Are you looking for a FREE game engine to create both 2D and 3D games with advanced features and the ability to export your completed game to just about any platform? Do you want an engine that you can program, script, or visually program (whichever you prefer)? Then the game creation tool/engine you are looking for is Godot!

Check it out here:

https://godotengine.org/

Not only is this an advanced 2D/3D game engine, but it is open source, too. So, you can go in and modify it if you please. It's actually pretty impressive.

seems to be a great choice for 2D mobile games! I'm curious how it works with high end 3D graphics.

Do a Google search and look for a few videos. There's a few pretty impressive ones out there. Like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XptlVErsL-o

Looks interesting. I might play around with as it seems somewhat lightweight.

yeah but sometimes it takes longer to make something with a lightweight engine, than with a heavy one, because of the missing tools and editors...

Have you looked at Godot 3 at all? What missing tools and editors? In reality, it's missing as much as Unity or Unreal in that you still need to create your assets somewhere else, such as in a 2D paint program, like Photoshop, or a 3D modeling app, like 3DS Max. But you have the editor where you can add your graphical content, be it for 2D or 3D, and a full coding environment, including the ability for visual coding (mainly for non-programmers). Godot does not appear to be "lightweight" at all, actually.

Have you looked at the feature list? Read about it here:

https://godotengine.org/article/godot-3-0-released

When it comes to 3D, it features things found in AAA engines, such as:

PBR Rendering:


FULL PRINCIPLED BSDF:


Global Illumination:


Mid and Post Processing:




GPU Particles:


GLTF 2.0 SUPPORT:
[img]https://godotengine.org/storage/app/media/3.0%20release/gltf.png[/img]

And so much more!

And, best of all, it's open source and free, including exporting to just about anything:

Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
Desktop platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, UWP, *BSD, Haiku
Export to the web using HTML and Web Assembly
One-click deploy & export to most platforms. Easy to create custom builds too.

I would highly recommend you check it out.

I actually doubt that engines can provide better modelling/painting tools that other products such as 3DS Max or blender that specialize in these areas. So in that regard, I prefer to use external programs to do these jobs.

What I do think, however, is that the easier you can import these assets and get them working, the better.

Also, by "lightweight" I didn't mean a lack of features, but something that isn't as bulky and stubborn as unreal. Like having the option to only use minimal features and create a small application / extend on it with your own stuff.

Hi Kartoffel,

With "lightweight" I was really responding to sivan, who said:



Also, I was not at all indicating that Godot, or any other engine, be a replacement for tools like 3DS Max, Photoshop, etc. I think you understood that, but I wanted to be clear. However, since Godot supports both Collada and glTF 2.0 scenes, then it should be extremely easy to get assets into Godot for use.

Oops, I guess that was a misuderstanding then
Anyway, Godot does look pretty neat, but I haven't tried it out, yet.

I see its rendering is cool I meant the engine's editor tools like handling complex animations (can be heavy in case of a realistic third person game) like the animation blueprints in UE4, or terrain tools, foliage editor, material editor, a mesh reduction feature is also handy in UE4, collision editor, skeletal mesh retargeting, how the editor represents code implemented functionalities, and additional things making game development really faster like AI related stuff (navmesh pathfinder, behavior tree editor). I mainly see great tools for 2D games, and you can find mostly 2d games in showcase too, the 3D related info is quite short in the docs, but apparently it includes really a lot of great things!

Godot was primarily a 2D game engine with a bit of 3D up until this latest release. Now it is both. So, the 2D roots are still very apparent. However, some of what you are talking about is a part of Godot 3. Godot 3 has an advanced material/shader language and a visual editor will be included with v3.1 (so, it's in the works). Godot also has a visual scripting language like Unreal's Blueprints, which is also extendable. And more.

Some of the things you want in the editor, like mesh reduction, I would not use or want, but would do it myself in the 3D application of my choice.

In any case, Godot might not be for you. That's cool. I just thought that people here might be interested. After all, you get a lot with engines like Unreal and Unity, but with Godot you get the engine as open source (improve and extend it all you like, if you like) and get a lot of advanced features ... all for free no matter how much you make. Not only that, if you've seen how this engine has grown, then it would seem that it's only going to get better. And, lastly (for me), it has a pretty small footprint. Godot is like 45 MB. And when I run it, I don't have to have some account somewhere, it doesn't have to check in.

