Over the holidays, I had an idea that I wanted to quickly prototype, so as an irregular Godot user I grabbed the latest beta, Each time I want to prototype something or just generally mess around with some idea quickly, its often Godot I reach for, and frequently its been a little while, so there's probably an update...
For some reason, I just grabbed the latest RC or beta, whenever was offered as their experimental version. Well I've been doing this on and off since version 3 point something (a while) and much to my happy surprise I've been able to upgrade one particular (fairly complex) project through all these version (with backups!) and you know what it has (yet!) to bite me. This is a testament to the quality of Godot, its obvious a lot of people in the community put a lot of hard work into this project, and pay attention to detail and quality.
Not only that, is it 1GB, 2GB or more to download, for a complete visual 2D/3D engine with physics ?
No! the single self contained executable, for v4.5.1 is just 131MB (on Linux), you can easily throw it on a USB drive, with a few textures and simple models and take it round to someone who want to know how make a game, if you pre-plan with a simple 2D game idea, or even just walk them through the tutorial, well lets say I have a few happy friends with a new hobby !
The biggest plus though by far is the fact that Godot has become richer in features, easier to use and generally more capable through the v3 and v4 series, yet its not some groaning bloated heavy weight mass of files, just one reasonably sized executable... I cannot emphasise enough how its steadily improving and getting easier to use and gaining more improved features - yet without bloat - a fine balance indeed.
Coding in Godot has 2 main options GDScript or C#, while C# is a fine language for programming last I looked the documentation wasn't too hot (but i understand that has changed) and the C# environment depending on platform will probably mean you'll need to figure out what to do about making sure it and the produced game, will run when installed. Generally there are a few technical coding caveats you need to be aware of as well, if you're starting with Godot I'd recommend GDScript, its similar to and as easy to use as Python and as the docs say:
In most games, the scripting language itself is not the cause of performance problems. Instead, performance is slowed by inefficient algorithms (which are slow in all languages), by GPU performance, or by the common C++ engine code like physics or navigation. All languages supported by Godot are fast enough for general-purpose scripting. You should choose a language based on other factors, like ease-of-use, familiarity, platform support, or language features.
If I ever need to implement something in a prototype I look in the documentation as I've frequently be surprised just how rich the feature set of the engine is.
And if you do have some function that is missing from the engine, and it is time intensive and you really can't just do little bits each frame.... then you can always make a C++ add on for the engine (if its something less intensive you can also make add ons with GDScript)
If you've not tried Godot recently, do yourself a favour, take a look, spin up a simple prototype for something, you may very well find it useful. There is every chance I'll be a much more regular Godot user....
Thank you and well done to all the contributors of Godot, may it go from strength to strength !
Enjoy!