Hi, I think this an interesting discussion and I have maybe a different view about Defold and I hope people find it useful.
Firstly, I agree entirely with @Pkeod and @britzl. Defold is, in its own right, a 3D rendering engine - not a 2D one. And Defold does do well to stay a 2D_game engine. Please notice the emphasis on rendering and game notation of the engine type.
For me, Defold is something a little special, and I think people need to understand why it not easily compared to Unreal Engine, Unity or similar.
Defold is an open framework and this is very different to a closed source game engine. Godot is somewhat comparable, but again I think its in a different space than Defold (for a number of rather complex reasons which I will explain).
Defold really has advanced and unique capabilities:
- You can change the source and build your own Defold to suit your needs. This is important if you need to customize for targeted solutions - 3D games and 3D simulations are exactly that. You never get exactly what you want with a generic system. You always end up buying support from Unity3D or Unreal if you need to do serious platform development. This is not the case for simplistic and targets solutions that already work within these systems.
- It is one click build on any supported platform, from Win, Linux and OSX. This is unique to Defold. There are some that do similar things, but none do one click builds without SDK installs. And (imho) this is THE most powerful feature of Defold by a mile. Do not under-estimate this feature, it is going to be important for Defold going forward and it heavily relates to the editor, plugins and feature sets like 3D.
- The Defold community is inspiring. There are so many kind hearted and wonderful people here on the Defold forums and discord. This is critical in an open framework. And it is very reminiscent of the early days in Unity3D forums (circa 2008). Again, this cannot be understated. So keeping these forums open, active and a little controlled is highly valuable to long term development progress.
- 3D is a feature not an application. Critically its a rendering feature. Under the hood, Defold is fully 3D capable (see my repos) and it should not be a priority to make the editor fully 3D capable. This would be a grave mistake in my opinion. Every implementation of 3D for a game, app or other use will be different so it is far better to have a 3D capability that people can utilize as they see fit rather than build an entire system with 3D interfaces that then need to be extended and maintained and provide complete generic capability for everyone. A quote I like to use for this (not sure who it is from) - “If its good for everything, then its good for nothing.”.
- Native plugins are your friend. If you want 3D, then native plugins are the beautiful way forward. Imho, this is probably going to be the best (and most likely) way the 3D systems will flourish in Defold. I have been able to implement cross platform 3D simulation and gaming within such plugins with relative ease. Even compared to Unity3D or Godot, I was stunned to see how quickly I built a complex shader working in 3d (sky / cloud sphere rendering) and a simple fps as well. Building a gltf loader for dynamic asset loading was also very easy (less than a week)… so it shows the power of 3D within Defold is already there.
I think what is happening with many peoples ‘need’ for 3D features is they are new to 3D development and want all the facilities of Unity3D within the Defold editor. This should not be something people should ask for nor should they expect it. Again, its clear to me that Defold is an open_framework that has a 2D game engine focus. If you dont understand this, then I think maybe you need to spend some more time learning the internals of Defold. Knowledge is power.
It also concerns me that many people are “asking” about 3D capability in Defold, but are not doing a simple search in github or forums to see all the amazing 3D work people have already done. If you dont want to spend the effort, then I recommend moving onto an engine that works at a higher level rather than hassle the brilliant Defold contributors.
And my last point. Please, please, please take note of this paragraph. Defold and the people working on it have made something very special. And I have been in this business (games, simulation and networking) for a long time (20+ years) and I havent seen anything as powerful as what these talented individuals have come to together to make. Make no mistake, I believe Defold is going places. But before you try to coerce it in one direction or another, understand it. Understand what Defold is, how it works, and the amazing features it has. It is so flexible and expandable I am utterly convinced that Defold is far from just a 2D game engine already… 