- cross-posted to:
- gaming@beehaw.org
- games@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- gaming@beehaw.org
- games@sh.itjust.works
One of the big winners of the Unity debacle is the free and open source Godot Engine, which has seen its funding soar to a much more impressive level as Unity basically gave them free advertising.
What’s stride?
Glad you asked. It’s another open source 3D game engine that may feel a bit more familiar to those who are used to Unity. This is their website.
I’m still just starting to learn it myself, and it can really use some more features, but I think it’s pretty cool. I like the UI more than Godot’s, and I like working in C#.
Looks interesting. Shame the editor doesn’t run on Linux and the engine doesn’t target Linux at all. Valve is pushing Linux gaming hard and people are hating Windows 11 every day more and more. Anything exclusively C# will always have a Microsoft shackles issue.
Microsoft has wisely moved a lot of C# development into the .NET Foundation which also promotes the .NET Core Framework for other OSes including Linux, and the Roslyn compiler for C#.
I believe it does currently have Linux support. At least that is one of the build options. I’m not sure what might prevent it from working in Linux, unless the FBX import package isn’t compatible.
I haven’t tried it myself yet, though.
The only comment is a marketing text that claims “experimental support” for Linux. There’s no mention of Linux at all in any of the tutorials. And on the manual it looks very finicky, they only support an old LTS version of Ubuntu and reading the GitHub issues, it looks not only experimental but very rough. As barely working, lot of workarounds, rough. On Godot at least, Linux is a first class citizen, not an afterthought to qualify for grants.
I’ll need to play with it some more when I get a chance. In any case, my impression is that it’s still developing and still has some way to go. I’d be kinda shocked if Linux doesn’t get decent support eventually.
You can work in C# with Godot too.
You can, but I think I read somewhere that it works better with GDScript.
It depends on what you mean by better. GDScript is better integrated into the IDE, with C# really requiring that you use an external code editor currently, but both languages have very similar capabilities.
I found the thing I read earlier: https://popcar.bearblog.dev/unity-to-godot-what-to-expect/
It doesn’t sound too bad, really.