Why & How I'm Migrating my Indie Game from Unity to Godot

[@_xtel]

Welcome to the club.

[@kurayamiblackheart]

Been migrating since like 2 weeks, whenever the drama started, migrated to Godot too for my 2D online game. As Python is my main language, and as Godot's performance are better for 2D games, not to mention how easier it is to use (more user friendly), I thank Unity for having helped me to find where I belong. Using a custom build of Godot 4.1.1 :D

[@m0-m0597]

Yeah and if you want to get godot REALLY fast, there is now an option to include C++ modules XD

[@m0-m0597]

If you combine that with GDscript and avoid Csharp (marshalling problem), the performance will be chef kiss

[@RayOfSunlight984]

2:10 "Even though i own the game that i make in unity, i don't own the software to make it or to run it" Strong words over there

[@DoneCosta]

Godot is a great alternative for those migrating from Unity, especially if you create 2D games.

[@fjohnson-o4t]

What about 3D games that an indie can make not the big ones?

[@st.altair4936]

​@@fjohnson-o4tCassette Beasts was made in Godot. And I remember a simple looking Ultrakill-style movement shooter also made in Godot, can't remember its name though... Godot 3D has gotten pretty decent with 4.0 and beyond, even if not on Unity's level

[@fjohnson-o4t]

@@st.altair4936 I just hope not to encounter something gamebreaking in my simple horror game. These people made me fear for my project.

[@helloworld5219]

​@@fjohnson-o4tGodot is fine for indie 3d games too, imo Unreal is an overkill for what most people make

[@foldupgames]

@@helloworld5219 Whenever people (or me) start drooling over Unreal's amazing quality, I remember that you have to be able to CREATE models of that quality and your computer has to be up to the task as well!

[@ayvesstarforge]

Really Cool Video, I Hope Your Switch To Godot Goes Well And Same To All The Other Developers. It's Hard Switching Game Engines And Learning Everything From Scratch (Not Really From Scratch But Ya Know What I Mean). Best Of Luck, Can't Wait To See The Next Devlog.

[@Summer_and_Rain]

would be fun if someone did try to do it in scratch XD

[@foobars3816]

One thing that I didn't initially consider is that when an engine is open source, you can modify it or even just dive into the code when you are just not grasping the docs on the use of some specific function.

[@Zurpanik]

I just recently migrated pre-production over to Godot and am never going back - and with further investment and development, there's no doubt Godot's 3D rendering capabilities and performance will improve. Already the toolset is fantastic and the entire experience is actually a joy for me haha. I absolutely cannot wait to play your game!

[@jellifygirl]

With open source software, you can pretty much only go up. But with engines strictly under a company's control, they can always decide to go down, and take you with them...

[@ZaberfangX]

Is nice to hear you found a home with the engine that is not another stress on your shoulders. Been watching from a few Godot dev happy about switching and dodge alot bullets.

[@flopper8727]

I Had the Same Feeling after i started rewrite my Game in Godot. Before that i was really scared that i will alsways want Tobias unity, but after 2 days, i started Loving Godot.

[@MaliciousTachyons]

I'm 100% with you. I have like 2 years of development to port over, and I haven't even started because I'm only just teaching myself the engine. Thank you for sharing this! :)

[@Vexed-dev]

this made me switch and I love Godot :) thanks

[@rootbindev]

I love the graphics while talking about this

[@erikringwalters]

This is awesome I love hearing stories like this!

[@NiklasAndersson7]

With all the recent attention, I expect Godot to take off like a rocket. Good choice girl. Godspeed!

