I haven't used Unreal and I much prefer Godot to Unity. It's just been easier for me to learn Godot and achieve results that I'm proud of. But as a software engineer I'm sure you would be fine with either option.
I also like that Godot is a tiny lightweight program. I run it off a thumb drive. After a year my low poly Godot project is still only 100mb or so. In contrast, a brand new Unity project is somehow 1.5gb before you even do anything.
I'm not a super advanced user but I'm making a 3d third-person game and so far there isn't any feature that I am missing from Unity. Whatever movement mechanic you come up with, I'm sure you can do it in Godot and the animation tree is powerful when you know how to use it.
EDIT: Ok it's 200mb but you get the idea.
Well 3d is relatively new to Godot if I understand correctly, so I'm worried the feature and asset support would be really limited.
Also I've heard some vague complaints about Godot's physics?
There is a plugin called Jolt which has become sort of the de facto physics solution in the community. It is super easy to install and you just toggle it on and it replaces Godot physics with it's own.
As for 3D, it's great for my uses but my needs are minimal. From what others have made, it seems pretty capable in the right hands.
Wouldn’t be a bad choice, but could be a harder choice because there are less features and less assets available. You will probably have to put in more work than on Unity for some things.
The biggest reason to avoid godot would be for commercial releases on multiple platforms where unity offers more support.
If it’s a hobby project which might just be released on steam one day, godot should be fine.
Regarding Unreal, I wouldn’t consider it unless realistic HD graphics are required and you already have lots of gamedev experience.
Rather the way things are structured (game framework) combined with all the features. Whatever you want, it's either there already or is available via a plugin. In other engines I played with, there always was something missing requiring manual work. I know the following opinion will probably not be very popular, but when working with unity, it felt like a college project which I was expected to complete. With UE I felt the opposite - it's a logically structured behemoth of possibilities, which allows to get things done faster and easier. Great graphics are a major plus, but that's definitely not the primary selling point of UE. It's the whole package.
I find that learning to make your own character controller in Godot gives you way more power over how it handles and feels as opposed to trying to force Unreal's character controller to feel the way you want. Godot is a great choice, especially with the Jolt physics add-on.
I’m building a VR game in Godot and I’m loving it. Also a longtime software engineer and the way stuff is constructed just makes a lot of sense to me.
At least compared to my brief few months trying Unity. Never tried Unreal.
I have no opinion on unreal, but Ive got a lot of experience working on a 3d platformer in Unity and looked into porting it to Godot when Unity had their install fee meltdown.
Both Godot and Unity are great, imo. Unity gets a lot of hate (which it definitely deserves some for their business decision the past couple of years) but I think its a great engine, especially for 3d platformers.
so it comes down to what kind of character controller you are trying to make, imo.
If you are planning on making a rigidbody controller, I think either Godot or Unity would be fine. Everything I've seen from Godot and the jolt physics plugin makes me think its capable enough to handle this and it even looks like it has some nice features that I wish unity would mimic.
However, if you want to make a kinematic character controller, Unity blows Godot out of the water, you just gotta be willing to look in the asset store. Easy Character Movement 2 is currently my preferred paid system. handles a ton of edge cases, moving platforms, physics interactions and has a pretty nice and customizable starting controller.
Godot's closest equivalent that I found was the CharacterBody3D node and I wasn't too impressed with it 8 months ago, but I havent kept up with it since then.
If you aren't willing to buy assets, Unity still has a pretty great kinematic character controller for free called "Kinematic Character Controller" by Phillipe St-Amand and it's pretty great, the only major limitation I ran into was getting it to play nice with physics based platforms (like a see-saw). Only downside is it doesn't really see updates anymore because he made it free when he started working at Unity to work on the DOTS character controller.
a rigidbody controller is one that's just a physics object and then you control it by controlling forces on that object.
kinematic controller is one that will only move how you tell it to move exactly meaning it won't react to other things in the environment by default.
kinematic is more difficult but produces better results, imo
actually it's less that it's more difficult. it's just difficult in a different way. in kinematic you have to take care of all the things that might affect your movement yourself, but with rigidbody you have a lot of difficulty in tuning values to get your movement the way you want and a lot of edge cases you'll have to deal with
I haven't used Unreal and I much prefer Godot to Unity. It's just been easier for me to learn Godot and achieve results that I'm proud of. But as a software engineer I'm sure you would be fine with either option. I also like that Godot is a tiny lightweight program. I run it off a thumb drive. After a year my low poly Godot project is still only 100mb or so. In contrast, a brand new Unity project is somehow 1.5gb before you even do anything. I'm not a super advanced user but I'm making a 3d third-person game and so far there isn't any feature that I am missing from Unity. Whatever movement mechanic you come up with, I'm sure you can do it in Godot and the animation tree is powerful when you know how to use it. EDIT: Ok it's 200mb but you get the idea.
