Exploring Godot Game Development

For the last little while, I’ve been looking for ways to expand upon my creativity and learn new skills. That started with learning 3D modeling in Blender, which I feel leads well into game development. Making bad games with no clue on the theory and design but with high confidence feels a little tired and cliché for software engineers - which will probably be me, but I just have this need to do something creative and fun.

Finding the right engine

My belief is that selecting the first tool you learn with will be important, as it will probably be with you for a long time. For example, if you learn to code with Python, Rust might seem very different and difficult to learn. I don’t want to have to re-learn everything if I decide to switch engines later on - so I’m evaluating the options with important criteria in mind:

• .NET support: I’m a .NET developer, and I want to be able to use my existing knowledge. I am aware that game development requires thinking differently when scripting as opposed to creating a web app, but I still want that familiarity. But to that end, I also want:
  • Proper async/await support
  • Familiar methods, frameworks, and libraries
  • Solution-based project structure allowing for customisation
  • Package management with NuGet
• Pipeline support: I need to be able to build and deploy using headless CI/CD pipelines. This is something of a rule with me - if I can’t automate it, I don’t want to do it.
• Cross-platform support: I want to be able to build for Windows, Linux, macOS, and even the web. As A lInUx UsEr, I always get a bit fierce about the Windows-first focus of games, so I want to do better and make my bad games natively cross-platform.
• 3D support: I want to make 3D games, and I want to be able to use Blender assets in my games. I don’t want to have to learn a new tool for 3D modeling and animation. I won’t start with 3D games, but I want to have the option as I get more confident.
• Linux-first development: I don’t use Windows at home, and I don’t want to have to use it to develop games. I want to be able to use my Linux machine for everything, including testing and debugging.
  • Integration with JetBrains Rider is a bonus.

I’ve been looking at a few different game engines, and I’ve decided to start with Godot. It’s totally open source, hasn’t had any ’enshittification’ scandals, and I’ve heard good things about it. I’ve also been told that it’s a good engine to start with, as it’s quite user-friendly and has a lot of documentation and tutorials available.

For the evaluation, I followed the 2D tutorial on the official docs to get a feel for the engine.

First impressions

Godot looks like it will be a great project for me to use as it meets most of my requirements, perhaps even for more than just games. I’ll still need to give the 3D tutorial a go to see if it meets my 3D requirements, but I’m feeling pretty good about it.

I found that in the C# version (as opposed to the ‘GDScript’ version of Godot), there are many custom methods and classes that are similar-but-not the same as some of the ones built into .NET - but these didn’t feel too alien to me, they were similar to what you would find in any other .NET library. It looked tricky, but I also think I may be able to do dependency injection, too.

One limitation I found that does not meet my requirements is that when using C# and Godot 4(.2), I am not able to publish to the web - version 3 does not have this limitation, however I don’t want to begin as a new Godot user with the previous version. This appears to be a limitation of .NET at the moment, but is on the radar and intends to be supported as soon as possible by the team: godotengine/godot#70796.

If you want to see the results of my following the tutorial, you can find the project on GitHub.

So far, I’m feeling pretty good about Godot. I’m going to continue with the 3D tutorial and see how I feel about it after that. I’ll keep you posted!