[@darkehartplays]

Migrating over my various half-finished personal projects and prototypes to Godot has been the saddest games work I have ever done in all my years as a games freelancer. I can't believe they thought they could directly screw over their userbase so blatantly and get away with it. :(

[@foldupgames]

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

[@iWillAvert]

I'm new(ish) to game dev and Godot ended up being my go to choice. I had tried a while back with things like Unity, and well over a decade ago with just pure Java. Godot was simple to pick up, I learned about it just in time after I began learning Python (which like you said, has made the transition extremely easy) and it is very capable. People underestimate its 3D capabilities. There are many devs beginning to prove them wrong though since Godot 4, and some of those devs are people who are porting from Unity!

[@nocturnaltruthseeker]

First of all I love your content. Secondly as someone who is learning Godot. I'm glad you are switching. It's easier to relate to your content. Open source software is great because of the community behind them. Godot exists because the community loves it. A tight knit community takes care of each other. I think that Godot will bring a new era of indie games. I look forward to it.

[@qili5491]

welcome board!! I have worked on both engine. godot first, then some unity for a compnay. Gonna to say, I have way less trouble with godot than unity. I feel unity is more general, it is powerful but many feture need you to build from the ground(or add plugin). Godot have variaty of node that provide me enough tool to work on 2d. So I am pretty satisfy with godot.

[@seanpowers-g5t]

Really enjoyed. Great discussion. Look forward to seeing progress :)

[@majorkonfuzion1007]

change is good, good for you

[@ThatGamePerson]

I think a lot of us feel that way. I feel comfortable finishing my current game in Unity but I agree with you about not wanting to get rug pulled in the future.

[@dancingdoormanable]

Unity has spoiled the fun you had with a project you do for fun and that's bad. Great to hear that you adapted so fast to Godot and are enjoying yourself again. The ergonomics of the system you create your game in should gel with your style of development and the community should match you as a person. Humans are social animals, so trading in corporate overlords for some nice people seems to me like a power move. Nice of you to share your thoughts and experience so far. Keep up the good work!

[@sleepydewdrop]

Hell yeah. Honestly I'm only a hobbiest and ive been doing the same thing. You just cant trust what Unity is up to, and at the end of the day, godot is open source. Would love to hear more about how the migration is going if you stumble on any good godot resources!

[@tomdriver6733]

You think, that you will make more than 200.000$?

[@sleepydewdrop]

@@tomdriver6733 obviously not dude, but why would I continue to invest time into a software where i cant trust the owner? What if i develop a larger scale product for fun, and then the pricing model changes again and Im on the hook for thousands? Despite it being free? This isn't about the current decisions anymore, what this event has shown is that unity, as a company, are more than willing to make these kinds of drastic changes to their pricing model, in the name of profit rather than any basis in market research. this event actually prompted me to look more into unity ownership, and a significant portion of it is venture capital, which has a fiduciary duty to maximize profit at nearly any cost. After this decision was announced, multiple employees came forward that they raised all the same concerns we had internally, and were ignored for the sake of profit. If you further look into the situation, unity's game dev software specifically, has never been a profitable sector of the business, but it was always meant to be a loss leader within their larger corp to onboard people into the sections of unity that were profitable. the decision to change the game engine sector of the business is an illogical move that would only profit venture capital, and that is what unity's executives have chosen. Anyway the point is that their decision making skills are compromised, and godot, as an engine, is open source so it cant be purchased the same way unity was. that format protects the engine from crazy changes in terms of service, etc. Why risk any future project I do, when godot is right there?

[@hidden13x]

We share comment sentiments. Thanks for sharing your perspective.

[@SlyPearTree]

Good luck!

[@takarahayashi4124]

ngl, your avatar is adorable lol but in any case, I agree, Godot has been a pleasure for me as well

[@МухиддинМахмудов-б5щ]

Such level of cuteness ☺

[@ast3077]

Glad to hear you migrated.

[@cody31]

Great video. Thank you!

