Discussion
#gamedev mastodon: Please give me suggestions for game engines that meet the following requirements:
1) 3D
2) Supports both dev and publish on both Linux and Windows
3) Supports native c++ for game logic
4) Supports using Perforce
5) Does NOT use gen AI
6) Fully local. no cloud BS.
7) Open source / source provided
8) Preferably free, or at least cheap, but any kind of subscription is a hard no.
(Note: I am NOT switching to git. Replies telling me to use git will be blocked.)
Thanks!
@zinnschlag @mdiluz @iveks @witchpixels Not only does Godot not support Perforce, the dev team has philosophical issues against supporting it. It needs some core fixes (e.g. understanding/handling locked files, not overwriting files on launch, etc) that can't be fixed via plugin. Last year I tried volunteering to work on it, and was talking to another volunteer about working together; it was made clear our patches would be refused and someone even deleted our thread.
Leaving Godot is the goal.
@drakonite @zinnschlag @iveks @witchpixels always surprised Perforce requires tooling support, what an odd technology
@mdiluz @zinnschlag @iveks @witchpixels It follows the Lock-Edit-Commit paradigm, which used to be standard. Before editing a file you need to "lock" (aka "check out") the file, so the VCS (and everyone else using it) knows you are editing it. For files that cannot reasonably be merged it only allows one person to edit at a time.
This is extremely useful for gamedev teams, e.g. because if two people unknowingly edit the same art asset at the same time one of them will lose their work.
@mdiluz As long as tools are well behaved (e.g. do not overwrite read-only files) you can do all the VCS work manually, but it is so much nicer when tools that access lots of files understand locking and adding files.
Hint: Godot is not well behaved, especially on Linux. It silently stomps read-only files, replaces unmodified files, etc.
@drakonite oh I'm well aware of the why, I use it at work on the daily. However if we're getting into the weeds then in my eyes the lock-first mechanism is what one might call a "viral" solution - one that requires other tools to play ball and even require integrating with individual VCS APIs. P4 forces other tools to be aware of it, spreading vendor lock-in and pushing its own economic costs onto others when they implement support and maintenance. I can see why some devs refuse to engage.
@drakonite Godot seems mostly a good fit. I don't think it supports Perforce out of the box, but there is this plugin https://github.com/kitchensynk/godot-perforce-plugin. No idea if and how well it works.
Native C++ for game logic is possible with GDExtensions. Again, never tried it myself. Seems slightly cumbersome, but doable.
GitHub - kitchensynk/godot-perforce-plugin: Adds support for Helix Core P4 in Godot 4.1