Godot or Defold

Questions
#1

So, hello i’ve been interested in lua recently well i quited gamedev long time ago (yes i used both engines but meh didn’t like them that much) but i just can’t quit i want to create some games, so i have a few questions:

Which engine do you think its easier ?
Is defold only focused primarly on mobile gamedev? can i make games in otherplatforms?
Is lua really that hard than gdscript (not a beginner level but maybe advanced)

i know some programming stuff (if/else satement arrays etc…) so i still consider myself as a beginner
Thanks for your time!.

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#2

Hey, I hope that you are well! I’ve used both Godot and Defold so hopefully I can answer some of your questions.

In my opinion, I find Defold easier. The flow of game objects in collections, in my mind, is a bit more straightforward than Godot’s node system. This part though comes down to personal preference.

Defold is great because it allows you to develop for different platforms. I have been able to create web games, and I am currently working on a mobile game that will also be released to PC. The mobile development is fairly simple, there are a lot of great resources to get you started.

I don’t think lua is very complex. It is fairly straight forward, but if you run into any trouble, there is always great documentation you can take a look at. One deciding factor for me when choosing between Godot and Defold was that Godot used gdscript. This scripting language is limited to the Godot engine and has no use anywhere outside of it. My thinking was, ‘might as well learn something that I can take with me and use somewhere besides Defold’.

Overall I have found Defold to be the better of the two, I hope that some of this information can help you come to a decision :wink:

Have a good one!

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#3

first of all i wanna thank for you kidness and anwsering , i also thought the same about the gdscript only limited to godot engine, this forum is better than reddit in general (had some good/bad experinces), anyways what is your recommendations when it comes to docs about defold?, again many thanks!.

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#4

I just started learning Defold recently. I’ve never used Godot, but I’m an iOS developer and I’ve also dabbled a bit with Unity. The Defold docs are great from my brief experience! The manual and API reference are easy to use and have answered almost all of my questions so far. People on the forums here are super friendly and helpful, too! :smiley:

I’d recommend downloading Defold and following the interactive tutorials you can access from New project > From Tutorial once you install the engine. They walk you through how to use the engine and the core concepts of how Defold structures a project with assets, sprites, game objects, etc. Then you can start reading through the manual – it will be easier to understand once you have a bit of hands-on experience from the tutorials!

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#5

Many thanks!.

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#6

Similar to what @ced mentioned, the manual and API reference are the places to go. The forum is also very friendly and prompt to help out if you have any issues. There are also extensive tutorials that go into a bunch of different topics. Once you complete those, you should be able to get started making games on your own. You can also check out Gamefromscratch’s Defold series as well as David Chadwick, both on youtube.

Have a good one!

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#7

Many thanks !.

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#8

I’d also curious on how’s mobile performance between two engines.
In terms of build size, defold is way better (this and this), way ahead competitors.

But how about efficiency? I mean the battery consumption and ability to run on low end devices?
My impression, defold is also better on this and godot will eat more cpu and battery.

I’m researching and really hard to find godot data on this.

Does anyone experienced with both engines can please confirm this? :slightly_smiling_face:
Thanks

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#9

Defold is better the 2d works space is not a small rectangle like godot has you can export to web mobile pc and even Nintendo switch and also lua code is ok i gues im still learning it and GDscript for godot often doesn’t work because its constantly updated

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