[@paul1979uk2000]

It reminds me of Valve with Steam and how they don't want to be dependent on Windows, knowing that if Microsoft has new management and wants to make life difficult for them, they likely could and hence why Valve keeps pushing hard to make Linux a viable gaming platform, because they have a lot more control over the direction they can take with Linux. In the case of Valve, the vast bulk of their money is thought Steam, with the vast bulk coming from Windows, and even though it's unlikely Microsoft would play some dirty tricks, the idea that they have the power that they can is kinda scary for many. What Unity is doing is a big wake-up call for many developers that are putting in a lot of effort, money and resources into a game engine, which is time-consuming, and what Unity is doing, what's to stop others like Unreal doing the same some day, if they become really dominant in the industry, with in the case of triple a games, they are heading in that direction. If I was a developer and after everything Unity has done, it will have put me off all closed game engines, that if I was working on a game already in Unity, I would continue on it till release, but any future projects would be on an open source engine, probably Godot. I know Godot isn't perfect, especially when it comes to 3D, but the foundations are in place that you can make good games out of it, and it keeps getting better, that from what I can tell, it's really good at 2D games, it's good enough for a lot of projects with 3D, but could be a lot better, it's no match for Unreal when it comes to that level of visuals, but most indie games don't need that level of quality. Personally, I would move to Godot and work within the limits of what the engine can do, which isn't the end of the world and those capabilities will continue to expand, maybe more so now that there's a lot more interest in the Godot engine so it's likely going to get more investment and resources thrown at it to make it better. Another thing we should remember, with Godot being open source, as the community gets bigger, the engine will likely develop faster for it, as any one of us can help to make Godot better, basically, if you have the capabilities, and want to make it do things that it can't at the moment or want to improve performance in a specific area, if you have the skill set, you could actually do that and that helps to improve the Godot engine for everyone.

[@JonathanTash]

Godot is the engine I use and I'm honestly pretty excited you're coming onboard. It's the easiest engine to use that I've found and it's powerful, fast, lightweight, and organized. I was using Godot 4 until I realized that it's terrible for making web games right now, and now I'm switching back to Godot 3.

[@BanditLeader]

Godot 4 isn't terrible for making web games. It's pretty good at it really. It's just that currently the c# version of godot 4 doesn't support web. But it soon will

[@Handheldlove]

welcome to Godot

[@lothar3073]

PyGame was my first experience making games, but being the really simple and limited thing it is I never really got enough motivation to do anything serious with it. I tried Unity and other game making engines and they just always looked bloated, complicated and unproductive to me. It wasn't until a friend of mine made a game for a gamejam and spoke about Godot that I learned about the engine, and a while later I finally tried it. Everything clicked just right. The same feeling of a productive and humane language that Python gave me, Godot gave it in a game engine level. I hope this Unity debacle creates an opportunity for less used engines like Godot to shine and improve, and I'm here to be part of this moment as another Godot game developer. Welcome to the community everyone.

[@EmilioNorrmann]

this is the way :)

[@darthnegativehunter8659]

don't miss the discord channel. there is lots of things going on in there.

[@MarceldeJong]

Wishlisted your game. Take your time to make the best game in whatever engine you want to use.

[@defcodeOne]

I haven't touched Unity in years now. I was thinking about getting back to game dev and was thinking about pygame as a way to get closer to the metal and a bit of Unity. But with all the recent developments with the Unity kinda torn if I will want to continue with it or not.

[@Lex_Gzubv]

Hey, Thank you. would be great if you can make godot turorials.

[@Bekah_Penguin]

I love godot! But I also love the blueprints system in unreal so I’m really torn what one to use 😞

[@PastelPixelsDev]

They both definitely have some great strengths!

[@SuperHeroINTJ]

I am loving Godot. ❤

[@CodingQuests]

Godot supremacy!

[@fkeyzuwu]

you should probably add the word "Why" to the beginning of the title. i legit didnt realize you werent gonna actually show your migrating process until like 4 minutes in.