I am excited to play with Godot and see what it can do.

That's something that suprised me and I like about it. It's just really quick to get up and running. I mean, I wouldn't see it as a problem even if it was 500 MB (which would still be less that other engines), but the portability and quick start-up / loading are great.

As for how well it handles and performs, I'm not sure. I didn't spend much time with it, yet. I'm a bit concerned about performance (of the 3d graphics in general, aswell as some of the scripting methods like GDScript or the visual coding feature) but these might be no problem at all.

Very interesting indeed. Open source and free is great, need to check the examples and the source code soon. (First try on the day it was released was not so great, installed an example/ material test scene, that crashed, then I couldn't start Godot anymore as it crashed as well.)

I hate engines taking several GB of my HDD, especially when more versions should be installed because of different projects...

The following video is fun, especially if you are making a 3D platformer or some other similar game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD04Tua191Q

I really like Godot, I can't lie. I think they are doing a lot of things right, and the community seems to be pretty fantastic.

Well 2 days with Godot 3 docs, examples and video tutorials.

So far the learning curve is by far the lowest of the engines I've tried (Unreal C++ and unity C#).

TL:DR

GDScript is not hard at all after Lite-C. It's a bit confusing for foolish reasons. It doesn't use {} or ; instead it uses levels of indention. It only a little annoying because I like the organization of {} and ; after years of using them.

The built in classes are similar to acknex functions. It not to hard to follow. Move_and_slide == c_move , Input.is_action_pressed == key_pressed, raycast == c_trace, Delta == time_step, ect.

API documentation is lacking. It's in progress and incomplete. It's often short and not clear. I really prefer the A8 manual style with it's examples and related function links.

The "getting started" section on the Godot docs page is easy to understand and follow. It quickly had me understanding the design of scenes/node and scripts. Also that page has basic tutorials by subject from 2d to physical ect.. I haven't really look at but 10% of them as I skipped to the more advanced stuff on YouTube. But I'm sure it's worth spending half a day to really understand the design and api.

The built in script editor is not so great. It has auto complete but I haven't seen prototype tip. It is continuously error checking but it's so far not very clear about the error. Really I just haven't learned how to read and use it. The engine can hang on error, but like SED you can switch to the editor to see the debug and error info.

Cool fact the complete Godot editors are actually a Godot engine game/application. Sort of a working GED with built in SED.

Enough for one post, I'll post again if anyone actually wants a future update.

Please do keep posting. It's helpful.

Also, while the Godot online tutorials and help are lacking (though better than they've been in the past, from what I'm led to believe), there are some really good tutorials online, particularly the ones from HeartBeast, Game From Scratch, and Jeremy Bullock:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrHQNOyU1q6BFEfkNq2CYMA

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr-5TdGkKszdbboXXsFZJTQ

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwJw2-V5S1TkBjLQ3_Ws54g

They each should have Godot 3 tutorials, too.

Ok @RealSerious3D.
I'm following Bullock right now. His FPS controller is the current choice until the official one is finished by RandomMomentina.
https://youtube.com/channel/UCYGKT9XOmuL45aEP2bWBGYw

It brings up a few negative issue. Godot is like 3dgs in a way. You have to put everything together from parts. Unreal has a actor, pawn and player class. Ready to go built player controller. It also has minimal templates which I really liked. So you can jump right in with a basic fps player controller that has a basic weapon
, Collision, animation and camera. There are template for many game styles.

Godot lacks any player controller classes or scene. It would be nice to not have to connect all the parts. You will always need a physical body, visual mesh, collision, input and a camera in almost all games.

Why isn't this package already with in one class and scene with the choice to modify to needs? When will I need a player that doesn't accept any input? Or that doesn't need a collision haul? When will I make a game without a camera looking at the player in some form and to render it?

So why not follow unreal and build users sold controller classes and basic template scenes?

I mean I like it like 3dgs that by having to put it together and write all the basic myself I learn a lot and get a deep understanding. But honestly, I'm gonna make a handful of player type scenes with scripts to copy and modify. It seems foolish that all users have to personally build there first basic player controllers. Or that they would hand make them over and over for each project. That's very old school.

Anyway I'll post a more interesting and informative post at the end of the week when my first projects are further along and I have a real feel/ understanding of godot.

