Is learning OpenGL mandatory

Questions
#1

Since Defold uses OpenGL ES 2.0 as the rendering engine, and there are many things (such as render scripts) that assume previous knowledge of OpenGL, is it mandatory to know OpenGL to use Defold at its best?

There are many answers to my questions in that forum that seemed cryptic to my level of understanding. In particular, It seems I’m very lacking in rendering knowledge. So I’m wondering if learning OpenGL is really the golden entry ticket to put Defold to good use.

I tried to learn OpenGL many times but it’s so low level that I can’t get to make any sense of it. I’m certainly lacking some basic knowledge to fully grasp the explanations but it is very hard for me. I had hoped that Defold would leverage that complexity for me but as soon as I dig deeper, there are always complex concepts under the hood.

I feel pretty lost at that point…

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#2

No, you do not need to learn OpenGL, but its knowledge can be helpful.

Best thing to do is to ask questions about the complex things you find in Defold.

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#3

Well, when the answer leads to a whole lot more complexity than the original question, I wonder if asking it in the first place was a good move…

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#4

That kind of question is a great kind of question to ask! I consider myself an artist first still not a coder, and I often have to ask questions or get help from things above my pay grade, but using Defold does not require that because at this point all of the hard questions I have had been answered / projects have been made which black box the complexity so we can focus on gamedev.

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#5

Yes, knowing OpenGL concepts and shading language is mandatory to use Defold at the maximum level.
As well as knowing C++, Objective-C and Java to be able to write native extensions.

But all of that is not mandatory to use Defold at normal level, Defold is perfectly capable of supporting complex games with default configuration.

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