maybe sometimes, but not always.

You won't convince one another. So you personally either go for it (hang on to Godot), or you leave it (other mothers' daughters and all that).

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.