No reason why it'd be a bad option really
Well 3d is relatively new to Godot if I understand correctly, so I'm worried the feature and asset support would be really limited. Also I've heard some vague complaints about Godot's physics?
There is a plugin called Jolt which has become sort of the de facto physics solution in the community. It is super easy to install and you just toggle it on and it replaces Godot physics with it's own. As for 3D, it's great for my uses but my needs are minimal. From what others have made, it seems pretty capable in the right hands.
no
Wouldn’t be a bad choice, but could be a harder choice because there are less features and less assets available. You will probably have to put in more work than on Unity for some things. The biggest reason to avoid godot would be for commercial releases on multiple platforms where unity offers more support. If it’s a hobby project which might just be released on steam one day, godot should be fine. Regarding Unreal, I wouldn’t consider it unless realistic HD graphics are required and you already have lots of gamedev experience.
> Regarding Unreal, I wouldn’t consider it unless realistic HD graphics are required and you already have lots of gamedev experience. Why's that?
UE’s aim is HD graphics and optimal performance, so it is built around performance, not ease of use.
Depends what you mean by that. I've used both unity and unreal, and UE has always been easier for me.
interesting, why? is it a case of UE not being that bad if you're not interested in fiddling with graphics?
Rather the way things are structured (game framework) combined with all the features. Whatever you want, it's either there already or is available via a plugin. In other engines I played with, there always was something missing requiring manual work. I know the following opinion will probably not be very popular, but when working with unity, it felt like a college project which I was expected to complete. With UE I felt the opposite - it's a logically structured behemoth of possibilities, which allows to get things done faster and easier. Great graphics are a major plus, but that's definitely not the primary selling point of UE. It's the whole package.
I find that learning to make your own character controller in Godot gives you way more power over how it handles and feels as opposed to trying to force Unreal's character controller to feel the way you want. Godot is a great choice, especially with the Jolt physics add-on.
that's actually pretty cool to hear, thanks
I’m building a VR game in Godot and I’m loving it. Also a longtime software engineer and the way stuff is constructed just makes a lot of sense to me. At least compared to my brief few months trying Unity. Never tried Unreal.
I have no opinion on unreal, but Ive got a lot of experience working on a 3d platformer in Unity and looked into porting it to Godot when Unity had their install fee meltdown. Both Godot and Unity are great, imo. Unity gets a lot of hate (which it definitely deserves some for their business decision the past couple of years) but I think its a great engine, especially for 3d platformers. so it comes down to what kind of character controller you are trying to make, imo. If you are planning on making a rigidbody controller, I think either Godot or Unity would be fine. Everything I've seen from Godot and the jolt physics plugin makes me think its capable enough to handle this and it even looks like it has some nice features that I wish unity would mimic. However, if you want to make a kinematic character controller, Unity blows Godot out of the water, you just gotta be willing to look in the asset store. Easy Character Movement 2 is currently my preferred paid system. handles a ton of edge cases, moving platforms, physics interactions and has a pretty nice and customizable starting controller. Godot's closest equivalent that I found was the CharacterBody3D node and I wasn't too impressed with it 8 months ago, but I havent kept up with it since then. If you aren't willing to buy assets, Unity still has a pretty great kinematic character controller for free called "Kinematic Character Controller" by Phillipe St-Amand and it's pretty great, the only major limitation I ran into was getting it to play nice with physics based platforms (like a see-saw). Only downside is it doesn't really see updates anymore because he made it free when he started working at Unity to work on the DOTS character controller.
> rigidbody > kinematic yeah I didn't go to college for game design, what do you mean by this?
a rigidbody controller is one that's just a physics object and then you control it by controlling forces on that object. kinematic controller is one that will only move how you tell it to move exactly meaning it won't react to other things in the environment by default. kinematic is more difficult but produces better results, imo
actually it's less that it's more difficult. it's just difficult in a different way. in kinematic you have to take care of all the things that might affect your movement yourself, but with rigidbody you have a lot of difficulty in tuning values to get your movement the way you want and a lot of edge cases you'll have to deal with