Defold adds support for Nintendo Switch

What do you mean?

There are two things to consider:

  1. Is the developer approved by Nintendo for access to Nintendo SDKs and tools?
  2. Does the developer have access to Nintendo Switch support for Defold as a community donor?

When it comes to 1) it is up to the Defold Foundation to only make the tools available to approved Nintendo developers. We will not give you tools access without Nintendo first approving you. And if access is revoked by Nintendo we must stop providing access. We will make an online license check when you build and fail builds if you are not a licensed developer. You can obviously use a cached build, hack the check etc but that is on you and you would be violating your agreement with Nintendo.

When it comes to 2) we will piggy back on the license check process and prevent you from receiving updates and performing builds if you no longer pay for access. We would also revoke access to the private forum category and download site for Nintendo Switch enabled versions of Defold. I guess you could hack your way around some of this but in general it will be hard for you to build for Nintendo Switch.

Please also keep in mind that $25/month is dirt cheap. Game Maker is $799 a year (Defold is $300). Not sure what it costs for Godot, but I’m guessing you pay more than $300 to get help porting your game. Unity and probably also Unreal are free but that is to be expected from game engine providers with almost unlimited funds.

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As far as I know, you have to pitch your game to Nintendo, am I wrong? Maybe it is right to say you can register, but you can’t release it until pass the publishing progress?

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Exactly, you need to email them and they’ll ask you about your project and the team. You don’t have to have a professional project per se.

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You have to pay 3th party for porting your Godot game (which is a open source engine) to devs like Lone Wolf Technology

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You guys are not slowing down! What’s next? World domination?

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What a great news! Hoping to port Zoo Economy after initial steam release )

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I need to change a scenario of my presentation about Defold :laughing:

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What is bothering me, if there are any games that can show Defold possibilities on Switch? Do you have already something to show off? It would be awesome to show how it is looks like instead of just announcing the support. A small research shows that Interrogation is “coming for Nintendo Switch 2020” so @dapetcu21? :smiley:

Also, from technical point of view - how it looks like when it comes to building an app? Is there a custom build server? Is it only possible when you have access to the paid membership? Or is it possible to setup a local build toolchain?

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For building the app, you’ll use the same workflow, just with a different Editor/bob.jar. It’s the same build server, but it’ll check that the license is still valid (i.e. still an approved Nintendo Switch developer). There is a separate contribution tier that gives you access to the source, which would technically allow you to setup a local toolchain.

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Not yet. We are collaborating with three different developers/studios to bring their games to Nintendo Switch. I will let the developers announce their games when they are ready.

@jcash has provided more info here: Defold adds support for Nintendo Switch

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This is great!

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I already mentioned this in Slack but I am super proud of you guys. €25 a month is crazy cheap, by the way. I’m not sure how much the nintendo developer kit costs, but €25 is basically nothing compared to the other costs involved.

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Since the cat has been out of the water for a while, yes, Interrogation is coming to Switch, and rather soon for that matter. We’re not ready to announce the release date yet, but it’s not a secret that we wanted to release on Switch for a while.

From the technical PoV, I can tell you that the entire process is quite seamless. Congrats to @Mathias_Westerdahl and the rest of the Defold team for their hard work getting that to happen. There is a bit of config required (not much, just the regular metadata like all the other platforms), but otherwise you just build your game with the custom bob.jar, then install it on your dev kit. You don’t even need to have Nintendo’s SDK installed on your machine, as bob.jar and the build servers handles all of that for you (the same way it works for bundling for other Defold-supported platforms).

As for integrating with the Switch’s peculiarities, there are some common APIs already exposed to Lua, but it’s also very easy to write anything extra that you need into a Native Extension (yes, those work as well). (btw, I already ported the FMOD extension for Switch, if anybody is using it for their games, just ask and I’ll give you access once I verify you as Nintendo-approved).

If you’re a Switch-approved dev, expect a post from me on the Switch sub-forum detailing our experience with the process end-to-end.

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And let me also thank @dapetcu21 in return, for patiently testing our builds throughout the process, and pinpointing the issues relevant to making this a Defold experience. :heart:

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Tears of Joy!

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Can you develop for the Switch from a Mac? Or does it need to be Windows?

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I don’t think I can answer that without breaking the NDA.

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You could, but then you’d have to kill him.

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Ahah fair enough guys. I have already used 8 our my 9 cat lives, so I’ll keep this one :stuck_out_tongue:

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