Yeah, I am not a progammer (yet), but am getting ready to learn. But having looked at Godot, GameMaker Studio, and a few others, this seems pretty typical (that you have to create player input from scratch). For example, when I started to learn GameMaker Studio, I seriously thought that they would have a simple piece of code for pushing an object, an extension of their collision code or some such. Nope. Not at all. It's so basic and the basis for so many games. Instead, you had to do a lot of basic programming to get that simple function to even work. It was frustrating.

On the other hand, like you pointed out, you can create your code and save it to use whenever you like, making this a quick process for yourself. And because Godot allows you to attach code to objects/parts, you can easily create your code, attached to a part, save that part, and reuse as you please in any game. It's pretty easy to make a base player character, attach scripts to control it, and then use this as you base whenever you please, just swapping out the sprite or 3D model.

This is, for me, one of the things that attracted me to Godot over a system like GameMaker Studio ... and perhaps this goes back to my 3D GameStudio roots.

@All - I was going to ask if anyone had a good 3DGS test scene that includes the scene from a 3D modeler (I.g. 3dsmax or blender). I was going to convert it to godot and compare performance. I don't have a 3dgs key anymore and I don't know if I could make one before the trail expired.

However - I now think it's pointless! It's reasonable to assume Godot out performs A8. It's also reasonable to assume that Godot can out preform it even after using materials and features 3dgs dx9 doesn't have.

So I don't think Godot is the better engine out of unreal, and unity. But almost any newer engine is going to be better than A9 lol A8. And clearly every editor is better. I mean Wed-Med-Sed look like 2000-party over out of time!

I've not had the time to test Godot as I am currently involved in several projects, both work related and otherwise. Once I clear my plate a bit more, I plan to dive in.

Having said that, I would guess (and it is only a guess) that Godot would probably not perform as well as Unreal or Unity. But if that ends up being the case, I'm OK with that. Godot, for the most part, is a pretty well-rounded engine made for both 2D and 3D games. It's roots in 2D are very apparent, especially since v2 kind of had 3D as more of an "add-on" then a full feature. V3 changed that, though.

So, with Godot, we have a game creation tool to create most every game you could want ... and get it to just about any platform, too ... all for free. And if a part of Godot does not perform as it should? Well, it's open source. If you're a talented programmer, you could make improvements where you need. Neither Unreal nor Unity offer that ability.

Most of us are not going to create some massively online player game with zillions of polys for environments and characters. And if we are making things work in 3DGS, then we should have no issues with Godot's 3D. As you pointed out, the ceiling should be higher in Godot than 3DGS.

In any case, I am excited to find time to learn this engine. It looks like it has a lot to offer. And glTF support means I should be able to get more out of my 3D program and into Godot as simply as possible.

I'm slowly working through the Godot official tutorials (very slowly ... one must work, too, after all) and I am liking what I am seeing. I love their idea of a "node" based system. It just makes sense to me and it's something that's just a bit different than working in Unity or Unreal.

For example, you can nest nodes as children of other nodes and, thus, build your scene, your level, your world. Parents inherit from children. So, you could create a player node, create a weapon node, make the weapon a child of the player, and the player inherits the weapon's abilities, so to speak. You could also create your player node, create a wizard node (a node that has "wizard" abilities), create a warrior node, etc. Then you could easily create different players by making the wizard node a child of the player, or the warrior node the child of the player, etc.

I'm coming at this as someone who has extremely limited programming, and I am liking and beginning to understand Godot's programming. It's fun and makes sense. I like that I can work on one node, one thing at a time, save it, and bring it in as a child, an instance to my scene when needed. I like that I can open the node at any time, make changes, and those changes are passed to the instance in the main scene. It really helps to isolate issues and really helps with bug testing, too.

I can't wait to have more time with this engine and see if I can create something with it.

So, I've been testing Godot for a little bit now and I'm starting to really like it. It's super lightweight (i.e. an empty project actually feels "empty", without tons of crap generated around it by default) but still includes many of the important features and lets you easily extend most things with scripting to fit your needs.

As a downside, I'm not a huge fan of dynamic programming languages for game programming. I prefer something which is compiled and more explicit (not everything being a "var").
Their scripting language seems really polished, though and so far I've been getting around with it pretty nicely. Also, from what I know you can actually use c++ or c# for scripting, aswell. It's just not as convinient or easy to use.

In terms of performace I can't really say anything, yet. I haven't run into any issues so far. Then again, all the things that I tried weren't very complex.