Im frustrated when do you advise switching game engines?

[Jb_Skaggs]

This was sparked by another forum post on here I did not wish to hijack.

Im a recently disabled 50yo man and decided to get serious making smaller games and apps hopefully to make a little side cash and enjoy myself.

I come from a GMaker (since 2003), Panda3D, Gambas, VB6, Basic, Python, Enigma, and recently Godot. Left GM for number of reasons mainly they are moving to subscription model and other stuff. Though they do have great forums but many of my friends have left. I have been toying with Defold and Love2d.

So I have this decent size project in Godot with about 30 days into it. I am frustrated with my experience in Godot. On paper it seems very easy- but in reality I end up having to work hours for what should be minutes. Due to just not liking their path system and the way they handle objects etc. There are things I love about it such as the gui system and object follow path system. I really enjoyed making card games and a word processing app on godot.

But after a month of fulltime coding in it I am not happy. I dont want to throw away a month’s worth of work, but I also dont want to keep banging my head against errors that sometimes are caused by typo, sometimes by language change, and sometimes by my editor/ compiler. Two days ago I edited a duplicated scene and crashed my whole project and had to re write a days work. With no easy way to back it makes edits challenging. Took me 4 hours to fix a bug that was caused not by code by by compiler needing to be restarted. That really irritated me.

So Im not here to bash Godot, Gamemakers or others they are wonderful product for many people.

But when would you seriously switch engines? I have done a little on Love2d and Defold and they both seem solid- especially with assets / libraries or example snippets to speed up time. And I love the LUA language. Love2d was nice but no integrated level editor was challenging and Tiled2d and Optikon were ok but not optimal. So it brings me to Defold.

IM not looking for why is Defold better than another engine- am asking when does just not liking something justify switching an engine maybe even mid project and the potential lost programming time and time to learn new system?

[Pkeod]

In my personal history I have been an extreme advocate and supporter of gamedev tools until I gave up on them as issues built up and I eventually moved on. The last tool I used before Defold was the now no longer existing Monkey-X (sort of a competitor to Haxe) which was great when I started but the more I used it in pro project the more it hurt. It cost me an absurd amount of money (for various reasons) because I insisted on making it work. And I was one of probably the major financial supporters of it having bought over 100 copies at full price to give out to other devs just to support the project. But despite that the support was really only one way, the issues I had with it kept piling up (and I didn’t want to fork it), the developer of it was far more interested in his pet projects rather than making the tool viable for commercial use, so I eventually jumped ship and was lucky enough to find Defold.

I can’t think of a single pressing issue I have with Defold that would make me quit using it for gamedev work. It is a joy.

It is up to you if you want to stick with Godot. If I had to guess you may find things you don’t like with Defold too based on your own tastes. For me it aligns, but I know others didn’t care for it.

If you want to switch I’d recommend trying to port your project to Defold isolated parts at a time and asking questions here as you get frustrated or stuck. I have ported several large projects from other dev tools to Defold. People here are happy to help.

integrated level editor
Tiled2d

Be aware that Defold’s tile editing features are not as great as Tiled. I still recommend using Tiled for serious tile based projects instead of Defold’s tile editor. https://www.tilesetter.org/ is another paid option with support for Defold’s format.

[Jb_Skaggs]

Thanks you sound similar to me in mindset. Back when I was doing structural engineering you used whatever the company told you to. I was amazed how many companies worth millions did most of their programming on spreadsheets. Ill checkout tilesetter.

Porting this project shouldnt be that hard as its the infrastructure not a near finished product.

[Ragetto]

Not sure my opinion/experience is relevant since I’ve been using Defold for less than 2 weeks (and I’m a less experienced developer than you are), but I used to create game prototypes with Love2D… It was so pure, straight-forward and reliable, I really enjoyed the learning process and the engine itself, until creating (profitable) mobile games became my objective. At some point, I realized this would be difficult/impossible to achieve with Love2D, and this is when I actually decided to look for another engine.

Defold was some sort of pure, light, optimized version of Unity. Exactly what I was looking for.

And since Northmen were building it, it couldn’t be anything but smartly designed and rock-solid Seriously, this is still how I feel about it, and believing in the “tool” is super important (beyond features) when you’re about to invest time, energy and possibly money in the mid/long term creation process.

I may be wrong, but I can imagine myself creating fun, stable, easy-to-maintain, AND profitable mobile games with Defold, definitely not with Godot (for some of the reasons you mentioned).

