Unity announced a new fee structure today, and developers are none too happy. “We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user,” the company wrote in a blog post announcing the change.
  • romaselli@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    151·
    10 months ago

    This is a great opportunity to tell people about Godot, a free open source engine that has been killing it lately.

      • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
        25·
        10 months ago

        I’m a dad with a full time job and 2 toddlers. If I wanted to dip my toes into game development for the first time and I wanted to use Godot, what kind of project should I do first? Something that’s great for starting out and learning the absolute basics.

        • Jaarsh119@lemmy.worldEnglish
          14·
          10 months ago

          As typical as it is for the current indie game dev climate, making a ‘Vampire Survivors’ type game is probably a really good starting point for game development. 2D games are somewhat easier to make than 3D ones, so a 2D roguelike could be fun (but get’s very complex very quickly) or a old-school Zelda styled game would also be pretty cool in my opinion while remaining fairly simple.

          Here’s are a couple other avenues to learn off the top of my head:

          • Follow along with one or two of the large amount of tutorials they have for the engine and adding new features and gameplay mechanics to them when you feel like it.

          • Think of a cool but simple idea and try to execute it yourself through trial and error, referencing the online docs and asking questions to the Godot game dev community.

          It can be super daunting as there is a lot to learn. Try to learn by working on something that you yourself think is fun and that’ll keep you more motivated :)

        • Rentlar@lemmy.worldEnglish
          41·
          10 months ago

          What @dack said for your first game that is a great resource. If you wanted an overview of how the godot engine works later you can start from the Intro

        • Phen@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
          3·
          10 months ago

          If you have some coding knowledge, this series of videos was amazing: https://youtu.be/mAbG8Oi-SvQ?si=Tyy2hjrdrvafSo6z

          Not everything he does is right and some things he doesn’t even understand that well, but it gives you a good idea into everything you’ll need and you can then quickly learn how to expand from that.

      • phx@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Thank you for this! Last FOSS engine I used was OGRE but it was fairly inconsistent across hardware and PC only at the time.

    • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      10 months ago

      Shoutout to Bevy as well. It’s not as user friendly or polished as Godot but it’s a lot more powerful. If you’re a talented game dev I’m sure you could do some amazing things with Bevy.

      • anlumo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        10 months ago

        Bevy is a very different kind of beast. It’s basically “here’s the ECS, have fun!” while it rides into the sunset.

        My next project will use bevy, but mostly because its API is so ridiculously small that I can map it entirely into my own engine (which then exposes the ECS through my own API). That would be a lifetime’s task with Unity (don’t know enough about Godot to say definitely, but I bet it’s the same, since it has the same architecture).

        • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          10 months ago

          To be fair it does have a huge plugin ecosystem that handles most of the common use cases, so it’s a bit more than just an ECS, but the docs have some pretty big gaps in them so you could be excused for thinking it’s more bare bones than it is.

    • Z4rK@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      10 months ago

      I would have used it if they didn’t focus so much on their own GDScript instead of keeping C# support.

        • Z4rK@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          Only for Godot 3, not 4?

          Edit: Godot 4 supports C#, but only for desktop games, not web, android and iOS.

    • Granixo@feddit.clEnglish
      19·
      10 months ago

      As soon as AV2/H.266 becomes standard, i’d say Youtube would be at risk.

      Edit: Added AV2 to my comment.

        • Granixo@feddit.clEnglish
          11·
          10 months ago

          I’m not saying that AV2/H.266 would make Youtube worse.

          I’m implying AV2/H.266 would allow us to migrate to a platform other than Youtube.

          Edit: Added AV2 to my comment

          • Rinox@feddit.itEnglish
            14·
            10 months ago

            Why would that be? If h265 is anything to go by, MPEG will probably charge an arm and a leg for h266, and the entire industry will pivot away from MPEG and move to AV2. I’m not even sure YouTube will ever implement h266

    • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      92·
      10 months ago

      Wikipedia incorporates pay-to-win mechanics, lootboxes, microtransactions and cosmetics. There will also be a convoluted crafting system with decaying materials and several incompatible currencies for every purpose imaginable.

    • MrMcGasion@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      10 months ago

      Yep, hopefully Godot ends up being the real winner, because with as many AAA studios that have started to abandon their own in-house engines in favor of Unreal, it’s starting to feel a bit like Epic is going to end up with more than a healthy share of the market.

  • spez_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    672·
    10 months ago

    I’m going to install games heaps of times so I can bankrupt any small game companies

    • postmateDumbass@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      10 months ago

      The in game ads already do that these days.

      Just try to hit that X, haha, tricked you! Installing.

      Any touch of the phone for 30 seconds auto installs…

      • Gianmarco Gargiulo@feddit.itEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Use a firewall app to block that game from accessing the internet (this obviously defeats the purpose of online multiplayer games.)

    • PlexSheep@feddit.deEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      From a Cybersecurity point of view, I think this is a legit attack. Imagine a server that has many virtual machines, all of which automatically trigger the reinstall mechanism as fast as possible.

      If there is not some kind of limitation on that rule, depending on how their mechanism works, you could cost the game creater a lot of money.

  • lechatron@lemmy.todayEnglish
    52·
    10 months ago

    Do you know how many times I install and uninstall a game before I even play it? I could probably destroy a small game company on my own with this fee structure, and I’m sure I’m not alone with the constant installing and uninstalling.

  • Dasnap@lemmy.worldEnglish
    43·
    10 months ago

    I brought this up in another thread:

    They expect Game Pass titles to have their bill footed by Microsoft.

    There’s kicking the nest, and then there’s kicking the fucking queen bee.

    • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
      7·
      10 months ago

      I mean what are they going to do with xcloud plays? Is it just 1 install on the remote Xbox or does it count per player, which means it’s an install every single time someone plays?

      I imagine a lot of the doomsday stuff people are saying are not going to come to pass (and some will!). But it’s this kind of ambiguity that always leads to this kind of speculation.