[@SonicCraft]

I saw 999 subscribers and had to click the big red button :D

[@PastelPixelsDev]

Thanks!! :)

[@Bobbo69]

She didn't discuss the new changes very much in the video, but for those not in the know, Unity *did* roll back the terms of service. Older versions will not be affected by new changes. The pricing model has also changed to being either a revenue share or based on self-reported installs, whichever is lowest.

[@SlyPearTree]

She did discuss that the biggest issue was that they wanted to change the TOS retroactively, from that POV it does not matter what they do from now on since they have shown they're very unethical.

[@youngminkim923]

Are you using GDScript? Or C#

[@DrZygote214]

Linux! Yes, say goodbye to wrestling with an antivirus!

[@delqyrus2619]

Just a little reminder: Open Source doesn't have to be "free".(While it usually is.) You need to think about how "proprietary" stuff works to understand it. Phrases like "If you know assembly everything is open source" are totally true. The only thing that prevents you from editing is the fact that assemmbler is hard - and the only thing that prevents you from copying their stuff are legal reasons. Besides "obfuscation" there is no reason to make something proprietary, because you can easily do it on a legal level - even if the source code is free. So don't misconcept "Open Source" with "it is free", like in "free of charges" - it is free like in "freedom". Sadly most of the people just use it as a "free tool", to get more money. But to support the community you should share the stuff you made for free too. I am a Linux user and developer to the kernel level and other users tend to "demand" stuff, i don't actually care about. I do stuff on and in the kernel to my demands, i don't have to obey to users. I do share my stuff open and free, so you don't have any demands on what i am doing. Just do it yourself if you want to have it. And some people are doing it. And some of them just don't care about the community they built it on top. So it is cool you are using open source software. But the developers of open source software usually do not care that much about if you are using it. That's the main switch you have to trigger in your head: We don't do it for free, we do it for ourselves. We usually don't care that much if you want something special. You are totally fine with doing it yourself - that is the reason we put it free. Thats why we put it out there: It doesn't cost us a penny to share it. You can of course do whatever you want. But the spirit of open source is: I use open source, so i share it open source. Otherwise there is no progress.

[@KX36]

Godot's not ready.

[@BanditLeader]

Care to elaborate? It's the best option for 2d. A good option for 3d. And also supports literally every platform; windows, mac, linux, android, ios, console, web. They even got vr/ar

[@KX36]

@@BanditLeader It's full of bugs.

[@BanditLeader]

@KX36 you do realize that everything is full of bugs, right? Not just godot. And godot gets weekly updates that squash the bugs

[@ahiltongdev]

Nice ◖⁠⚆⁠ᴥ⁠⚆⁠◗

[@sdhtriplicity]

d

[@vincenzopanella2705]

Stop now , Unity changed its pricing, everything is much more convenient than before, no need to switch

[@omegakiller1495]

There is no guarentee that they won't try to do that again. So it's better to abandon unity. Trust is already broken.

[@madjunir]

If it were a AAA 3D game I would advise Unreal. But Godot is great for 2D, 2.5D and smaller 3D projects. However with the development speed of Godot will be almost doubling now. Future Godot 5 should be as good as Unity in 3D and stay lightweight. Godot 5 is looking to become the "Blender" of game engines.

[@darkehartplays]

Until they betray us again. And it's not like this is the first time, either.

[@vincenzopanella2705]

@@omegakiller1495 No this won't happen again, Unity learn from mistakes , but was it a mistake ? I don't think so, Unity already changed its business model and will propel it into the nexet generation of games

[@G3VII]

It's sad because Unity is such a great engine. A lot of people are downgrading to lesser engines over this controversy and their final products will suffer in the end.

[@BanditLeader]

Lesser? What's lesser about godot? Godot is superior for 2d and on par for 3d

[@Bobbo69]

@@BanditLeader It's all subjective. Personally I've tried other alternatives but always come back to Unity, might be different for you. Saying "downgrading to lesser engines" is not helping either.

[@iamerror1699]

That is Racist...

[@RenderingUser]

wat?