Defold and 3D Support - Discussion

[britzl]

@WhiteBoxDev

now would be a reasonable time to bring up my thoughts on Defold and 3D support

Thanks, we appreciate the feedback from you and others in this thread!

@WhiteBoxDev

It is often stated that Defold is not meant to compete with other engines which focus more heavily on building 3D games

True. This is not our goal, and it never will be. We will not compete with Unity, Unreal or perhaps even Godot in the 3D space. It is much too crowded and fiercely competitive. I have said this numerous times here and elsewhere.

@WhiteBoxDev

However, in the past year or so from my perspective, it seems as though the amount of questions and effort being put into building 3D games with Defold has increased drastically. I say this based on the activity I see on the forums, in Discord, and in the occasional engine new release threads.

I agree. We are definitely seeing more interest in 3D. I believe a lot of this comes from the release of the Mesh component in Defold 1.2.169, released almost exactly one year ago. The mesh component is one of those low level but super flexible components that can be used for so many things. It is a perfect example of the kind of building blocks we prefer to provide. It is not super easy to use but it opens up sooooo many opportunities for cool 3D and 2D features.

@WhiteBoxDev

To get to the point, it feels like there is a little too much effort going into implementing 3D support that could be much better spent working on the 2D side of things

I honestly can’t understand what you are basing this on. The Mesh component was released one year ago. I can’t think of any other feature released in the past year that has focused on improving 3D support. There was a recent contribution by @aglitchman to fix custom 3D convex shapes but I can’t think of anything else.

@WhiteBoxDev

It is honestly a little bit sad to see creators trying to build their 3D visions in Defold

Are there really that many examples of this? The only thing that comes to mind is @Epitaph64 who struggled quite a bit with his Unexplored Territories game.

Other developers in our community with quite a bit of experience in game dev, such as @aglitchman, @Dragosha and @dlannan seem to take the features we do provide (mainly the mesh component) to heart and create really amazing things with them. I’m not sure if they struggle to build their 3D visions in Defold, but from my point of view the process seems fairly painless.

@WhiteBoxDev

gives you a fully functional 3D first-person shooter with animations, dynamic lighting, and multiplayer already baked in. To achieve even these effortless results in Defold, it would probably take you… well, who knows? It really goes to show just how much time is wasted trying to develop for 3D in Defold

Yes, it would be a pretty big undertaking to create this in Defold. It is not something I’d recommend unless you’re a seasoned game dev with prior experience building 3D games. For a beginner who knows very little of 3D game development it is not advised to use Defold.

BUT I am also extremely sceptical of a template project such as the one you are referring to. It sounds great when you read the label on the box, but is it actually something that will hold up in the long run? Can it be used in production or will you have to spend a lot of time patching and fixing up things?

@WhiteBoxDev

Focusing the vast majority of resources on developing Defold for only 2D games really seems like the better option here, for both competition with other engines and giving developers a top notch engine to build their ideas

Yes, this is our main focus. But it won’t be our only focus. We will spend a small portion of our time to improve the 3D capabilities we have and to come up with the next “mesh component feature” that will give Defold developers another low level but super flexible feature that can be used to build cool things (in 2D and 3D).

@WhiteBoxDev

Perhaps it is better to refrain from encouraging users to use Defold for their 3D game ideas

@WhiteBoxDev

“Sure! Defold’s 3D support has been improving a lot recently and it would be exciting to see more 3D games made with it.” The latter feels scummy and you’re intentionally leading them down a path of headaches and missing features

Are we really encouraging users like this? I think we are usually pretty clear on the messaging around the capabilities of Defold and it is definitely not our intention to mislead anyone. And I appreciate if you call me out if I get too excited about 3D! And I do get excited when I see developers create stuff like this:

• x.com
• x.com
• DRILLER by Artsiom Trubchyk
• x.com