But it also depends on the platform you’re targeting, and the type of games you want to make, how you plan to market/monetize them, etc. But if you realize you won’t be able to achieve your goals with your current engine, or if you feel that maintaining/updating your games will be a daily pain in the ass (which was my biggest fear with Godot)… then working with this “non-final” engine doesn’t make sense (except if you enjoy the learning process in itself, or if your game is almost ready to be launched).

Anyway, you shouldn’t see your experience with Godot as wasted time… It will make you realize/confirm what you want/don’t want in a game engine (and maybe someday how great Defold is )

[Jb_Skaggs]

Thanks for responding. One thing is for sure- I get more encouragement on the Defold forum.

I have proceeded past several issues and can finish this project in godot- but its going to be probably as hard as learning defold. So what I have been done is to complete the first level up to 4 enemies with all gui sfx, ffx, path following etc working. Basically a bloons td 5 clone like template. Screen shots attached for reference.

Then I am thinking how to port it over.

I am a one man studio (would love to have more help one besides my daughter for art) undergoing chemotherapy which hampers my learning ability. But also being disabled means I cant just do this as a hobby I need to have some profit. Not much.

What I make are hidden object games, tower defense games, RTS, applications, and card games. My target platforms is desktop, linux, mobile and facebook instant. I just learned today godot may not have any built in commercialization tools for mobile.

I appreciate your thoughts.
JB

[ross.grams]

I’ve also switched between multiple different game engines. The switch was always caused by frustration, usually after at least a year of using an engine.

After that amount of time I was comfortable with the engine, and knew many of its pros and cons, but also got a feel for how it was developing (or not). With some engines, it’s possible for big issues to get fixed, for some, new issues only get added!

All engines have their share of problems, or at least things you don’t like. There will be problems that you must spend days, weeks, or months working around. It can help to make a list of your own priorities. Some features you can’t do without, some problems you are just unwilling to deal with, others are in a grey area. Some features that you really like may also be quite easy to replicate yourself! Just don’t think that switching engines will solve all of your problems.

You can also think about your time frame:

• In the short run: just make games! Even if they’re a bit shoddy, released games are better than no games.
• In the long run: If you plan on making 5 games…it may be worth it to spend a couple months or more learning a new engine, a new language, building your own tools, etc., if it means you will make games faster, better, and have more fun doing it, even if it’s delayed for a while.

Honestly, it sounds like you’ve already decided to switch, so…good luck!

A couple bits of real advice:

Two days ago I edited a duplicated scene and crashed my whole project and had to re write a days work. With no easy way to back it makes edits challenging.

1. You really need to learn how to use version control (git). You should never lose a day’s work, and certainly never have to worry about how to undo changes! It will save you tons of time.

2. Don’t update your engine if it may introduce breaking changes. Unless there’s an absolute must-have feature added, don’t update. Find a reasonably stable version and don’t change it. Thankfully, Defold is pretty serious about backwards-compatibility and pretty solid in general, so you don’t really have to worry about this.

[Jb_Skaggs]

Thanks

[MrZak-dev]

Since you have tried godot before, i want to share my thoughts about this.
i have used godot for 3 years now, i have made 4 live mobile games.
as you said, Godot UI is really good but its not the most important part in a game. what makes me think to change the engine is the ability to maintain/update live games, it really get frustrating over time.
another thing i want to mention is that sometime i spend(waste) a lot of time trying to explain some weird behavior/bugs in my games, in last i find that its an engine bug and everyone is talking about in the issues for more than +4 months which make me think that i have to find another way to do that thing.

When it comes to Defold, it is really a solid choice, the team behind it knows what’s really important to the user, your projects will not get delayed because of an engine bug.
they fix whats important before thinking adding more features to the engine. unlike godot, you can now check their issues on github and you can still find bugs from 2018.

[Jb_Skaggs]

That is what I have been feeling. For example today I only have a small bug to fix with pause system and I have been working six hours to fix. And it just wont fix. Spend time on Godot forums and find out- its not a bug its a deliberate choice not to support. Same thing yesterday with a sfx problem- not a bug they deleted the node entirely so now all the sfx clash and crash.

Ok I think I will go ahead and try and port this over. Worse thing that can happen? I learn something new.

[britzl]

Ok I think I will go ahead and try and port this over. Worse thing that can happen? I learn something new.

Good luck! Do not hesitate to ask questions if you are uncertain how to do something in Defold. We’re happy to help out, point to the correct manual or example email etc