Defold roadmap H2-2018

You forgot to add :sunglasses:

iOS Game Center
iOS Game Center support has been a long requested feature of Defold. Support for will be added as a native extension.

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We are doing research right now and there are plenty of unknowns that we have yet to find answers to. @Andreas_Tadic is spearheading the RnD on this.

No. It’s likely going to be a multi-step process. At first perhaps only a system that allows developers to hook into the build process with scripts of their own, like pre and post build steps. Later we’ll move to extensions that define it’s own UI as well. We do not know yet which direction this will take. We’ve experimented with this in the past but haven’t settled on anything. Being able to write your extensions in Lua would be cool. @mats.gisselson may be able to share more insights into this. Keep in mind that editor extensions will not happen in 2018. It’s a task that we wish to work on during 2019 and hopefully ship at least an MVP of before next summer.

Integrating the Asset Portal into the editor is something we want to do, but it’s not something we have planned for yet.

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Yes, this is on our radar.

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We encourage the community to create this. If no one does it on their own we might open up for community collaboration/sponsorship to get this implemented.

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PS Yes, the roadmap on defold.com will get updated!

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What about physics improvements?
Where is immediate raycast results? Is it even planned?
Ability to make something like this within same frame is crucial:

  1. Cast some ray. Get raycast hit result with collision object and hit point at (for example) x = 100.
  2. Move collision object towards caster (dx = -10)
  3. Refresh spatial information about collision object.
  4. Cast another ray. Get hit point at x = 90.

Nothing complex here. Physics engine like Chipmunk2D can do this. Box2D probably can do that too.
Defold can’t do that right now. This is makes some games very difficult to implement.

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We have nothing planned, BUT we are doing experiments with physics improvements. @Mathias_Westerdahl recently played around with joints and constraints in Defold (I think he posted about it somewhere). We also have plans to explore if it’s possible to move Box2D to a native extension.

Also please note that the roadmap listed above isn’t what we will exclusively work on over the course of the next 12 months. There are many other things we will work on, big and small, but at least it gives you an idea of some things to come.

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Looking forward to improve sound engine and more control!

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What @britzl says, not everything is listed here.
For instance, we will at some point add some (currently unplanned) physics improvements such as joint support, physics scaling and also synchronous ray casts. ETA? We’ll see.

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It may seem insignificant, but I am looking forward to the improved undo workflow the most. :heart_eyes:

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This looking really promising and I can say that we are eager to see most/all of listed features!!
EDIT: Removed question about Firebase/Push notification, was already answered here

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I should have made a new forum topic for that but, what about automatically cleaning old versions of Defold ? Every update creates a new 150MB folder in C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Defold\unpack.

On small SSD it is problematic and I have to regularly clean older ones myself. Is that something you’re aware of ?

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I couldn’t find an issue for this. @mats.gisselson and eriklizzard? @Erik_Angelin

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Think there is a jira issue. Anyhow, we’ll likely look at it when we refine the update mechanism. Maybe @eriklizzard knows more :smile:

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Haha, yeah, maybe he does! :slight_smile:

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Awesome! Thanks a lot for giving us an updated roadmap. Really useful and interesting to know what what the rough plan is.

Is there a rough idea of which systems this is likely to include? Physics? GUI? Always nice to reduce build size by removing systems that aren’t used at all.

Great! When I started using Defold I was very surprised how lacklustre the current audio functionality is.

My vote is Nintendo Switch :slight_smile:

Suuuper useful thank you.

Good job :muscle:

Very much looking forward to this, local undo is so much more intuitive and useful. Are there plans to also snap the view to where the change occurred? Currently if I’m typing at the bottom of my script and undo something at the top there’s no feedback at all, sometimes I don’t even realise I’ve done it.

From my experience this is absolutely critical to effectively making games in Unity. All of the upvotes.

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+1 This is also mostly what I hope will come with the revision to the undo workflow. I don’t mind the global level undo(which can be useful in some cases), as much as simply not being able to see what was just un-done.

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I am really looking forward to 3D and material improvements! Hopefully that includes features such as being able to define meshes (such as using low poly version of a mesh for collisions) as collision meshes and use dynamically generated meshes for collision.

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Yes, we’re thinking things such as: Webview, IAP, Physics, Spine, Facebook, Push

Yes, the Switch is the most likely first platform to port to.

Yes, this might get fixed soon (before local undo).

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Just making sure you know it’s already possible to remove the physics from the build?

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