So, a lot of users are concerned that the direction Unity is taking development with DOTS is maybe fragmenting development, along with other factors, like paying for VR support packages, and what-not. Add on the fact that the company now has investors, who knows what the direction is going. I doubt very much they’re going anywhere in the next year. In five years, harder to say, but I’ll wager they’ll be sticking around, maybe with different pricing model.
But honestly, anyone making software should always worry that the software they’re using is going to be yanked from underneath them at any moment in time, which makes FOSS so enticing. But for those not using FOSS, they’ll weigh out the pros and cons for their own development, just like you should do. What project am I making? How long will it take me to complete? What sort of tools does the software provide to help me accomplish my goals? What sorts of technologies am I looking to feature in my project? And again, how long will this take to complete?
It’s an evaluation process, and at the end of the day, there is no right or wrong; it’s only what you feel comfortable with. If you chose Unity, and they go belly up in a year or two, well, it may be early enough for you to just scrap the project and go to the next best thing. If you value the work you’ve done in a year or two, you can spend time porting that code to another engine. I doubt very much Unity would leave all of their customers hanging without far advance notice and peace out. But if so, you can hate them forever. And there is the chance that if Unity discontinued, got bankrupt, etc. they’ll find investors to help right the ship. And failing that, there may be a ragtag group that develops a similar engine that interfaces near seamlessly with your existing Unity project, similar to how MonoGame took over XNA.
But, spending time worrying about this shit is taking away from you learning and making games. Try both pieces of software out, and use the one that you think will help you deliver your vision most accurately, efficiently, and most fun.
Trust me, I’ve been keeping an eye on Godot for a while too, but there are reasons why I haven’t gone. Well, I’m making a 3D game right now, but if I were to make a 2D game, I would understand a little bit more. A lot of the belief of using FOSS is that with no strings attached, I can freely produce content. But on the flip side, something like Unity, you have years of development put into it, to make your life easier. Ultimately, what keeps me on Unity is the Asset Store. Most people just compare just the engines, but if you compare engines AND ecosystem, there is no comparison. Unity’s assets have saved me days if not months of development time. The most important commodity in the whole process.
That’s just one aspect. The other is the language. Sure, it supports C# and C++ too I think, but not as the primary development language. So, if you ever decide that Godot is not right for you, I don’t know, maybe development is too slow, and you’d rather jump ship because their scripting language has run into some limitations or something, you can’t port your code to another language that does support the standard languages. Oh, and if you ever decide to show off some of your code in an interview, good luck teaching them GDScript first, or if they ask you to do a couple of exercises/challenges, ask them if you can use GDScript to implement your solution.
That all said, I WANT Godot to succeed. I would definitely go if the ecosystem was as rich, and they supported something like C#, Python, C++ as the main dev language. Almost my entire dev environment tools are free and/or open source (Visual Studio, git, Blender, Krita, ASEprite, Audacity, OpenToonz, Davinci Resolve) and the game authoring tool (VS aside) is the only tool that isn’t free with no strings attached. So far, Unity has been great for me. If their terms ever change that make me think about it, then, well, it hasn’t been the first time that sort of thing has happened to me. You just move on to the next best thing, porting your code in tow, or starting over and trying again.
Well, it could just be me too. I don’t know. But seriously, Google is your best friend. There’s just a ton of material out there to educate yourself as to what’s best for you, and only you would know. Or maybe, just maybe, you read this far, and actually found value in all that I typed. Perhaps I made a difference.
